Book Title: Confluence of Opposites
Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

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Page 312
________________ 294 piety and self-denial is, likewise, affected, literally, by his virtue. He generates forces that will lead to happy prosperous conditions, an attractive healthy body and exalted status, and, on the complete separation of his soul from matter, finally, also, to nirvana, No judge or magistrate is needed for all this; the properties and functions of different substances suffice fully for the rewarding and punishment of souls. GOD If the theologian would but pause to ask himself: how a god created the world or awarded punishments and rewards, he would perceive the untenability of the position taken up by him. For the God of theology is pure Effulgence of Spirit, and has no "hands with which to compound elements together and manufacture things, or condition the circumstances of man. Besi les, Godhood is the perfection of holiness, and cannot be deemed to find it agreeable work to be constantly engaged in the formation of men and animals with his hands in such unholy places as some of the wombs obviously must be. But there is just one more loop-hole of escape here left to exotericism, and that is the analogy of the soul's own activity. I now imagine him to say that as the soul moves its physical, bodily limbs, though it has no hands and feet itself, in the same way we should think of the actions of a creator. Even here the important fact is ignored that analogy is no argument! But even the analogy itself is not sound in this instance because it ignores the most striking feature of the distinction between an Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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