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THE QUALITIES OF MATTER
karma keeps the life-monad linked to the world." By increasing the yellow and white karmic matter, virtuous acts produce the gentler, more savory tics-but these are ties, even so; they do not suffice to consummate release. "Influx" (āsrava) of every type has to be blocked if nirvana is to be attained, and this arrestment of life can be affected only by abstention from action-all action whatsoever, whether good or bad."2
A basic fact generally disregarded by those who "go in" for Indian wisdom is this one of the total rejection of every last value of humanity by the Indian teachers and winners of redemption from the bondages of the world. "Humanity" (the phenomenon
51 Compare Bhagavad Gità 14. 5-9. "The gunas-sattva, rajas, and tamas --which are born of matter, bind the immortal dweller-in-the-body fast in the body. Sattva, being stainless, is luminous and of the nature of peace and serenity; it binds by creating attachment to happiness and to knowledge. Rajas, the essence of passion, is the cause of thirst and fascination; it binds the dweller-in-the-body by attachment to action. Tamas, finally, is born of ignorance, and bewilders all embodied beings; it binds by inadvertence, indolence, and sleep. Thus, while tamas darkens judgment and attaches to miscomprehension, rajas attaches to action, and sattva to happiness."
52 The Jaina Tirthankara, by virtue of his boundless intuition, or omniscience, which is based on the crystal purity and infinite radiance of the life-monad released from its karmic matter, directly perceives, in the case of each and all, the precise color, taste, fragrance, and quality of the matter infecting the life-monad; he knows exactly the degree of pollution, obscurity, or brightness of every individual that he sees. For the luminosity of the monad pervades the whole organism, and is thought of as emanating even beyond the strict circumference of the bodily frame, in such a way as to form around it a subtle halo, invisible to the average mortal but clearly perceptible to the enlightened saint. Here we have the archaic background of the halo-the "aura' of the Theosophists-which encompasses every living form, and which, through its shadings, darkness, or radiance, betrays the status of the soul, showing whether one is steeped in obscuring animal passions and bedimming ego-propensities, or advanced along the path toward purification and release from the bondages of universal matter.
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