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100
Jaina View of Life
Manaḥparyāya knowledge. Manaḥparyaya cognises the objects of thought by the minds of other people.100 The Viseșävasyaka Bhāşya states that a person possessing Manaḥparyāya directly cognises the mental states of others without the instrumentality of the sense organs and the mind.101
In Western thought such a form of cognition was called 'thought transferences'. Myers coined the phrase "Telepathy for describing such experience. Tyrrel gives many instances of Telepathic cognition. He also mentions instances of collective telepathy which he calls collective telepathic calculations. In the publication called 'apparitions published by the Society for Psychical Research many interesting examples of telepathic cognition have been mentioned.
Manaḥparyaya, telepathic experience, is not easy to get and is not common for all. A certain physical and mental discipline is the condition for getting such capacity of intuition. In the Āvasyaka Niryukti we are told that Manaḥparyāya is possible only for human beings of character, especially for homeless ascetics. Human beings acquire this capacity due to merit and by the practice of mental and moral discipline.108 The Nandi Sūtra gives detailed description of the conditions of the possibility of Manaḥparyāya in the case of human beings.106 The conditions for the possession of Manaḥparyāya are i) the human beings in the Karma-bhūmi must have fully developed sense organs and a fully developed personality i. e., they must be paryāpta. ii) They must possess right attitude, samyag drsti. As a consequence they must be free from passion. iii) They must be self-controlled and they must be possessed of sddhi, extra-ordinary powers. The discipline and the occult powers attainable by the Yogis mentioned in the Patanjala Yoga is
100. À vas' yaka Niryukti, 76. 101. Visesavas yaka Bhäsya, 669, 814. 102. The Personality of Mon (Pelican) by Tyrrel, p. 65. 103. Āvas yaka Niryukti, 76. 104. Nandi Sūtra, 39-40.
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