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EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL

Atma Siddhi is a spiritual poem composed in Gujarati by the nineteenth century Jain mystic poet and philosopher Shrimad Rajchandra (18671901 C.E.). Atma according to Jainism means "soul" or the "self" and "Siddhi" means "attainment". Hence, Atma Siddhi is translated as Self Attainment or Self Realization. It is a composition of 142 verses in Gujarati, explaining the fundamental philosophical truths about the soul and its liberation. In the heart of this poem, Shrimad Rajchandra has explained the existence of the soul in a scientific way. In the poetic form, the disciple asks to his spiritual master about the existence of soul. He doubts on the soul and his spiritual master removes his doubt by using amazing logic and some scientific ideas and ultimately the pupil starts believing in the soul and develops faith in the teaching of Tirthankars. The pupil and his masters discussion are explained from the verse 45 to 107. In this article I have given main points of their discussion and explained the meaning of the verses. Hope this article will remove all the doubts of the readers mind about the existence of the self.

THE DISCIPLES DOUBT

The pupil doubts the Soul's existence, Is out of sight, its form unknown, In any way no experience, Nowhere is Soul, cannot be shown.
The disciple starts asking his spiritual master about the existence of the soul. He has the same confusion like we do have. The soul is not seen nor felt by the all senses. Nobody has seen or perceived the soul through the senses or any kind of sensors. It seems that the soul can never be experienced in any other way. So we cannot say that the soul does exist. Hence the disciple doubts the very existence of the soul.

The body, senses or the breath, Can be the Soul, all else is false, How can one know the Soul ere death? No clear signs I see as walls.
Since there is no sign of the soul known to us it is better to say either that there is no soul at all or that the living body, the senses and the breath is the soul. The fundamental marks of life and active consciousness in a living being open to sense perception are only three. A living being moves its limbs, perceives its objects by its senses, and breathes. Therefore, the disciple suggests that the Self can exist only as breath in living beings, that breath is the Self. Those who hold that the conscious Self has qualities other than the above three found in living beings should explain them.

If there's the Soul, why it's not known? As pots and clothes, it should be seen; If there is Soul's existence own, Arguments mine are true, I mean.
If the soul exists as a substance then it should be seen or felt as living bodies, pots, clothes are seen by our senses. The Self is different from the living body, its senses and breath and yet it is not seen or known as independent substances. Hence it does not exist.

Thus there is no Soul, futile all Means for freedom of the Soul of saints, Destroy my doubts by any means, To make my heart free from all taints.
If there is no soul then it is futile to think about liberation. Please explain the nature of souls existence if it really exists. THE TRUE SPIRITUAL MASTERS REPLY

The Teacher true does so explain, The body and the Soul seem one, Distinct are both, the signs are plain, Remove body infatuation. The body and the Soul seem one, Distinct are both, but this deceives, Alone the body infatuation, Distinct are both as swords and sheaths.
From eternity the soul (consciousness) is in close contact with matter. Hence it has completely identified itself with the body (matter). In fact the Soul and its living body are quite
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different in nature as is the sword from its scabbard. The embodied Soul has forgotten its original Selfhood so much so that it doubts its independence of the body when the realized Souls actually advise and guide one to an experience of such independence. For such Souls proper concentration on the nature of the Self can be attained by constant contact with a living and enlightened Guru. By such contact the seeker of the Self will be indifferent to the sense object contacts and he will direct all his energies to know the Self. How can the soul be identified? As fire can be grasped by a fork, the nature of the Self can be grasped by discriminative differentiation between the nature of the Self and that of the body, its senses and breath. The Self is Self-luminous and knowing. By a discriminative intellect the thoughts of the Self can be separated from those of the not self the body, the senses and the world at large. The intellect can clearly distinguish between the conscious and the unconscious, the living and the dead. In all forms of knowledge the knower is there but different from them. There is no knowledge without the Self, the prime knower. A tree looks beautiful and green in the presence of the soul. But when the soul leaves it (the trees body), the beauty is gone and it looks dry. The beauty of nature is due to the presence of the soul. By true insight the seeker of the Self will read the presence of the Self in the surrounding beauty of the Nature. In all doubting the doubter will be known. While the material objects perceptible to the senses are momentary and subject to destruction the Self is indestructible. In fine, leaving everything else, a seeker of the Self should have firm faith on the Self and should think and meditate on it. The chief characteristics of the Self are eternal maintenance of its essential nature (Samata), the source of all beauty (Ramata), prime importance of its presence in all forms of knowledge and action (Urdhvata), the capacity to know everything (Sukhabhasa), the seat of all experiences
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internal and external (Vedakata), and the source of all enlightenment (Chaitanyata).

