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These Jinas or Tirthankaras were born as ordinary men, but they renounced the pleasures of the world and, by a course of selfdiscipline, asceticism and concentrated meditation, mastered the flesh, annihilated all the forces and influences obstructing spiritual development, and attained fullest self-realisation and absolute perfection, bringing out to the full the divinity or godhood inherent in man. Then, for the well-being and happiness of all living beings, they preached what they themselves had practised and achieved. As such, Jainism is not a revealed religion and claims no divine origin.
It starts with the scientific assumption that nothing is destructible, that is, nothing can be created out of something which does not at all exist in one form or the other and that, therefore, the universe is the conglomeration of all that exists, is uncreated, is real, and is without a beginning and without an end. The principal constituents of the cosmos are the two categories: animate objects
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