Anekanta Philosophy of Co existence

Author(s): Mahapragna Acharya
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

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Anekanta : Philosophy of co-existence
There is nothing like the spiritual. The spiritualist, on the other hand, asserts that it is the self alone that is true, the sensuous world is false. The logicians of the Jaina school investigated the truth behind the rival claims and found that the sensuous world was not false. Whatever is possessed of causal efficiency is true. The senses are causally efficient and hence cannot be untrue. Their objects also cannot be false. The characteristic features of a real are origination, cessation and persistence whatever is causally efficient does necessarily arise, cease to exist and also continue. To say that the sensuous world is true and the self is untrue can be possible only in ordinary parlour, but it can never be a language expressive of the truth that is deep and unfathomable. On the other hand, to say that the self alone is the ultimate truth while the sensuous world is unadulterated falsehood can be the language of the spiritual world, but it can never be true of the world as it is. The saints and philosophers cannot express themselves in identical linguistic tools. In spiritual idiom, the sensuous objects are momentary and evanescent. Such idiom could inspire detachment and renunciation, but would miserably fail as a device of logical investigation of the nature of truth. Logic does not distinguish between the element of the sensuous object and the element of the self. The material atoms are as real as the spiritual self in the eyes of the rationalists. All that originates, vanishes and persists is real. This triple criterion of truth is as validly applicable to the