Gandhi Before Gandhi

Author(s): Bipin Doshi, Priti Shah
Publisher: Jain Academy Educational Research Center Promotion Trust Mumbai

Page 95

GANDHI BEFORE GANDHI
existence from the Western and European world by the soul-blighting and absurd dogmas of the dark ages that supervened? By the persecution of wise men and destruction of innumerable works in the library of Constantinople, the Church hierarchy managed to plunge the whole of Europe into mental darkness which has given the world the black record of the inquisition and the loss of millions of human lives through religious wars and persecutions
What is re-incarnation? Re-incarnation is the doctrine that soul enters this life not as a fresh creation, but after a long course of previous existence and will have to pass through many, before it reaches its final destination. Our age is the age of opinions. Instead of thinking ourselves, we allow others to think for us. If I can quote passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson or from Lord Tennyson's poems or from the Bible in favour of a certain theory, no argument will be necessary to prove it. But if I quote a passage from my Bible, you will say you won't believe in its truth and will ask me to prove my position logically. I will accept the challenge and prove the truth of my theory, not by a quotation from my scriptures but logically.
judgments. An amoeba in search of food pursues no haphazard methods but makes most careful selections of the kind it wants. It will send out its pseudopodia, catch, swallow and digest a struggling infusorium or other nutritious germs, but a mere touch of a grain of sand does not satisfy its character and it thrusts itself away and plainly says "That is not good". Oxygen consuming bacteria will cluster around grains of chlorophyll, if exposed to direct sunlight but pay no attention to them in the shade or darkness. They know when the oxygen is being given off. Infusoria guides themselves in hunting their food with apparently as much precision as fish. They avoid obstacles and sometimes undertake to move them out of the way. They reject that which is not nutritious and take the nutritious. These facts, evidently teach that the central energy called the soul power is not the result of any well formed nervous system but vice versa.
We know that the human body is a mechanism but not a mechanism like a watch or a steam-engine but a knowing mechanism, able to control itself. It is controlled not by any external power but by a power within, which we call mind, soul, spirit or ego. The existence of this central power is disputed by none. Materialism declares this central power to be the property of matter, to be the product of molecular activities going on within the brain. This theory only explains how mechanical motions are produced in the brain cells. But machines only produce motions, not
In man this fact becomes most potent, what particular motion among the molecules of the brain can be postulated as the physical equivalent, and causal antecedent of our conceptions of justice, of truth, of moral obligation? The physical brain is limited to motion only. It cannot even choose its own mode of motion. What possible motion in the brain causes