Some Problems in Jaina Psychology

Author(s): T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: Karnatak University Dharwar

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SOME PROBLEMS IN JAINA PSYCHOLOGY
none of the three positions is untenable.21 Those who maintained simultaneous occurrence looked at it from the empirical point of view. Jinabhadra resorted to the rjusutra, analytic point of view, while Siddhasena looked at it from the sarngrahā, or synthetic point of view.
Apart from the logical and epistemological implications of this problem it has a great psychological significance. The experience of the kevalin is not possible for us to know. However, it is necessary to analyse the experience in its psychological aspect. The discussion of the simultaneity and the successive occurrence of jñāna and darśana in the case of the kevalin throws light on the fundamental nature of experience in the jñāna and the darśana aspect. Experience is concrete, it expresses itself in the analytical and synthetic aspect. Immediate experience is a factor in the concrete psychosis. We also get the analytic experience which is aided by intellective factors. Jñāna and darśana have been very often talked of as knowledge about, and knowledge of acquaintance. But knowledge of acquaintance is not a proper phrase for darsana, because knowledge of acquaintance is a single form of cognition. It is analogous to sensation. But darśana is not to be identified with the primitive and the original form of cognition. It is higher, and yet simple. It may be referred to as intuitive experience which apprehends reality directly in a moment of experience. For instance, we very often get the solution of a mathematical problem in a flash. Parraudin, a Swiss hunter, conceived the idea that the huge blocks of rocks had been transported by glacial action. He got this as a sudden flash of insight. It was later proved by more plodding scientists. There has been a good deal of discussion regarding the knowledge of acquaintance or simple apprehension' in modern psychology. L. T. Hobhouse recognizes simple apprehension'. James talks of the knowledge of acquaintance'. Hobhouse says that thought relations never constitute a content of immediate experience. "The consciousness in which we are directly or immediately aware of the content present to us a state which I venture to call apprehension, is a primitive underived act of knowledge". Prof. Stout speaks of immediate experience in similar language. Simple apprehension is the term which seems most suitable for the presence of an object to consciousness without indicating any more special relation in which the mind may stand to this object.22 Bertrand Russell also, in spite of the frequent use of the phrase knowledge by acquaintance', means by it the same kind of experience as Hobhouse and Prof, Stout meant by 'simple apprehension'. It is better called 'acquaintance' and not 'knowledge based on acquaintance'. We shall say that 'we have acquaintance with anything of which we are directly aware, without intermediacy of any process of inference, '23 or any knowledge of
21 Jñanabinduprakarana, p. 33. 22 Stout (G.F.) Manual of Psychology: 3rd Ed., p. 103. 23 Russell (B.) Problems of Philosophy, p. 73.