Book Title: tman_and_moksa
Author(s): G N Joshi
Publisher: Gujarat University

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Page 829
________________ Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra www.kobatirth.org Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir Conclusion 797 partly similar to that of the Medieval Vaisnava Saints of India, who too sought to reach God by emotional attachment and surrender to God, through prayer, and worship and a mystical union with Him. According to Spinoza, the aim is the moral emancipation of the human mind which consists in the attainment of the intellectual love of God and of immortality. For that one has to subdue the emotional and sensitive part of our nature and to maintain and enhance the rational part. In the final state body disappears and the soul attains eternality (deathlessness or immortality) by experiencing itself to be integral with the substance (God). It is the highest unity with God, but in this union the distinction between God and soul is not obliterated, but is rather accentuated. It is a state of blessedness. Spinoza does not favour the absorption of the soul in God like Samkara but he is nearer to Rāmānuja and Nimbärka is so far as the individual retains his distinction and still experi. ences its essential unity with God, Kant was opposed to any kind of happiness for he looked upon emotions as a part of the lower nature of man. His highest ideal is discharge of moral duties dictated as the categorical imperative by Reason. Fichte also, being a moralist, does not think of the attainment of happiness. He regards the disinterested discharge of one's moral duties as the highest good. According to Hegel, the highest ideal is to realise identity of the individual soul (the subjective mind) with the infinite Spirit, the Idea, the Reason from which it has evolved. The highest freedom consists in the experience For Private And Personal

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