Kailashchandra Shastri Abhinandan Granth

SR No.: 012048
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Babulal Jain
Publisher: Kailashchandra Shastri Abhinandan Granth Prakashan Samiti Rewa MP
Publication Year: 1980
Total Pages: 630
Language: Hindi, English, Sanskrit
Classification: Smruti_Granth & Articles
File Size: 17 MB

Page 550

When Descartes, e. g., thought of extention and consciousness as substances he was, as Spinoza later suggested, talking of attributes or was merely abstracting, i. e., distinguishing extentional and consciousness aspects of experience, but was thinking that he was dividing (or classifying) the substances, into two. But dividing substance having extension into living and non-living substances is quite different from classifying the concepts of extension and consciousness (without extension) and then thinking that consciousness without extension was one kind of substance and extension was another kind of substance. In experience we do come across the living beings and nonliving things. But however minute a living being may be our experience always tells us that it is always determined by extension. That we are not able to see the extension of it by our naked eyes, does not prove that there is no extension determining these substances. One has to admit that the language Aņoủ Aniyān etc. is the language of extension or space. The problem which arises here is that how there can be a Sanyoga-external contact between something that is extensional and something that is extensionless. People of various schools including Jainism must have noticed this difficulty and that is why the concept of Linga-Deha or KāraṇaDeha must have been introduced. It goes without saying that Deha suggests that although consciousness was different from body, it still had extension. But if this is admitted it is a tacit admission of the fact that the division Jiva and Ajiva was a division of matter, i. e., existence having extension, into non-living and living, and from this it would follow that Jain philosophers were primarily concerned with dividing or classifying the world into extentional but conscious and extentional but nonconscious world, and not into extentional and nonextentional world. My contention is that in a physical analysis or division it is never possible to divide the world into something that is extensional and nonextensional. When we try to talk of extensional and non-extensional and also identify extensional with nonconscious or Ajiva and nonextentional with conscious or Jiva we are, as a matter of fact, abstracting, conceptualizing, logicizing and only mistaking a logical analysis for a physical division.
Of course a problem would arise here : When we are talking of a Living being, we know that it is determined by birth and death. In a state after death consciousness or livingness disappears and it makes us think that it has gone away. We forget that 'has gone away' is a metaphor and if it is not used in a metaphorical way it would only belong to the language of space. But we simultaneously hold the belief that (a) it belongs to the language of space and (b) it does not belong to the language of space. We simply overlook that to hold two such beliefs together is a contradiction. But holding such beliefs becomes possible because they are held in two separate chambers of consciousness without any communication between them. Of course, one will have to explain the phenomenon of exit or vanishing of life. But saying that life is a separate substance and it goes away at the time of death is not offering a real explanation of the phenomenon, Space and a thing in space cannot be separated
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