The Truth

Author(s): O P Jain
Publisher: Veer Nirvan Granth Prakashan Samiti

Page 30

THE SOUL
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present and all that everyone shall ever know in the future. In other words, every soul is potentially omniscient though the actual knowledge it may possess at any particular time of its career may, owing to the influence of admixture (or impurity) be very very poor or negligible. We know that intellectual lucidity is obtained by the removal of mental cloudiness, opacity, dullness or fog, which is like a dirt over a mirror and arises from the union of matter with soul substance and which tends to curtail the functions of the soul."
4.4 Prof. Bowne has very clearly described the process of knowledge, in his book on Metaphysics, pp. 407-410, thus :
The effect of all external objects is conveyed to the brain through nervous impulses. In the dark chamber of the skull, the object is out of picture and nervous signs are the raw material of all knowledge of the outer world. Knowledge has not yet appeared unless these signs are interpreted. We, therefore, need an interpreter who shall read back these signs into their object meaning. “But that interpreter, again, must implicitly contain the meaning of the Universe within itself, and these signs are really but excitations which cause the soul to unfold what is within itself. In as much as by common consent, the soul communicates into the outer world only through these signs, and never comes nearer to the object than such signs can bring it, it follows that the principles of interpretation must be in the mind itself and that the resulting construction is primarily only an expression of the mind's own nature. All reaction is of this sort, it expresses the nature of the reacting agent, and knowledge comes under the same head."
According to an article in Daily Telegraph of London dated 30.10.34, Dr. James Collier says “the tendency of modern neurology. is more and more to regard the brain as a telephone exchange, with a far greater number of alternative connections than was hitherto supposed. What then, of the mind in its relation to the brain. There is yet no answer. But it may perhaps be said that neurology is tending, if only temporarily and tentatively, to regard the brain less as its residence than its instrument.”
4.5 The analysis made so far shows that the substance of consciousness is indivisible and as such indestructible. The same reason which proves that matter is eternal, also establishes the eternity