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THE JAINA DOCTRINE OF RELEASE tained. The need of experience is dissolved in infinite knowlcdge. This is the positive meaning of the term and state of kaivalya.
One is reminded of the protest of the modern French poet and philosopher, Paul Valéry, in his novel, Monsieur Teste. "There are people," he writes, “who feel that their organs of sense are cutting them off from reality and essence. This fecling then poisons all their sense perceptions. What I see blinds me. What I hear makes me deal. What I know makes me unknowing. In so far and inasmuch as I know, I am ignorant. This light before me is no more than a kind of blindfold and conccals either a darkness or a light that is more.... More what? Here the circle closes with a strange reversal: knowledge, a cloud obscuring the essence of being; the shining moon, like darkness or a cataract on the eye! Take it all away, so that I may scel" B6 This outcry, together with the modern theory of knowledge from which it arises, is remarkably close to the old idea to which Jainism holds: that of the limiting force of our various faculties of human understanding.
But the Tirthankaras have lost even the faculty of feeling; for this tou belongs but to the texture of the flesh, the suffering garment of blood and nerves. Hence they are completely indifferent to what goes on in the stratified worlds that they have left beneath them. They are not touched by any prayer, nor moved by any act of worship. Neither do they ever descend to
45 "Il y a des personnages qui sentent que leurs sens les séparent du réel, de l'être. Cc sens en cux infecte leurs autres sens.
"Ce que je vois m'aveugle. Ce que j'entends m'assourdit. Ce cn quoi je sais, cela me rend ignorant. J'ignore en tant et pour autant que je sais. Cette illumination devant moi est un bandcau et recouvre ou une nuit ou une lumière plus.... Plus quoi? Ici le cercle se ferme, de cet étrange renversement: la connaissance, comme une nuage sur l'être; le mond brillant, comme une taie et opacité.
"Otez toutc chose que j'y voie." (Paul Valéry, Monsieur Teste, nouvelle édition, Paris, 1946, pp. 60-61.)
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