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JAINISM AND WORLD PROBLEMS
means of acquiring and strengthening faith in one's own Divinity, and also of freeing the Self from the clutches of Matter, in other words, of accomplishing one's Salvation,
We are familiar with the conception of the Jnana and Karma Indriyas, that is to say, the sensory-motor system or organism, in modern terminology. But that is not enough for our requirements; we must also know the why and the wherefore of the working of the senses and the mechanism of self-initiated movements.
I shall now describe as briefly as possible the Jaina view of things in reference to the above matters, and the bearing of them on the subject of Release (Nirvana), which is the Ideal to be attained.
To begin with sense perception, which is the function of the Jnanendriyas (senses), it is quite well known that the senses themselves are merely instruments for the mind, ·but precisely how perception is achieved is involved in so much obscurity and indefiniteness in different systems that nothing like a satisfactory explanation can be ob. tained from them, modern science actually declaring it to be an insoluble problem. The Jaina view is that knowledge and the excitation which comes through the senses are not the same thing; they differ inost materially. The excitation (stimulus) is matter or energy in some form or other ; perception is a state of consciousness. States of consciousness are devoid of colour, taste, smell, weight, measurement and the other material qualities, though they represent such qualities and all material things. The idea of boiling water is not hot in itself, nor that of ice cold. A ship is a bulky heavy thing outside in the world, but the knowledge or idea (or thought) of a ship is neither bulky nor heavy itself. What happens in perception is simply this: the excitation from the object, when it reaches the perceptive centres of the brain (through the sense organs and the nerves of sensation connected with them), merely gives
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