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- An Exponent of India's Priceless Cultural Heritage syllable of another generic word. It signifies bodiless, liberated souls. While the Arhut is living, acting as spiritual master, these are liberated beings after human existence. (Not earth-bound spirits). These are liberated souls. The third is the first letter of a class of religious masters who do not stand on as high a level as the others, but are leaders of an order who may reach a higher state. The fourth is the first letter of the class who are disciples, students under religious masters, who are going to reach that higher state. The fifth is the first letter of the class which means holy men or holy women. It is sounded OM. When we sound that word we bring before our minds these five classes of beings. We attach spiritual meanings to this symbol.
According to Virchand Gandhi, Jaina philosophy is a perfect system and it teaches how to develop memory and sharpen it. He cites the examples of Kalikalsarvajna Hemchandracharya, Shrimad Rajchandra, Pandit Gatulalji and others who possessed phenomenal retentive memory. Hemchandracharya, it is reported, would sit with forty scribes early in the morning and dictate a sentence on grammar to the one, then go to the other scribe dictating a line on prosody and by turn dictate a line or a sentence to each of the forty scribes. Within a short span of time all the forty works would be ready. Virchand Gandhi also mentions Satavadhani – being attentive to 100 people at a time - Shrimad Rajchandra and Pandit Gatulalji, a Vaishnavait, who was blind and could not read, but would remember word by word what he had heard.
The image of India in those days in western countries was that of a backward country steeped in orthodox customs and its people being uncivilized. At that time, Virchand Gandhi portrayed India differently as an enlightened nation of glorious traditions. Later in his talk, he discusses the basic tenets and principles of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism and explains the principles of
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