Book Title: Reals on the Jaina Metaphysics
Author(s): Harisatya Bhattacharya
Publisher: Shatnidas Khetsy Charitable Trust Mumbai

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Page 199
________________ 184 Reals in the Jaina Metaphysics is not effected by a God according to the Jaina's but is due to the inflow of a peculiar class of material molecules into it. These material molecules, of and by themselves, freely enter into the soul and are called Dravya Karma's. The Karma, with the Jaina's, is thus not merely an ethical act as with the philosophers of the other Indian schools but it stands, on the one hand, for the psychical feelings (Bhāva Karma's) which are springs of our action and on the other, for the actual material corpuscles which, as the result of the said Bhāva Karma's or psychical feelings get themselves attached to the soul constituting its corporeal frame. How THE SOUL CAN BE UNITED WITH MATTER This raises the question of the manner in which Karmaparticles unite with the psychical principle. It involves the perennial problem of metaphysics which has appeared from time to time as the problem of the relation between mind and the material body. Descartes admitted the dualism and his attempt at bridging the gulf between mind and body practically left the problem where it was. Malebranche and the orthodox occasionalists introduced God to effect the union of the two manifestly opposing principles, almost in the way in which the Nyāya thinkers propounded the theory of the all-knowing and all-powerful Isvara as the connector of the spiritual force of Adrsta with the material molecules forming an animal's body. Leibnitz also was a believer in God and he pointed out that although the two principles, soul and matter were apparently opposed to each other, there was a pre-established harmony among them. The Jaina solution of the problem, if like Leibnitz's a solution at all, begins with a tacit acknowledgment of this pre-established harmony minus the hypothesis of God. In other words the Jaina's assert that the nature of a finite unliberated soul and the nature of the Karma-molecules are such that one is modified in consonance with a modificatio in the other. The Jaina discussion on the subject brings home the difficulty of uniting soul and matter, if once an absolute dualism between them is admitted. Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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