Notion of Growth

Author(s): Hermann Kuhn
Publisher: Crosswind Publishing Germany

Page 40

THE NOTION OF GROWTH
23
The individual impulse of life - jiva - our very consciousness - possesses a number of extraordinary abilities of which we presently know and use only a small part.
Knowledge is one of the most significant of these qualities. It gives us the initial key to the unknown part of our consciousness. Therefore the first chapter of the Tattvarthasutra focuses primarily on this theme.
In the Western hemisphere of the world we usually regard knowledge as the constantly growing mass of external information. The sheer volume of this data alone seems to make any comprehensive cognition impossible.
But this type of external information is not what the Jains conceive as knowledge.
The Jains regard knowledge as the basic nature of our consciousness. They consider knowledge such a fundamental and inseparable feature of individual consciousness that it encompasses the source and the totality of all knowledge within itself.
All external knowledge recorded in books or other storage media has no impact on us as long as we do not actively integrate it into our consciousness. All formal
prodigies like Mozart, Blaise Pascal, Yehudi Menuhin etc., whose extraordinary abilities could not have been gained by training and cannot be explained by mere talent). For all this there must exist a basis of individuality that continues during time and is independent of material factors.
It is certainly everybody's own choice to believe in a model of the world that assumes that matter is the central governing factor of the universe. Yet this model basically concludes that the continuation of the species may be the only possible value of life - and in the long run even this would prove insignificant. Those who believe in this speculative idea block all search for and access to a purpose of life beyond this materialistic model.