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THEORY OF MATTEREALS AND JAIN PHILOSOPHY / 67
MATTEREALS-A TRANSFORMED ETERNITY
1. Neither Ultimately Eternal, nor Entirely Destructible -
The concept of matter being a 'transformed eternity' may be newly accepted by the science, but it is one of the fundamentals of Jain Philosophy. Out of the six mattereals (dravyas), the highest activity and diversity is seen in pudgals (matter). The matter can be created (from energy), destructed (to energy), transformed ( converted physically) and transacted (moved in spacetime, but the resultant sum of pre and post transformation masses and the massequivalent of energy remains unaltered in the Lok of which we are a part.
Mass + Mass-equivalent of Energy = Finite Constant Definition:
Mahapragya writes in Bhagwati-Bhashya – > matter can change physically - Transformed > matter cannot disappear as non-entity - Eternal
These lead to two very interesting corollaries. Corollary-1:
If matter has to exist, the extent of Universe (Lok) has to be finite. Unlike in Alok which has infinite extent as per Jain teachings, matter contents become zero... Corollary-2:
Jains propound that all activities in Universe are cyclic in nature. So is the time - ara or era. The conversion of entire matter into energy brings about the catastrophic end while the reformation of matter from concentrated energy (scientists today may love to call it Big bang) restarts the next cycle. While the time between start to end may be finite, the repetition of cycles remain eternal as matter cannot become a non-entity.
Transformation of matter:
Law of Conservation of Mass was first propounded by a famous scientist Lavoisier in 1789. According to him the net mass of the matter present in the
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