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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
The Systems of Rāmāpuja ....
587
occurs only with the grace of God who is to be sought by the most ardent faith and devotion for Him, and also by the knowledge of scriptures of Him and of the five distinctions; the karma or moral duties and religious rites help as subservient to it. Knowledge gets transformed into bhakti which ends into the total self-surrender of the jiva to the Paramātman who is the final authority, as He alone wields the Supreme power necessary to overcome the evils of the world and to save the souls from them. The devotee has to undertake serious efforts to attain the grace of God by qualifying himself (adhikärin-offalora) by practising the various ethical virtues and yogic practices and other prescribed means. An all-absorbing love for God with aversion for all things other than God, is absolutely necessary. He has to strive from below to rise above by becoming more and more worthy of the Divine grace, and the Parmātman has to lift him up to His bosom by removing all the impediments from his path. Thus, theism cannot effect emancipation of the individual soul without the Divine grace. The purely human efforts always prove to be insufficient for the deliverance of the souls. Nicol Macnicol says -- "For Theism to be possible man must be recognized as a self-determining agent, whose character is not externally fixed, but for whom the future may be a land of hope and promise. He must be one, God helping him, burst the bonds of habit, and enter into the experience of a moral victory that is really his, and the God whom he knows must be
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