The Truth

Author(s): O P Jain
Publisher: Veer Nirvan Granth Prakashan Samiti

Page 27

THE SOUL
ITS NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES
RESTONE
4.1 Modern science teaches the constancy. of Nature. This means that basic substances and their attributes are eternal and unvarying, they never cease to be and are never produced from nothing. The substance and its attributes are the two sides or aspects of the same thing, for there can be no substance apart from its attributes. This is tantamount to saying that attributes only inhere in substances and substances are but bundles of attributes, e.g., gold is only the sum total of all its properties, yellowness, heaviness, materiality etc., and cannot be thought of as anything apart from them.
Substance is characterised by the triple function of origination, destruction and continuance at one and the same time. When a bar of gold is melted, there is destruction of bar-ness, origination of liquid state and continuance of gold as gold throughout. This fact will help to explain many phenomenon of the Universe, which otherwise may be termed as illusion or 'Maya'. This explains the law of constant change, yet of constancy of Nature.
4.2 The Universe is resolvable into two kinds of substances-- the living and the non-living. The living substance is characterised by consciousness, while non-living is not so characterised. These can be called 'Jiva' and `Ajiva' or spirit and non-spirit. The living substance i. e., the soul does not have a form (like gases), is weightless, colourless, odourless and cannot be perceived by the usual senses of touch, taste, smell, sight or hearing. It does not show the usual qualities possessed by matter.
Some materialists try to deny the existence of spirit and attribute consciousness to matter, though they have not been able to put any acceptable explanation so far. This notion is based on inaccurate and incomplete understanding of the substance ‘spirit', and on the experience that matter influences the conscious qualities of living beings. As will be described in details later, matter does influence soul behaviour,