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1088
As regards the first of these points, we must reject the idea of a creator altogether, since there are no sufficient reasons to prove that a supreme being is responsible for the world-process, and because no one who sets himself up as a creator can possibly have happiness in himself, and also because the idea of a creator is a self-contradictory notion. The removal of a man-like creator from the field, however, does not mean the removal of Godhood from the universe, since that is the Ideal of fulness and perfection for the soul to aspire to.
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
In respect of souls, it will be apparent to any one who cares to think for himself that the knowing subject cannot possibly be regarded as a product of matter. You cannot have blood out of stones; neither can you have consciousness out of the concourse of dead atoms. The psychological functions of memory, judgment and the like, as also the higher faculties of the Subjective Mind, unmistakably point to mind being no secretion of the brain. The dependence of the discriminative intellect on the convolutions and development of the brain is not inconsistent with this hypothesis, and merely points to the functions of the physical brain being transmissive', but not productive. The consciousness of man, and for the matter of that of all beings in the world, is, therefore, quite independent of the groupings of atoms and molecules of matter, which some of us regard to be the things which give it birth.
Jain Education International
Soul, then, is consciousness, the nature of which is to know. Analysis further reveals the fact that consciousness cannot be subject to death, since it is not
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