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JAINISM AND WORLD PROBLEMS
their subsequent return to consciousness, implies in fact a statical or relatively unchanging condition of something, call it what we may."-(p. 165).
"When two stimuli are simultaneously applied to the sense-organs of any normal human being, they produce a change in his consciousness which is their combined effect or resultant. This composition or combination of their effec's does not take place in the nervous system; the two nervous processes are nowhere combined or compounded; they remain throughout as distinct as if they occurred in separate brains; and yet they produce in consciousness a single effect whose nature is jointly determined by both nervous processes. These facts can only be rendered intelligible by assuming that both processes influence or act upon some one thing or being; and, since this is not a material thing, it must be an immaterial thing Our intellect demands this conclusion We cannot be content to say that each of the two processes generates or creates a sensation, which two sensations then float off to come together and join the stream of consciousness ;... for even if we could admit that sensations can exist in this isolated manner, the essential problem would still remain-Why do these two sensations come together and why do they join that particular stream of consciousness, rather than any other? The only possible alternative to the hypothesis that this immaterial thing is an enduring psychic entity, is to assert that it is the stream of consciousness itself. Now to say that the cerebral processes act upon consciousness is a convenient and common usage; but, if the statement is to be taken seriously, it implies that the stream of consciousness is not merely the sum of the effects of, or the psychical aspects of, the brain processes, but that it has an independent existence, that it is itself an entity or being. And this would be Animism, but Animism of a peculiarly unsatisfactory kind. We should still have to assert that the stream of individual consciousness as it exists at any moment
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