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SOME PROBLEMS IN JAINA PSYCHOLOGY
physical structure (dravendriya), and the psychic function (bhāvendriya), has great psychological significance. The physical part is the organ itself. It has its subdivisions. It can be compared to the modern physiological analysis of the sense organs. The bhāvendriya is divided into two parts: labdhi and upayoga. Labdhi is the manifestation of specific sense experience, and upayoga is the psychic force, the horme, which determines the specific experience.
The problem of the contact of the sense organs with the external object is psychologically important, although it has a great epistemological bearing. The Jainas maintain that the visual organ, like the mind, is aprāpyakāri, because it does not come into direct physical contact with the object. The other four sense organs have direct physical contact with the object. Therefore they are prāpyakāri. But modern scientific analysis of the sense organ of sight shows that we should suppose that there is some form of contact of the eye with the object through the medium of light.
The Jaina analysis of the sense qualities coming from the various sense organs has also great psychological importance. According to the Jainas, the visual sense quality is classed into five types of colour. Touch is of eight types, and smell is of two. There are five types of taste. There are seven fundamental sounds. Comparison with the modern analysis of sense qualities shows that the Jaina analysis has a psychological basis although not based on experimental investigation.
Thus, the soul is the experiencing agent. It gets two types of experience the sensory experience and the extra-sensory experience. The sensory experience is empirical experience gained through the sense organs and the mind. It is indirect. The extra-sensory experience is supernormal experience. The soul gets it directly without the help of the sense organs and the mind.
Sense Perception
The Jaina analysis of sense perception is as complex and it is significant. The contact of the sense organs with the object, except in the case of the visual sense, is just a remote condition like time and space. The sense perception of a particular object does, in fact, involve psychic factors. The removal of psychic impediments in the destruction and subsidence of the knowledge-obscuring karmas is a necessary factor in the sense perception of an object. It is a negative condition. Selective attention is a positive psychic factor. It may be compared to the mental set of the western psychologists.
The Jaina description of the stages of sense perception is a significant contribution to the psychology of perception, although it gives a predominantly epistemological picture. According to the Jainas, sense
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