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

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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
resembles the idea so completely, and its it so exactly, that consciousness is unable to find room between them. Representation is stopped by action. The proof of this is, that if the accomplishment of the act is arrested or thwarted by an obstacle, consciousness may re-appear. It was there, but neutralized by the action which fulfilled and thereby filled the representation. The obstacle creates nothing positive ; it simply makes a void, removes a stopper. The inadequacy of the act to representation is precisely what we here call consciousness. Where many equally possible actions are indicated without there being any real action (as in a deliberation that has not come to an end), consciousness is intense. Where the action performed is the only action possible (as in activity of the somnambulistic or more generally of antomatic kind), consciousness is reduced to nothing. Representation and knowledge exist none the less in the case if we find a whole series of systematized movements the last of which is already prefigured in the first, and if, besides, consciousness can flash out of them at the shock of an obstacle,"
Confusion is apt to arise in the mind by the statement that knowledge is necessarily included in the thing in itself, inasmuch as the human mind insists on the question, whence came this knowledge in the first instance ? Strictly speaking, the question itself is illogical, since in its true nature, the thing in itself, as conceived by philosophers, is pure consciousness and eternal, so that the idea of a time limitation cannot affect it in the least. And, so. far as awareness is concerned, consciousness cannot be said to have been devoid of it at any time. In other words, we cannot conceive of a point of time when consciousness may be said to have dawned in its own mind for the first time, just as we cannot conceive energy springing into being, as a new manifestation, for the first time, in the universe. As a matter of fact, knowledge merely consists in the states of consciousness itself, and in respect to