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Distinction Between Living and Non-living
J. L. JAINI
It is necessary to emphasise and clearly realise that there are two distinct categories : Perfect and Imperfect. The Pure Disembodied Soul alone is perfect. The mundane, matter-clad Soul is Imperfect. By Perfection here is meant a condition than which nothing is better forever. One may want £100. For him nothing is better at present than to get £100. But there is no guarantee that he will want nothing if he gets £100. Perfection is where there is no want, no need, no desire, no room for further improvement or betterment. Perfect desirelessness, complete non-attachment, imperturbable vitarăgată are connotations of perfection. Thus it is that Jainism does not believe God, an Almighty, Perfect, Conscious Soul, to be a Creator. Creation means bringing about something which was not before. The mundane soul when it becomes a Perfect Pure Soul, at the end of the 14th spiritual stage, certainly creates its own perfect condition of Infinite Perception, Knowledge, Power and Bliss. In this sense, and in this sense alone, God or Siddha may be said to be the Creator of all the Universe, present, past and future, for the Siddha is Omniscient ; and all the Universe, with all its substances, with all their attributes and modifications, in all times and places, becomes subject to this All-Seeing Omniscience, and thus it may be said to create the Universe. Here Creation means the attainment of Perfection, of Omniscience, of Omnipotence, of Godhood, of Siddhahood. In no other sense, Creation is possible in Jainism. If Creation means the making or bringing into existence of something which was not before, (excepting that becoming Perfect means bringing into existence the condition of Self-perfection and Omniscience, which was not before), it implies the conscious Creation of something necessary and useful, or of something unnecessary and useless. If the former, why was a useful thing not made before ; if the latter, the Creator is a frivolous wastrel, or simply puerile in making, and then breaking the Universe.
If the Universe is created by God as an absolutely new thing, it must follow that before its creation God was not krita-kritya, one so perfect that nothing remained to be done by Him. If He only recreates a destroyed Universe, then the Jaina explanation (that the Universe is uncreated and passes through a sort of birth and death at the junction of Avasarpini and Utsarpini semi-cycles of time) is simple and sufficient.
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