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________________ 654 THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE. Of these life-waves, the second is concerned with the breaking up of the compactness of the This’into minute fragments, from whose groupings arise countless combinations and forms ; but the third has a twofold function. Firstly, it is a pouring of Will into the countless combinations and atoms of matter, in the act of cognition and affirmation of their supposed existence in imagination, and, secondly, it is a moving away, or withdrawal, from them in the process of their denial. Both these motions of Will, namely, that towards matter and that towards the Self in which it turns its back, as it were, on matter, are constant and eternal, and are to be understood as being simultaneous, not as successive events intime. This constant interaction between the Will and the 'This,' involved in the simultaneous affirmance and denial of the latter, is the cause of evolution. * The suggestion here seems to be that the universe is like a cinematographical show. The idea is that if we were to look into the nature of our perceptions, we should become aware of the fact that the world is presented to us in a succession of presentations, or moments, each of which constitues a complete picture, but that the succession of these pictures is so rapid that the mind, unless trained to minute observation, fails to recognize the fact of succession, and, misled by the fusion of common elements, or features of resemblance, in the successive pictures, looks upon the panorama as if it possessed a fixed continuity in time and space. What seems to be moving, progressing, evolving and disintegrating, in the succession of moments, is that in respect of which the succeeding pictures differ from one another. Hence arises the delusion of reality and stability of the universe of forms. From the point of view of the perceiving faculty, the act of Self-defining consists in the incessant process of moving the inexhaustible series of the films of the mental cinematograph, accompanied, in one and the same breath, as it were, by the questionanswer, Am I this?-No,' i.e., the mental determination, 'I This not.' This eternal impossibility of satisfactorily getting the Infinite into the frames of finite things, that is, the Actual into the ill-fitting, readymade moulds of our intellect, in other words, of defining the Real in terms of the unreal, is the cause of the world-process or Evolution. Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org
SR No.006702
Book TitleKey of Knowledge
Original Sutra AuthorN/A
AuthorChampat Rai Jain
PublisherZZZ Unknown
Publication Year1919
Total Pages1204
LanguageEnglish
ClassificationBook_English
File Size25 MB
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