Indian Philosophy

Author(s): Sukhlal Sanghavi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 51

The Nature and the Cause of the World
place an experience of qualities like colour, taste, etc., but giving proininence to the feeling of pleasure, pain and delusion that arises from this experience they, un consideration came to the view that the object of ex perience, instrument of experience as also the intellect undergoing experience - all these three are of the form of pleasure, pain and delusion. If any of these three were devoid of one of these three felt states then the feeling in question would have been impossible. To the different viewers the same thing appears as causing pleasure, pain or delusion; not only that, even to the same viewer at different times the same thing appears as thus causing pleasure etc. Even where sense-experience is not being undergone then too the intellect does somehow experience the states of pleasure, pain and delusion. From all this it has to be concluded that whether an entity be gross or subtle, external or internal, an object of cognition, an instrument of cognition or an agent of cognition it must be of the form of pleasure, pain and delusion. Thus right from things gross upto the subtle intellect they established mutual similarity and also posited causal relationship among them. However, their task was to proceed beyond the manifest intellect and elucidate the nature of that originating cause which was called sat and supposed to be something unmanifest. So in the form of the cause of the manifest intellect they posited that universally recognized element sat or unmanifest (avyakta). But the fundamental question was how to define the nature of this element. Hence on the basis of the common element of the form of pleasure-pain-delusion recognized by themselves they determined the nature of that originating cause. Thus they said that if all things whatsoever are commonly possessed of the form of pleasure-pain-delusion, then their originating cause too must be possessed of aspects determinative of the common nature of all things. On the basis of this supposition they posited even such aspects in the originating cause as should elucidate the gross and subtle multifariousness visible there in the universe and should render possible that common nature characterizing all things whatsoever. These aspects are sattva, rajas and tamas. They are called guņa in the sense that they are mutually un-separable constituents of the originating cause. And even if the respective functions of thes guņas are different from one another they all act in concert becoming chief and suboridnate as suits the occasion. Hence it is that on the basis of the mutual intermixtures - proportioned in numerous ways - of these three guņas the entire further development of the gross as well as subtle creation takes place,
To them certainly occurred the question as to why this ultimate cause too should not have a cause. And this question they answered in the same manner as do all other philosophers - viz. by saying that in the end rest must come somewhere or else. Thus in the eyes of these thinkers