What is Jainism

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

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SACRED PHILOSOPHY
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to be affected by matter. As Jainism points out, the differences in the degree of conscious manifestation among different orders of beings as well as the liability of an unemancipated soul to be affected by matter are due to the force known as Jñánávarniya Karma, which means a definite group of forces that tend to curtail the knowing faculties of the soul. Jainism also points out that these knowledgeobstructing forces are generated by the fusion of spirit and matter, both of which are real substances, as stated before.
The supposition that there can be no soul unless it remain in one and the same condition under all circumstances is childish, and has never been advanced by true philosophy. We thus find nothing in these facts of observation which may be said to be inconsistent with the spiritual hypothesis. On the contrary, it is evident that materialism has failed to understand the nature of consciousness which it has hastily declared to be the fundamental property of an atom of matter. For neither the phenomena of higher consciousness nor the supernormal faculties of clairvoyance and the like can be conceived as having sprung from a primitive nucleus in an atom of matter. We cannot regard these higher manifestations as purely magnified versions of the supposed atomic consciousness. They differ both with respect to quality as well as quantity; and the differences are such as cannot possibly be regarded as due to augmentation or intensification of the original nucleus. The most pronounced materialists have not associated atomic sensitiveness with either smell or sight or hearing, and the wildest conjecture fails to guess how these faculties could arise by mere augmentation or magnifying of the barest susceptibility to sensations of touch which is all that the atomic consciousness is supposed to be capable of. There is not an iota of evidence to support the proposition that internal qualitative changes can be wrought by mere increase of intensity or bulk, or even by external quantitative arrangements or regroupings of individuals or units of a given substance. To bring about such qualitative changes two or more substances or things with different* properties will have to be combined and compounded
* It is not to be supposed that the case of the four natural elements, fire, water and the like, constitutes an exception to this rule, for while it is true that all atoms are alike in respect of their general qualities as matter, they are not alike with
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