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THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
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ananta chatushtaya in Jaina Scriptures, are the attributes of their divine Souls. They are the true Teachers of mankind and the fountain-head of perfect Wisdom, hence Religion. Their chief characteristics, as given out by Jesus (Luke, XX. 34-38), are: (1) the possession of spiritual merit which entitles them to attain ‘that world,' i.e., Nirvana, (2) freedom from sex, that is, the absence of all material bodies, (3) non-liability to death, and (4) the enjoyment of godly Status.
It is not possible to lay too much stress on the words *any more' in the Messianic observation recorded by Luke (XX. 36). The statement would lose all its merit, if souls are born and die only once in their career. The fact that it was made only in reference to those Great Ones who obtain that world and the resurrection from the dead, is sufficient to show that it is not applicable to all souls indiscriminately. Thus, while all those who have not perfected themselves remain liable to repeated births and deaths in the course of their evolution, those who attain the fullest degree of spiritual unfoldment are necessarily exempt from dying any more.
The true interpretation of the passage about the resurrection of souls, thus, leads us to a conclusion very different from that arrived at by the orthodox Church. Not the least satisfactory feature of our interpretation is that it, at once, reconciles the teaching of Jesus with that of almost all other ancient religions of the world. Reincarnation is a truth of philosophy, as we shall see later when we come to deal with the theory of karma, and the attempt to disown its doctrine can only end in
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