Notion of Growth

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

Page 64

THE NOTION OF GROWTH
tirely that we have really no idea how all these fragments could possibly fit into one coherent whole, nor where this constantly growing pile of data might lead us in the first place.
In contrast the concept of the Jains introduces not only a candid outline of the structure, import, range and validity of knowledge, but also provides clear orientation where insight and cognition will lead us.
The difference between the two concepts originates in the fact that the West concentrates almost exclusively on only one of the two types of perception available to us. Unfortunately this is the one type that can only produce a limited insight into reality (naya - see below). Over and above this the West further limits itself by focussing almost exclusively on only one single aspect (the mechanisms of matter20) of the broad spectrum of reality and attempts to explain the functioning of our entire reality with the mechanics of this single element.
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The Jains however use both methods of perception to uncover an ever broader and more integrated comprehensive picture of reality instead of dividing it into disconnected fragments. The Jains also never forgot that cognition and insight is an individual experience, that external knowledge as it is recorded in books and other storage media has no significance as long as we do not actively integrate it into our consciousness, - and that any formal learning is irrelevant to our growth if we do not transform it into individual experience.
The sutra introduces both methods of perception:
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20 more precisely: the belief that the functioning of reality is governed exclusively by the mechanisms of matter