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( 62 ) Cais of the modern time is the cost of living, which
is going up from day to day and which entails the devotion of whole-time labours to the procuring of the means of livelihood and those other things which are necessary to enable one to be counted as a "somebody" in society. This leaves no time for spiritual unfoldement, which itself demands the withdrawal of the outgoing energy and its inner concentration for the destruction of the Karmic bonds. It was on this very ground that Mahatma Gandhi, who was essentially a Jain, held the view that the progress in civilization lies in the reduction of mar's material wants to a minimum. Jainism which propounds self-abnegation, tiyag, is the only system of philosophical thought that can deliver the goods
The civilization of the ancients, on the contrary,never lost sight of the necessity for the spiritual evolution of the soul, and then the cost of living was so cheap that every one could procure the necessities of life without much trouble or lab.jur, utilizing, every moment of one's valuable time for devotion to God, i. e., the ideal of perfection and Bliss. There can be no gainsaying the fact that the effect or influ
