Jain Journal 1967 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 43

OCTOBER, 1967
in consequence of friction with the incoming stimulus, or of resistance to action. But the glow produced by reflection is the intellectual gleam with which reason carries on the adjustment of the soul's inner relations with the outer.
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The control of the mind is exercised through the brain and the nervous sytem which are interposed between it and the body. The centripetal impulses coming from the periphery pass through the brain just as the motor impulses originating with the will find their way to the desired channel of activity through it. This is because the brain is superimposed, as a loop, over both the sensory and motor systems, through which the ego comes into touch with the physical world.
Nevertheless the brain is not the chooser, since choice belongs to the ego, and also since the brain is composed of matter which is unconscious by nature. What connects the ego with the brain is the central organ of mind, which is composed of too fine a material to be visible except to clairvoyant vision. The nature of the matter of which this central organ (the dravya mana) is composed, is evident from the fact that it is in touch at one end with the finest nervous fibres of the brain, and, at the other, with the subtle and superfine substance of the soul which is absolutely beyond the reach of sense perception. The dravya mana is distinguishable from the manas of the non-Jaina systems, which is but another name for the individual will as appearing in the form of desire. As already stated, the material mind is only an instrument in the hands of the ego for deliberation, training, voluntary motion and intelligent speech, but the desiring manas represents the dynamic energy of the ego itself inclined in a particular way or ways. In different language, the manas consists in the energy of life bent on seeking gratification in respect of the four principal instincts or generic forms of desire, namely, āhāra (food), bhaya (fear), maithuna (sexual indulgence) and parigraha (attachment to worldly goods), and is laden with the impurities deposited by the four kinds of passions-anger, pride, deceit and greed which arise from and are rooted in desire. The dravya mana, on the other hand, is intended, like a system of switches, to regulate the traffic between the ego and the outside world, and discharges its function by offering a choice of paths for the different kinds of movements. But it does not originate motion, for that is the function of the will. And the work of the will in producing motion is of the simplest description: it has merely to dwell upon an idea to produce motion in any desired manner. As William James points out, every idea tends ultimately either to produce a movement or to check one which otherwise would be produced.