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THE JAINA THEORY OF SENSE PERCEPTION
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in the perceptual judgment (avāya). That is why it has not been separately mentioned by him. Avāya, when it continues for some length of time, may be called retention in the sense of absence of the lapse of experience. It may also be said that absence of the lapse is also a condition of recall in the sense in which he defines dhāraņā. Mere perception without the absence of the lapse cannot give rise to recollection. Perceptual judgments which are not attended by the reflective mental stage are almost on the level of unattended perception, like a person touching grass in hurried motion. And such perceptions are not capable of giving rise to recollection.93
Hemacandra's description of avāya and his analysis of dhāraņā come nearer to the psychological analysis of perception, specially of the Structuralist school. Perception is a concrete experience in which sensations are organized and interpreted. Meaning is assigned to sensations. Without the factor of meaning or interpretation of the impressions, perception would be impossible. Hemacandra's example of the person touching grass in hurried motion shows that 'selective interest is a necessary condition of perceptual judgment. Such experiences would be on the fringe of consciousness, and they would enter into the focus of consciousness only if forced by factors like nearness or selective interest. Retention is an important condition of perception. In fact, as Stout says, retentiveness is in some form an indispensable condition of mental development. Mental development would be impossible unless previous experience left behind its persistent after-effects to influence the mental state in the course of subsequent experience. These after-effects are called traces or dispositions. Hemacandra called them saṁskāra. They are the latent conditions of subsequent experience. However, Hemacandra makes them special capacities of the soul. Mental traces or dispositions bring us to the problem of memory.
However, the analysis of perceptual experience shows that the concrete psychosis involves the accumulation of sense stimuli to produce a cumulative effect. It gradually gives rise to awareness, that is, the physiological and stimulus condition of sense awareness. That is vyañjanāvagraha. It gives rise to awareness of the object. It is a sensation. It is arthāvagraha. Thus, avagraha is a stage of sensation. It is a stage of immediate experience in which we are merely aware of the object of stimulation without knowing anything more of the object. Avagraha, on the whole, is a stage of sensation. But, avagraha is not without the thought element. There can be no pure sensation. Sensations always have a derivative meaning for retentiveness and association operate from the very beginning of life. A sense impression or image has meaning in so far as it refers to something other than itself, in so far
93 Pramānamimāṁsā, I. 1. 29. and commontary.
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