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 649

028
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
influence is needed to prevent its becoming an actuality of experience. The nature of this external influence, that is, the force of karmas, is fully explained in such works as the Gommatasara.*
It follows from this that knowledge really arises from within, and education is merely a drawing forth (from e, out, and duco, to lead) from the depths of consciousness. As the bondage of karma is loosened, nem impressions are set free to manifest themselves, widening the field of perception and knowledge by bringing the soul into touch with something to which it had remained irresponsive hitherto ; and, finally, when all the perception- and knowledge-obstructing bonds. of karma are destroyed, omniscience is attained by the potential becoming the actual.†
* The Gommatasara is a Jaina work of great authority on the doctrine of karma, but unfortunately it has not yet been translated into English. Those who cannot liave access to it are recommended to read the author's Practical Path' which deals with the main features of the subject at some length.
There can be no getting away from the fact that the soul can never know anything unless it be endowed with the knowing faculty. The senses only give us impressions, photos or images of objects, but not the knower to cognize them; and it would be a miracle if they could create the knower, for they are unconscious themselves. There can be equally clearly no doubt but that the soul primarily only perceives its own conditions or states of consciousnessjin knowing anything else, for very often that which it knows is very different from what is actually perceived, and in many cases what is known is never really perceived with the senses, e.g., ether, which is invisible to the eye. The existence of a capacity to know, then, is a condition precedent to the consciousness of the soul; and it is evident that this capacity to know is not anything foreign to it, or to be acquired from without, but its very nature, for, as we shall see later, the separation of jilana (consciousness) from the jñani (knower)