________________
192
SAMAYASĀRA of one and the same principle. This method of cutting the gordian knot by the monistic metaphysician is not considered to be the correct solution by the Jaina thinkers. The thinking entity, Self, and the inanimate matter are kept distinctly apart and yet they are mutually related in the case of an organic being in the ordinary world. Psychologists in the West who accept the difference between mind and matter, have adopted the psychophysical parallelism to explain the relation between the two. The changes in the body are entirely according to the law of causation which is observed to hold good in the physical realm. Similarly the series of successive mental states, according to the operation of the law of causation pertain to the realm of consciousness. Changes physical and chemical in the material body do not directly produce changes in consciousness and yet physical change and conscious change mysteriously determine each other, each functioning as the external determining condition of the other. An attitude similar to the modern hypothesis of parallelism is adopted by the Jaina thinkers. The body is subject to its own causal law of operation. Consciousness has also its own law of operation and yet one determines the other, operating in the form of external nimitta condition. Conscious changes constitute the nimitta condition for physical changes. Thus the two causal series, though not directly inter-related are indirectly related to each other; each determining the other only as an external nimitta condition. Thus the two series are brought together in the case of an embodied empirical ego who can be said to be born or to have died. The conscious Self, taken by itself in its pure nature, apart from the association of the body is not subject to birth or death. It becomes subject to birth and death only when it gets embodied, when it becoines samsāri jiva. How does it get embodied? The building up of the body of an organic being is supposed to be due to its own mental activity. In the environment there are subtle material particles suitable for building the body. When the Self forgetting its own pure nature manifests in the form of impure psychic states, it causes the building of a body to itself out of the suitable particles in the environment. When once the building up of
ne body is completed, then begins the career of the empirical Self or samsāri jiva having a series of births and deaths.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
