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The Jaina Philosophy
for the purpose of advancing the life of the soul must be based on the facts which are experienced on all these planes, and must also be based on the true ideas of the relation of the human being with other beings.
Although in a theoretical sense we may divide the planes of life into different divisions, the lowest kind being the monad, along all the other planes, the vegetable, animal, etc., till we come to the highest plane, that of human life, which we also divide into different planes, still we know that our own life is related to all other life, and certainly we must observe the facts with regard to all this other life. Physical life we can know by actual observation, in other forms of life, or in the human body itself. How is it maintained? Let us observe in the case of the tree. It lives by gathering to itself other particles of matter which it assimilates. At the same time, while it assimilates all these it destroys the life of these particles. If these particles lived their own life always independently of the life of the tree, there could be no growth. Suppose in the human body so many living beings, each living its own life, the human being cannot live. The physical elements must be assimilated. So in the physical life there is no possibility of existence without destruction of other life; at the same time we know that to a certain extent there is always gathering of more and more particles every moment, but finally the organism collects less and less and at last it disintegrates and the life force departs from it and we call this death.
This is the ordinary idea of the physical life, and most of us who have not studied occult sciences think that there is no life beyond this, and that all rules must be based only on facts observed in this life and that advancement in this life is the object to be gained. To a certain extent the destruction of the physical life is the death of the soul, for it is a change in the condition of the soul; the relation is broken. In order to live the highest kind of
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