Spiritual Awakening and other Essays

Author(s): Kamalchand Sogani
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 155

THE AVADHI AND MANAḤPARYAYA TYPES OF SUPERSENSUOUS COGNITION
The Avadhi and Manaḥparyaya types of cognition form part of Jainist epistemology. They are not our ordinary ways of perception through sense-organs but are completely and radically different from them. Ordinary persons and even some thinkers and scientists look at these ways of perception with scepticism. To them, the postulation of such ways of knowing is just dogmatic assertions without any scientific basis. The Jainist saint-philosophers seem to be so sure of the phenomena of supersensuous cognition that they have unhesitatingly called it Pratyakṣa' (immediate and direct). This is in contrast with the Parokṣa (mediate and indirect) types of knowledge which are given to us through the sense organs and the normal instrumentality of the mind. The contention of the Jainists is that knowledge is the essential function of the soul; so it should be able to know without the intervention of sense-organs and the brain. But somehow this inherent capacity of the soul has been obstructed; hence, we need the spectacles of sense-organs for the occurrence of knowlege. Tatia remarks, "Knowledge is as independent as existence. As existence does not depend upon some other existence for its existence so knowledge does not depend upon something else for its knowledge. Knowledge is there in its own right as its objects are there in their own right." If we reflect a little, we shall find that knowing independently of sense-organs is our birth right and our dependence on