Concept of Divinity in Jainism

Author(s): P Ajay Kothari
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 19

the Supreme Reality, under the impression and belief or faith that God can fulfil .his desire; remove the suffering or misery. Thus a man, for fulfilment of his wants, interest, feelings etc. approaches to an all powerful and all knower, supreme reality -- The God, who happens to be the central theme of almost all religions in one way or the other. Meaning of Religion
Etymologically, “religion' means “to bind back’. It is derived from the Latin words ‘re' and 'legere' or 'ligare'. According to J.B. Pratt, “Religion is the serious and social attitude of individuals or communities towards the power or powers which they conceive as having ultimate control over their interests and destinies”.• Attitude means “The responsive side of conscious which is found in such things as attention, interest, expectancy, feeling, tendencies to reaction, etc.”? Thus, religion is the attitude of the self towards the determination of the destiny, an object in which the self genuinely believes. 8
According to James, “The personal attitude which the individual finds himseif impelled to take up towards what he apprehends to be the Divine is religion”.! According to Swami Vivekananda, “Religion consists in realisation; it is an awareness of the individual of the Infinite, in him, a reawakening of the soul”10
Shri Aurobindo asserts that the purpose of religion is to link the human with the Divine and in so doing make sublime the thought and life and flesh so that they may admit the rule of the soul and the spirit."
According to William James, "Religion shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of the individual men in their solitude, so far as they approached themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the Divine”. !2 Religion in other words, is a feeling, an awareness, a realisation of the union with the God or Divinity.13
THE CONCEPT OF DIVINITY IN JAINISM