Neuroscience and Karma

Author(s): Jethalal S Zaveri, Mahendramuni
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 12

brain which not only regulate our breathing, nourishment and sleep but also influence our emotions, wants, desires, our satisfaction and revolsion, our longings and our fears. Thus there is an indisputable connection between the modus operandi of karman and brain-function.
Let us, for instance, see how anger is produced. Jain āgaması (canonical texts) teach us that the passion-quartet -- anger, arrogance, deceit and greed — are :
(i) self-generated (ii) provoked by others (iii) both self-generated and provoked by others (iv) generated due to the fruition of a specific karman without
any external cause. Neuroscience has established that there are centres of anger as well as peace in our limbic system. Dr. Jose Delgado's experiments with ESB(electric stimulation of brain) has revealed that an animal (bull) can be made either fighting-mad or totally docile by stimulating (by remote control) different points of limbic system. Thus acuroscience not only cxplains but expands and clarifies what is rather vaguely stated in agamas.
And so we think that it is appropriate to synchronize the presentations of modern scientific facts with ancient philosophical wisdom. "In the history of human thinking" says Werner Heisenberg, the physicistphilosopher, "new, interesting and the most fruitful developments frequently take place when two different lines of thought-lines, having their roots in quite different parts of human culture, in different times, or religious traditions - meet and mutually interact.*? It is, however, a most difficult task. The writer may "either succeed in being intelligible by offering only superficial aspects of the problem and thus arousing in the reader the deceptive illusion of comprehension or give an account in
1. Thanan, 4/76-79 2. Physics and Philosophy, p. 161
(iv)