________________
37
From all the above knowledge about the words you are reading, you may lead yourself on to a knowledge of something else which is not in the words themselves. So from the mere sense of having seen the words, i. e. from a merely sensitive knowledge about them you may go on to think that they are philosophical symbols and exclaim with Milton:--
"How charming is divine philosophy,
Nor harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, Where no crude surfeit reigns". Comus 11,476-480.
If you analyse your experience about these words you will easily perceive no less than thirteen distinct stages in it. 1. Consciousness (Chetaná). 2. Attention (Upa-yoga) of this consciousness towards the conating (Darshana) of these words. 3. Conation (Darshana) itself i.e. the awareness that something is there, 4. Attention (Upa-yoga) of consciousness to know (Jnána) and to see. 5. Actual sight, (Avagraha) the preception that there is something like words there. 6. The desire (íhá) to know further the question what letters are these. They seem to be English. It is the process through which mere preception is transmuted into judgment; it is the conception and comparison or pre-judgment or ratiocination. 7. The judgment, (Aváya), The answer; they are English letters. The retention (Dharaná), the fixing of the judgment in the mind. 9. The memory (Smriti) of the words. 10. Their recognition (sanjná). 11. The Induction (chintá) from them. 12. The deduction( Abhinibodha) and 13. The Scriptural knowledge (Shruta) i. e. the extra knowledge of other things derived through the sight of the script of the letters.
It is easy to see that the first four are pre-knowledge stages; and the next eight from 5th to 12th are stages of degrees of sensitive knowledge, and the last is inferential knowledge, which may be termed Scriptural knowledge.
Consciousness may further know things directly without the intermediation of the senses or the mind. The soul itself may visualise matter directly or may visualise the impressions about it in the mind of another. This kind of knowledge is very rare and can be understood only after great profound study and longlived life of controlled discipline and purity. Still more difficult to understand is Omniscience. I shall try to take the reader up to it gradually, provided he is patient and dispassionately in search of Truth, and
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
