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Letter 12
Now the Dravyatva attribute establishes or proves that these modifications that take place are a continuous process, without any break or halt. So in every single samay the activities in the substance take place endlessly.
The definition of the Dravyatva attribute is the energy by which the modifications of the substance are continuously changing without any interruption where as the substance remains constant is called Dravyatva attribute.
Here the stress is on the words continuously changing. It is nothing but a smooth non stop flow of the evolution and the extinction going on in the substance. Modification is a state in which the substance exists. A modification cannot exist for more than one samay.
If this attribute of continuous change was not there in the substance, then the substance would have remained stagnant in some phase or the other. For example, a patient would have remained so forever, he would never recover and become healthy. A child would remain a child forever, he would never grow up to be a youth or an adult. In the same way one would never be able to break the cycle of birth and death, and attain the Siddha status.
Milk curdles into curd, the raw mango ripens, the student acquires knowledge, the patient recovers, all these changes are due to Dravyatva attribute.
Thus, in every substance, each attribute is continuously undergoing a change which is due to its own Dravyatva attribute.
But till today we believed that some other substance is the performer of this activity, like, we get knowledge only from the teacher, disease gets cured because of the doctor etc. These statements which we make are not the factual statements, the presence of the other substance which we think to be the cause of the activity is only instrumental.
Now you may wonder what is this instrumental cause ? That substance which itself does not undergo any change, or perform the action, or function, but which is treated as the most suitable ( accompanying or associating cause ) in the organisation of that action or function is called the instrumental cause.'
In the making of a pot, or a jar of clay, the stick, the wheel etc. or the potter himself are the instrumental causes, so instrumental cause is not the actual cause, because it is only conventionally called to be a cause.
The raw mango is green in colour, sour to taste and hard to feel, but the same mango when ripens is yellow in colour, Sweet to taste, and soft to feel. This transformation we see after 8 to 10 days, but actually the
