The Soul-Essence

...was a useful thing not made before. If the latter is true, the Creator is a frivolous wastrel, or simply childish original: "puerile" for making and then breaking the Universe.

If the Universe was created by God as an absolutely new thing, it must follow that before its creation, God was not a Krita Kritya Sanskrit: literally "one who has done what was to be done"; a being so perfect that no tasks or desires remain—someone so perfect that nothing remained for Him to do. If He only recreates a destroyed Universe, then the Jaina follower of Jainism explanation is simple and sufficient: that the Universe is uncreated and passes through a sort of birth and death at the meeting point of the Avasarpini the descending half-cycle of time in Jain cosmology and Utsarpini the ascending half-cycle of time in Jain cosmology eras. If it is argued that there must be a creator (as distinct from a natural cause, co-existence, or sequence of events) for everything, then there must also be a creator of God, and so on infinitely original: "ad infinitum".

Furthermore, like creates like. God, as a Pure Soul, can only create a living soul. How then can He create non-living, unconscious matter out of Himself?

The Jaina doctrine is that the lifeless, non-living, unconscious Universe is eternal and uncreated. It evolves and revolves within its own countless attributes and changes forever. It undergoes radical, catastrophic changes in space and time, which the history of all nations records as the Deluge the Great Flood, the Mahabharata the ancient Indian epic centered on a Great War, the Great War, the Pralaya Sanskrit: the periodic dissolution of the universe, and so on. Is this doctrine not more satisfying to the soul, simpler, and more clearly marked with logic and truth than an attempt to explain things through the doctrine of Creation? Since "creation" is actually just the Pure Soul achieving its own Perfect state, it is easy to see that everything else in the Universe, from the perspective of the conscious, living, and knowing Soul, is Imperfect.

Obviously, imperfection is only tolerated because and as long as we cannot get rid of it. Therefore, all worldly effort—being the product of the living Soul’s union with non-living matter—should be merely tolerated, shunned, or renounced. When renunciation is impossible or impractical, it must be merely tolerated, controlled, and regulated so as to keep it within the limits of the least possible harm to Perfection.

A clear intellectual understanding and a persistent, practical pursuit of this in our daily lives is essential to keep us true to the center of