ISJS Jainism Study Notes E5 Vol 04

Author(s): International School for Jain Studies
Publisher: International School for Jain Studies

Page 274

"The sequence operated, infinite and wonderful modifications of the past, present and future and the deep and infinite mass of substances are so exquisite to the pure soul as if those substances have been engraved in, painted, entered deep, nailed inside, drowned wholly or merged completely and reflected in the glory of pure consciousness and its manifestation". Further he has written in verse 47 annotations.
Amitgati has also expressed the same thing in Yogas ra: i.e. all the past and future substances remain present in their various modifications and the consciousness of the omniscient knows them exactly in the same forms and variations.
Samantbhadra in pta-Mimans", Akala ka in "A a ati" and Vidy nandi in "A tasahasri" have established the principles of omniscience at large. As a matter of fact the existence of "omniscient being" is the main topic of Jaina logic and the whole logical thought is dedicated to the establishment of the concept of an omniscient.
The people with preserve attitude think that the independence of substances is deprived by fixing futurity as definite, but they forget that if further is taken for granted as take uncertain, the astrology, astronomy will be proved imaginary, when solar-eclipse, lunar eclipse etc. will take place this can not be foretold the Jaina philosophy is full of definite declarations of further events which will happen lacs of years afterwards. All those declarations are very emphatic in their assertions of futurity. In words, they are like this - "Things will happen like this only and not otherwise. If we deny the certainly of futurity in the omniscient being we will have to deny whole of the Jaina Scriptures?! But before things any such wrong step, I would like to request the eager seekers of truth to ponder over coolly, calmly as it is a great principal of sequence bound modifications of all the substances. They may have a natural cause-and-effect-relationship in between them, yet the omniscient knows simultaneously all the events of futurity as well as all the events of the past.
Once a true aspirant of liberation attains omniscience, he never loses it again. It is the fullest form of manifestation knowledge attribute of soul. There are no different degrees of omniscience. It is not caused by any eternal means. It is the complete enfoldment of our consciousness by itself. In the state of omniscience the consciousness ceases to be influenced by time etc. eternal causes whereas in the first twelve stages of spiritual development, i.e., is the state of non- omniscient the consciousness gets influenced by time etc. The omniscience is regarded as "All comprehensive Channel of knowledge because it is characterized by the absence of Karmic bonds. In case of nonomniscient beings there are many different degrees of knowledge (knowing-activity) varying from minimum two types to maximum four types of imperfect knowledge.
Some scholars may argue to how great kundakunda has written in Niyams ra that the omniscient god knows and sees all (the substances with their all modifications) from the conventional (vyavah ra) point of view and from the realistic (Ni caya) point of view he knows and sees his soul only? Here one should not get confused with the earlier statement but he should know that all the prepositions are based on the principal -prepositions depending on the self and congruous to the self are real, while those depending on non-self and not congruous to the self are conventional. This is made clear in the Sanskrit commentary on the above verse.
In short, whatever depends on others is conventional. As such omniscient knows, sees his own soul is real assertion while that he knows and sees other is conventional assertion. This is the sum and substance of the above statement. But, that "He knows & sees non-self entities from conventional aspect does not mean that He does not know them actually.
Prak
a
Further in the above context a question has been raised and answered well in Parm tm chapter 1 verse No. 52 commentary as under:
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