Structure and Functions of Soul in Jainism

Author(s): S C Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 71

One can be conscious of his psychic functions directly; and therefrom the existence of the self is deduced. Max Müller remarks "There is in man something that can be called Atman or self. It requires no proof, but if a proof were wanted it would be found in the fact that no one can say, 'I am not (I being the disguised atman) for he who would say So, would himself be not, or would not be." "Mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, all else is remote inference." It may be argued that it is always the experience of some psychic functions which we get in selfconsciousness. We never come across, as Hume held, the substance of the soul. We shall consider Hume's position at a later stage. At present it will suffice to say that, if one accepts the substance of matter, the substance of the soul cannot be denied. We certainly draw a distinction between the functions of the soul and matter, and so they must have been determined by two different substances. The difficulty of assigning an object of self-experience arises out of the fact that we want to perceive the soul in the same manner as we would see a piece of matter. The substances of matter and soul are so different that the ways of their comprehension are not the same. Matter is comprehended in terms of its attributes and modes, so also a soul must be known in terms of its attributes and modes. The feelings of pleasure and pain, the cognition and other psychic phenomena are the terms by which the soul can be known. These are the forms of its existence, and we can know it only in terms of the forms of its existence. As these forms of the soul's existence are different from those which we find in matter, we come to the conclusion that the soul must be a different substance from matter. Even the protoplasm of the materialist has been shown to be insufficient to explain the phenomenon of consciousness. Bausfield rightly replaces protoplasm by psychoplasm which he holds to be
1. Max Mular: Indian Philosophy, vol. II, p. 50
2. Eddington: Science and the Unseen World, p. 24
The Soul: 67