Jiva

MIND, MATTER AND GOD : JIVA, JADA AND ISVARA
M.M.NINAN
Materialists by definition deny the existence of any nonmaterial substance. They need
not necessarily be atheists. Many of them held that God is corporeal.
Stoics, and Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), held that God is corporeal. The Mormons
asserts that we are created in the image of God and the God who reacts with us and
known to us has a human body like ours. “The Father has a body of flesh and bones,
as tangible as man’s; the Son also” (DC 130:22). At any rate we have to accept that
Jesus as the Son of God did appear in human form as the Angel of the Lord before the
incarnation. In doing so we take God as part of the universe. It is only one more step
to make God as evolved from Matter in the course of some ultra time.
The Hindu scripture Sreemat Bhagavatam 3.9.19 says: O my Lord, by Your own will
You appear in the various species of living entities, among animals lower than human
beings as well as among the demigods, to perform Your transcendental pastimes. You
are not affected by material contamination. You come just to fulfill the obligations of
your own principles of religion, and therefore, O Supreme Personality, I offer my
obeisance unto you for manifesting such different forms.
Among the earliest forms of materialism was atomism.
Leucippus or Leukippos ( 5th century BC) his disciple Democritus (460-370 BC)
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