Jiva

MIND, MATTER AND GOD : JIVA, JADA AND ISVARA
M.M.NINAN
last instance, assumed world creation in some form or other...comprised the camp of
idealism. The others who regarded nature as primary belong to the various schools of
materialism.”
Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach & the End of Classical German Philosophy, early 1886
MESW, 1977, pp. 603-04; MECW, Vol. 26, pp. 365-66
In dialectical materialism matter is all that is in the universe. Movement is the form of
the existence of matter, an inherent attribute of matter, a manifestation of the multiplicity
of matter. Everything flows, everything changes; there is nothing absolutely stagnant,
nothing unchangeable in the processes of actuality. There are three fundamental laws
of matter. Engels postulated three laws of dialectics from his reading of Hegel's Science
of Logic. Engels elucidated these laws in his work Dialectics of Nature:
1. The law of the unity and conflict of opposites
All progress takes place through the unity, conflict, interpenetration, and transformation
of opposites. Every state carries within itself two forces. Engels calls them Thesis and
Antithesis. At any instant the state is decided by the synthesis of these two forces. The
synthesis then becomes the thesis with its embedded anti-thesis and the process goes
on. This process never stops.
This practically is saying that while everything is developed out of matter, there
inherently is a duality within the properties of matter itself. This is sometimes
referred to a Dialectical Monism. Dialectical monism, also known as dualistic
monism, is an ontological position that holds that reality is ultimately a unified whole,
distinguishing itself from monism by asserting that this whole necessarily expresses
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