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THE SYSTEMS OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
who believe in creation believe from a different standpoint than this. It cannot come into existence out of nothing, but is an emanation coming out of something. The state only is created. This book in a sense is created because all its particles are put together, having been in a different state. The form of the book is created. There was a beginning of this book and there will be an end. In the same manner, with any form of matter, whether this form lasts for moments or for centuries, if there was a beginning there must be an end.
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 called by the Jainas 'God'.2 The STETS 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
2. 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 section, 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.
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