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OCTOBER, 1976
69
This supernatural power of vision in the Yogi is practically omniscience. Thus although the Sankhya philosophers do not believe in divine omniscience nor in the omniscience of a liberated being, they admit the possibility of omniscience in the Yogis or persons on the high way to self-culture.
The Stage Penultimate to Liberation and Omniscience : The Nyāya and the Vaišesika Views
The thinkers of the Nyaya school maintain that it is impossible for the instrument (karana) of knowledge to be simultaneously connected with more than one percept; for this reason, a simultaneous cognition of all things is impossible according to them. But they admit that the recollections of all things or cause of the cognitions of all things, may simultaneously present themselves to a sage, when he may be possessed of a knowledge which relates to the whole collection of the objects. Such a knowledge has been called by them samūhālambana or collective knowledge. This samūhālambana is practically indentical with the prātibha-knowledge noticed before and consists in a sort of omniscience.
The Vaisesika thinkers have given the name ‘ārşa-jñāna or 'the knowledge of a seer' to the prātibha which relates to the knowledge of all things.
To be Continued
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