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A SOURCB-BOOK IN JAINA PHILOSOPHY
trusts his reasons and not the essence knows that everything flies and nothing is. Considered from the rational point of view we can say, impermanence is the essence of reality. David Hume also maintained that permanence is an appearance and change is reality. The illusion of permanence is due to the senses but reason knows that nothing is permanent. Whenever I try to catch 'myself', I stumble upon this or that perception. I do not find myself as permanent substance. Williams James propounded a theory of the stream of consciousness. Every passing thought is itself a thinker.3 Bergson enunciated the doctrine of Elan vital as the very essence of life and the universe. The Elān is the very source of the world and everything is the manifestation of the Elān.4
The abhedavādin affirms that reality is one, and difference is an illusion. The diversity and difference in life are due to our ignorance. The fundamental principle of the universe is one. It is; and the diversifications of the One are only an appearance. This view-point has been presented in the Upanişadas and by the thinkers of the Advaita Vedānta. The Absolutists, as they are called, posit the One as the uitimate reality because that is the consummation and the limit of the gradual process of the synthetic approach. The one is the perfection and duality is imperfection. This is the cardinal principle of the Advaita Vedāntu. Vijnanavāda and Śünyavāda have presented similar points of view.
In the Western thought, we get traces of the development of monistic philosophy from the time of Greek thinkers like Permenides. Permenides said that reality is and it does not become. That which becomes, that which changes, is not real. There must be something that changes. It is the eternal principle. It is the one principle which remains the central point of the changes. It is the sat in the language of Indian philosophy and change is the asat. He said, 'Ex nihilo nihil fit.' From the sat, you cannot get another sat, because it is the reality. That which becomes, must come out of that wbich it was not. If it were, it would not become and there is no problem of
The illusion of permanence is ascribed to the senses. It is by reason that we arise to the knowledge of the law of becoming." 2 David Hume, Ibid. 3 William James : Principles of Psychology, 4 Bergson, Henry : Creative Evolution.
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