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160 : Śramana, Vol 58, No. 2-3/April-September 2007
Jainas consider it as absurd and say that this objection would have been valid if both the perception of the omniscient and the entire world were annihilated in the following moment. But both of these are ever-lasting or eternal, hence there is no absurdity.
Mīmāmsakas further argue that if an omniscient being treats both the prior non-existent (e.g. past) and posterior non-existence (e.g. future) simultaneously, it is wrong because both of them cannot co-exist together. For example, simultaneously birth and death of the same person cannot take place together or at a time a blue object is treated as blue and not as yellow. To this, Jainas reply that an object perceived as blue at a particular place and time and not always and in every case. So there is no contradiction.
It is further argued that if the omniscient being cognizes everything, he must also have the experience of attachment and aversion etc. and therefore will be influenced and contaminated by them. Consequently, he would cease to be omniscient because that attachment and aversion are obstructions to right cognition. Jainas say that mere knowledge of desires, aversions etc. is not sufficient to make a person tainted by them unless the self is transformed into the very mode of attachment etc. Besides, desires and aversions are produced by our impure mental states and senses and not by the self, which is perfect. Knowledge is different from active participation.
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To conclude, Omniscience in Jainism is not only the perfection of the cognitive faculty of the self but also its ultimate end. It is spiritual state of eternal bliss and the culmination of the religious aspiration. This state can be compared with the state of Jivanamukti of Samkhya and Vedanta. Similarly, Alaukika-pratyakṣa of Nyāya School, Asamprajñātasamādhi of Yoga, Turiyāvastha of Upanisads and Radhakrishnan's Religious experience have very clear implications of omniscience, although they partly encroach on the realm of the religious mysticism. Excepting the Mīmāmsakas and the Carvaks, all Indian systems believe in the possibility of human omniscience, however, the Śramanic culture insistence on human omniscience more than others to grant infallibility to their prophets, because on this depend the very life and death of their systems. In
