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Nature of Jain Theism
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experience. There must be windows in his sky through which the light of divine forgiveness can stream into his penitent heart."12 In this connection we have to note that Jainism, by including all these and satisfying its due recognition becomes theism,
In the chapter on popular beliefs and Sadhana we have seen in detail how the Jain prayer plays a very important role in the life of a devotee who observes its rituals and worships God with passionate devotion. Jain prayer, though it is not to please God, is certainly an important moral act. It expects inspiration to the soul, peace to the mind and purity to the active life a Jain is living. Same is the case with worship, rites and rituals fasts and religious festivals, holy pilgrimages and Yoga. On one hand the metaphysics, the doctrines and theories, enjoy due importance in Jainism as a system. But then, on the other hand, Jainism being theistic in more than one aspect, the God of its theism, the Arhat and Siddha, always triumphs completely over all the legalism of its doctrines and theories. It is not fully correct that there is no 'divine grace' or 'God's grace' in Jainism. In fact one may get numerous evidences in support of the grace if we survey the Jain Yoga and Arādhanā.
As Destiny could be shaped, destiny could be changed. What is required is the purity of the heart and spiritual development of the soul. Thus we find Jainism, alongwith its conception of God, from the point or view of its prayer, worship. Rituals and such practices, expresses a very high order of passionate devotion, men's hearts yearning for the divine life, a victory of life over death, of the spirit over matter. Philosophically Jain Theism provides a superb example for any system which claims to be rational in its base and aspires to be morally and spiritually theistic in its final phase. 8.2.3. I- Thou Relationship
This relationship is the relationship between the being and God. To use the phraseology which Clement C. J. Webb found convenient to use, “a combination of ultimacy with intimacy")) is a dstinctive note of all that we should call “religious'. The religious experience, since mysticism has sufficiently opened a number of issues, has become a very important feature of a theistic system. “In some types of religious experience, the desire of the worshipper may be 12. Macnicol N., Indian Theism, p. 229 13. Webb, Clement C. J., Theism and Absolutism, p. 387
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