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JAINA THEORIES OF REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE
As already shown, while repudiating the idealistic notion of the concrete universal, the theory of identity-in-difference, the metaphysical presupposition of anekāntavāda, animating all the spheres of Jaina philosophical thinking, recognises the objectivity of the material universe. The objectivity of the universe signifies the fact that the universe is independent of the mind or consciousness. This independence, or the duality of consciousness and the material universe, necessarily presupposes the principle of distinction, which exerts a compulsive force until the logical goal of this principle is reached in the form of the development of the Jaina concepts of reality and knowledge into the comprehensive scheme of anekānta realism. In other words, once the initial step is taken, namely the recognition of the principle of distinction as being at the root of the duality of the mind and the world, there is no stopping short of working out, to their logical conclusion, the consequences of the operation of the principle of distinction. The claim that anekāntavāda is the most consistent form of realism lies in the fact that Jainism has allowed the principle of distinction to run its full course until it reaches its logical terminus, the theory of manifoldness of reality and knowledge.
The first significant step to be taken, once the operative principle of distinction is accepted, is the postulation of a multiplicity of ultimate reals constituting the cosmos. The material or the objective world is constituted, according to Jaina ontology, by five ultimate reals : viz., matter (pudgala) space (ākāśa), time (kāla), the medium of motion (dharma) and the medium of rest (adharma); and the mental or the subjective world consists of an infinity of independent minds, or
