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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
536
Atman and Moksa
of the Brahman. It can be attained by properly realising the real nature of the soul which is in essence nothing else but the Supreme Self. A proper realisation of the proposition 'That art Thou' leads to the final liberation. Rāmānuja does not mean the complete annihilation of the individual soul (jiva) by the absorption of it in the Brahman, but he means by it the generation of the consciousness of its unity and inseparability with the Brahman. It consists in the realisation on the part of the soul in itself that it is only a mode of the Brahman which is its innermost Self or reality; that it cannot exist apart from its cause, the Brahman, and that it is only an extension of the Brahman. Rāmānuja explains the meaning of the text 'that art thou' as 'in that all this has its Self'.' He maintains that not only is the soul not annulled in liberation but it maintains in it even its sense of egoity. Rāmānuja is not able to imagine a state of release in which that which attains release is not conscious of the attainment of the release. He says -“The 'I' is not a mere attribute of the Self so that even after its destruction the essential nature of the Self might persist -- as it persists on the cessation of ignorance -- but it constitutes the very nature of the Self.'? That which undertakes' severe penance for the attainment of release does not desire the final state of liberation in which it itself would
1 Rāmānuja — Com. on Vedānta Sūtras. Tr. Thibaut, 1.1.1, p. 134.
? Ibid. p. 70.
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