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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
626
Atman and MokẸa
to enter a personal and loving relationship with such an almighty, omniscient and omnipotent God, who is ignorant of sorrow and suffering, of finitude and limitations. The desire on the part of man to seek communion with the Divine ultimately culminated into the loving adoration and sacrifice, into Bhakti-devotion for the Divine. The knowledge of the impersonal, qualityless, and heartless reality (absolute) finally fails to quench the craving of the human heart to widen itself to infinity, to realise an identity with the Reality, and to experience forever an unending bliss which ultimately relieves him of the shortcomings and the sorrows of the worldly life. The finite human heart, therefore, demands the perfect and all-powerful Being, who is not only the creator, the sustainer, and the absorber of the whole universe, but who is also full of profound compassion (dayā ) and love for His creation, and who possesses the supreme power to destroy the evil by which the worldly beings are constantly harassed. He also possesses the power to redeem the individual who has for ever surrendered himself totally to Him by cutting short the mechanical operations of the Adrsta. The human heart thus craves for the attainment of such a perfect loving God who would become a source of everlasting peace, consolation, solace, and contentment to him, and would no more send him to the realm of suffering. This desire on the part of man has ultimately led to Theism, which means that the ultimate Reality is not the impersonal Brahman but a personal entity possessed of the qualities like love, compassion, and joy. The later 'Advaita systems of
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