Jaina Philosophy

SR No.: 001180
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Mohanlal Mehta
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
Publication Year: 1998
Total Pages: 328
Language: English
Classification: Book_English & Philosophy
File Size: 15 MB

Page 62

REALITY
49
interpenetrate. Intellect is an organ, not of 'fabrication,' but of 'discerninent', a power men have to single out the most fugitive elements of what passes before them... aspect within aspect, quality after quality, relation upon relation. The action of the mind is not creative. Its ideas are not of its own making but rather of its own choosing. It is essentially a selective agency, 'a theatre of simultaneous possibilities.' The sense-organs select from among simultaneous stimuli, attention is selective from among sensations, morality is selective from among interests. To reason is to guide the course of ideas.
Thus, the Realists do not regard only one reality as valid. They establish the theory of the reality of physical objects independent of and entirely different from any mind, intellect, experience, consciousness, individual or spirit. Consciousness is different from its object. The object of a sensation is not the sensation itself.
The nature of consciousness is quite different from the nature of material objects. Consciousness is the essence of spirit, i. e., mind, while material objects exist outside the mind. How can these two absolutely different realities be identical ? If, 'Consciousness Alone' is real, what necessity is of the existence of external objects? Why should an external object prove itself as an obstacle in the production of knowledge ? If consciousness itself is non-blue, what is the necessity of an external object? If consciousness itself is blue, what is the necessity of an external object? If 'Consciousness Alone' is real, there would be no difference between the state of dream and the state of waking life, inasmuch as it is the external and objective reality that makes a distinction between the two. Different Trends of Realism :
We, now, proceed to consider the problem whether Realism takes the existent to be numerically one, two or