Jaina Theory of Knowledge

Author(s): Mohanlal Mehta
Publisher: Gujarat Vidyapith Ahmedabad

Page 70

JAINA THEORY OF COMPREHENSION
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is a detailed description of clairvoyance from fourteen standpoints.63
TELEPATHY:
The mind, according to the Jaina, is made up of a particular material substance. Its modes are the different changes of states emerging into acts of thought. Every state of our thought is a particular mode of the mind. As our state of thought changes, so also the mind changes. Thus, every state of our thought is reflected in the different modes of our mind-substance. In other words, a state of thought is nothing but a particular mode of the mind-substance. The direct cognition of these modes of the mind-substance is called tepelathy. A person possessing the faculty of telepathy can directly cognise the states of our thought. This cognition of the states of thought is nothing but a direct perception of the modes of the stuff of which the mind is made up. Now, as regards the genral nature of telepathy as the direct cognition of the various states of thought, the Jaina thinkers are unanimous. But regarding the knowledge of the external objects of thought, they are not in a unanimity. We shall record this fact in the course of our discussion.
Telepathy preceives the objects thought by the minds of different persons. It is confined to the plane of human beings. Its emergence is conditioned by a particular capacity possessed by one having a particular mode of right conduct.64 The faculty of telepathy is not acquired by an