have any perception he cannot have any inference either.  If it is said that without the supposition of a God the variety of the world would be inexplicable, this also is not true, for this implication would only be justified if there were no other hypothesis left.  But there are other suppositions also.  Even without an omniscient God you could explain all things merely by the doctrine of moral order or the law of karma.  If there were one God, there could be a society of Gods too.  You say that if there were many Gods, then there would be quarrels and differences of opinion.  This is like the story of a miser who for fear of incurring expenses left all his sons and wife and retired into the forest.  When even ants and bees can co-operate together and act harmoniously, the supposition that if there were many Gods they would have fallen out, would indicate that in spite of all the virtues that you ascribe to God you think his nature to be quite unreliable, if not vicious.  Thus in whichever way one tries to justify the existence of God he finds that it is absolutely a hopeless task.  The best way then is to dispense with the supposition altogether [Footnote ref 1].

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[Footnote 1:  See _@Sa@ddars’anasamuccaya_,_ Gu@naratna on Jainism, pp. 115-124.]

207

Mok@sa (emancipation).

The motive which leads a man to strive for release (mok@sa) is the avoidance of pain and the attainment of happiness, for the state of mukti is the state of the soul in pure happiness.  It is also a state of pure and infinite knowledge (anantajnana) and infinite perception (anantadars’ana).  In the sa@msara state on account of the karma veils this purity is sullied, and the veils are only worn out imperfectly and thus reveal this and that object at this and that time as ordinary knowledge (mati), testimony (s’ruta), supernatural cognition, as in trance or hypnotism (avadhi), and direct knowledge of the thoughts of others or thought reading (mana@hparyaya).  In the state of release however there is omniscience (kevala-jnana) and all things are simultaneously known to the perfect (kevalin) as they are.  In the sa@msara stage the soul always acquires new qualities, and thus suffers a continual change though remaining the same in substance.  But in the emancipated stage the changes that a soul suffers are all exactly the same, and thus it is that at this stage the soul appears to be the same in substance as well as in its qualities of infinite knowledge, etc., the change meaning in this state only the repetition of the same qualities.