Sacred Philosophy

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

Page 19

16
absolutely nothing in the facts of observation to support it, beyond two things, namely, firstly, that matter is known to affect the manifestation of consciousness, and, secondly, that all beings are not endowed with the same kind of mental powers. These facts do not, however, establish anything more than this that the degree of conscious manifestation in unemancipated souls depends on the quality or quantity or both of matter which may be existing in combination with the soul. The materialist's conclusion-that the dependence of consciousness on matter demonstrates the non-existence of the soulcould be reached only if it were postulated as a fact that the soul was not liable to be affected by matter. As Jainism points out, the differences in the degree of conscious manifestation among different orders of beings as well the liability of an unemancipated soul to be affected by matter is due to the force known as Jñânávarniya Karma, which means a definite group of forces that tend to curtail the knowing faculties of the soul. Jainism also points out that these knowledge-obstructing forces are generated by the fusion of spirit and matter both of which are real substances, as stated before.
The supposition that there can be no soul unless it remain in one and the same condition under all circumstances is childish and has never been advanced by true philosophy. We thus find nothing