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Jaina Eschatology :: 213
Now the question is whether the pure or the impure faculties of the soul are affected by the operative karmas. If there are pure faculties of the destructive type, they cannot be obscured by any karmas. If there are pure faculties of the subsidential type, they can be obscured by the operation of those very karmas only which will arise later on. From this it follows that the operative manifestations are nothing but manifestations doubly affected by the karmas. Sensuous knowledge is a mixed type of manifestation. It presupposes the covering of the kevalajñānāvaraṇa without which it cannot be effective. The kavalajñānāvaraṇa is not totally destructive to the attribute of knowledge but is so only with respect to some traits of knowledge. Even the wrong type of sensuous knowledge, i.e., the kumati has been enumerated among the mixed manifestations, while one more manifestation, i.e., ajñāna (non-cognition) depending upon the knowledge attribute has been conceived and designated as the operative manifestation.1 As regards the identity of the manifestation of non-cognition it is said: "Among the three types of knowledge (i.e., mati, śruta and avadhi) the non-cognition is destructive-subsidential, it is never operative. The noncognition which is conceived to be operative is void, because, the body is unconscious."2 Akalanka takes non-cognition in the sense of the worng type of cognition and calls it a destructive subsidential manifestation."3 Again non-cognition as an operative manifestation has been identified with the absence of knowledge. But as the total absence of knowledge in not possible in any of the living beings, non-cognition must be taken only in a relavtive sense. Non-cognition cannot be a mode of the knowledge attribute. It can only be a trait of the actualized power for cognition. Every living being possesses a positive power for cognition. This very power evinces non-cognition in the form of its own limitation. So we find nothing like an independent mode which could
1. Umāsvāti: Tattvartha-sütra, 2.6
2. Rājamala, Pañcādhyāyi, verses 1018-19
3. Cf. Akalanka: Rajavārtika, 2.6.5 4. Ibid., p. 109
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