Jain Journal 1967 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 20

62
thought, evolves fresh and flexible modes of life and builds up a new social fabric. It does not echo or copy, it creates.
JAIN JOURNAL
Spirituality a wide, dynamic, creative spirituality-welling out of the resurgent soul of man will be the religion of tomorrow. The cultural crisis of the present can only end either in disintegration or in a new creation. It is for man to choose between the two. If he wants, not disintegration, but a new creation, it is essential that he should undergo a radical transformation, a veritable rebirth. And all impulse to spiritual rebirth comes from the soul. So the soul of the Jaina, revolting against the cramping hold of dead conventions, must awaken and assert its own inherent divinity and radiate its light and power in this hour of darkness. Not by the easy path of blind conformity, not by intellectual research and philosophical expositions, nor even by an expenditure of energy, time and money in botched, tinkering reforms can a society be renovated. This craze for social or humanitarian service is not native to the Indian soil. It is mostly western, and particularly modern, a legacy of the Renaissance Humanism. This desire for social or humanitarian work sometimes comes to a person who, in consequence of a stirring in his soul, feels a sort of discontent with the sombre present. This discontent may be a prelude to a real spiritual awakening, but Nature takes good care to sluice it off into a reformist fervour. The person, shackled and ignorant himself, then goes forth with hope and enthusiasm to bring light and freedom to his fellow-beings His mental ego feels a secret gratification that it is engaged in a "selfless" work. The world applauds him. Honour and respect shower upon him. But the stirring of his depths has ceased. His mind has filched the palm from his soul. In India, in contrast, whenever there has been a cultural decay or decline, a new wave of spirituality has swept over the country and galvanised its life. All movements of life have been preceded by a spiritual upsurge. For, it is the Spirit alone that can recreate, re-form and remould, not the mind of man.
Ethical self-culture is indeed a most edifying pursuit provided one can guard against the inflation of the sattvic ego. But even ethics is not spirituality. It is a great means, not an end and may very soon become a bar in itself. The ethical man tends to be attached to mind-made principles and rules, which he considers categorical and sacrosanct. He may achieve some amount of mental mastery over his lower nature, but bound in a chain of gold, he is unable to wing up to the Emperean of the Spirit.
It is only the soul's fire and not the ardours of the mind that can bring about the rebirth of man and his society. The fire that burned