Key of Knowledge

SR No.: 006702
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1919
Total Pages: 1204
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

Page 32

THE IDEAL..
il
the method of its realization to others, is the first great Teacher of our race and the founder of Religion in the true sense of the word. However absurd the statement may seem at this early stage of our investigation, it is certain that religion is coeval with its own necessity and also with rational thought. It is true that the phases of rational thought have undergone certain kinds of evolutionary changes, but it is also true that these changes have added little or nothing to the knowledge of the so-called primitive humanity, who were fully instructed in all the departments of Religion, and made familiar with the true principles of yoga and devotion, two important departments of the science of Self-realization. As a matter of fact, there was nothing left to be discovered at the time of which we are writing, and the task of the future generations was inerely to understand and dispense the divine knowledge in a simple, easy way to the suffering humanity. As time wore on people drifted away from the high ideal set before them by the great sages of the race, and, in consequence, became estranged from happiness, which they vainly tried to extract from the material objects in the world. Warning voices rose up from time to time to exhort them to remain steadfast to their noble and ennobling ideal. Tirthamkaras and saviours and swamies and prophets appeared and preached to the world in quick succession ; but their philosophy was of no value to the people, as they had no time left from the pursuit of sensual pleasures and riches to understand the sublime teaching of religion, while yoga and devotion, entailing, as they did, severe austerities and self-denials, equally ceased to