One that sees the sight and knows, Experiences one unconcealed, Indisputable sign that shows, The Soul itself to all revealed.
How can be the soul seen through the eyes? The eye sees through the co operation of the Soul. In other words, the soul guides and controls the eyes to fulfill their function of seeing the objects. Therefore one can say that the Soul sees through the eyes and hears through the ears. The Soul knows the forms. Ever after leaving all forms of the body, the Soul being indestructible abides. All other things are transitory, the Soul is eternal. The Soul does not cease to be with the stoppage of breath. Liquidating one by one the imperfect and limited experiences of the Soul, the experience of the Self itself remains indubitably certain and it is the irreducible basis of all other experiences. The pupil had asked that the soul cannot be perceived through the eyes, ears etc thats why it does not exists. The master says that know the knower which is beyond all senses, mind, body and breathing. That can be experienced without any obstruction, it is the soul itself. In short, the experience of I do exist is the soul.

Each sense has its own subject knowledge,

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The knowledge of all sense subjects, The Soul possesses, 'its not strange, The ear hears, the soul rejects.
Every sense organ enables us to know only its appropriate objects, the ear cannot see and the eye cannot hear. But the Soul can know the appropriate objects of all the five senses. Without the co-operation of the Soul, no sense can function. Not only the Soul knows the objects perceived by the five senses but also it remembers them for future reference. The work of one sense is not known by the other sense. But the soul is one who has the knowledge of all the five senses at once.

The body cannot know the Soul, Nor senses, neither knows the breath, All do their deeds, if there's the Soul, If it goes off, it's called death.
The body cannot know the Soul, nor can the senses or breath know it. On the other hand the very functions of the body, the senses and the breath depend on the presence of the Soul in them. The body and the senses are material; they will be dead and lifeless in the absence of the Soul. Without the Soul they cannot be known as such.

In all the states the Soul separate, Is seen always as consciousness,

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Distinctive mark is accurate, To ascertain the Soul's presence.

The Soul, though present in all the states of consciousness (wakefulness, dream and sleep) of a living being, always experiences itself as different from each and all of them. The states of consciousness come and go but the Soul remains as their knower. It is the eternal knower of everything. The know-ability of the Soul is eternal and indestructible.

You know the pots and clothes and all, Thus believe them but not the knower, If pots and clothes exist big, small, Why not the Soul with knowledge power?
What a surprising argument is yours, O my pupil? You say you know the body, the pot and the clothes etc., the sensible objects and so you accept them as real and you do not accept the knower of these bodies, pots and clothes etc. If the knower is absent, the knowledge and the known are automatically absent. Where is knowledge without the knower? The presence of the knower is implicit in the knowledge of the sensible objects.

Supreme in thought, though bodies thin, In fat, strong bodies no cleverness, This proves the body is the inn, And not the Soul, there is no oneness.
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On accepting the theory of the body as the Soul, a man's intelligence will increase or decrease with the increase or decrease in his volume. But on the contrary we find slim bodied persons with extraordinary knowledge and the fat bodied persons with dullness and ignorance. Hence it seems the volume of a body has no direct relation with the intellectual powers or intelligence. If body is the Soul and Soul is ever knowing and intelligent the above anomaly would not arise. Therefore, we should conclude that in no circumstances can the Soul be identified with the living body.

