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The Soul and Consciousness :: 111
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rather feeling, a state as yet without either an object or subject....Feeling is immediate experience without distinction and relation in itself. It is a unity, complex but without relations. And there is here no difference between the state and its contents, since, in a word, the experience and the experienced are one. And a distinction between cognition and other aspects of our nature is not yet developed. Feeling is not one differentiated aspect, but it holds all aspects in one. Modern psychology distinguishes between the physical stimulation and sensation. The psychosis consequent upon the first contact between the mind and the object marks the beginning of the perceptive process. "The simplest mind we can legitimately conceive is, then, one which would respond to a sense impression not by merely having a sensation, but by an act of knowing; this act we could only describe as becoming aware of something there, an object in space, no matter how completely undefined the nature of the object as thought of and the nature of its spatial relations. Such a mind, of simplest possible structure, must be conceived as consisting of one cognitive disposition linked with a single conative disposition. Such a mind would respond to every sense impression that affected it at all (no matter what its nature) with simple awareness of something there and a vague undirected impulse of appetition, of striving towards the object." It appears that this elementary process of perception is not distinct from knowing. Sometimes a similar view which identifies conation with the indistinct apprehension of the object, technically known as vyañjanāvagraha in Jaina philosophy, is also maintained. But the general opinion of the Jaina thinkers is that conation forms no part of the cognitive process. Vădideva Sūri is of opinion that conation marks a stage prior to that of avagraha (indeterminate sensuous knowledge). It is like the stirring of consciousness on the contact between
1. Bradley: Essays on Truth and Reality, p. 194
2. Mc Dougall: An Outline of Psychology, p. 260
3. Indracandra: Epistemology of Jaina Agamas (unpublished),
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