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Jaina Philosophy and Religion
innocent and kind, why should he be the victim of that deadly attack? But the apparent anomaly of such cases disappears, if we take into account the acts performed in past births.
A child has to experience pains during the period between the inception of the embryo and the actual birth. Are they all the results of the child's acts? Or, are they all the results of its parents' acts? They could not be regarded as the results of its acts performed in the present birth, because it has performed no act-good or bad-in the state of embryo. And if they are regarded as the results of the acts of its parents, then it is also not proper because why should it experience the fruit of the good or bad act of its parents, without any reason? And it can never be maintained that it experiences pleasure or pain without any cause, because there can be no effect without its cause.
From all these instances we know that the primary cause of the varied diversity or inequality does not lie merely in the present birth, nor is the diversity or inequality the result merely of the training or culture imparted by the parents, nor is it the result merely of environment, situations or circumstances. So it is proper to maintain that the soul existed even prior to the inception of embryo. This prior existence itself is the previous birth. The present birth and the special capacities associated with it can very well be accounted for on the basis of impressions that are left on the soul by the desires entertained and the activities performed in the previous birth. The logic that proves the previous birth, proves also the birth prior to that birth, and even the birth prior to that one, and thus is proved the beginningless series of successive births prior to the present birth. Similarly, the same logic proves even the future birth of the mundane soul.
Even the fact that the new-born child that has yet learnt nothing in the present birth starts on its own sucking the milk from its mother's breasts, proves by inference the existence of soul or consciousness in the previous birth.
Some may raise a question: Why do we not remember our previous birth, if it really existed? In reply a counter-question is asked: Do we remember all the events that took place even in the present birth? No, many events are veiled by our forgetfulness. If we forget many events of the present birth, then what to talk of the previous birth itself and events thereof? In the present birth, we have undergone radical changes in the life-species, in body and in sense-organ; our entire life has radically and
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