Key of Knowledge

SR No.: 006702
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1919
Total Pages: 1204
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

Page 598

THE HOLY TRINITY,
577 This will be evident on a little reflection. The question is : what is a feeling* in itself ? Is it merely another name for pure activity or energy ? Surely not, for analysis reveals the fact that feelings differ inter se as much as ideas, so that the emotion of hatred is radically different from that of love. And yet activity is common to both. If we were to express this idea in the form of a mathematical equation, we should have to say that the emotion of love = energy+the ideat of love, and the emotion of hatred = energy+the idea of hatred, and so forth. Feelings, then, differ from one another not in respect of energy, but solely and simply in respect of the ideas which tinge our mental activity by saturating the mind with their essence. Hence, an emotion is an idea converted into feeling, just as action is an idea liquified into a process and carried into effect by the ego. Emotions and feelings are thus sub-conscious tendencies of life, not because consciousness is not present at the time, but because it is neutralized in consequence of the feeling whose presence leaves no room for a conscious chuice, or deliberation, in the mind, so long as it remains in possession of the field of consciousness.
" When we mechanically perform an habitual act," writes Bergson (Creative Evolution, pp. 151-2), “when the somnambulist automatically acts his dream, unconsciousness may be absolute; but this is merely due to the fact that the representation of the act is held in check by the performance of the act itself which
*A feeling might be defined as that in our in ward states which cannot by any possibility become an element of a percept or of an image (Höffding).
| The word 'idea' is here used in its most comprehensivo senso, and signifies what is known as instinctive consciousness as well as intellectual thought.
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