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THE ESSENCE OF JAINA SCRIPTURES
ignorance-darkness, has its eye closed and in spite of its beginningless connection with the generality of perfect intelligence is unable by itself to distinguish the object, and distracted in a search for the apparatus of exterior means, which it partially obtains and partially does not obtain; excessively enfeebled through the loss of its unlimited energy; and, though aiming at evolution into the other, at every step disappointed because the wrestler Great-Infatuation (maha-moha) is still alive-deserves according to deeper truth (paramarthatah) to be regarded as non-comprehension (anupalambha). Hence it should be abandoned.
Now he observes that, since the organs of sense are not capable of proceeding simultaneously towards the totality of their objects, sensorial knowledge must be abandoned:
56. Touch, taste, smell, colour and sound are the material objects (pudgalas) for the sense-organs; the sense-organs do not grasp them simultaneously.
The substrata of touch, taste, smell and colour, moreover sound (sound is a material substance according to Jainism), are material objects, fit for being grasped by the sense-organs. But even they are not grasped by the sense-organs simultaneously; for the requisite energy due to destructive subsidence is not present. In the case of the senseorgans the interior discerning efficacy, which is termed destructivesubsidence of [knowledge-obscuring)- karman, proceeds successively, like a crow's eyeball," and is incapable of illuminating in many directions; hence, although the communications between sense-organs and objects are open, an awareness (avabodha) of the objects of all the senses will not take place simultaneously, because of the indirectness (of sensorial experience).
Now he ascertains that sensorial knowledge is not direct:
57. The sense-organs are called an exterior (para) substance, and not an innate nature of the self; how then could that which is grasped by them be direct or immediate perception for the self?
Absolute knowledge (kevala-jnana), belonging to the absolute (kevala) self, is immediate. But that which arises through observation by means of the sense-organs, which have not the slightest connection with the innate nature of the self and are allotted to the group of exterior substances, inasmuch as they are provided with a separate existence, cannot be immediate-perception for the self.
