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The General Conception of Knowledge
153
that govern common souls. The knowledge, will and activity of the common souls are momentary, while those of īśvara are permanent. Common souls know the object through a contact of sense with the object. Iśvara perceives them directly. The knowledge of ord nary souls apprehends the object only, while for self-apprehension they require another cognition. i. e. anuvyayasāya. The knowledge of īśvara is self-revefatory, Ordinary souls lose their knowledge and other special qualities in the state of liberation, Iśvara holds them permanently.
The Yoga does not recognise Isvara as an ontological reality, but holds it a mere hypothesis for the practice of yoga.
The Sārkhya and probably the Vaiseșika system before PraŚ istapāda do not recognize the existence of God. They hold that all souls are similar in status as well as nature. The yoga system holds Isvara as a soul with eternal purity. It was never associated with ignorance or passion. It is the highest ideal of human aspiration.
The Jaina also does not recognize any existence of God. It holds that all souls are fundamentally similar and enjoy the same status and nature. Only the karmic influence, which is a foreign matter, makes them different. The theory of evolution, according to Jainism, is the theory of different grades of the karmic influence. The states of the Liberated and the Bound
Generally, all the systems, except those of Cārvāka and Mimāṁsā, recognise two states of the common soul. According to the Nyāya and Vaiseșika the liberated souls are dispossessed of all the special qualities that distinguish a soul from other objects. 1 According to Sankhya and the Vedānta the real soul is always free. The state of bondage is merely an illusion. According to the Buddhist the soul is a stream of
1. Prasastapādabhāsya p. 281.
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