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INTRODUCTION
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changes in the other. The innate nature of things is the reason why only the intrinsic cause or internal factors can be regarded as the direct or substantive cause (upadana karana) of changes or modifications within their own respective entities. On the other hand, extrinsic causes or external factors can be considered only as indirect, subsidiary cause or the supportive factor (nimitta) of changes in the other.
The extrinsic, indirect and auxiliary kind of causal interaction does not in any way violate the principle of classic physics that "the physical realm is causally closed in the sense that nothing non-physical can enter into it and act as a cause' >>124 and that "each physical event lay in an unbroken series of antecedent physical events". It also does not violate William James' principles of psychology that "psychological events never take place in a vacuum without some reference to the preceding events". 125
Psycho-physical Parallelism
states
The Jaina contention that the two events - brain states and inental while interacting with one another, remain quite distinct processes and independent series or sequences (physical and psychic) seems to suggest a kind of psycho-physical parallelism. However, this parallelism is not merely "a temporal correspondence of the two series, but transcended and reconciled by the Jaina concept of nimitta karana" 126 (each one acting as an extrinsic, indirect, auxiliary, supportive or subsidiary factor or cause of the other). Jaina parallelism is, thus, quite distinct from other parallelist theories based on “divine intervention" (Malebranche) and mysterious "pre-established harmony" (Leibniz), which speak only of co-occurrences and never of interaction or causal relationship between the mental and physical realms. 127 The Jaina view differs not only from other systems of Indian philosophy but also from the disjunctive substance dualism of Descartes, property dualisms of David Chalmers and Thomas Nagel, John Searle's "causal reduction," and Max Velmans so-called "complementarity," which is based on deterministic physical laws or processes."
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In this way, the Jaina concepts of jiva, the evolving nature of reality, the dual (physical and psychic) aspects of mind, and nimitta karana (the conscious states and brain activities acting as extrinsic, indirect, auxiliary cause or supportive factor of each other) provides "the correct approach to the mind-body problem". This is the goal
