EMANCIPATION FROM
BONDAGE
When Jesus of Nazareth
propounded the proposition* (*See John, VII. 32) "Ye shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free."
His interlocutors failed
to understand the nature of freedom, which the knowledge of truth was to
carry to their hearts. It was their ignorance of the nature of spiritual
bondage, which prevented them from grasping the true sense of the
messianic observation. They looked upon freedom from only the political
point of view, and had never thought of the true or spiritual freedom with
which religion mainly concerns itself. They had then to be told, that
freedom signified emancipation from the bondage of sin, but it is not
clear, whether they fully comprehended the messianic speech even then, for
even today it is difficult to believe that the full significance of the
terms freedom and bondage has been adequately grasped by the humanity at
large. Be this as it may, the important question for us is not whether the
interlocutors and followers of Jesus understood his purpose or not, but
what is the true significance of the terms freedom and bondage in the
science of religion?
It is obvious that there
is no concrete substance or thing to correspond to the word sin when used
as a noun; the word expresses a pure mental abstraction, and conveys the
idea of wrong- doing. The bondage of sin, thus, is clearly the thralldom
of actions, i.e.,
karmas
(actions or deeds), which is to be shaken off in order to bring the state
of natural freedom of the soul into manifestation.
THEORY OF
TRANSMIGRATION
It must be borne in mind
that there can be no bondage to pure mental abstractions, or purely wordy
concepts; the word signifies some kind of real fetters, not, indeed,
consisting of chains of iron, but of a very subtle and invisible material.
It is well to know that nothing but force, in some form or other, is
capable of holding things in the condition of slavery, and that no kind of
force can be conceived apart from a substance or material of some sort.
The bondage of sin must, then, be a bondage of `matter, and the obtainment
of freedom must consequently imply the destruction of bonds and the
removal of the particles of foreign matter from the constitution of the
soul.
This is precisely what is
implied in the theory of transmigration, which undoubtedly, was well known
to and accepted by every rational religion in the past. It is, however, in
Jainism alone that we find it placed on a scientific foundation, and
though the scriptures of other creeds contain allusions to it, these
allusions are nearly always couched in mystic or unintelligible language
and are never explained on lines of rational or scientific thought. This
is one of the facts which explain the reason why the followers of certain
religions, including Christianity, do not now accept the doctrine of
re-birth, and range themselves against the creeds which preach it.
That the theory of
transmigration is a truth of philosophy will be readily acknowledged by
any one who would study the nature of the soul and of the causes upon
which depends its ensoulment in a body of matter. As regards to the
former, that is the nature of the soul, it is sufficient to state that the
qualities of feeling, willing and knowing, which are the special
attributes of consciousness, are not to be found in matter, and must, for
that reason be the property of a substance which differs in toto from it.
The simplicity of the soul is proved by the fact that no one ever feels
himself as many, which shows that the subject of knowledge, feeling,
perception and memory is not a reality composed of many atoms or parts,
but a simple individuality. Soul, then, is a reality, which is not
indebted to any other substance for its existence, and as such must be
deemed to be eternal and uncreated. This amounts to saying, that the line
of existence of every soul merges in infinity both in the past and the
future, so that each and every living being has a history of his own,
however much he might be ignorant of the events of his earlier lives in
his present incarnation.
In respect of the causes
of the ensoulment of a
Jiva
in the body of matter, it is to be observed that in its natural purity the
soul is the enjoyer of perfect wisdom, unlimited perception, infinite
power and unbounded happiness, which, in the absence of a restraining
force or body of some kind, must be deemed to be manifested in the fullest
degree in its nature. The idea of such a perfect being descending to
inhabit a body of flesh and thereby crippling its natural unlimited
perfection, in a number of ways, is too absurd to be entertained for a
moment. It follows from this that the soul did not exist in a condition of
perfection prior to its present incarnation, and that the existence of
some force capable of dragging
Jivas
into different wombs is a condition precedent to their birth in the
several grades of life. But how shall we conceive force operation on soul
and dragging it into an organism, if not as the action of some kind of
matter? It is, therefore, clear that the soul must have been in union with
some kind of matter prior to its birth in any given incarnation.
So far as the nature of
matter which is found in union with the soul in its pre-natal state is
concerned, it most obviously must be of a very
sukshma(fine)
quality, since the fertilized ovum, which roughly speaking, is the
starting point of the life of an organism is itself a very minute,
microscopic structure. The body of this fine material, called the
Karman
sartor
(the body of karmic
matter), in technical language of the Jaina
Siddhanta,
is the cause and instrument of transmigration, and, along with the one
called `the taijasa*
sarira
(body of radiant wonder),
(*The electric body
taijasa
arira is a necessary link
between the other two bodies of the soul- the
Karma
and the audarika, the body of the gross matter. The necessity for a link
of this kind is to be found in the fact that the matter of the
Karman sarira
is too sukshma fine and that of the
audarika
too gross to allow any direct or immediate interaction between them and
that an intermediate type of matter is required to connect them with each
other.) is a constant companion of the soul in all its different forms
assumed in the course of its evolution in the samsara. Both these bodies
undergo changes of form from time to time, there by leading to different
kinds of births; they are destroyed only when
Moksha
is attained, which means perfect freedom of the soul from all kinds of
matter.
The necessity for the
existence of the shuttle body
Karman
sarira
would also become clear by taking into consideration the effect its
absence would have on the soul of a dead man, i.e. a disembodied spirit.
Obviously the absence of all kinds of limiting and crippling influences
would at once enable such a disembodied soul to manifest its natural
perfection in the fullest degree, making it the equal of Gods and the
enjoying of the supreme status of
Paramatma
(god) at a stroke. Death, then, instead of being the dreaded foe, as it is
considered now, would be the greatest benefactor of all kind of living
beings, and the attainment of supreme bliss, to say nothing of
omniscience, omnipotence, and all those other divine qualities and powers
which men associate with their gods, would be possible with the greatest
ease, not only to every virtuous
Jiva,
but to every rogue, rascal and sinner as well. Even the act of murdering a
fellow being would have to be regarded as a highly meritorious deed, and
suicide acclaimed as the shortest cut to the heaven of the highest
divinity. Dogs and cats and the whole host of creeping things and the like
would also, on such a supposition, find their differences of development
abolished at a stroke. The path of salvation, too, would no longer consist
in Right Faith, Right Knowledge and Right Conduct, but would lie on the
point of the butcher's knife or through the friendly grave of a cannibal's
stomach.
