Jain Journal 1989 01

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

Page 19

JAIN JOURNAL
sorts in the 'field' and reaping their fruits in the same or the next births. The individual must be told this great truth about himself that how from unicellular (nigodi ya) stage he has come to evolve to the stage of man and what can be his future prospects, with respect to the changes brought in the 'field' and the possible ‘field-less' stage, that of Paramātman. To yoke oneself to the service of state, society and the gross body and remain negligent of what may be deemed as sheer individual is a great blasphemy to the Truth. Truth must be studied naked as it is. Then only, we can hope to become exact and faultless in deciding the gradation of human ends without which we are no better than a blind or a mad man.
The world is a mystry to a great extent because life is a mystry and we do not know how we came to be man all of a sudden from the parental protoplasm and we can perceive nothing but total darkness beyond the little days or years of life. The existential anguish of death so much corrodes on man's mental and physical health that if he comes to know the assurance of the Jet attacker Peter13 that it is not necessarily so worse after death, and further by our actions we can earn a good lot and get assured like Socrates that in next life we would get better friends, we will become more happy and courageous. The ignorance about our 'being' beyond birth and death has made of us an absolute slave of this gross body. We can think in no terms but that of this body and its amenities. The conflicts in society - religious, social, political, ecomonic, international-all centre round the body and its more or less imaginary needs. It is of vast importance to day that man be made well aware of his 'being® which is deathless. It will not only act as a very good diversion but will give him great spiritual satisfaction and in turn will remove much of the trouble in his life which is nothing but the reflection of his psychological spiritual discomfiture.
The American philosopher Dewey has said that a labourer who does a particular labour in a factory but does not know how the finished product ultimately comes out, what is the whole functioning and organisation of factory is an ignorant slave and not the master of his present labour. He cannot enjoy his labour. Is it not a good analogy for a man who does not know how he is reaping particular fruits, what future effects he is ignorantly sowing, how he has come about to be the man he is and how he is to process through the future beyond death? Most men are ignorant slaves in this respect and modern scientists, mostly, are unfortunately reluctant to recognise the facts which uncover the mystry beyond death and make man aware of his true 'being'.
13 Geralding Cummins, Mind in Life and Death.