Jain Journal 1990 04

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

Page 58

APRIL, 1990
169
may not have any form.3 Sight is an impression made on the nerves of the eye by vibrations sent forth from the object perceived and this impression which we call sight, if there are no vibrations coming out of the object, is of course not produced ; but if this substance influences us in certain ways the implication is that there is something moving or producing vibrations, and these cannot exist unless there is some material substance which is vibrating. The very fact that something is moving in some way and influences us in some peculiar way implies that there is something material about this. If there are no vibrations the substance is not material. It need not exist in a form which will give us the impression of a any colour, smell, etc. There is nothing which can partake both of the attributes of soul and of matter; the attributes of matter are directly contrary to those of the soul. While one has its life in the other, it does not become the other.
How can that soul live in matter when its attributes are of a different nature ? By our own experience we know that we are obliged to live in surroundings which are not congenial to us, which are not of our own nature. People feel that they are not related to their surroundings, there must be some reason for their being obliged to live in those surroundings, but there must be a reason in the intelligence itself ; it cannot be in the material substance. We know that this is a fact, because intelligence cannot proceed from any thing which is purely material. No material substance has given any evidence of having possessed intelligence ; it might have done so when there was life in it, but without this it has no intelligence. That intelligence is, we are quite sure, influenced by material things, but it does not arise from the material things. Persons of sound intelligence take a large dose of some intoxicating drink and the intelligence will not work at all. Why should this material thing influence the immaterial, the soul ? The soul thinks that the body is itself and therefore anything which is done to the material self is supposed by the real self to be done to itself. That is where the Christian scientists and the Jaina philosophy will agree ; that if the soul thinks that the body is real self anything done to the body will be considered by the soul to be done to the soul, and therefore what happens to the body will be felt by the
3 That soul does not occupy space only means that it is not something physical ;
for strictly speaking, the Jaina does maintain that there obtains some sort of relationship between the substance called 'soul' and that called 'space'. The printed text here contains some bracketed material but that is redundant. This statement is worded somewhat loosely ; for according to the Jaina, even when occupaed by soul the body does not come to possess intelligence ; what it becomes then is an 'instrument of the intelligent activities undertaken by soul.