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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
Vedanta (S'amkara)
with which it happens to be associated.' The Jiva is Brahman itself; it is not different from it.
Another objection is raised against their identity. It is asked if the individual souls are one with the Supreme Self or parts of it, why should its knowledge and lordship be hidden? S'akara says that the concealment of the Self's knowledge and lordship is due to its being joined to a body, the sense organs, mind, buddhi, sense objects and sensations. Moreover, as he says "as the heat and light of the fire are hidden as long as the fire is still hidden in the wood from which it will be produced by friction, or as long as it is covered by ashes; so in consequence of the self being connected with limiting adjuncts in the form of a body, etc., founded on name and form as presented by Nescience, its knowledge and lordship remain hidden as long as it is possessed by the erroneous notion of not being distinct from those adjuncts.' "2 Had the soul possess.
ed the power of the Supreme Self the individual souls would have been able to create objects like chariot that they see in their dreams from their mere wishes.
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For Private And Personal
According to the Advaita Vedānta, the individual soul does not possess the final or the noumenal reality; it possesses only the phenomenal reality. It lasts only as long as it is associated with the buddhi,
1 S'amkara (Com.) on Vedanta Sutras. Tr. Thibaut, 4.3.14, Vol. II, p. 397.
जीवो ब्रह्मैव नापरः ।
2 Ibid. 3.2 6, Vol. II, p. 140.
