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reason given for the practice of morality. The moral acts have their results. We could give this reason, but that ought not to be the object of any person. If these things are understood, the occult powers will come of themselves without anything more being necessary, but they will not be the object of the life of the person. They may come and go, but the moral nature of the soul ought not to change. The object is not to obtain the occult powers and manifest them, but to manifest the soul's powers in such a direction that it will not be allowed to stray and become lost. These powers are not anything that come to the soul from outside, they are not an addition to it. If the soul is immortal, then any addition to it is a change in the soul, and it is not of one kind at one time and of another kind at another time. The theory which we advance can be explained by the illustration of a piece of gold ore in which there are a thousand particles of impurity and a hundred particles of gold, and we say that there are impurities there, and we therefore refine these away, and when the impurities are gone, the nature of the gold is not changed, but it becomes more apparent. We say in the same manner that the soul is an emanation from the divine, that its nature is divinity; only on account of its worldly life of desire, which is selfish and injurious to other people, the whole compound organic being is impure, and in that sense we may say that the soul is in a fallen state, but not in the sense that it was pure at sometime but has departed from its former state and is depraved.
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