________________
THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS AND PAIN
59
Briefly stated, thinking consists of four stages: 'selecting the subject; holding the Conscious Light on that subject; focusing the Light; and the focus of the Light. When the Light is focused, the subject is known.'8
Percival saw the human body as the plan of a changing Universe. 'Senses of the body are the ambassadors of Nature at the court of man; the representatives of the four great elements of fire, air, water, and earth, which are individualized as sight, hearing, taste, and smell of the human body.' The senses themselves do not see, hear, taste, smell or contact independently. They merely receive impressions from Nature and carry them to the breath-form, and the breath focuses them and correlates them so that they do their work through the smell of sense.
Only a small portion of the doer lives in the body. The entire doer is prevented from coming in because of the weakness, inefficiency and unfitness of the body. The embodied portion of the doer is limited in the exercise of its own power because of its own ignorance, indifference, sloth, selfishness and self-indulgence. It does not understand who and what it is, how it got here, what it has to do, what its responsibilities are and what is the purpose of its life. Because of indifference, it allows itself to remain in ignorance and be a slave of Nature. Because of sloth, its powers are dulled and deadened. Because of selfishness, of blindness to the rights of others and the need for gratification of its own wants, it cannot understand and feel its powers. Because of self-indulgence, the habit of giving way to its own inclinations, appetites and lusts, its powers are drained and wasted.
Because thinking is more real than the appearances of matter, it can demonstrate their relative unreality. It can deprive pain of its hurt, disease of its devastation and age of its withering. Thinking can call into existence objects like
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org