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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revolution is the appearance of humans who can consciously evolve by will and can even change the environment. This started only about 6 million years ago with appearance of hominin genus, ardipithecus and man, as we know today, i.e. homosapiens appeared only about 200,000 years ago. Thus we see that the development of consciousness over the geologic times is going on at an ever accelerating pace. The next revolution does not seem to be far away and we are already at its doorsteps.
The most primitive species (e.g. algae) had only mati jn'nand later the higher species (mammals e.g.) developed sruta jn?n. The humans have discovered laws and developed ways of calculations by which they can acquire a kind of avadhi jn?n transcending space and time. They can reasonably well estimate what happened in the remote past anywhere in the universe and can well predict the future. The evolution of consciousness thus has been accompanied by evolution of jninto a higher state, i.e. from mati to shruta to avadhi as can be seen from the species existing at various times in this evolutionary chain. Extrapolating this in to the future would imply that further evolution will lead to higher levels of consciousness and jnin, with time i.e. to manahpary ly and ultimately to Keval jn?n. There is nothing which remains to be known after one acquires Keval jnin. And eventually, every one should become a kevali, if nature has its way. Although this is only an extrapolation, considering the logic on which science works, this looks inevitable.
2. The fossil record shows that the evolution is accompanied, not only by development of new species, but extinction of some of the old forms of life. Sooner or later, extinction of all and every species will occur and they will be replaced by new species, i.e. we can say that extinction is the ultimate fate of all species.
3. The higher species may arise not necessarily from the highest existing species but can occur from any level, even much lower. There are instances that a lower species has given rise, by a quantum jump, to a much higher level (from the point of view of consciousness) of species. This implies that we can not predict what species will evolve to the higher level and when and therefore all forms of life must be considered sacred and need to be preserved for achieving higher level of consciousness. Disappearance of even very 'low' ranking species may delay or derail the process of acquiring higher level by natural selection.
Based on the observation of physical characteristics and their inter relation in several species, Darwin found that they have physically evolved in different ways over time as a consequence of interaction with the environment and concluded that evolution