Jaina Gazette 1928

SR No.: 034890
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Ajitprasad, C S Mallinath
Publisher: Jaina Gazettee Office
Publication Year: 1928
Total Pages: 502
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 33 MB

Page 254

97
DISCONNECTED NOTIONS Volition is exercised not imparted. Volitions do not come from outside into an empty container; deeds and doers are distinctions but not diiferences, are not things different from each other which can be separated in space or exist at different times.
Any gift must be known as something which is not one's self. T..ings which are given to another person are things which are not that person, and as volition is the person in operation, the person active, volition is not something given by another being.
It would appear at first sight, without examining it, that what is true of our volition is also true of our whole psychological outfit, perception by the senses, imagination, memory, ideas, conceptions, judgments, reasoning, feeling, beliefs, convictions, sympathy, knowledge; and if this is true it disproves the theory of creation.
If we ask the question, where do our ideas come from the answer must be that they do not come from outside, but must be regarded as the activity of the conscious entity himselft Man is the source of his own ideas; some of these ideas have correlates in reality and some do not. Ideas do not come from outside into an empty head. The words of another being, whether written or spoken, release what was already latent and now comes out into conciousness. I am inclined to think that this is also true of perceptions of things through the senses; a tree is not the source of man's conception of a tree: man himself is the source of his conception of the tree. The tree allows the play in the man of what was already there potentially, the vibrations from the tree release the latent idea of tree; the vibrations from the external object, acting upon the eye and thence upon the nerves and brain are the circumstance which releases the otherwise obscured knowledge of the object.
If this is the case, then what is the source of false ideas? They are disturbed or distorted on the way out, they are twisted as they arise in consciousness, the twister being the person himself who for some reason of his own wishes to distort. It pleases him so to do.
Referring again to the above named author Schopenhauer and his third volume of his World as Will and Idea, he says in
13 Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat