Some Problems in Jaina Psychology

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

Page 60

THE JAINA THEORY OF UPAYOGA
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all our wishes and ideas, although the example was meant to explain the process of avagraha. Buddhist psychology recognizes the unconscious life. It is called vidhimutta, while vidhicitta is the waking consciousness. The two are divided by a threshold of consciousness, manodvära. Similarly, bhāvānga subjectively viewed is subconscious existence, though objectively it is sometimes taken to mean nirvāņa. 49 Mrs. Rhys Davids says that the consciousness is only an intermittent series of psychic throbs associated with a living organism beating out their coming-to-know through one brief span of life. 50 Similarly, the idea of the unconscious is implicit in the conception of the four states of consciousness in the various schools of Indian thought. In the Mandūk yopanisad we get a description of waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep, and the highest stage, turīya. In the dreaming and dreamless states of sleep there is the implicit awareness of the self. 51 All the orthodox systems of Indian thought accept this distinction of the levels of consciousness. This implies the presence of the unconscious state of which we are not at the moment aware.
In modern psychology, the idea of the unconscious underwent modifications at the hands of Jung. Jung used the word unconscious in a wider sense. He made a distinction between the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious contains repressed wishes, forgotten memories and all that is learned unconsciously, Deeper than the personal unconscious is the collective or racial unconscious, the common groundwork of humanity out of which each individual develops his personal and unconscious life. The collective unconscious is inherited in the structure of the organism including the brain structure which predisposes the individual to think and act as the human race has thought and acted through countless generations. The collective unconscious includes the instincts and also the archetypes. Archetypes are the primordial ways of thinking submerged in the waking life. An archetype becomes an idea when it is made conscious. The new discoveries in science and the creative work of scientists arise out of this treasure-house of primordial images. 52 There is nothing to prevent us from thinking that certain archetypes exist even in animals. They are grounded in the peculiarities of the living organism itself; therefore, they are direct expressions of life whose nature cannot be further explained.
The doctrine of karma presented by Indian thinkers and systematically worked out by the Jainas may be aptly compared to the collective or racial unconscious of Jung, more specially of the archetypes of the collective unconscious, although the karma theory has a metaphysical 49 Radhakrishnan (S): Indian Philosophy, II Edn., Vol. I, p. 408 (f. note). 50 Rhys Davids (Mrs.): Buddhist Paychology, p. 116 (1936). 51 Mändūkyopanisad, 2. 7. 52 Jung (C.G.): Two Essays on Analytical Psychology: Tr. from German by R.F.S. Hull,
p. 67-68 (1953).