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 92

CREATION.
7
both spirit and matter are able to influence and operate upon each other under certain circumstances. Nor is the interaction between these two substances of nature erratic or indefinite in any sense ; it has its own laws which are as rigid and inviolable as those to be met with in any of the apodictic sciences. We shall define some of these laws when we come to deal with the theory of karma; meanwhile, it is sufficient to say that the materialist has confused the issue by confining his attention to a set of wrong alternatives for an explanation of the phenomena of consciousness. The strangest thing about this is that, while he is not prepared to deny the existence of matter, in spite of the changes which it is constantly undergoing in subjection to the forces of nature, he sees nothing but non-existence of the soul the moment he discovers it to be affected by musk and the like, altogether forgetting that the gulf between the conscious and the unconscious is too wide to be bridged over by any means. As Prof. Bowne* observes:
“By describing the mind as a waxen tablet, and things as impressing themselves upon it, we seem to get a great insight until we think to ask where this extended tablet is, and how things stamp themselves on it, and how the perceptive act could be explained even if they did. ... The immediate antecedents of sensation and perception are a series of nervous changes in the brain. Whatever we know of the outer world is revealed only in and through these nervous changes. But these are totally unlike the objects assumed to exist as their causes. If we might conceive the mind as in the light, and in direct contact with its objects, the imagination at least would be comforted; but when we conceive the mind as coming in contact with the outer world only in the dark chamber of the skull, and then not in contact with the objects perceived, but only with
* Metaphysics, pp. 407-10.