After my post on Joyful Revenge, many esteemed friends of mine have asked me on my messenger about a mystery called SOUL.
Extract from my book #RajputanaChronicles #Guns&Glories:
Mehta Gokal Chand (1807-78), the grandson of former Pradhan Mehta Devi Chand, a religious and very intelligent person from his childhood, was appointed as Pradhan of Mewar in 1856 by Maharana Swarup Singh after Pradhan Mehta Sher Singh was dismissed. He was later in 1865 appointed as Kiledaar (Governor) of Mandalgarh Fort. He narrates his childhood interaction with Jain Acharya Udaichand at Mandalgarh Fort, in which the Acharya talks about the relationship between soul (आत्मा) and body (शारीर)
Acharya says, “Human being (इंसान) means the consciousness (चेतना), which comprises of the BODY (perishable and temporary costume with physical dimension) and the SOUL (living energy without physical dimension).”
Hence, the soul or being (living energy), experiences life through the physical body, the human (non-living). For example:
• The soul is the driver; the body is the car.
• The soul is the actor; the body is its costume.
• The soul is the musician; the body is the instrument.
• The soul is the deity; the body is the temple.
I can use a knife to chop vegetables. I can use the same knife to kill someone. The knife neither decides (outwards) nor experiences (inwards), but can be washed easily under water. Now look at the fingers which held the knife. They neither decide nor experience the actions. They too can be washed under water. It’s easy to realize that the knife is an instrument, but it is more difficult to realize that the fingers as well as the arms are instruments too.
The legs are instruments for walking, the eyes for seeing, the ears for hearing, the mouth for speaking, the tongue for tasting, the heart for pumping food and oxygen (via blood) around the body, and so on. Even the brain is an instrument used like a computer to express all thought, word and action programs through the body and to experience the results. If every physical part of the body is an instrument, who or what is it that is using this instrument? Very simply it is I, the self, the soul. The soul uses the word I for itself and the word my when referring to the body; my hands, my eyes, my brain, etc. I am different from my body.
मंडलगढ़, मथुरा नगरी, सागर , जमना नीर;
कृष्ण ज्यों केली करे, गोकल्चंद गंभीर !!
“Mandalgarh, Mathura nagari, Sagar Jamna neer;
Krishn jyon keli kare, Gokalchand gambheer!!”