Pravachanasara

SR No.: 003289
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A N Upadhye
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram
Publication Year: 1964
Total Pages: 612
Language: Hindi, Sanskrit
Classification: Book_Devnagari
File Size: 16 MB

Page 103

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Pravacanasāra
though comparable with sattva is not a positive spiritual something, but only immunity from the remaining two upayogas; in the Sāmkhya system, gunas are the ingredients of Praksti, which in turn represents an equipoise of guņas; but in Jainism upayogas are manifested by the soul because of its being associated with karmic matter.
5. THE THEORY OF OMNISCIENCE.-Really speaking the soul (ātman) is the knower and essentially an embodiment of knowledge (II, 35; I, 28 etc.). Knowledge is the self, and knowledge cannot subsist anywhere else than in the self; self and knowledge are coëxtensive, neither less nor more (I, 23); if the self is smaller, then knowledge being insentient cannot function; if larger, it cannot know in the absence of knowledge (I, 24-5). In a sense however the self can be taken as wider than the self (I, 29), because it has other characteristics like sukha, virya etc. In view of its being an embodiment of knowledge, the soul is capable of knowing itself, other objects than itself and the combinatory products of the two (1, 36). But this essential knowing ability of the soul is crippled because of its long association with karmic matter in the form of knowledge-obscuring etc.); and it has come to possess the sense-organs (I, 55; II, 53). The senses are material in nature (paudgalika) and hence foreign to the real nature of the soul. Whatever is apprehended through the senses is indirect (parokşa), because the soul is not directly apprehending the object of knowledge; that would be direct apprehension (paccakkham viņņāpam) when the soul apprehends all by itself without the aid of senses (I, 56-58). The sense-perception is graded and mediate (ajugavam and parokkham), because it has four stages: outlinear grasp (avagraha), discrimination (ihā), judgment (avāya) and retention (dhāraņā) (1, 40).
[p. 74:) After manifesting pure consciousness when the soul becomes free from knowledge-obscuring, conation-obscuring, obstructive and deluding karmas, it comes to be self-constituted and possessed of omniscience (I, 15-6). This omniscience is supersensuous; therein the apprehension of the objectivity takes place directly by the soul without the aid of sense-organs; there are no sensational stages, but the apprehension is sudden and simultaneous; it is endowed with the potencies of all the senses together as it were; and there is nothing that is not visualised in omniscience. (I, 20-2). The omniscient knows and sees the whole world, the variegated and unequal objectivity of the present or otherwise, neither entering into nor entered into by the objects of knowledge, just as the eye sees the objects of sight (I, 27, 47). Omniscience operates on the objects, just as a sapphire thrown in milk pervades the whole of it with its lustre; omniscience is ubiquitous in its functions, and therefore the omniscient is called omnipresent; and all the objects are within his knowledge (I, 28-31, 35). The external objectivity does not affect him, though he sees and knows everything completely (I, 32). It is the supernatural characteristic of omniscience that therein are visualised all present and absent modifications of all those types of substances as if in the present (I, 37-39). Omniscience being an extra-sensory form of knowledge (atīndriya-jñāna) knows any substance with or without space-points, with or without form and those modifications which have not come into existence and those that are destroyed (I, 41). It is also called kşāyika-jñāna, because this knowledge is the result of the destruction