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RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE JAINAS can be created or destroyed, so also no soul-entity can be created or destroyed. What becomes of soul then after what we call death ? No power in the universe can annihilate it. It must exist somewhere. In what state would it exist ? Does it at once pass into spiritual existence ? If so, there is no justice in hurling all the egos, good, bad or indifferent into spirituality without distinction. Spirituality itself means the existence of spirit pure and simple and there is no sense in asserting that all egos after death live in that state, when we know for a certainty that all of them have lived on this physical plane different kinds of life. Effects of good or bad acts committed on the physical plane must manifest on the physical plane. The force created by the ego on the physical plane in this life must in some way or other manifest itself after death on the physical plane - be in future life. And if the soul has to pass through other future lives, is it unreasonable to say that it has passed through past lives also ? If the soul was created at a time it must also die at death. Whatever begins in time must end in time. If the soul is immortal, it must be immortal at both its ends. It cannot be immortal at one end without being immortal at the other. The idea of special creation at birth implies the correlative of annihilation at death. It does not stand to reason that from an infinite history the soul enters this world for its first and only physical existence and then shoots off into an endless spiritual existence. As Emerson says : We wake and find ourselves on a stair. There are other stairs below us which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one which go upward and out of sight.
Re-incarnation is the only doctrine which gives a complete solution of the much-disputed question of original sin. There cannot be greater injustice in the world than the fact that I am suffering for the transgression of my ancestor. Adonis responsibility for our sin is only a makeshift of the theologians. No one but the individual himself can be blamed for his wrong doing. Are not the courts of Law of your United States founded on the ideas of justice ? Will any Judge sitting on the throne
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