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THE ENLIGHTENED VISION OF THE SELF
the three stages of origination, annihilation, and stability. The whole world with its principal contents of the soul and the non-soul has to obey this law of change, process, or movement. The important point to note here, observes Kalipada Mitra, is that “the stages of origination and annihilation are like the thesis and anti-thesis of Hegel having a tendency towards stability which means nothing other than synthesis at a particular stage of the continuous developmental process ready to make room for a fresh origination or a new stage."14
This, however, has again to pass over into the stage of annihilation which along with the previous stage jointly acquires a momentum urging the reality attain a fresh synthesis and so on. The qualities which originate at a certain stage, Mitra adds, “carry with them their death signal and the influx of fresh qualities ensures synthesis and stability of the substance. Like other hypotheses, the Jaina hypothesis of evolution, is an attempt to conceive of substance as it presents itself to common observation. It seems at once both emergent and creative. "It is emergent," Kalipada Mitra explains, “in so far as it supplies us with the detailed links of connection between one stage and another which is the main character of the hypothesis of Emergence as pointed out by Lloyd Morgan. It is creative in so far as we do not miss in it the creation of a new feature as indicated by the new synthesis which is attained at every third stage." 15
As a conscious substance, the soul itself evolves into its qualities and modifications into its thinking, feelings and conations and into the various forms of conscious beings. If realizes its complete existence through them. This account of reality and existence, Kalipada Mitra points out, “at once mark the Jaina position out from that of the Buddhist who disintegrates reality into shreds of qualities and modifications and from that of the adinitist whose reality swallows up all qualities and modifications." 16
The significance of the Jaina view of reality will be obvious when we examine the extreme views of Advaitins and the Buddhism. At the one extreme, there is the Vedanta school, especially the Advaitins, who as Matilal observes, hold that “if something exists, it should exist always. And since only Brahman is the existent, it is eternal, ever lasting and unchanging. Hence, change has to be ruled out as only appearance."1? At the other extreme are the Buddhists (especially
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