Confluence of Opposites

SR No.: 006704
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain
Publication Year: 1921
Total Pages: 422
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

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except in the first person. If one could accomplish the fact of experiencing pleasure and pain in the third person, it would be a miracle; for what one witnessed in another could only be a spectacle, never an affection or experience. Preyers' infant, too, if Preyer ever observed him under the influence of hunger before he learnt to talk, could not but have felt hungry in the first person singular, and in the first person singular also must have been experienced by him the satisfaction that followed the nourishment on such occasions. We thus conclude that the first characteristic of consciousness is individuality which is inseparable from it even in its lowest form, the barest susceptibility to sensations of touch. It is, no doubt, possible for us to conceive this low form of consciousness in association with an atom of matter, but a majority of leading materialists themselves are opposed to this view, and it is altogether untenable for the reasons that have been already given as well as for those that will be given later on. But if not the property of an atom of matter, consciousness cannot be a function of the brain also, for the individualistic attribute of conscious life is altogether inconceivable as the product of a human or animal brain, which is itself devoid of indivisibility, hence individuality. For the brain is composed of atomic matter and can have nought but a corporational' personality,-a board of consciousnesses presiding over the affairs that might be placed before them. I grant that one's ideas about oneself may change from time to time from different
CONFLUENCE OF OPPOSITES
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