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GOD
We say there are both preservation and destruction in the many forces working around us. All these forces are working every moment in the midst of us and around us, and the collection of these entities is called by the Jainas 'God'.' The Brāhmaṇas represent it by the syllable Om; the first sound in this word represents the idea of creation, the second of preservation and the third of destruction. All these are energies of the universe and taken as a whole they are subject to certain fixed laws. If the laws are fixed why do people bow down to these energies ? Why do they consider the collective energy as a god or as God ? There is always an idea of the power to do evil in the beginning of this conception. When railroads were first introduced into India ignorant people who did not know what they were, who had never seen in their lives that a car or carriage could be moved without the horse or the ox, thought that there was some divinity in the engine, some god or goddess, and some of them even bow down before the car, and even to this day you will find in some parts of India, among the pariahs or low class, that there are people who entertain this
o to these energies in our primitive state we are liable to attribute personality; and after a long course of development we symbolize our thought in the form of pictures and explain them in that way to make them more intelligible to others. In the ancient times there was not rain but a rainer, not thunder
1. This statement is anomalous, for it is precisely Gandhi's argument that the
material energies manifested there in the universe are not treated as 'God' in Jaina philosophy. Nor can it be said that Gandhi here means to refer to the 'spiritual energies' which, as we shall learn in the next paragraph, are actually treated as 'God' in Jaina philosophy. For in the present section Gandhi is confining his attention to the material sector of the universe. (K.K.D.) .
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