ceasing to exist. The wise man, therefore, aims at annihilation, non-
existence. Nirvana is not a state of positive happiness but a negative
state characterised by absence of feeling and, therefore, absence of
pain.
Christianity inculcates in its followers the dogma of "original
sin." Adam and Eve were guilty of disobedience to God, and were
punished by being expelled from heaven. Every man is born with a
soul stained by the original sin. He can wipe out this stain only by
believing in Christ and living a life of asceticism and hard discipline.
Salvation means the regaining of the state of bliss which was
forfeited by man through sin. Man gains his salvation not by daring
adventure and glorious achievement but by self-abnegation and
refusal to participate in the affairs of the world. The ideal is not self-
fulfilment but self-renunciation. Such was the teaching of the
Church in the medieval age.
The Jews, too, were obsessed with the idea of sin and its
consequences. They lived in terror of hell, where, they believed,
they would suffer for their sins, as well as for the sins of their
forefathers. They thought that they could escape this doom only by
the punctilious performance of an elaborate ritual. All that salvation
meant was to be saved from hell-fire.
It is obvious that in all these creeds, the emphasis is on the
negative aspect of salvation. Salvation is conceived not as a positive
achievement, the acquisition of some new value, but as deliverance
from the evil which clings to man from birth. In Islam, the emphasis
is on the positive side of "salvation". Islam demands that man
should be oriented to the future, that he should bend his efforts to
the realisation of new values and the attainment of new levels of
experience. Islam discourages man's preoccupation with the past:
instead it fosters hope in the future. Man's objective in this life
should not be to regain a lost paradise. He is encouraged to create a
new paradise for himself in which all his capacities may have full
scope for development. This he can do, not by withdrawing from
the world and fixing his gaze on the past, but by being fully alive to
the present and by making full use of the opportunities that this life
offers. The purpose of Islam is the reorientation of man to life, so
that he may wake up to the immense potentialities inherent in him.
His "salvation" lies in discovering the possibilities open to him, and
Salvation^158