The Jaina thinkers made a distinction
between the states of the soul as bahiratman, antaratman and
paramaatuman. Bahiratman consists in the identification of the self
with body and eternal Belgians it is the bodily self I this wr say, �I am
the body, I am lean etc� this identification is due to ignorance. The same
soul is in the karmavastha and is characterized by suddha
caitanya and bliss. It is free from all sense of otherwise. It has
discriminative knowledge. This conscious self is ataraman in the
samyagdrsti gunasthana the pure and perfect self which is free from
the impurities of Karma is the paramatman. It is characterized
perfect cognition and knowledge. It is freed ad is a Siddha. This
paramatma is jnaamaya ad is pure consciousness it cannot be known
by the sese it has o indriyas and not manas. From the oumea point
of view these are the attributes of the soul.35 The Jaina approach to
the problem is metaphysical it contains elements of psychological
instigation; but the language is the language of metaphysics. Modern
psychologists, especially the rational psychologists, stopped
psychological analysis and explained the process of realizing the pure
nature of the self from the empirical stage to stage of pure ego. But the
transcendental self is not the subject of psycholo9gy. William James has
said that states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her
work with. Metaphysics or theology may pore the existence of the soul: but
for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is
supersluous.�36
Jainism refers to the size of the
soul. Although souls are not of any definite size, they contract and
expand according to the size of the body in which they are incorporated
for the time big. The soul is capable of adjusting its size to physical
body, as the lamp placed in a large or small room illuminates the whole
space of the room. Nemicandra describes it as the phenomenal
characteristic of the soul. From the numeral point of view it is said to
exist in innumerable pradesas. 37 In respect of the elasticity of
the soul, Jainism differs from the other Scholl�s of Indian thought. As
Jacobi says the Jains have a tenet of the soze of the soul which is not
shared by other philosopher.38
Some philosophers like the Vaisesikas,
Demarcates and the atomizes, thought of the soul as atomic. Some others
talked of the omnipresence of the soul. Jacob says that the origin
Vaisesika was not clear this point. Some Samakhya writers preferred the
soul to be infinitely small while Isvara Krana and later writers
characterized it as all-pervading.39 The spatial view of the
habitation of the soul had occupied the minds of the Upaisadic
philosophers.
Upanisadic psychology agrees with the
Aristotellia I localizing the soul the soul I the heart. It was later
thought that it was in the brain. Yogic ad Tatric books recognized the
cerebrochemical processes , and aconciousness was traced to the brain In
the Taittriyounisae (1.6.1.2.) we read that the soul in the heart
moves by passage through the bones of the palate, right up to the skull,
where the hari are made to part. The soul in the heart is called
manomaya in the Kausitaki Upanisad the soul is described as the
master of all bodilyfunctions. The sense depends on the soul as �relatives
on the rich� the self�s immanent in the whole body , and is hidden in it
This passage leads to the view like the Jaina view , that the soul fills
the body . Different other accounts are given in the Upanisads. In the
brhadranyaka the self is described as small as grain of rice or
barley. In the kathopainsad we find that the soul is of the size of the
thumb.40 It dwells in the center of the heart. In the Candogya, it
is said to be of the measure of the gpanbetween the head and the chin.
William James tares the feeling of self to the cephalic movements. He
says that the self of sells when carefully examined is found to nosiest
mainly in the collection of these peculiar motions in the head or between
the head ad the heart. 41 Descartes merits that the seat of the soul is
the pineal gland Fichte holds that the soul is a space filling principle
Lotus says that the soul must be located some where in the matrix of the
arterial brain events. These accounts tend to make us believe that the
soul is something material, which occupies space. It is sometimes pointed
out that the idea of the spatial attributes of the soul constitutes a
contradiction. If the soul has no form it cannot occupy space, en the
infinite pradesas; and if it is immaterial it cannot have form.
However, this contradiction is due to the difficulties of expressing the
immaterial in thermos of the materials this has bee the perenocabulary of
its own, the Freaks had the same difficulty plato had to resort to
allegories and myths for expressing the immaterial. In Jainism although
the description of the soul is not metaphorical, it is just an tempt to
come nearest immaterialism. It may be that the difficulty is due to the
complexity of substance in Jainism. Jainism gives the cross division of
substances as spiritual and non-spiritual, and again as corporeal and
non-corporeal substance like Dharma ad Adharama; and there is the
corporeal which is called pudgaga. From the phenomenal point of view,
jiva comes under the spiritual but corporeal the corporeal need not
necessarily be material.
