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JAINISM For the Western mind, the personality is eternal. It is indestructible, not to be dissolved. This is the basic idea in the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body, the resurrection being our regaining of our cherished personality in a purified form, worthy to fare before the majesty of the Almighty. That personality is thought to go on forever-even though, by a curious inconsistency, it is not believed to have existed anywhere, in any state or form, previous to the carnal birth of the mortal individual. The personality did not exist in extra-human spheres, from all eternity, before its temporal eartbly manifestation. It is declared to have come into being with the mortal act of procreation, and yet is supposed to go on alter the demise of the procreated mortal frame: temporal in its beginning, immortal in its end.
The term “personality" is derived from the Latin persona. Persona, literally, means the mask that is worn over the face by the actor on the Greek or Roman stage; the mask "through" (per) which he "sounds” (sonat) his part. The mask is what bears the features or make-up of the role, the traits of hero or heroine, servant or messenger, while the actor himself bchind it remains anonymous, an unknown being intrinsically aloof from the play, constitutionally unconcerned with the enacted sufferings and passions. Originally, the term persona in the sense of “personality" must have implied that people are only impersonating what they seem to be. The word connotes that the personality is but the mask of one's part in the comedy or tragedy of life and not to be identified with the actor. It is not a manifestation of his true nature, but a veil. And yet the Western outlook-which originated with the Greeks themselves and was then developed in Christian philosophy-has annulled the distinction, implied in the term, between the mask and the actor whose face it hides. The two have become, as it were, identical. When the play is over the persona cannot be taken off; it clings through death and into the life beyond. The Occidental actor, having wholly iden
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