PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: A contemporary introduction

110 CONCEPTIONS OF ULTIMATE REALITY

In sum: numerically identical things undergo change of qualities; change of one
thing (quality) presupposes permanence of another thing (substance).
The same text adds that: “The self’s essence is life.. The distinctive
characteristic of self is attention.. Those with minds are knowers.”^20 Among
things or substances are some whose essence is being alive and being capable of
being liberated or being alive and being incapable of being liberated.^21 Any such
thing is conscious or capable of giving attention to objects of experience, and self-
conscious or aware of itself as agent and as being affected by other things. These
remarks serve as background to the religious point of the doctrines just noted:

That which should be grasped by self-discrimination is “I” from the

real point of view.^22 The soul has the nature of knowledge, and the

realization of this nature is Nirvana; therefore one who is desirous of

Nirvana must meditate on self-knowledge.^23

According to Jainism, knowledge of the nature of the self or person is
achievable through meditative self-awareness; such knowledge is constitutive
of achieving enlightenment. The most desirable modification – namely,
enlightenment – neither changes the nature of the self or person or jiva nor
removes his capacity for awareness or his status as a knower:

After the soul is released, there remain perfect right-belief, perfect

right-knowledge, perfect perception, and the state of having accom-

plished all.^24

Here, persons are enduring self-conscious substances, retaining numerical
identity over time and retaining identity as individual persons in their
enlightened state. Thus in the Jaina Sutras^25 one reads that when the
Venerable Ascetic Mahavira had become enlightened, he was

omniscient and comprehending all objects; he knew and saw all

conditions of the world, of gods, men, and demons: whence they

come, whither they go, whether they are born as men or animals.

. or become gods or hell-beings.. the ideas, the thoughts of their
minds, the food, doings, desires, the open and secret deeds of all
living beings in the whole world; he the Arhat, for whom there is
no secret, knew and saw all conditions of all living beings in the
world, what they thought, spoke, or did at any moment.

Mahavira – founder of Jainism and achiever of enlightenment – is conceived
as being the same person post-enlightenment as he was preenlightenment.
Nor does post-mortem achievement of full and final enlightenment/nirvana
alter this.