Jaina Concept of Omniscience

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

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SOUL-PSYCHOLOGY AND OMNISCIENCE
by making intellect unconscious, Sārkhya weakens the foundation of knowledge because, speaking commonsensically, intellect plays a very important place in the preservation and protection of knowledge. However, there is also an opposite view. They say that even if the 'buddhi' as the first evolute of Praksti is unconscious by itself, in the combination with the Purusa which mirrors itself in it, 'knowledge' is certainly not weakened. Similarly, in the system of Advaita Vedānta, even if it is true that from the paramārtha point of view all empirical knowledge forms parts of Avidyā, on the Vyavahāra level all the true criteria of Knowledge are valid. Hence, we cannot discover any weakening of the intellect in Sankarā. cārya himself, nor in that of his followers.
The Vedāntic position goes to the other extreme of regarding all empirical knowledge as only psuedo-knowledge. This condemnation of empirical knowledge also weakens the intellect because what is left out as real knowledge after the rejection of intellectual or emperical knowledge is extremely ethereal and intangible.
The Jainas claim that they preserve the concreteness of knowledge and the empirical knowledge, because they neither treat intellect as unconscious nor do they accuse emirical knowledge as being of the nature of psuedo-knowledge. This amounts to saying that the Jainas are realists and empiricists in the broad sense of the term.
To the Buddhists, there is no problem of relation between the soul and consciousness. They do not believe in the exi. stence of any substance like soul. Cognition to them, is a function of the beginningless stream of consciousness (citta) which takes the form of Alaya Vijñāna and Pravrtti Vijñāna. There is no permanent substratum or central matrix of the process. But in the state of Mukti or salvation, when con. sciousness is devoid of the influx of avidyā or trsņā,20 it does not cognise any external object.
Sole.
20 Tattva Sangraha, p. 184; Cp. Saunlaranındı, XVI. 28, 29.