________________
112
when is effect to be given to that admittedly unanswerable position?
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
The Vedantic theory has already been dealt with fully, and needs but little comment here. Its monistic aspiration is foredoomed to failure, like that of the modern Monist, who claims to establish his Monism by joining matter and force with a hyphen. Even Berkeley must be supposed to have thrown up the brief when he introduced the idea of an universal mind, distinct and separate from the individual minds, though it is difficult to conceive how such an idea could ever find a place in his unbending Idealism; for the idea of the universal mind cannot but be a state of one's own consciousness, and, as such, no more an independent reality than the material world which is also known as a state of the perceiving mind.
To sum up, consciousness is a reality independent of matter, and in no sense its product. It is eternal, having neither beginning nor end. The universe is eternal, too, and contains material forms which are subject to evolution and change. Matter is also uncreate and eternal. The materialistic theory, culminating in the grand doctrine of Evolution, is necessarily imperfect, one-sided and undignified. It is imperfect, because it ignores the existence of spirit; onesided, because it confines its survey to the objective side of things; and undignified, because it insults the Living Reality by treating it as a product of dead matter. The theologian is wrong, because he has no true conception of God, because he ascribes an origin to the universe, and because he insists on the creation of
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org