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 74

CREATION
53
rules of grammar in its speech. The fact is that consciousness manifests itself in two different ways; firstly, in the form of feeling, and, secondly, as thought. Of these, the first form is uncreate and independent of evolution, in the sense in which science uses that word, but the second depends on environment and unfoldment. The same argument which leads us to the conclusion that the idea of personality is the creature of evolution, also leads us to the conclusion that the primary form is eternal, though particular types of its manifestation may differ from time to time. The study of the development and growth of the child also reveals the presence of the feeling of pain which finds expression in the first cry the little one utters, on entering the world. Is this feeling of pain, together with the sense of hunger, and all those indications of likes and dislikes which the child displays from the earliest moment after birth, also the outcome of evolution ? We shall be prepared to regard consciousness as a product of evolution only when science succeeds in demonstrating that lifeless things can be made to feel pain and cry in its laboratories. A substratum of consciousness must be allowed in the first instance before we can bring in its modifications in the course of evolution."
We must endeavour to keep our minds quite clear on the distinction between 'personality and its substratum. The former is the bundle of ideas-social, proprietary, and the like, which one appropriates to one's bodily self-- hence, the sum-total of relations in which a particular body stands to other bodies in the world. But the latter, i.e., the substratum of personality, is the very power itself