Book Title: Jain Yug 1983
Author(s): Mohanlal Dalichand Desai
Publisher: Jain Shwetambar Conference

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Page 533
________________ ૩૧ જ્ઞાનક્રિયાભ્યામ મોક્ષ seeking to evince the existence of a free remote and disinterested, far removed from world of work in which the creative acti- the spirit of mediocrity that so sullenly broods vity of the self is viewed in constructive over the world. The superior world of selfmanner. hood does not simply exist, but is an effect Libertarianism can do no more than thrust out by the ego as it seeks to strive beyond itself and achieve a 'victory over demonstrate the abstract possiblity of freedom as a force which exerts itself here and there the invisible. This act of self-affirmation from time to time. wills the self and the world as one-that is, the self is willed as a world. Intro-activity, however, seeks to account for the continuity and systematic coherence of human activity., for, from the inception The ego is known by means of a comof human culture, the human spirit has lete form of self-affirmation, in which thought been tracing in the air a line parallel to and action are one and the same; this selfthe course of the natural world. The free- affirmation, therefore, is a conscious act and dom of humanity is thus something which active thought. Its selfhood and its worldleads the ego forward beyond nature rather hood are one and the same. than backward into the meshes of causal law; the proof of one is the same as the When dialectics sounds the depths of senproof of the other it is the perceptible sation, volition, and intellect, it observes at fact of a system of nature below, and a the outset that the intellect holds the secret system of humanity above. The possibility and serves the plan of the self in a way of introactivity has been ignored by tradi unknown to the other two forms of spiritual tional ontology, which has penetrated beneath life. Sensation does indeed make the self the crust of reality to the subterannean fires of free energy. The free strivings be aware of its existence, as also of its position in the world; activity enables the self to neath the crust of formal reason are essen re-act upon its experiences; but the power tial to a comprehension of the whole, and without the recognition of inter-activity, to improvise, the power to detach the ego the significance of human reality will be from the world, belongs neither to sensation superficial indeed. nor volition, but to the intellect alone. If, therefore, the ego is to gain ascendancy over the world, it must be by means of the The intro-activity of selfhood, recognis- spontaneity of the free intellect. able in the forın of human culture consists Knowledge is thus to be understood as of a complete act of self-affirmation. This a striving after the substantial in the inidst affirmatory act on the part of the self con- of the contradictions inherent in sensation sists, not of some life-force whose aim could and volition. be no more than the acquisition of the immediate, but of a striving towards the -SHAW.

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