Faith Knowledge and Conduct

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

Page 54

THE TRUTH
speaking, it is a sort of force marked with differentiating pitch and intensity and rhythm, which is to be distinguished from the blind forces of nature, because of its being an aspect of the Intelligent substance of Spirit.
When the general form of mental agitation, termed desire or impulse, encounters a thing that emits or sends out corresponding vibrations, it experiences a sort of shock or thrill which is the first act of perception, or rather the first step in the process of perception. At this stage cognition is felt rather than known, that is to say, it is more like a feeling than knowledge (idea). Then comes attention into play, which ascertains the nature of the object by testing it with its innate mental forms. As a result of this cognition proper now takes place.
The impulses, then, are the mental re-agents, and all knowledge is acquired, by the finite mind, through them, of the outside world, in the first instance. They embody the general diagrams of class-sensations (general ideas) of things, and are able, by means of the correspondence between the mental and physical vibrations, to detect the presence of their objects.
Attention is, from another point of view, the instrument of succession, and, therefore, of limitation of knowledge. We do not know all things together, but only one after another. Yet knowledge in its infinite array is present within the consciousness all the time.