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Jaina View of Life
In this highest state, the Paramātman, the pure and the transcendental self, shines with the light of omniscience like the light of the sun illuminating itself and other objects. 16 Within a moment after self-realisation there flashes forth a great light. The whole world is then seen in the Ātman. The Jaina conception of omniscience is very important for understanding the mysticism of the Jainas. The Jainas thought that knowledge is due to the sense organs and the mind is not sufficient to comprehend the nature of reality. They accepted the possibility of immediate and direct experience without the use of the sense-organs and the mind. This is pratyakşa. This is supernormal experience. Three types of supernormal experiences have been mentioned : 1) avadhi (clairvoyance), 2) manaḥparyaya (telepathy) and kevala (omniscience). Kevala is the direct immediate intuitive experience of the highest type. Kevala jñāna is of two types, (i) bhavastha, the omniscience of the liberated who still live in this world, as for instance, the omniscience of the Tirthankaras; and (ii) the omniscience of one who is totally liberated, who may be called siddha. The bhavastha omniscience is, again, of two types (i) sayogi and (ii) avogi. There are subdivisions in both these. Similarly, Siddha omniscience is of two types, (i) anantara kevala and (ii) parampara kevala, each having its own subdivisions. 18
The Jaina view of omniscience may be compared to the Nyāya view of divine knowledge and the yoga theory of divine perception." Divine knowledge is all-embracing and eternal. It has no break. It is a single all-embracing intuition. It is perceptual in character, as it is direct and not derived through the instrumentality of any other cognition. The divine perception grasps the past, the present, and the future in one eternal 'now'. The soul, according to the Jainas, is itself divine and perfect, and there is no transcendental being other
16. Paramātmaprakáša of Yoginda, pp. 35–36. 17. ibid. p. 104.
18. Nandisutra, Gatha 19-23. 19. Nyāyamanjari, p. 200. 20. Yogasūtra. I, 25.
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