New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

Author(s): Mahaprajna Acharya, Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Today and Tommorrow Printers and Publishers

Page 114

106 New Dimensions in Jaina Logic
and what was transmitted by tradition and recorded in the Bhagavati Sūtra. Many valuable arguments were proposed in favour of the conception, some of which are reproduced here below:
1. Soul is by nature capable of knowing. It falls into ignorance only in the presence of obstructions to knowledge, and consequently fails to know the subtle, covered and remote objects directly. On the annihilation of the obstructions it becomes capable of such knowledge, and in that case there is no veil between the knower and the known and there is no reason why all knowables should not be reflected in such pure consciousness.30
2. The opponents of omniscience argue that a human being cannot be omniscient. But they may be asked-'Why should you say so? Do you say so by comprehending that there is no omniscient, or without such comprehension? If you are sure that never and nowhere there was, is or will be an omniscient, then that would amount to yourself being an omniscient person. But if you deny the existence of an omniscient without such comprehension, your assertion would be an ipse dixit and not a statement supported by reason.'
3. The existence of a fact is proved by means of arguments in favour of and absence of arguments against it. There is no definite argument in opposition to omniscience and so its acceptance as a fact is free from contradiction of any kind.31
4. The objects which are subtle, covered, and remote in space and time must be directly known by some person because they are inferable, for instance, (the inferable) fire which is actually perceived by some person or other.32
5. Difference in the manifestation of the knowledge is an accepted fact. Such manifestation must have a consummation. Even as volumes of bodies that relatively differ in extension find their maximum in infinite space, the relative variation in the manifestation of knowledge finds its plenum in pure and perfect knowledge (kevalajñāna).33
Memory
Determinate perception (avagraha), speculation (ihā), determinate judgment (avāya) and retention (dhāraṇā) are the successive stages of a single process of direct perception. The stages that