Chicago Prashnottar

Author(s): Vijayanandsuri
Publisher: Atmanand Jain Pustak Pracharak Mandal

Page 40

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If it is separate from Him, is it sentient or insentient? If insentient, then is it eternal or noneternal ? If eternal, then your statement that there was only one God before the creation and no other existence, is like the statement of a mad man. It is self-contradictory. If you call that power non-eternal, then its material cause must be another power of God which must also have another power for its cause and so on and so forth. This is an argument in a circle and involves a fallacy. If you call it a sentient power, then is it eternal or non-eternal! In both the cases the above two fallacies i. e., self-contradiction and reasoning in a circle arise. If you consider this power non-separate from God, then all things are God. Every thing becomes God i. e., good and evil; heaven and hell ; merit and demerit ; virtue and vice ; the high and the low; the king and the beggar ; the virtuous and the wicked ; the ruler and the ruled ; a good man and a thief ; the happy and the unhappy &c. &c.