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UNIVERSE
83 of ether, known as Dharmāstikāya and Adharmāstikāya, and space. The animate world consists of innumerable kinds of living beings, each being a centre of complex forces. Time may be figuratively called a substance, really meaning a generalized mode of thought in regard to the activities of beings and things.
The universe is not merely a congeries of the above mentioned substances, heaped together and set in activity by an extra-cosmic creator, but is a system by itself, governed by laws inherent in its very consitution, Law is not to be understood in the sense of a rule of action prescribed by authority, but as a proposition which expresses the constant or regular order of certain phenomena, or constant mode of action of things and beings. It is not a command but a formula to which things or beings conform precisely and without exception, of course, under definite circumstances and surroundings. Jainism, therefore, is not a theistic system in the sense of the belief of the existence of God as the Creator and Ruler of the universe. And still, the highest being, in the Jaina view, is a person and not characterless, qualityless Being like Brahman of the Vedānta.
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