YJA Convention 1994 07 Chicago IL First

Author(s): Young Jains of America (YJA)
Publisher: Young Jains of America YJA USA

Page 50

Another difficulty is the impossibility of an intelligent being becoming non-intelligent matter. In the world there is insentient matter as well as intelligent being, and sentient intelligent being could not function as the insentient and non-intelligent elements that there are in the world; so the theory that God an intelligent being, created the world by himself taking the shape of it, including the non-intelligent part, is untenable.
or pure; but, while it is combined with the non-intelligent element in the form of subtle material forces, these produce feelings of attachment and a version; and these passions, acting as the instrumental cause of good and bad unnatural actions, become the means whereby new matter of a similar kind is attracted to and combined with the soul. This matter that is attracted to and combined with the soul becomes a kind of stored force which will at some time or other spring into activity and produce some kind of pleasure or pain to the soul. After having thus exhausted itself it falls away from the soul; but as just mentioned above, while it is operating, it acts as the means whereby new matter of similar kind is attracted and assimilated until the soul comes to know its own nature and recognizes these forces as foreign elements, when it ceases to identify itself with them, so that, while they are exhausting themselves, no fresh forces of a similar character are generated. Once all these foreign forces are removed from the soul it is pure, and never again becomes impure; it has reached Godhood.
Those who hold this theory of God being the only the eternal existence and himself taking the shape of the world, are among others, the Vedantists of India. They hold that God is pure, intelligence and that when he created the world he associated himself with what appears to be and is called the non-intelligent. But here the question arises whether this nonintelligent element with which intelligent being became associated is a separate and different entity from God, or whether it is attribute of God. If it is a separate entity, then the theory of their being only one eternal thing is contradicted and dualism is accepted. If, on the other hand, it is an attribute of God, then this non-intelligent element must always have been with hi, and he cannot be regarded as pure intelligence, but must always have the element of non-intelligence and impurity in him. In the Jain theory this association of the pure and perfect intelligence with the elements of nonintelligence and impurity is acknowledged, but the difference is this that, while the Vedantists hold that God associated himself at some particular time with this non-intelligent element and thus become the visible world, the Jains maintain that this pure intelligence and nonintelligent element, in so far as they are at present intermingled, have been intermingled with each other form eternity and are thus the cause of the visible world. Soul and matter in the ordinary living being are, as a matter of act, actually intermingled; but as they never become, but always have been, intermingled, the question of the cause of their so becoming does not arise, for there never was a time when those souls who are now intermingled were not so. The real nature of the soul itself is the same, whether intermingled with matter
So we have now seen that the quality or being creator and ruler cannot be attributed to Deity, without distracting from other qualities essential to the idea of Deity. But there are some further considerations to be mentioned.
One great argument put forward in support of the belief that there must be creator and rule of the universe, is the fact of system and order in the processes of nature, and also the fact of beauty, it being maintained that these are the evidence of intelligence. However, it is not correct to say that there are only beauty and order in the world; for there are also disorder and ugliness. If it be said that storms, earthquake, and disease are sent by God for some beneficial object that he has in his view, then obviously this view is taken at the expense of either the quality of benevolence or the quality of omnipotence, for were God both benevolent and omnipotent, such injury and inconvenience would not be allowed to exist
According to Jainism, the world is the effect of
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