c of Jain theology, the
treatise from which this account is taken[257] adds that the dimensions
of a perfected soul are two-thirds of the height possessed in its last
existence.

How is this paradise to be reached? By right faith, right knowledge and
right conduct, called the three jewels, a phrase familiar to Buddhism.
The right faith is complete confidence in Mahavira and his teaching.
Right knowledge is correct theology as outlined above. Knowledge is of
five degrees of which the highest is called Kevalam or omniscience. This
sounds ambitious, but the special method of reasoning favoured by the
Jains is the modest Syadvada[258] or doctrine of may-be, which holds
that you can (1) affirm the existence of a thing from one point of view,
(2) deny it from another, and (3) affirm both existence and
non-existence with reference to it at different times. If (4) you should
think of affirming existence and non-existence at the same time and from
the same point of view, you must say that the thing cannot be spoken of.
The essence of the doctrine, so far as one can disentangle it from
scholastic terminology, seems just, for it amounts to this, that as to
matters of experience it is impossible to formulate the whole and
complete truth, and as to matters which transcend experience language is
inadequate: also that Being is associated with production, continuation
and destruction. This doctrine is called _anekanta-vada_, meaning that
Being is not one and absolute as the Upanishads assert: matter is
permanent, but changes its shape, and its other accidents. Thus in many
points the Jains adopt the common sense and _prima facie_ point of view.
But the doctrines of metempsychosis and Karma are also admitted as
obvious propositions, and though the fortunes and struggles of the
embodied soul are described in materialistic terms, happiness is never
placed in material well-being but in liberation from the material
universe.

We cannot be sure that the existing Jain scriptures present these
doctrines in their original form, but the full acceptance of
metempsychosis, the animistic belief that plants, particles of earth and
water have souls and the materialistic phraseology (from which the
widely different speculations of the Upanishads are by no means free)
agree with what we know of Indian thought about 550 B.C. Jainism like
Buddhism ignores the efficacy of ceremonies and the powers of priests,
but it bears even fewer signs than Buddhism