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96
SOME PROBLEMS IN JAINA PSYCHOLOGY
as it enables us to think of the object. In experiencing a sensation, an object is brought before the mind. The sensation of yellow carries with it the thought of something yellow.94 This leads us to the next stage called ihā. It is associative integration. In this stage of integrative experience, we do not get the full experience of the object in the form of cognition of the determinate nature of the object in its fullness. In this, we do not form a judgment. In the stage of avāya, we get the perceptual judgment. In this stage, sense impressions are interpreted, and meaning is attached to the experience. We get perceptual judgment in the form: 'this is a red rose'. The implicit presence of the thought element in sensation gets expression and a concrete experience is formed. According to the Jainas, the perceptual experience which they sometimes call avagraha in general, needs to be retained. Otherwise, it would not be complete. Retentiveness is, in some form, an indispenesable condition of mental development. Our subsequent experience depends on the capacity to retain the perceptual cognition. This capacity of retention differs with different individuals. A completed perceptual experience would be possible with all the four stages co-operating. This is the concrete psychosis called perception. As it was pointed out earlier, it is sometimes referred to as avagraha. Thā, avāya and dhāraņā have already been shown to be cases of avagraha. But such identification of the other processes with avagraha was not universally accepted. Jinabhadra says that they are cases of avagraha only by courtesy, upacāreņa.
The Jainas have given an exhaustive description of the four stages of avagraha, perceptual experience, so far discussed. Each of them is of six types, as they arise from the five sense organs and the mind. Again, vyañjanāvagraha is of four types only. Thus there would be twenty-eight forms of perceptual cognition. Each of the twenty-eight forms, again, is of twelve types according to the nature of the object they can have. Therefore, the Jainas have mentioned that there are three-hundred and thirty-six types of sense experience, matijñāna or abhinibodhika-jñāna. This eleborate classification has no psychological significance, although it has logical and mathematical interest. The Jaina logicians were fond of fabulous mathematical calculations. This is found in their elaborate classification of karma as given in the Gommatasāra: Karma Kānda. Glasenapp in his Doctrine of Karma in Jainism, has given a detailed analysis of this division. The same tendency must have inspired the Jaina logicians to give such an elaborate classification of avagraha.
94 Stout (G. F.): Manual of Psychology, p. 193.
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