Key of Knowledge

SR No.: 006702
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1919
Total Pages: 1204
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

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968
TIIE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
is quite untenable philosophically, It has, however, largely entered into modern thought, and some sects lay stress on positing it by itself, describing it as the Unmanifested. The Hindu and the Christian views on this point bave already been discussed in the earlier chapters of this book, but the fact that Muslim theology bas taken the same view, will become clear on a perusal of the following abridged passage from the Philosophy of Islam':
"In the beginning was God just as He now is-without any addition or participation * * * * There is no addition to or subtraction from the Divine Essence-It is the same. In the first stage, Unity is real and diversity is relational * * * * It is a stage where imagination cannot be exercised. He is beyond all knowledge. In this stage the essence had overwhelmed the attributes. He was as it were engaged in Himself. Then there is tho awakening of His love for Himself. He wanted to see Himself. 'I was a hidden treasure,' in a Hadis it is said, and loved to be known, and created the world to be known. There is the awakening to His attributes. In the second stage, (Wahdat) four relations are found, Vajud (essenco), llm (knowledge of self), Nur (Light, i.e., dawning of the essence in the knowledge,--the Ego), and Shahud (observation of self). He becomes conscious-I am that I am.'"
It is needless to comment upon the impurity of the notion of tlie Unmanifest Absolute, since it is a pure abstraction like fluidity, or republic. In actual experience one never comes across fluidity, but only water, nor encounters à republic, but only men, institutions, and so forth,
The conception of God as Ishvara, 'the Word,' and the like, is the next to demand our attention. But we have fully shown in the ninth and the tenth chapters that in actual life there is nothing to correspond to these conception which are pure personifications.