Jainthology

Author(s): Ganesh Lalwani
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 71

epistemologically. In this paper an attempt will be made to answer the question from the point of view of thanatology.
Thanatology
Until recently scientific investigation in the West seems to have been so steeped in materialism that any evidence of some form of postmortem existence or experience was not taken seriously. As a result of the efforts of people like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the experience of death and near-death experiences are being taken more seriously. Some evidence on this point was collected and presented by Dr. Raymond A. Moody, Jr. in Life After Life. He has now followed this book up with another - Reflections on Life After Life.
It will now be argued that this latter work seems to contain materiāl which may throw some light on the Jain concept of kevalajñāna. Dr. Moody writes on the basis of the report of subjects who had neardeath encounters of extreme duration" thus :
Several people have told me that during their encounters with “death" they got brief glimpses of an entire separate realm of existence in which all knowledge – whether of past, present or futureseemed to co-exist in a sort of timeless state. Alternately, this has been described as a moment of enlightenment in which the subject seemed to have complete knowledge. In trying to talk about this aspect of their experience, all have commented that this experience was ultimately inexpressible. Also, all agree that this feeling of
7 A. L. Basham explains (R. C. Zaehner, ed., The Concise Encyclopedia of Living
Faiths (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), p. 265 : Jainism is not, however, a fatalistic system. The tendency to fatalism is strongly opposed by Jain philosophers, and the apparent determinism of Jain cosmology is explained by a remarkable and distinctive theory of epistemological relativity known as the doctrine of manysidedness" (anekantavada). The details of this system are too recondite to discuss here, but its essential kernel is that the truth of any proposition is relative to the point of view from which it is made. The ebb and flow of the cosmic process is from the universal point of view rigidly determined, but from the viewpoint of the individual a man has freedom to work out his own salvation. Free will and determinism are both relatively true. and only the fully emancipated soul, who surveys the whole of time and space in a single act of knowledge from his eternal station at the top of the universe,
can know the full and absolute truth. 8 Raymond A. Moody, Jr., Life After Life (Atlanta : Mockingbird Books, 1975). 9 Raymond A. Moody, Jr., Reflections on Life After Life (New York : Bantam
Books, 1977).
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