________________
174
JAINISM ANI) WORLD PROBLEMS
then be devoid of consciousness ; and, in the latter, there would be no knowledge, nor conscious beings in existence, which, happily, is not the case.
It might be urged that knowledge, consciousness, or the power to know or cognize, is an independent quality which, when it comes in contact with the soul, enables it to perceive and know itself and other things, but this is untenable on the ground that qualities only inhere in substances* and cannot be conceived to exist independently of concrete things. The fact is that qualities are pure mental abstractions ; no one has ever seen them existing by themselves.
The soul is a wonderful thing; it is a substance, and at the same time is the repository of knowledge. Knowledge and memory do not exist in it like loose images stocked in a drawer, or photos in an album, but as the diversified aspects of a partless entity, the mutually interpenetrating flashes or coruscations of a huge undivided conscious illumination, or as a multitude of inseparable and co-existing notes or rhythms of a unitary intelligent force.
From the point of view of somethingness, the soul is a substance; from that of consciousness it is a pure embodiment of knowledge, consisting in an infinity of inseparable ; and yet separately perceivable, scintillations of intelligence itself, and from the point of view of energy it is an unbreakable unit of force that cannot be exhausted by any means, being eternal and unperishing, in its nature.
* That qualities inlere in substances is a self-evident truth, for they cannot be conceived to exist by themselves. If they could lead an existence independently of substance, we should have softness, liardness; manhood and the like also existing by themselves, which would be absurd. Moreover, if qualities were capable of leading an independent existence of their own, existence also would exist separately from all other qualities. But this would make existence itself a featureless function or attribute of nothing whatsoever, on the one hand, and all the other remaining qualities simply non-existent, on the other, because existence would jo longer be associated with them. It follows, therefore, that qualities cannot be conceived to exist apart from substances.. . . .
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
