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METEMPSYCHOSIS
115
karmas done during the present life bearing their fruits in the present life itself and (2) the bad karmas of a particular life bringing to bear their evil effects in that life itself have also been pointed out, but in the wider context of indicating the way in which one's own actions (good as well as bad) will have to be answered by the individual.2
When the immortality and reincarnation of the soul are asserted, an important question arises. Does reincarnation connote always an upward evolution, so that once the stage of the human being is attained, there is no danger of slipping down the scale of evolution to attain a sub-human stage ? Even the common man may probably answer the question in the negative. No doubt, it may be argued that the proviso that a person indulging in evil acts has to undergo suffering for the same and this in itself is a just punishment for the evil-doer. Read along with the implication that such a person naturally encounters the situation of his having to stay on at the human level without any prospects of an upward evolution, it seems that the possibility of man slipping down need not even be thought of. But the strict application of the theory of karma requires, the common man may suggest, that if acts indulged in by man do not befit the status and dignity of man but that of a sub-human level, the individual be pushed down the human level. The Jaina view is that a just punishment requires a corresponding degradation even in the level of life.
Mehta, clarifying the Jaina view, refers to the theosophist's view that once consciousness attains to the human level, 'there is no return', that if evil reaches a stage beyond redemption there may be an utter dissolution of that entity and that though man may become a super-man, he will never be less than man and points out that the view is influenced by the theory of evolution and that the Jaina tradition has never entertained this notion of the theosophists. He writes : "The Jaina holds that the soul of a human being after death can go back to animals or vegetables. It may also go to heaven and live there for some time. Thus he believes in the retrogression of the souls. He does not believe in the theory of growth and progress of the souls from lower to higher states of consciousness."'3
2 Ibid 3 Jaina Psychology, pp. 176-77
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