Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c11.s3.11

c11.s3.11

We need not suppose that all these powers were either claimed or enjoyed by all saints; the last is obviously the essential intuition, but the whole body of the potencies beginning with the celestial ear is given the style of super knowledge (*abhiññā*), and, with the prior members, of aggregate of intuition (*paññā-khandha*) or simply intuition or knowledge (*vijjā*).¹ Or, again, the wisdom of the saint is described as the eye of intuition (*paññā-cakkhu*) which ranks not merely above the heavenly eye—Ānanda had it but not the latter—but also above the eye of the law (*dhamma-cakkhu*), the technical term for entering on the path which leads to liberation.² We need not doubt that the possession of such powers was duly believed in by adepts, nor need we ascribe them to anything more wonderful than the hallucinations ³ which the meditations were certain to produce; that in the east men claim to-day to remember previous births aids in explaining the origin of such ideas; it confers no validity upon them.⁴