________________
meaning thereby that the objective world that we are experiencing is a creation of our own consciousness, an illusion, a phantom, a dream.
In Berkley's word's, “Behind all objects and material expansion in outer space and on the earth that combine to present the picture of the cosmos in front of us, there is no other element or reality except that of the mind itselt." In Upadhyaya Yashovijayji's words, “This sprawling world, is nothing but a handiwork of our mind and is, therefore, unreal." In above context, how closely the wisdom of the sages approximates with the newly found knowledge of modern science !
False identification of soul with body :
'World is an illusion'; this age-old vision is now a 'scientific' discovery. Observe, how emphatically it is being stated by the scientists :
The great German scientist / mathematician Leibnitz writes : "I am able to prove that not only light colour, heat and the like, but motion, shape and extension too are mere apparent qualities." Just as our visual sense, for example, tells us that a golf ball is white, so vision abetted by our sense of touch tells us that it is also round, smooth and small - qualities that have no more reality, independent of our senses, than the quality which we define by convention as white.
Thus gradually philosophers and scientists arrived at the startling conclusion that since every object is simply the sum of its qualities, and since qualities exist only in mind, the whole objective universe of matter and energy, atoms and stars, does not exist except as a construction of the consciousness, an edifice of conventional symbols shaped by the senses of man.
100
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org