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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
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Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
Jainism
237
all the five sense organs. The higher animals among these, namely men, denizens of hell, and the gods possess in addition to these an inner sense organ namely manas by virtue of which they are called rational (samjõin) while the lower animals have no reason and are called asamjñin.” 1
The Jainas invest all the things of the universe with spirit or the Jiva. Even the things like stones and bricks which are only Sthāvaras or immovable things are imagined to be possessing soul. All the things of nature which appear to and are called inanimate by an ordinary man, seem to be possessed of Jivas to a Kevali and thus Jainism holds a kind of pan-spiritualism — the whole universe is invested with the spirit. The Sarvadars'anasangraha also states --" That is the Pçithvijiva who accepts the Prithivi as his body."2 Nothing is without the soul; though the degree of the expression of the soul is varying in the various objects of the worid, the whole world with its objects is possessed of the Jiva in some form. Vegetables, winds and cyclones, fire, heat, electricity and magnetic force, dew drops and fogs, stones and bricks also possess the soul, though at the lowest level. As we ascend higher in virtue of the number of sense organs we find that gradually the worms, beeches, earthworms, ants, bugs, moths, wasps, scorpions, mosquitoes, gnats, flies, locusts and butterflies and the hell beings, lower animals, human beings and demigods ---all these small and big
1 Dasgupta S. : A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 190.
2 Sarvadars' anasangraha, p. 70. (Com.).
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