Practical Path

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

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THE PRACTICAL PATH.
Turning to chakşu darśana (vision), its development and functioning are generally prevented by the malformation of the eyes or visual centres of the brain. In either case, it is the clogging of some part of the organic structure which is responsible for the total or partial destruction of vision, while the clogging itself is due to the lodgment of particles of matter in a place where they should not be. Improper exercise of the function of vision ; such as pretending not to see, affecting disgust at the sight of a being or thing, especially when he or it happens to be an object of worship and veneration, and other like deeds which throw the organs of vision into an unnatural, strained or crooked attitude, and thereby allow the incoming particles of matter to find a lodgment in a place not intended for them, are the main causes of a total or partial absence of vision. Besides these, the influence of 'suggestion as a general psychological cause of malformation is not to be ignored, and many cases are reported in the records of psychical research in which the sight of painful wounds and the like has occasioned similar conditions in the beholders thereof. Hence, acts such as pulling out the eye-balls of another from their sockets, and then feeling delight at the unhappy condition of the victim of one's fiendish tyranny, are also calculated to deprive one of vision. Delighting in interfering with another's beholding a Jaina saint, preventing him from having access to an object of worship, such as Scripture, from motives of hatred, and the like, are also causes which lead to the loss of vision in a subsequent re-birth, and, may be, in this very life.