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INTRODUCTION
concrete life in this world is vitiated by Nescience and is real only from the practical point of view. "The mutual superimposition of the Self and the Non-Self, which is termed Nescience, is the presupposition on which there base all practial distinction--those made in ordinary life as well as those laid down by the Veda-between means of knowledge, objects of knowledge and all scriptural texts, whether they are concerned with injunctions and prohibition (of meritorious and non-meritorious actions) or with final release." Thus he points out that in ordinary life, every individual has to operate only through his body and sense without which life itself would be impossible in the concrete world. Even the cognitive process of knowledge depends upon sense-perception and intellectual activity which naturally presupposes the organic body. Even when the individual is looked upon as an agent carrying out the injunctions religious and ethical an organic body must be presupposed for carrying out all those injunctions. His conduct as the social being in the world is therefore inextricably mixed up with bodily behaviour, without which he can neither discharge his duties as a social being nor as a religious devotee. In this respect he is of common nature with other animals, who also behave in an identical manner in reacting to the environment. In the presence of an enemy, the animal tries to run away and escape and in the presence of a friendly environment it feels happy. Thus this concrete world of natural experience which is common to both men and animals though philosophically supposed to be the result of Nescience, is to be considered real and important from the practical point of view. In this concrete world which is real in its own way, the social distinctions based upon rank and birth hold good. That one is a Brahmin and another is a Ksatriya, one is a master and another is a servant, are all distinctions based upon the body and hold good only in the empirical world.
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The third point which he emphasises is that this empirical world resulting from the non-distinction between the Self and the Non-Self exists without beginning and without end. This natural world which is without beginning and without end is produced by the Nescience or wrong conception which is the cause of individual souls appearing as agents and enjoyers in the empirical world which is eternal and uncreated. The individual self in the empirical world or Samsara is influenced by this wrong knowledge and identifies himself with external objects.
Jain Education International
"Extra-personal attributes are superimposed on the Self, if a man considers himself sound and entire, or the contrary, as long as his wife, children and so on are sound and entire or not. Attributes of the body are superimposed on the Self, if a man thinks of himself (his Self) as a stout, lean, fair as standing, walking or jumping, Attributes of the sense-organs, if he thinks I am mute or deaf or one eyed or blind. Attributes of the internal organs when he considers himself subject to desire, intention, doubt, determination, and so on."
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