The natures of the Soul and matter, Are clearly quite different, Can never be of one character, See ages all: past, future, present.
The sentiment and the non-sentient substances have quite different characteristics and distinction between the two is unmistakably clear at all times. The non-sentient objects or substances have no capacity to know anything. On the contrary the sentient substances are ever knowing. Therefore, one should not be mistaken for the other. They would never merge into each other. A sentient substance can never be a non-sentient one and a non-sentient substance can by no magic or logic be made into a sentient one. Both are utterly different and are experienced as such in all times. The attributes of touch, taste, smell, color are absent in the sentient souls and the attributes of knowledge and perception are always absent in the non-sentient substances.

One that doubts the Soul's existence, He himself the Soul must be, 'Without the doubter's obvious presence,
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Can there be doubt?' surprises me.

The soul itself doubts the existence of the self. How strange is that! One cannot even say that there is no Soul in the absence of a Soul. Doubt implies the existence of the doubter, and the doubter is the Soul. There cannot be a doubt without a doubter. The Soul by nature is self luminous and it is illuminating all other objects. We spend more time in seeing other objects by the help of the Soul and we feel we have no time in perceiving our own self luminous Soul. Therefore, we come to a strange pass i.e. we doubt our own existence.

THE DISCIPLE'S DOUBT

By thinking deep upon your points, Of Soul's existence, I allege, That there must be the Soul, who joints, The diverse parts of this knowledge.
The disciple reflected on all the proofs of Soul's existence given by the Guru and found them to be convincing and conclusive. Therefore he declares that he has been clearly convinced of the existence of the Soul. After getting convinced of the truth of the first proposition i.e. the Soul exists, the disciple proceeds to his doubts about the second proposition i.e. the Soul is eternal. He proceeds,

The second doubt now I put forth, The Soul cannot be eternal, The contact of the body's birth, Destruction of union visual.
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The disciples second doubt is on the eternity of the soul. We can only recognize Soul's existence in the experiences of a living body. To say that a man has died is simply to mean that the Soul has stopped its function in it. This means that the Soul is momentary and not permanent nor eternal, that the Soul is born at the co-operation and contact of five gross elements in a certain proposition and that it expires at the disintegration or separation of the very five elements.

Or things are transient, constant change, Is seen in every living being, And substances without knowledge, I see, thus, there's no eternal thing.
All psychical and physical substances are found to be in constant and continuous flux or change. There is nothing in this world of space and time which is not changing. Therefore, the Soul that exists should also be existing as a momentary substance. This is the view of the Vijnanavadin Buddhists.

THE TRUE TEACHER'S REPLY

The body is only adherence, The object seen, lifeless, with forms, Who knows the Soul's genesis, hence, Or death thereof? Think of the norms.
The body is a composite of atoms. The body is visible and is the object of someones perception. The non-sentient body
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cannot know anything. If we think on every atom of the body we can conclude that they have no consciousness. And therefore the atoms can never generate the consciousness. How can a non-sentient living body give birth to a sentient object even when it may be in contact with a sentient Soul? Therefore, it is wrong to hold that a non-sentient substance helps directly or indirectly the birth or destruction of a sentient Soul. Besides, who can be logically held to have experienced the so-called birth and destruction of sentient Soul in the non-sentient body? If A knows that B is born, A should be prior to B. But the disciple has argued that the living body and the Soul are born together and they die together. So the Soul, the knower was not prior to its birth, nor does it survive its destruction. We have already argued that the non-intelligent or non-sentient body cannot know about the sentient Soul, either its eternity or its momentariness. Now we argue that on the theory that the Soul and the body are born together and that they die together, even the Soul, the knower cannot record its birth or death and therefore the theory is contrary to reason and experience.

