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ज्ञानाद् भिन्नो न चाभिन्नो भिन्नाभिन्नः कथञ्चन।
ज्ञानं पूर्वापरीभूतं सोऽयमात्मेति कीर्तितः।।४।। jñānād bhinno na cabhinno bhinnābhinnaḥ kathañcana |
jñanaṁ purvāparībhūtam so'yam ätmeti kirtitah 114||
Soul is not absolutely different from [its quality] knowledge. Nor is it absolutely identical with knowledge. But from a certain point of view it is different from knowledge and from a certain point of view it is identical with knowledge'. Knowledge is (a quality) having preceding and succeeding modes or states. In this manner the soul is described.
1. Soul is a substance and knowledge is its special quality. The Vaiseșika thinkers maintain
that substance and its quality are absolutely different. Against this Vaiseșika view the Jaina thinkers put forward their non-absolute view. They say that a substance and its quality are identical in so far as they are physically inseparable. It is impossible to physically separate and put them in different places. But it is possible to mentally differentiate a substance from its quality on the basis of their different names, definitions, etc. Thus from the point of view of mental or conceptual distinction, a substance and its quality are different from one another.
('suis:
स्वदेहप्रमितश्चायं ज्ञानमात्रोऽपि नैव
ततः सर्वगतश्चायं विश्वव्यापी न सर्वथा। svadehapramitaś cāyaṁ jñānamātro' pi naivan tataḥ sarvagataś cāyaṁ viśvavyāpi na sarvathā 11511
Soul is body-sized'. It is not of the nature of knowledge alone. As it is of the nature of knowledge, it is all-knower (omniscient) [by its pure knowledge, kevalajñāna.] It is not absolutely all-pervading implying thereby that it is allpervading only when it performs keyalisamudghāta in its last birth and pervades the entire universe (loka)]
1. The dimension of the soul is equal to that of the body in which it lives. Even in the state
of liberation it has practically the size equal to that of the last body it had in the last birth. On this point the Jaina thinkers differ from the Nyāya-Vaiseșika and the Sänkhya thinkers who consider the soul to be absolutely all-pervading.
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