Jaina Concept of Omniscience

Author(s): Ramjee Singh
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 33

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THE OMNISCIENT BEING
responsible for anybody for being a person. But personality has been conceived in the Indian tradition of admitting of various degrees of unification and development, so much so that it has been attributed to superhuman subjects like Gods, deities, angels and demons as well as to subhuman agencies like animals and birds, besides the human beings. Very often God is described as omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. But since the believers in polytheism or ditheism do not, however, accept any Surpeme God but believe in many deities, variously described, the deities are also treated as omniscient beings. Angels are also supposed to be supernormal beings with goodness within while the demons etc. are supposed to know everything of the world and also the minds of man. The demons etc. described in epic mythologies are also equipped with supernormal vision.
(C) Human Omniscience
It is interesting to find out the concept of omniscience associated with human beings. The notion of human omniscience is completely absent in Western thought, where only God is described as omniscient. In Indian thought, the concept of omniscience has generally been associated with Yogic attainments or salvation. Through Yoga, one can attain omniscience. Among the Yogis, we have the two main types, -yukta and yunjñana. The former is one who has attained through spiritual perfection such intuitive knowledge of all objects which is constant and spontaneous, while the later is the kind of Yogi who require the help of concentration as an auxiliary condition for the attainment of intuitive omniscient knowledge. The Yoga Sutra mentions many kinds of Yogic concentrations like Dharmamegha (Cloud of virtue), 38 Asamprajñāta (Super-conscious)39 which is also called Nirbija
38 Patanjali, Yoga Sutra, Vivekanand (trans. ed.) called Raja Yoga (Almorah, Ramkrishana Mission, (1951) IV. 28.
39 Ibid., I. 18.