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 644

THE HOLY TRINITY.
623
With regard to the phenomenon of retention, it is to be noticed that the difference between the living mind and a looking-glass in respect of perception and memory consists in two points, namely, firstly, the power of the mind to feel its affections, and, secondly, its ability to retain the impress even after the object is gone. Hence, while the mirror is incapable of knowing and retaining the impression of what it reflects, the living mind performs both these feats. It achieves the former because of its natural property, and the latter, by absorbing some of the material of the different stimuli which reach it from outside. These impressions, however, are not lasting, and are liable to be obliterated in course of time, though the effects of the original perceptions as well as of conceptual thought are preserved in the form of modifications of the soul's constitution, and may be read, as an open book, by those endowed with super-sensuous faculties. All samskaras, i.e., impressions, are material in nature, no exception being made even in the case of those formed from the data of the senses other than vision as well as those formed by the mind alone. The rule is that a very fine kind of matter flows towards the soul with every thought, word and deed, so that there is nothing surprising in the fact that some of this material should be utilized for the formation of memory. Indeed, the surprise would be all the other
*But for this, it would be impossible for us to know anything, for the human consciousness cannot know anything from a distance, Thusa material agent is required in each case to reach the finite mind before it can be conscious of an object.