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JAINISM AND WORLD PROBLEMS
JAINISM AS THE COMMON PLATFORM
From the confusing bewildering jumble furnished by the religious scriptures of the world two facts emerge clearly if one have patience and sympathy accompanying one when studying Comparative Religion and ancient lore. These are: (1) a total disagreement amongst the different religions or groups of religions in respect of their god or gods, the function and description of Divinity and the summum bonum of Life, and (2) a perfect agreement in regard to the undercurrent of Enlightenment, as the basis of an underlying gnosis, in each of the prevailing religions, showing that the gnostics, or the knowers of truth, in each and every community have held identically the same views. The question which we have to answer with reference to this curious state of affairs is this which of these, the disagreement, or the agreement, of religions is to be taken as the true aspect of things religious? It is obvious that both of them cannot be accepted as true at the same time.
The following chain of reasoning has led me to the conclusion that the matter of agreement constitutes the true view of religions, and that the matter of difference is due to an extraneous though very potent cause. Firstly, it is silly to think that religion could only have been intended really for one community or nation amongst men, or that a god could be found who would make love to one section of the human race and condemn and consign all the rest to perdition. From this it would follow that not the matter of difference, but that of agreement, would necessarily be the nucleus of the true doctrine. Secondly, there are indications in the scriptures themselves that go to show unmistakably that the teaching of the diverse creeds, with regard to the points covered by the matter of disagreement, was not to be understood in the plain, or literal, sense of the words. In other words, most of the scriptures are couched in allegorical or parabolic style,
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