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JAINA GAZETTE. Thus it becomes common to each and everything in the universe to be both a guiding force, and a thing guided. In relation to every other thing it is a guiding force, and in relation to every other thing it is also a force that is itself guided. And this is much about the same as saying that each thing in the universe produces effects upon other things, and is itself the object of the effects of other things.
This, I think, is perfectly sound reasoning; and it settles the guiding force question.
The question assumes 'evolution’; or rather perhaps I ought to say implies that there is no atrophy, whatever word we use to express the opposite idea to evolution. But the probability is that all the three possible conditions exist, vie., progress, stagnation, and retrogression. A person who is now a man may, I believe, generate such karmas as would make him a monkey by his next birth. But, if I understand the Jain system correctly, there are but three periods in the life history of any living being, viz., first, a period or condition of life which is, what it is, but it is a life in which there is no development. This period, I understand, is eternal backwards as far as the past is concerned for those who are now in it. Secondly, a period during which developinent is going on and during which there may be ups and downs, progress and retrogression. This is the period of life we are in at present. It has its beginning in time, and it has its ending in time. And once the living being has begun to develop he never goes back to that previous state in which there was no development going on. Thirdly, the period after development is finished; and this period is eternal forwards.
As far as I understand, the development begins by means of circumstances; and as it advances it progresses at the instigation of the soul itself, whose nature it is to develop to perfection.
This, as I understand it, is ever going on; there are ever those who are leading a kind of life in which there is no
development nor ever was in the past; there are alwars those Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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