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RE-INCARNATION.
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(1) complete eradication of lust, or sexual passion ;
(2) absolute freedom from ignorance, in different language, most perfect knowledge;
(3) total abstention from drinking, flesh-eating, killing, and other forms of limsa (injuring others); and
(4) freedom from sleep, since that would signify a gap in omniscience.
Bhagwan Mahavira, the last great Tirthamkara, had all these 18 qualifications in Him, and for that reason His great personality stands out, amongst the numerous company of pseudo saints and saviours, as that of the greatest Teacher the world has had during the last five and twenty centuries. We are not minimising the greatness of the other teachers by any means, since it is not our purpose to find fault with any religion, however backward, or insufficient. But after the fullest possible credit is given to their lives, as described in their own books, it is impossible to shut one's eyes to the absence of most of the four prominent traits pointed out above. Jainism, indeed, goes still further and points out that its teaching does not include the worship of the Great Ones (the twenty-four Tirthamkaras) in any sense. These Saviours are not the objects of worship, in any sense ; but only the living Models of Perfection which every soul must constantly keep before its mind. For, as stated before, it is not idolatry, but idealatry,' which Jainism inculcates, the realization of the fruit of which it assures, in the fullest possible measure, to each and every soul, which would care to follow the great and the only perfect Masters on the path.
Every soul, does not matter in what sphere of life it might be born, has the capacity to come into the realiz
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