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THE QUALITIES OF MATTER Tīrtlankaras in the present cycle. Moreover, as time moves on to the conclusion of our present descending age, the scale of humanity will decline still further, the religion of the Jainas will disappear, and the earth, finally, will be an unspeakable morass of violence, bestiality, and grief.
This is a philosophy of the profoundest pessimism. The round of rebirths in the world is endless, full of suffcring, and of no avail. Of and in itself it can yield no release, no divine redecming grace; the very gods are subject to its deluding spell. Therefore, ascent to heaven is no less a more phase or stage of dolusion than descent to the purgatorial hells. As a result of meritorious conduct, one is reborn a god among the gods; as a result of evil conduct, a being among the beings of hell or an animal among the beasts; but there is no escape, either way, from this perennial circulation. One will continue to revolve forever through the various spheres of inconsequential pleasures and unbearable pains unless one can manage somehow to release oneself. But this can be accomplished only by heroic effort-a long, rcally dreadful ordeal of austerities and progressive self-abnegation.
The Qualities of Matter
ACCORDING to Jaina cosmology, the universe is a living organism, made animate throughout by life-monads which circulate through its limbs and spheres; and this organism will never die. We ourselves, furthermore-i.e., the life-monads contained within and constituting the very substance of the imper
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