Gommatasara Jiva Kanda

Author(s): Nemichandra Siddhant Chakravarti, J L Jaini
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

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of consciousness is another great distinction between the living and the lifeless. This attentiveness, of course, will be of as many different sorts as there are activities of the senses, mind and the soul, of which we can be conscious. We can be conscious of an object of sight, or of the other four senses ; or of the soul itself directed to a material object or to its own Omniscience. Thus our Attention also may be directed towards an ocular, or non-ocular object, or towards the soul directly knowing a material object or full of its own Omniscience.
Notice also, that of necessity, this Attention is essential to any kind of Knowledge. As a matter of fact, if we subject any piece of our knowledge to deep analysis we can note the following stages.
1. To begin with there is consciousness itself. This is the centre of life. It is life itself. It is the first and unmistakeable characteristic of what is called soul.
2. It must be Attentive to conate an object, i.e., to be inclined towards an object, i.e., to be merely turned towards it.
3. It must conate the object, i.e., it must be aware that some object is present there, without determining anything more about in the least.
4. Then it must attend to know that object in however slight a detail. This is the Attentiveness which must proceed knowledge.
• 5. Then a detail is grasped and knowledge begins, when we know a thing, we are not conscious of these 5 steps. But since our birth we are so much habituated to gain knowledge by means of our senses and mind, that these 5 steps are a sort of reflex or automatic, unconscious action of our busy consciousness. When we walk even for miles, or see with our eyes, or wink or breathe, or our blood courses in the body-we are seldom conscious of any of these things. They are familiar, habituated, and reflex or unconcious actions, and therefore unobserved. But their stages are all the same there. The alternate balancing of the whole body on one foot, th bending forward, then balancing on the other and so on; the closing of the eyelid to protect the eye; the inhalation of air to supply the lungs with oxygen, the exhalation to put forth foul carbonic acid gas, etc., each little action with its minute process and delicate machinery is going on without our attending to it, consciously. Infinitely, more delicate and unobserved are the myriad th our mind, which we call our channel of knowledge Only an Omniscient can see the millions of regular, natural processes by which the smallest particle of knowledge is called into being. Familiarity