The seer of the rise and fall, Must be quite different from the scene, Can hear the dead their death roll call? Or ere one's birth what can be seen?
The master explains to his disciple that it is obvious that one that claims to know the birth and death of the Soul must be different from it. The Soul in the living body cannot say it was born nor can it say it is dead. Such an experience is unthinkable.

Compounds of elements can be seen, But not the Soul that's original, The Soul is the seer and not the seen,
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Nothing can create the Soul eternal.

All combinations of atoms are seen and known by the Soul, but reflecting on the nature of these combinations we find none which is competent to create a Soul. Therefore the Soul is neither a sub-atomic particle nor a combination of atoms, nor does it result from any combination of atoms. The Soul is eternal and it is directly experienced as such by Selfknowledge.

From matter consciousness may rise, Or consciousness might it create, Is not experience of the wise, It never happens, say the great.
It is never possible that the soul is created out of matter or the matter is created out of the soul. None has ever experienced the birth of the sentient from the non-sentient or the reverse.

If out of any element, One is not created at all, It cannot be put to an end, The Soul is seen thus eternal.
That which is not born of any contact or combination of atoms or things, cannot admit of death or destruction by the cessation of contact or disintegration of atoms. According to the well-known law one that is born has to die but one that is unborn is immortal, eternal. In this sense the Soul is unborn and eternal.

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In beings like snakes anger's untaught, It shows the former birth's habit, Therefore the wise have deeply thought, The soul has lost last body, not it.
The snake shows anger in their behavior since the time of their birth. This can only be explained by saying that these qualities found in excess in these animals are due to their dispositions of the past births. That behavior shows the eternity of the soul and proves re-birth. The continuity of births proves the eternity of the Soul. The living body is born and will die but the Soul in the contact of the living body is not born and will not die. Because of the continuity of the Soul, the past and present lives of an embodied Soul are connected and the experiences of the previous life are helpful in developing the present life. The omniscient Lord (The Tirthankar or Arihanta) knows everything at once from infinite past-present and future. And such unmistakable knowledge of the past lives is a proof positive of the eternity of the Soul.

One sees in childhood, youth and age, There's knowledge of being the same, So see the Soul's all states but change, Remaining over the substance same.
The soul as substance possesses qualities like infinite knowledge, infinite perception, infinite power and infinite bliss. The soul is capable of infinite modifications (Paryaya) is eternally the same at all times. Its modifications change with the successive changes of its qualities. As the same substance may manifest differently, the same Soul in a living body assumes different forms such as infancy, maturity and old age, itself remaining unchanged. It knows and remembers all its different forms and this is possible only if it does not change with its changing manifestations.
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One who describes absolute change, Of everything at every moment, Must be the same who knows and says, This falsifies his own statement.
Therefore we must admit that the knower of the momentariness of objects cannot be momentary himself. On this evidence one should decide that the Soul that knows itself, its qualities, its manifestations and the world around, is eternal and not momentary.

Nothing is lost absolutely, See water changes as the steam, If consciousness is off totally, Find out the ocean of Soul stream.
According to the law of the substance nothing can be completely destroyed. Only the substance changes its form but it is never destroyed. Suppose, something made of clay breaks then we cannot say that it is destroyed because the clay is still present. If we further convert the clay into more pieces then still it is present in the form of atoms. Ultimately the substance will remain undestroyed in the form of subatomic particles. Physics has proved that matter changes but it is never completely destroyed. The atoms of which the material objects are formed remain indestructible though their compositions change. If non-destructibility is proved to be true of material objects how much more easy it is to admit the non-destructibility of the sentient Self which is superior to all material things? Hence the Soul is eternal and indestructible and incapable of merging or transforming itself into non-sentient objects. The disciple is challenged to find out any non-sentient transformation of the sentient self that he can imagine.

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From the above discussion between a guru and his pupil we can see that consciousness is obviously separate from matter. By separating them by thought and imagination and then by meditating on the nature of the self-soul we can experience our real self, a pure consciousness.

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