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Studies in Indian Philosophy
adverse effect they had on the future condition of those who believed in them. He also added that the Tathāgata knew also other things far beyond and having that knowledge he discovered the way of liberation and set himself free. And those other things are 'profound, difficult to understand, tranquilizing, sweet, not to be grasped by mere logic, subtle comprehensible by the wise.'+
Limitation of Media of Knowledge
Buddha did not deny the validity of sensory or extrasensory perceptions as media of knowledge. He himself acquired extrasensory powers and has affirmed that with such powers one can perceive things, even of the past, as they were. But he has also warned against the fact that the things so pre. sented in extrasensory perceptions may not always lead to right inference unless one is objective, free from all attacbments including attachment to one's ideas and beliefs, likes and dislikes, and so on. The Brāhmaṇas and Samanas, who started with the position that continuity to be a fact, something eternal as substratum or substrata should underlie the ever-changing phenomenal world, inferred the eternality of the soul and the world inductively from the continuous chain of births and deaths running into the past. But the totality of finites is not infinite; going back perceiving births and deaths, however countless in number, of beings would not prove the eternality of the soul and the infinitude of the world, would pot lead to the ultimate beginning of the soul and the world. To Buddha, the continuous chain of births and deaths in the past simply suggests the beginninglessness of the process of becoming. It is stated in the scriptures that incalculable is the beginning of the process of becoming, unknown is the extreme end of the process of becoming of individuals working under ignorance and craving. 5 From the continuity of the chain of births and deaths of individuals, the inference of the eterna. lity of soul as noumenal substratum is a fallacious inductive leap.
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