Jain Journal 1990 04

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

Page 61

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JAIN JOURNAL
of life are of different kinds then in the case of some being it may be necessary that he should be born in the human condition and pass through the actual conditions which must be obeyed if the human being is to be born, while if the forces generated are different in their character he may be born on some other planet where birth manifested in a different way, without any necessity of the combination of the male and the female principle. There are so many different planes of life that the mere study of the human life ought not to be made to apply to all the affairs of life. We have studied only a few forms of the life of animals, human beings, etc. but that is only the part which under the present development of our science, of our eyesight even, we are able to study. We are not able to study other forms of life, innumerable in the universe, and therefore we ought not to apply the laws thus discovered to all forms of life.
Our study is introspective because our idea is that the soul is able to know everything under the right circumstances. The knowledge acquired under these conditions is of a sounder nature and a more correct kind because the obstacles which come in the way of science are not there. Science has to commit mistakes and think that they do not,8 still knowledge is derived from inferences which we draw from certain premises which may not be right or if the premises are right the inference may be wrong. We do not mean to say that there are always mistakes in the knowledge which is acquired through sensation or through matter, but sometimes it is possible, and while it may be correct knowledge in many cases we cannot rely on that. The highest knowledge is immediate knowledge, derived by the soul without the assistance of any external thing, and the knowledge of liberated souls, and also the knowledge of human beings who are just on the point of being liberated, or have passed through the course of discipline, mental, moral and spiritual, and have nearly exhausted past forces, at the same time generating spiritual forces, and on account of discipline and spiritual evolution have become receptive. The soul sees everything when this state is arrived at ; it knows everything, is fully conscious and consciousness itself means first of all that it knows itself, and to know one's self means that it is something, some reality, and there can be no reality unless it can distinguish itself from other realities. Only the one universal thing could not know itself,
cause knowledge implies comparing one with another, and if that is not done there is no individuality. We say therefore that the soul in its highest existence knows that it is perfectly separate from other things so
• It is not possible to correct this part of the sentence, but it must be pointing out
something that Gandhi considers to be a shortcoming of scientific knowledge.