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BHATTACHARYA : JAINA METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY
The contents of the world of our experience are divided into Jivas and Ajīvas, souls and non-souls. The souls are svaprakāśa, selfluminous, and svasamvedana, self-knowing or self-conscious. The nonsouls are jaļa aprakāśa or unconscious. The souls are independent of one another and are a plurality, and so are non-souls a plurality. Both the souls and non-souls are self-existent reals. They are not created or evolved by any higher being called God. Jaina metaphysic is thus dualistic or rather pluralistic Realism. Each and every one of these reals, conscious or unconscious is never static or immobile, but is always pariņāmi or evolvent. But nevertheless in spite of its constant change or pariņāma it keeps up its stability or character as an identical substance in and through its changes or pariņāmas. It is thus a pariņāma nitya as Umāsvāti puts it, utpāda-vyaya-dhrauya-yuktam sat. The sat or real is characterized by utpādaor origin and vyaya or annihilation. It does not originate out of nothing, nor does it lose its identity of substance in this annihilation, but it always has the third characteristic of dhrauvya or stability, for otherwise it will forego its character as a sator real. Changes or pariņāmas are indeed going on in its life, but in the midst of its changes it retains its identity through its character as dhrauvya, permanence or stability. The guņas or qualities and paryāyas or modifications that originate and are annihilated are replenished so as not to lose its character as sator real by its dhrawya aspect. The Jaina metaphysic is thus distinctly realistic. Now the souls are conscious, and the non-souls are unconscious, one having nothing in common with the other. Here, as in all forms of Realism, explanation of knowledge, of how the soul knows the non-soul is a problem. Descartes dualistic realism in Western philosophy has offered Interactionism to explain knowledge by the mind of matter on physiological ground of a hypothetical pinealgland, and we all know how the flimsiness of this explanation has led his followers to introduce divine agency, Spinoza having recourse to 900 as Absolute substance whose parallel attributes are mind and matter consciousness and coleism and heibriz to his hypothesis of preestablished Harmony whereby God, or Master-minded who is the sufficient reason for effecting the harmony or knowledge relation between the two otherwise unrelated entities of mind and matter. This intervention of divine agency in explaining the problem of knowledge is evidently a mere sueterfuge, and has come down to us as a pseudo explanation of the relation between mind and matter in which all knowledge consists, and has been criticised as deus ex machina explanations of the knowledge problem. Hegel in order to get out of this untrasse has reduced mind and matter to a common spiritual determination by showing that both mind and matter have their origin
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