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

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Page 325
________________ 310 Reals in the Jaina Metaphysics systems. The crowning merit of the Jaina psychologists is that they not only acknowledged the reality of forms of sub-human consciousness but held the psychical life of man himself as a subject of continuous and progressive development. Leaving aside the supersensuous faculties like the Avadhi, the Kevala etc. we may thus recapitulate the principles of the Jaina psychology. The lowest form of consciousness consists merely in the passive experience of agreeable or disagreeable phenomena. This form of consciousness develops in some animals into a consciousness of purposive activity. This again leads to the more complex forms. The first is sensation. Sensation, although a more advanced mode of consciousness than those just described, is still but crude sentience, consisting in the consciousness that the sense-organs are affected. Next is the process which we have called the Grasp. It is more advanced than Sensation in as much as it includes the consciousness that something outside is affecting the sense-organs. The processes of Attention and Determination work upon the matter yielded by Grasp and present the something, the object of Perception,-in its details. Next operates the process of Retention and thus the Perception of the object is completed. Recollection revives the idea of the object of Perception and Conception forms the class-ideas by comparing the idea with its similars. Induction utilises these general ideas in establishing general truths and Deduction verifies and carries further the results of Induction. Thus is developed a system of unimpeachable authoritative truths. These truths supply us with principles of Explanation and help us in arriving at exact conceptions of the things under our observation. Ordinary Explanation is simply Integration of one idea to its associated one in an off-hand manner. The process of sustained Consideration and Mediation explain every link of the Integration. Explanation is logically complete and scientific, when the object under observation is viewed from its particular aspects and the word signifying it represents its exact nature. This is the order of mental development according to the Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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