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40 / JAIN STUDIES AND SCIENCE
reservation, is ready to pay back to the society in the form of a simple promise - that his dependents and all the future generations will not further burden the society with perpetual benefits of reservation. This way, both the short-term and the long term interests of an individual and of the society can be met.
Mahapragya says that the co-operation and co-ordination is obvious in all the activities of universe. Creation-destruction, life-death, ephemeral-immortal, lightdark; they all co-exist, yet our minds have created the concept of conflict, which must be transformed to the theory of harmonizing and complementing the opposites. Science and Spiritualism
Science is objective - always looking for cause and effect relationship. Philosophy is subjective - based on intangible experiences. As a pair, they become a fit case for applying the 'theory of complementing opposites'. Surprisingly, most scientific discoveries have philosophical origins. Similarly, science is giving new dimensions to the spiritual awakening. They need to be mutually reinforced further, rather than one discarding another. Today, science has concluded that if there is matter, there exists anti-matter too. They extrapolated the concept from atom/anti-atom, particle/anti-particle to universel anti-universe. How similar it sounds to the concepts of Dharmastikaya/ Adharmastikaya and Lok/Alok described in Jain literature! Examples from Rishbhayan
Rishbhayan is one of the many verses penned down by Mahapragya. Sadhvi Shrutyasha has searched several instances which sound paradoxical at first, but contain the deep rooted message of coexistence of opposites. A few such mentions are -
'Waves in calm water 'Marudeva's death made her immortal' 'As I approach nearer to the Almighty, HE maintains the same distance and illusion' 'Sun removed the darkness/but, it could not be seen in extreme
brightness' All these are imaginations of a poet, yet are very close to the truth. Mahapragya has extended his imagination up to the horizon where the practical reality meets the scientific theory. His logic is very simple, if a straight line can be made to bend, its two ends will eventually meet. According to him, the principle of Anekant gives us a tool with which the seemingly opposite ends
can be bent to encircle the complete picture which depicts the whole truth.
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