ISJS Jainism Study Notes E5 Vol 04

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

Page 294

the form of a lotus shaped entity called mind. This physical or material mind, in turn, interacts with the nervous system including the brain to transmit appropriate signals to sense organs and psychic mind back and forth. Brain is the first connection of physical mind. It processes all signals from physical mind and transmits the results for processing by other sense organs and vice versa. The brain has the capability to store information processing modules in its various limbs so that it process data received from sense organs and physical mind quickly and without recourse to physical mind all the time.
प्र
The empirical soul acquires knowledge through indirect means i.e. mati and ruta jn na. Table 1.3 gives the steps involved in acquiring these types of knowledge in a sequential manner. Thus we see that avagraha, the first stage of mati cannot start without intuition (i.e. feeling of existence of the object by the cognizer) and the object getting in the zone of cognition of the cognizer, i.e. getting in contact with each other direct or virtual.
Similarly h without avagraha; av ya without h; dh r without av ya; Sm ti without dh r and stages at serial number 7,8,9 and 10 are all serial and require preceding stage to occur to enable the succeeding stage take place. Sm ti is however used in h and av ya also.
We have also seen that the empirical soul can acquire on its own, without the use of sense organs, the knowledge of concrete objects through two types of jn na namely avadhi and manah pary ya directly. These are said to be partial / ek-de a as they know the concrete objects only but directly without the assistance of sense organs. Soul, due to the subsidence cum destruction of avadhi and manah pary ya jñ n var iya karmas, attains a capability to know all concrete objects directly. However to some extent, these two types also are dependent on the physical body of the cognizer (Avadhi) and the mind of the other person for manah pary yajn n.
Avadhi knows the objects through some or all-specific space points of the soul associated with the body and spread throughout the entire body (bhava pratyaya particularly). These space points are of the shape of conch shell, swastika, kala a etc. for auspicious knowledge while for the inauspicious cognition these are of the shape like chameleon etc. Further these space points keep changing or getting added/deleted as a result of the purity level of the soul (i.e. subsidence cum dissociation of avadhi jn n var iya karmas). Empirical souls in hellish and heavenly destinies have avadhi jñ na by birth and limited in nature.
With mati jn na, the cogniser knows the physical mind of the others and then manah paryaya cognises the objects being thought (or were /will be) by the mind of others as the thoughts are said to be the modes of the mind itself. Manah paryaya knows the objects with the assistance of mind and hence matijn na is its dar ana. Being the empirical soul, it knows the mind and its modes, this jn na knows only the concrete objects thought of by the mind of others and not the non-concrete attributes associated with them. As the owner of this jñ na is with a high order of soul-purity, his soul is able to directly cognise these objects and is of right type only.
Avadhi, manah pary ya and kevala being direct cognition by the soul do not need any media or assistance. These types of jñ na depend on the status of karmas masking the pure soul only. Avadhi and manah paryaya have limitations, as they are cognized by the empirical soul due to dissociation cum subsidence of respective jñ n var iya karmas.
To acquire knowledge of worldly and physical objects, Akala ka divided Matijn na into two types, namely s mvyavah rika pratyak a (direct by tradition) and / or parok a (indirect) comprising memory, comparison, logic, inference. Further he kept rutajn na as scriptural knowledge for spiritual discussions as the last type of parok ajñ na. In this process of acquiring knowledge, ruta is generally representing the knowledge acquired from others. In a way, it can be seen that ruta is further refinement of already existing knowledge, as it is first used as memory in acquiring knowledge then in updating this memory for use later on. It is acquired with the assistance of mati and is useful in enhancing the process of acquiring knowledge. Hence mati or mind based knowledge can be said as the most important type of knowledge to know the physical objects.
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STUDY NOTES version 4.0