Jainism Christianity and Science

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: The Indian Press Allahabad

Page 63

CHAPTER 7
SOULS ALL ALIKE
The Jaina view is that all souls are of a like nature in respect of their natural properties, attributes and qualities. Differences exist simply on account of embodied life. Outside the class of embodied beings there are no differences. The souls in Nirvana enjoy equal status; no one is greater, no one is lesser there. There can be no God who may be deemed to be superior to Souls in Nirvana. He will have to be either plus or minus something over and above the normal Soul, but if he is a normal soul plus so much of something else, he will be a compounded effect and therefore perishable. The counter-possibility does not arise, because one cannot take away anything from the natural properties or attributes of a substance.
Even the Tirthamkaras (of whom there are only twenty-four in a cycle of time comprising untold millions of years) are, in no sense, superior to, or different from, the ordinary soul; They were at one time sinful souls Themselves.
The Christian views on the subject are embodied in the following quotations :
" Ye are the light of the world."-Matt. v. 14., " Ye are the song of the living God."-Hosea i. 10. "... because as he is, so are we in this world."-1 John iv, 17.
"Every one who participates in anything is unquestionably of one essence and nature with him who is the partaker of the same thing ... Every mind which partakes of intellectual light ongbt undoubtedly
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