________________
68
Hermann Kuhn
Five channels give us access to knowledge. Every channel offers us a different kind of knowledge. The channels we employ also determine the range and scope of knowledge that will open to us.
The five types of knowledge - the channels - are listed in ascending sequence, i.e. each successive channel perceives more subtle and more comprehensive knowledge than the one preceding it.
Some of the channels mentioned in the sutra far exceed the range of the officially recognized channels (senses and mind). Though we use these 'unofficial channels in a natural way in our daily life, they carry the stigma of public suspicion.
Yet although our western society presently regards everything functioning without the help of the senses as suspiciously strange, this does not change the fact that these channels are definitely available to us.
The scope and precision of the 'subtler' channels far exceeds everything our senses will ever convey to us. Therefore it doesn't make sense to refrain from using this immense potential only because some leaders of the presently fashionable ideology30 assume that a systematic application of these abilities is impossible - without having seriously studied this.
We can use the more subtle channels in the same natural way we employ our five senses.
- Sense-perception (mati) - arises, when we perceive objects and events through our five senses and the mind.
30 the belief that the functioning of reality is governed exclusively by
the mechanisms of matter - science
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
