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Critique of Knowledge
103
ising qualities that constitute individuality'. The moment the limitation that makes particular experience possible is eliminated perfect intuition of everything is attained. The need of the experiences is dissolved in infinite - this is the positive meaning of kaivalya 119 Zimmer says that one is reminded of the protest of the inodern French poet and philosopher Paul Valery in his novel Mansieur Tests. There are people', he writes, 'who feel that the organs of sense are cutting them off from reality and essence.. knowledge, a cloud obscuring the essence of being; the shining moon, like darkness or a cataract on the eye! Take it all away so that modern theory of knowledge from which it arises, is remarkably close to the old idea which Jainism holds : that of the limiting force of our various faculties of human understanding.
Mimāṁsakas are not prepared to accept the possibility of the occurrence. The Mimāṁsakas raised a series of logical objections to the possibility of omniscience. According to the Mimāṁsakas omniscience cannot mean the knowledge of all the objects of the world either at the same time or successively. Nor can omniscience be knowledge of archetypal forms and not of particular things. There can be no omniscience because knowledge of the past, the present and the future can never be exhausted. Moreover, if all objects were known in omniscience at one moment, then the next moment it would be unconscience and blank. The omniscient, gain, would be tainted by the desire and aversions of others in knowing them.
But Jainas refute the argument of the Mimāṁsakas regarding the problem of the occurrence of omniscience. In the Pramāna Mimāṁsā we get the refutation of the Mimarsā arguments against the occurrence of omniscience. Similarly Mimāṁsakas have been replied by Prabhācandrai n Prameya-kamala-martanda. The Jainas say that it is not correct to deny the occurrence as the Mimāṁsakas do. Omniscience is the single intuition of
119. Pramāna Mimamsa I, 1, 15 and commentary.
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