Jainism

• Jainism

92:6.108. Jain­ism.

92:5.124. The sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ. Many men arose to pro­claim truth in this, one of the great­est cen­turies of re­li­gious awak­en­ing ever wit­nessed on Uran­tia. Among these should be re­corded Gau­tama, Con­fu­cius, Lao-tse, Zoroaster, and the Jain­ist teach­ers. The teach­ings of Gau­tama have be­come wide­spread in Asia, and he is revered as the Bud­dha by mil­lions. Con­fu­cius was to Chi­nese moral­ity what Plato was to Greek phi­los­o­phy, and while there were re­li­gious reper­cus­sions to the teach­ings of both, strictly speak­ing, nei­ther was a re­li­gious teacher; Lao-tse en­vi­sioned more of God in Tao than did Con­fu­cius in hu­man­ity or Plato in ide­al­ism. Zoroaster, while much af­fected by the preva­lent con­cept of dual spiritism, the good and the bad, at the same time def­i­nitely ex­alted the idea of one eter­nal De­ity and of the ul­ti­mate vic­tory of light over dark­ness.

131:6.1The third group of re­li­gious be­liev­ers who pre­served the doc­trine of one God in In­dia—the sur­vival of the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ing—were known in those days as the Sud­u­anists. Lat­terly these be­liev­ers have be­come known as fol­low­ers of Jain­ism. They taught:

131:6.2“The Lord of Heaven is su­preme. Those who com­mit sin will not as­cend on high, but those who walk in the paths of righ­teous­ness shall find a place in heaven. We are as­sured of the life here­after if we know truth. The soul of man may as­cend to the high­est heaven, there to de­velop its true spir­i­tual na­ture, to at­tain per­fec­tion. The es­tate of heaven de­liv­ers man from the bond­age of sin and in­tro­duces him to the fi­nal beat­i­tudes; the righ­teous man has al­ready ex­pe­ri­enced an end of sin and all its as­so­ci­ated mis­eries. Self is man’s in­vin­ci­ble foe, and self is man­i­fested as man’s four great­est pas­sions: anger, pride, de­ceit, and greed. Man’s great­est vic­tory is the con­quest of him­self. When man looks to God for for­give­ness, and when he makes bold to en­joy such lib­erty, he is thereby de­liv­ered from fear. Man should jour­ney through life treat­ing his fel­low crea­tures as he would like to be treated.”

94:4.1With the pass­ing of the cen­turies in In­dia, the pop­u­lace re­turned in mea­sure to the an­cient rit­u­als of the Vedas as they had been mod­i­fied by the teach­ings of the Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies and crys­tal­lized by the later Brah­man priest­hood. This, the old­est and most cos­mopoli­tan of the world’s re­li­gions, has un­der­gone fur­ther changes in re­sponse to Bud­dhism and Jain­ism and to the later ap­pear­ing in­flu­ences of Mo­hammedanism and Chris­tian­ity. But by the time the teach­ings of Je­sus ar­rived, they had al­ready be­come so Oc­ci­den­tal­ized as to be a “white man’s re­li­gion,” hence strange and for­eign to the Hindu mind.