Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

Page 280

THE JAINA DOCTRINE OF RELEASE
the coating layers and masks of individual existence. Divested of the characteristic features of this or that particular existenccform--the nature of this or that man, woman, animal, or divine being-it becomes anonymous, absolutely buoyant, and absolutely free.
The universe through which the bubble or gourd ascends is pictured in the form of a colossal human being: a prodigious male or female, whose macrocosmic organism comprises the celestial, earthly, and infernal regions, all of which are peopled by innumerable beings.82 The male colossus appeals to the manly asceticism of the Jaina monks and saints, while the female reflects an old pre-Aryan concept of the Universal Mother. The cult of the Mother Goddess goes back to the Ncolithic Age, when it was distributed throughout western Asia and the lands surrounding the Mediterranean. Images of this goddess have been found even from the Paleolithic period. And to this day her worship survives in popular Hinduism. The Jaina conception is of a prodigious human form, male or female, the bounds of which constitute the limits of the universe. The surface of the carth, the playground of the human race, is regarded as situated at the level of the waist. The regions of the hells are beneath this plane, in the pelvic cavity, thighs, legs, and fect, while those of celestial bcatitude, stratified one above the other, fill the chest, shoulders, neck, and head.88 The region of supreme isolation (kaivalya) is at the crown of the dome inside the hollow of the skull.84
82 Compare the vision of Swedenborg, supra, pp. 244-248.
<3 There is, for ciample, a class of cxalted divinc beings called graiveyaka, "belonging to or dwelling in the neck (grīva)." Cf. supra, p. 199.
A4 These spheres within the body of the macrocosmic being are approximately parallcled (though not exactly) by the "centers" (cakra) of the human body as described in Hatha Yoga and Kundalini Yoga (cf. infra, pp. 584-585). The techniques of yoga go back, like the doctrines of the Jainas, to prc-Aryan Indian antiquity. They are not included among the original Vedic teachings of Brāhman-Aryan orthodoxy.
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