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JAINA CONCEPT OF GOD IN JAINA THEISM
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someone, for example pot, cloth, clock, house, stall, chain etc., but such thing as sky, time, atoms, soul, etc. have not been made by any one. All learned man agrees in the view that all things, which have forms of effects, must have material cause. Without a material cause no such effect can be produced. Only a fool can say against this view but soul, time, atoms and sky have no material causes and are therefore beginning less and none has made them. The statement that all things have been made by God is therefore untenable. As regards the earth, water, fire, air, plats, moving creatures, and such portions of earth as heaven, hell and sun, moon, planets, stars, constellation, etc.; these are made by the combination of matter and spirit. The earth etc. is eternal by reason of their continuity and non-eternal by their apparent forms.
The matter and spirit embodying them are of infinite potentialities. These eternal forms manifest themselves when combined with their respective causes such as time, etc. and all the creation in the world that has been, is and will be, is due to the following five material causes- time, nature, continuity, action and energy. Except these five causes, no other creator or director of the world as God is proved.
A single seed is charged with infinite potentialities. A variety of colours, leaves, roots, fruits, bark, branches, flowers, seeds etc. abide in the seed in potential forms. When the seed is burned to ashes, its potential forces reside in its atoms but none of these forces comes into manifestation without its cause or concomitant. If no such characteristic forces reside in the seed, why is it that a seed of wheat does not produce mangoes, thorns, men, animals, bird etc.? All things have therefore their peculiar infinite forces. As they combine with their peculiar causes, they come into manifestation. A seed contains in miniature all the features of a tree but until it combines with its external concomitants, it does not blossom. These external concomitants are (1) rain (2) earth and water. Even if rain, earth etc. combine they cannot produce a blossom unless the seed is endowed with potentiality to blossom. Even granting that all the four
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