Key of Knowledge

SR No.: 006702
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1919
Total Pages: 1204
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

Page 148

GOD.
127
is unchanging and immutable; and in the second, that is, on the assumption that God is possessed of a lump of spiritual “clay' from which he manufactures souls, this lump of spiritual 'clay' must be either composed of atoms, or be non-atomistic in its nature. If the former, then each spiritual atom is already in existence as a spirit, and the attribution of its creation to God is purely gratuitous. Nor can it be maintained that the Almighty God forms spirits by combining several ' atoms' of this spiritual stuff, for spirit is a simple substance. On the latter hypothesis--that the spiritual clay' is non-atomistic in its structure-it would not be possible to break it up into smaller spirits, for that would be inconsistent with the nature of the substance itself. The only other hypothesis of a creation from 'nothing' is not admissible in philosophy. The nature of spirit is evident from the nature of God, who is said to be a spirit and uncreate. Now, since the nature of substances does not vary to suit individual beliefs, it follows that if spirit is uncreate in the case of God, it must be so in all other cases. Hence, all the souls are eternal and uncreate, that is, self-subsistent.
It will pay us more than we may be prepared to acknowledge at this stage to know that so far as the attributes pertaining to the substance of being are concerned, divinity can differ in no particular from any ordinary soul; for just as gold is gold all over the world, whether we come across it in the Himalayas or the prairies of North America, so is spirit never anything else but spirit howsoever and wheresoever it be found. Thus, 10 difference is possible between things formed of one