Conclusion 4

[This is part of Bhoja’s commentary following the previous pages and the final Sūtra 4.33]

It is alleged by the Naiyāyikas and others that soul is sentient, because it becomes so by contact with sentience, and that sentience is produced by the union of soul with its mind. They say that desire, knowledge, exertion and other attributes are produced by the contact of soul during its working condition with mind, and through those qualities, the soul knows itself to be the knower, the agent, and the experiencer. In the state of liberation (mokṣa), when false notions are suppressed on the suppression of the residua (doṣa) which are produced by them, there results an absolute annihilation of the specific attributes, knowledge, &c., and soul is acknowledged to reside in its own essential form. This, however, is not a correct assumption, for what would you accept to be the peculiar soulness of the soul in that condition? (You cannot urge that pervasion, immensity, and eternity are its constituents, for) the qualities of pervasion and the rest pertain to ether and others, and to differentiate it from them, some determinate form must have to be admitted. You may say that the specific character of soul is its own speciality (or kind to which it belongs). But this cannot be urged, for such speciality exists in all things, (i.e., everything has its specific distinction as a particular kind). It is necessary, therefore, to admit some other differentiation of the soul, apart from speciality, and this can be effected by admitting its supervisorship, from its being of the form of sentience, and in no other way.

As to what is believed by the Mīmāṃsakas about soul being both worker and work, the position is not tenable. They believe that soul is indicated by the use of the word I, and by the use of I, both the agency and the objectivity of soul are included, (i.e., soul is the ego, and nothing else can be ego, and the soul being the ego, the ego must include both soul and work, for in knowing the soul work must appear to be soul and no other). But this cannot result, because they are of contradictory natures. Agency implies him who measures, while work means that which is to be measured or proved, and the assumption of these two antagonistic qualities cannot be effected in one at the same time. When two antagonistic qualities are assumed, then there can be no unity, as positive and negative, and so are agency and objectivity antagonistic. Should it be said there is no antagonism between agency and objectivity, but there is between agency and instrumentality, we deny it, because the assumption of antagonistic qualities is the same (in either case). Rejecting then the theory of perceivable by the use of I, we hold the soul’s supervisorship as proved, and thence its sentienceness.

The theory of those who hold soul to be finite, defined by the body, and mutable, because it is reckoned among matter, tumbles down as soon as it is started. By the admission of mutability, the sentience form of soul is destroyed, and in the absence of its sentience form, how can there be any spirituality in soul? Hence those who desire to uphold the spirituality of soul must admit its sentience form, and that is its supervisorship.

Notes:

[This is the theory of the Ārhatas or Jains. (Cf. Cowell and Gough’s Sarvadarśana-saṅgraha.]