Jain Journal 1990 04

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

Page 55

166
JAIN JOURNAL
touching a different part of the animal, understood its form in so many different ways and thereupon became dogmatic. If you wish to understand what kind of animal an elephant is, you must look upon it from all sides, and so it is with truth. Therefore we say that the universe from one standpoint is eternal and from another non-eternal. The totality of the universe taken as a whole is eternal. It is a collection of many things. That collection contains the same particles every moment, therefore as a collection it is eternal; but there are so many parts of that collection and so many entities in it, all of which have their different states which occur at different times and each part does not retain the same state at all times. There is change, there is destruction of any particular form, and a new form comes into existence ; and therefore if we look upon the universe from this standpoint it is non-eternal. With this philosophy there is no idea, and no place for the idea, of creation out of nothing. That idea, really speaking, is not entertained by any right-thinking people. Even those who believe in creation believe from a different standpoint than this. It cannot come into existence out of nothing, but is an emanation coming out of something. The state only is created. This book in a sense is created because all its particles are put together, having been in a different state. The form of the book is created. There was a beginning of this book and there will be an end. In the same manner, with any form of matter, whether this form lasts for moments or for centuries, if there was a beginning there must be an end.
We say there are both preservation and destruction in the many forces working around us. All these forces are working every moment in the midst of us and around us, and the collection of these entities is called by the Jainas 'God'.2 The Brahmanas represent it by the syllable Om ( 3 ); the first sound in this word represents the idea of creation, the second of preservation and the third of destruction. All these are energies of the universe and taken as a whole they are subject to certain fixed laws. If the laws are fixed why do people bow down to these energies? Why do they consider the collective energy as a god or as God ? There is always an idea of the power to do evil in the beginning of this conception. When railroads were first introduced into India ignorant people who did not know what they were, who had never seen in their
2 This statement is anomalous for it is precisely Gandhi's argument that the material
energies manifested there in the universe are not treated as 'God' in Jaina philosophy. Nor can it be said that Gandhi here means to refer to the 'spiritual energies' which, as we shall learn in the next section, are actually treated as 'God' in Jaina philosophy. For in the present section Gandhi is confining his attention to the material sector of the universe.