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JAINISM, CHRISTIANITY & SCIENCE
have resurrection in flesh, repeatedly, till it is able to purify itself, if ever.
(3) Those who go to the outer darkness fall back into a condition of embodied esistence which is the very lowest and in which knowledge is all but lost, that is to say, in which there is only the barest susceptibility to sensations of touch left. This is characteristic of a form of vegetable life. In the Jaina Literature this condition is described as Nigoda. .
So great was the anxiety of the founders of the Christian creed to conceal their true views on this point that they seldom allowed themselves to be betrayed into open expression concerning it in any way. In the Gospels, 'the rising from the dead' was a mystery concerning which it is said that even the disciples understood it not (Luke xviü, 32-34; Mark ix. 10; Ibid. Xxxi, 32). In Philippians üi. 11, St. Paul's anxiety concerning the rising from the dead is only too apparent: “If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead."
In Ephesians v. 14 it is said “... Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light."
This exhortation, coupled with the statement that' resurrection is attainable only by individual merit and work conclusively points to Nirvana being the original conception in the minds of the speakers, and suffices to negative the idea of a general resurrection at the end of the world-process. Thus, there are two kinds of future states for the faithful soul in the Christian teaching, namely :
1. Eternal life as Sons of God; and
