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INTRODUCTION.
LXXV
self, is not in itself eternal but disappears like any other act;1 in the transmigratory condition this ability is crippled by karmas; so in the pure condition the soul must be a knower par excellence; and this knowledge will have to function irrespective of temporal and spatial limitations so patent in the process of human perception. Further the objectivity is a huge complexity with manifold modifications some present and some absent. Such a complex object of knowledge cannot be justly comprehended in its entiriety by a mediatory process of knowledge.. So, if this complex objectivity is to be thoroughly and immediately grasped, the soul must directly visualise it; that is possible only in omniscience, when the soul is completely free from all hindrances. Sense-organs are, after all, material adjuncts of the soul incurred by it as a consequence of karmas; so according to Jainism the knowledge received through senses, unlike in the Vais'esika system where it is called pratyksa and explained as the contact between the senses and the objects of knowledge, is indirect or mediate, because the objects are not known directly and straightway by the soul or self. Thus the senses are the means of empirical knowledge which is conditioned by the limitations of time and space, which is liable to environmental and perceptual errors, and which has stages in its process of knowing. Reliable knowledge worth accepting as authoritative is possible only when the self directly knows the objectivity without the mediation of senses; and that is the condition of omniscience. The possibility of omniscience can be inductively proved: Men of different degrees of intelligence and knowledge are found in this world; what is beyond the grasp of one might very easily be understood by the other; some men have some of their senses more alert and sharp than usually possible; all this means that there is the possibility of the presence of different degrees of knowledge according to proportionate subsidence and destruction of knowledge-obscuring karman. Then that condition of the liberated soul, where all the karmas are tracelessly annihilated, will have to be accepted as a state of unlimited knowledge which is the very nature of the self. In the religio-mystical experience the self when freed from karmic fetters is itself the Higher self; it is a condition of absolute knowledge which is the same as absolute happiness for which there is no parallel in this world. knowledge and happiness are the two sides of the same shield of liberation, nay they are identical. What Vedanta puts negatively Jainism puts positively: the former links nescience with misery and the latter omniscience with eternal bliss; the Vedanta annihilates nescience by submerging the individual into the Universal, while Jainism says that the individual itself becomes universal, still each retaining its separate individuality, with this omniscient bliss, when stripped of its karmas. The omniscience is possessed by Jaina prophets like Mahavira and by all the liberated souls.
OMNISCIENCE OF VARUNA.-Leaving aside the peculiar back-ground of this doctrine in Jaina philosophy, the conception of all-knowledge is a legitimate claim of human mind. Some tinge of omniscience is associated
1 Max Muller: Six Systems etc..p. 559.
