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mentioned the fullness or perfection of experience is attained in Kevala-jñāna which is really direct experience It is the manifestation of the very nature of the sentient subject when all its obscurations disappear The possibility of such direct synoptic knowledge or omniscience was questioned by the sceptics especially the Mimāmsakas It had been argued by the Jainas as by Patañjali in the Yogasūtias that omniscience is proved by the fact that we observe a gradation in the degree of knowledge Some know more than others and there can be no upper limit to knowledge except in omniscience The soul has the capacity to know anything and if all its obscuring factors were to disappear, it would reach omniscience From the notion of perfection and the possibility of its realization it is concluded that such realization cannot be denied 28 That man can free himself from ignorance, passion and the bondage of Kai man was accepted by the Buddbists as the natural corollary of the belief in perfect purification coupled with the belief in the innate luminosity of knowledge At lower degrees of purification we get lower degrees of supernormal knowledge Thus we have the Avadhuñana or clairvoyance and Manahparyāyajñāna or telepathy These two alongwith Kevalajñāna constitute the real or transcendental Pratyaksa
It would thus be clear that experience in Jainism is not the product of a chance encounter between physical organisms and external objects, not a causal response of the senses to stimulations from outside It is the direct apprehension of reality by the soul where at the level of impure bodily existence, psychic capacities and physical senses cooperate to allow the soul to function in accordance with the temporary destruction and subsidence of some obscuring Karman Such perception or Matijñāna has been divided into four stages-avagraha, thā, avāya and dhāraņā 29 Avagı alia is the apprehension of the object in a general manner Thā is the seeking of the mind to know the object more fully Doubt, enquiry and comparison of the data have their place in this stage which has sometimes been translated as 'speculation' One might compare it with the Santirana of the Ceylonese Buddhist school of Theravada The next stage of Avāya sees the emergence
