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 669

648 . THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE. consciousness can never be conceived as devoid of ideas altogether.
We shall now take up our stand at a point intermediate between the schools of the Advaita Vedanta and the dualistic Sankhya to be able to further pursue the line of thought which has given us these highly interesting and instructive doctrines and myths. This method is liable to lead us into error to some extent, in the first instance; but we shall have ample opportunity of correcting the same in this and the following chapters. To appreciate the beauty of thought underlying religious doctrines, it is always necessary to put ourselves in the position of the writers themselves, and to follow them in their ideas, on their own lines.
Starting from an assumed beginning of the worldprocess, and with the Absolute as the sole existence, we may say that the matter of which the universe is made is the objectification of Maya, the power of thought, or illusion. This gives us the first duality of Spirit and matter, from which the followers of the Sankhyan philosophy start on their investigation. The compiler of the first Book of Moses also proceeds from this point, and says:---
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."-(Genesis, I. 2).
At this stage there was no interaction between Spirit and matter, and consequently the earth was void and without form, and the universe of names and forms was non-existent. But to reach the next stage the Biblical narrator at once calls in aid the deux ex machina of the