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34
Lord-Mahavira
Existentialist affirmation of freedom. A further understanding of the mechanics of nature and the potentialities of man renders the concept of an extracosmic God a superfluity, apart from its own in many intrinsic difficulties. It is the same argument in a slightly modified form that prompts the Jaina rejection of an absolutism like that of Sankara. The absolutist has to deny the rationality of Nature much more that the theist and reduce it to a mare appearance. He has to belittle human individuality much more to make way for his absolute Spirit. Affirmation of nature as real and of the ineradicable significance of individual personality renders his position much more unacceptable to the inclusive and affirmative standpoint of Jainism. While the theistic and absolutistic creeds are rejected by Jainism sacrificing all the popular sentiments in their favour, it endeavours to preserve and foster to greater heights the values they stand for. If Divinity represents a concrete actualization of the ultimate ideals of perfection, Jainism holds that each soul is such a divinity in the making and the shaping of itself into that perfection lies entirely within its own self-liberating powers. God as a super-natural being or the absolute as the non-dual Universal Spirit is not there. But each Spirit, such as we are, can be raised to utmost divinity and absoluteness in terms of infinite power, infinite knowledge, infinite intuition and infinite joy. Something analogous to this conception is there in the outlook of Samuel Butler and S. Alexander in modern philosophy. It can be elaborated into a magnificent version of Humanism, certainly larger and profounder than that of Auguste Comte. This valuational incorporation of Theism and Absolutism within itself is yet another illustration of the logic of Comprehension characteristic of Jainism.
III
Jainism has a distinct conception of man's ultimate goal. That mundane felicity is not that goal needs no proof. That it is not extinction of the positive essence of self-hood is also clear. In fact it is not conceived in negative terms at all. In reality moksha or freedom for Jainism lies in the unimpeded expression of the innate nature of the soul. It is self-realization in the truest sense of the term. The abundance of nature constitutive of the self is curtailed and stands virtually negated in mundane life. This has to
