Jainism Eternal and Universal Path for Enlightenment

Author(s): Narendra Bhandari
Publisher: Research Institute of Scientific Secrets from Indian Oriental Scriptures Ahmedabad

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Jainism : The Eternal and Universal path for Enlightenment
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different faculties there is no time to think what is right and what is wrong. Once there is a scientific discovery, technical progress can proceed with a rapid pace and can take control of our lives. It takes the mind significant time to comprehend, philosophise transform and understand its implications. Failure of all religions to cope up with the progress of science is resulting in loss of their relevance in day to day life. To make philosophy and religion relevant to modern way of life requires that it be reinterpreted in modem, scientific language to meet the contemporary challenges. When contradiction is found between science and religion, the tendency is to choose the former, because it has made itself relevant to our daily needs. Science has made tremendous progress in the past 400 years and can not be ignored. Rather it should be synthesized and integrated with religion to make the philosophy more wholesome and comprehensive. Instead the puritans stick to the age old interpretations and follow them even if they can not be applied to day to day problems and appear irrlevant. This probably is the reason why people, even those who sincerely follow their religion, end up with gradual erosion of their conviction.
In an absolute sense, there is no measure or absolute criteria for right and wrong. What is right today in a given situation can be wrong tomorrow in another situation and what is nectar (amrut) for one can be poison for another. In this ambiguous situation it is difficult to decide the correct path, except that we must realize that we are the products of nature and the mother nature is all powerful and is always right. We must therefore take clues from nature.
Scientific studies show that over the 14000 million years since the Universe formed from a great explosion, the “Big Bang" and 4500 million years since the Earth came into existence, jiva and Ajiva, both have evolved in a certain direction. It seems that the mother nature is proceeding with a goal, a goal of development of consciousness. on Earth. We should therefore first determine the direction in which the nature is going and then decide the direction in which we should proceed, that is, with it or against it; help nature in achieving its goal faster or choose our path without caring about it. We seem to have a choice. We take the help of science or guidance from nature to find and define the "path" the Earth has taken and then we can exercise this choice. Such an approach would not be subjective, nor it would be wrong.
Nature's path based on fossil record
If we look at the history of evolution of species on Earth we find that over time the