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Metaphysics, Ethics and Spiritual Development
235
diamond on the presence of the necessary totality of causal conditions. The totality of causal conditions that produces glass is different from the one that produces diamond. We all know that filthy manure assumes an attractive mode, when it comes in contact with appropriate instrumental causes. Even poison turns into nectar when it comes in contact with appropriate instrumental causes. And even nectar turns into poison when it comes in contact with appropriate instumental causes. Though a substance has capacity to transform itself into many modes, it transforms itself into that mode alone for which the instrumental causes are available to it. If a teacher makes good efforts for a dull pupil the latter's intellect and cognitive faculty can develop. Poisonhood is potentially present in nectar, and nectarhood is potentially present in poison. It is only proper instrumental causes that make them actual or bring them out. Even a dull student has knowledge, but it is lying dormant in him. When proper instrumental causes operate on him it manifests itself. A substance manifests that mode alone which it has capacity to manifest on the presence of proper instrumental causes. Sand is matter. Oil too is matter. But sand cannot manifest or yield oil. The substance which does not have the proximate capacity to manifest a particular mode cannot manifest it, in spite of the presence of necessary instrumental causes. Atoms constituting sand must first get disintegrated and be free, and then form molecules of a special kind, then only they yield or manifest oil. The number of modes potentially present in a substance is fixed. They do not become actual or manifest simultaneously, because for manifestation they require different sets of instrumental causes. The substance manifests that mode alone, which is proper to be produced by the present necessary instrumental causes. Thus the possible modes of a substance are fixed. Of them, which will be manifested when is not fixed. The manifestation of modes depends on the presence of their respective sets of instrumental causes.
If all events, all mental states and all activities are predetermined, then there is no need of paying any heed to human efforts, activities, selfdiscipline, good works, etc. In that case, all differences of vitrue and vice, merit and demerit, good and evil, violence and non-violence, etc., have no meaning whatsoever; they stand rejected and refuted; all human efforts and activities turn out to be absolutely ineffectual; all moral responsibility is proved to be illusory; man is not free; he does what is destined for him to do. One who kills a man by stabbing him with a dagger does not incur
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