What is Jainism

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

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ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES
Psychology, where this proposition is definitely accepted. As you will notice, the significance of the simple nature of the soul is that IT IS INCAPABLE OF DISINTEGRATION OR OF BEING DESTROYED; BECAUSE WHAT IS NOT MADE UP OF PARTS CANNOT BE PULLED TO PIECES IN ANY WAY! The soul, then, is IMMORTAL in its own right!
Now, in regard to OMNISCIENCE also it will be noticed that knowledge is merely a state of the soul's own consciousness. In perception, for instance, the external stimulus which comes through the doorways of the senses is only matter or energy. But knowledge results when it reaches the perceiving faculty. Whence comes this knowledge, then ? Surely not from the world outside, but only from within the perceiving consciousness itself! Amongst European thinkers the idea has been developed by Prof. Bowne, an English Metaphysician, who shows that all knowledge only reveals the internal richness of the perceiver, and is merely an expression of his real nature. If we reflect on the subject, it will certainly appear that inasmuch as all souls are of a like nature all the knowledge that is individually acquired or enjoyed by them may be enjoyed by any one of them. In other words, what one soul knows is capable of being known by all others. Hence, every soul has the capacity for knowing all that any one ever knew in the past, and all that any one knows today, and also all that which any one shall ever know in the future. This means nothing more or less than knowledge unlimited by Time and Space !
With regard to bliss also, it may be seen that happiness that is experienced on the receipt of the news of success in some big enterprise, e.g., a University Examination, comes from within, and not from the world without. For neither the words nor the writing of the message of success contain happiness within them. This happiness arises not by way of sense-gratification ; it does not even resemble the pleasure that is experienced through the senses, but is of an entirely different nature. It is experienced because the news of the success in the examination has put an end to all worries and anxiety and to the sense of striving and straining which was troubling the soul thus far, leaving it free to experience