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METEMPSYCHOSIS
the enjoyment of celestial life is the result of practising austerities, observing vows and the like."
"8
The significant point regarding the Jaina theory of retrogression is that it supplies the basis for an ethics of responsibility. The karma theory in general, with its corollary, the theory of reincarnation, even in the popular understanding, provides the basis for an ethic of individual responsibility. In the Jaina theory this principle is accepted but there is an emphatic assertion that if man is a responsible being, he is responsible not merely for the good and bad acts he does at the human level and for which he answers at the human level,-in the same or in a future life. If his sense of responsibility is really to play the significant role in the matter of perfecting himself by elevating him far above the ordinary human level, it cannot but be brought in when he errs, when he commits acts which have the mark of the animal in them. He cannot indulge in acts which are beneath his dignity as a human being and escape the consequences. He gets degraded and is pushed down to the sub-human level.
8 VIII. 9. 41
117
Another factor which helps us to understand the Jaina theory in its proper perspective is that whenever we discuss man and his efforts to realize his ultimate nature, our discussion is in terms of consciousness. Spiritual evolution is a conscious process, not an unconscious one. It is because this aspect of man is discussed in ethics that we have a tendency to forget that consciousness is not something unique to the human species, though self-consciousness probably is. Notwithstanding the emphasis that the Jaina tradition lays on the self-conscious aspect of man it consistently maintains that consciousness as such does not have a break, be it the transition from the plant level to the animal level or from the animal to the human and super-human levels. It is in this sense that Jainism talks of two main categories of existence-jīva and ajiva-the conscious and the non-conscious. Since however the universe of discourse in ethics is the human potentialities and propensities, it looks as if we cannot conceive of man being lowered, however bad he may be. But, the Jaina philosophers' referring to the conscious principle has the wholesome effect of making us ponder over the conscious principle in the universe and of making us trace the evolution
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