Jainism and World Problems

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

Page 34

JAINISM AND WORLD PROBLEMS
word, while dogma will lead to disputes, estrangements and unholy wars, the Science of Religion will bind together all humanity into one unbreakable bond of Brotherhood, founded on the most durable of all bases, that is, the foundation itself of the ETERNAL SCIENCE OF SALVATION.
Dogma and dogmatic theology arose in the past in this way: after Religion had been established and founded by MEN who had attained to the highest Perfection, namely, the Perfection of Divinity, with its aid, its doctrines were allegorized by poetical enthusiasts, in different ways, in different lands, with the result that although the underlying doctrine remained identically the same in all cases, striking differences, because of the diversity and strangeness of personifications, that is to say, because of the gods and goddesses of the different Pantheons, became patent on the surface. And as people are not born with an understanding of the significance of the allegories composed by poets, a time actually arrived when people began to look upon the diverse gods and godesses as real living beings, and began to worship and idolize them in all sorts of ways. The knowers of Truth Divine were now very much reduced in numbers, and were persecuted by those of a violent nature in the opposite camp. About the time that the New Testament of the Bible was composed it had come to be recognised as a counsel of wisdom not to cast one's philosophical pearls before the swine; and the fools were also kept from approaching the Science of Religion. The reference is to the text which forbids the giving of the children's bread to the dogs. The dogs are the fools of Religion, while the swine represent the knaves; and the preachers of the Truth had to guard against both the fool and the knave, inasmuch as a fool was sure to talk, and thus give away the secret. Those who read the gospels and the epistles in the plain sense of the words, therefore, only misdirect themselves. The plain sense of the words was intended to turn away the fools and the knaves. The true doctrine,