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The Pathway to Perfection
than the individual soul. Each soul is a god by itself, although it is obscured by the karmic veil in its empirical state. The kaivalya state of the individual soul may be compared to the divine omniscience. However, the Naiyayikas and Patanjali admit that man has sometimes a flash of intuition of the future and can attain omniscience by constant meditation and practice of austerities. The Jainas believe that, by the removal of obscuring karmas by meditation, the threefold path and selfcontrol, the individual soul reaches the consummation of omniscience, the state of kaivalya. That is the finality of experience. But others, like the Naiyayikas, posit a divine omniscience which is higher and natural and eternal.
It is not possible to establish the possibility of omniscience on the basis of the methods of investigation which psychology and the empirical sciences follow. However, its logical possibility cannot be denied. Progressive realisation of greater and subtler degrees of knowledge by the individual is accepted by some psychologists, especially since the introduction of psychical research for analysing the phenomena of extra-sensory perception. A consummation of this progressive realization would logically be pure knowledge and omniscience, a single all-embracing intuition.
Now the great meditation is the sure way to omniscience and self-realization. Concentration of mind (dhyana) is an essential factor as a means to spiritual realisation. "The lower self sometimes gets the vision of perfection in its purified state and aims at the attainment of this ideal. On the attainment of prominent the self rises to its own pure state (paramā tma). Dhyana is the concentration of thought in a particular object,"1 for a certain length of time. The Jaina analysis of the lower types of dhyāna has a great psychological importance and need to be studied in the light of recent research in depth psychology. Dharmadhyāna and Sukladhyana are conditions
21. Tattvärthasutra: IX-27 'Ekagracintanirodhadhyanam'.
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