Jaina View of Life

SR No.: 001622
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: Jain Sanskruti Samrakshak Sangh Solapur
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 260
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, & Discourse
File Size: 14 MB

Page 66

The Jaina Theory of the Soul
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tendency towards a particular end. Some psychologists called it 'conation' or the conative process. But this drive may not always be conscious.
There is the presence of an internal drive in such processes. "To this drive or urge, whether it occurs in the conscious life of men and the higher animals we propose to give a single name....hornie".10 This activity of the mind is a fundamental property of life. It has various other names, like 'the will to live' elan vital', the life urge and the libido. Horme under one form or another has been the fundamental postulate of Lamarck, Butler, Bergson and Bernard Shaw. McDougall took great pains to present the hormic theory of psychology as against the mechanistic interpretation of life and mind.
The hormic force determines experience and behaviour. We get conscious experience because of this drive. The conscious experience takes the form of perception and understanding. Horme operates even in the unconscious behaviour of lower animals. In the plants and animals we see it operate in the preservation of organic balance. In our own physical and mental life we find examples of horme below the conscious level. We circulate our blood, we breathe and we digest our food, and all these are the expressions of the hormic energy. It operates at all levels both in the individual and the racial sense.*1 But the horme expressed and presented by the Jaina philosophers could not be developed and analysed in terms of the modern psychology, because their analysis of Upayoga was purely an epistemological problem tempered with metaphysical speculation. They were aware of the fact that there is a purposive force which actuates and determines experience. This is clear from the distinction between jñana and darsana as two forms of upayoga.
20. Nunn (Percy): Education : Its Data and First Principles, pp. 28
29, 3rd Ed. 21. Ross (James S.) Groundwork of Educational Psychology, p. 47.