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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
466
Ātman and Moksa
knowledge, and it is called 'That whose nature has become manifest' on account of the presence of such knowledge. Manifestation or non-manifestation of its nature of a different kind are not possible, since its nature is nothing but its nature (i.e., in reality is always the same)."! Thus, the soul is incomprehensible in the ordinary sense as it is not perceptible by our sense organs and it eludes its understanding by means of the mind and the intellect. It is perceptible only in our direct and immediate contact with it. . It is called the intuitive supersensible way of its knowledge. In fact, the Brahman can be known only by becoming identified with it. All the external ways of its apprehension are inadequate for its real knowledge. It consists in realising in the right way that 'I am the Brahman' (TĚ TAF). The Brahman or the soul is rightly understood only when one forgets and dissolves his fictitious and narrow sense of individuality and enters into a direct and immediate communion with the eternal and all-pervading Brahman. The Brahman, which is eternal, pure, intelligence, free, omniscient, omnipresent, perfect, immutable and blissful, is our real self. It is properly known when we can have such an experience that 'I am the whole existence, that I am the Being itself.' As long as efforts are made to understand it, in any of the objective ways, or in terms of the qualities of the objects of the world, it cannot be really understood. In our usual terms of description the Brahman has to be described as 'not this' not this'
1 S'amkara (Com.) on Vedānta s tras. Tr. Thibaut, 1.3.19. Vol. I, p. 187.
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