Confluence of Opposites

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

Page 95

CONFLUENCE OF OPPOSITES
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thought. Intellectual lucidity is obtained not by the intensification or magnifying of a supposed primal tactile nucleus, but by the removal of dullness, cloudiness and mental fog. This is so most certainly with respect to what is known as avadhi jnána which means roshan zimiri (s), i. e., the clairvoyance of saints that is acquired by severe asceticism, fasting and self-denial. Clearly here we have a case of recovering a buried Pompeii out of dried lava, and not of building and peopling a new city by some mathematical jugglery of imagination out of a single sensory brick! The truth is that every individual, soul, or ego is endowed with potential omniscience and may recover it by discovering himself. This might appear astounding at first sight but will be readily assented to on mature reflection. For knowledge is not a thing that can be said to have a concrete existence outside the being of a conscious entity or ego, consisting, as it does, in nothing other than states of the ego itself, that are usually described as states of consciousness. There are things outside ourselves, not knowledge; and our sense of awareness of things is called their knowledge. With respect to such things as the notion of Time, Space, infinity, causality and the like, Kant has shown them to be given a priori to the knowing consciousness, that is to say as not being derived from perception in any way and there is not one materialist known to me to-day who claims to differ from this great German philosopher in this regard. If our consciousness has evolved