Enlightened Vision of the Self

Author(s): Akalankadev, Devendra K Goyal
Publisher: Radiant Publishers New Delhi

Page 19

FOREWORD
of consciousness or the soul and maintains that jiwa or consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter, something like the inebriating power emerging from the mixing of certain ingredients. In other words, the so-called jiva or atman (soul) is nothing but a temporary product of material elements. It did not exist before birth; it will cease to exist after death. There is no life hereafter. To the Jains, the experience of knowing, feeling, and willing undeniably proves the existence of the Self.
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Satyashashan Pariksha of Vidyananda, the best exponent of Akalanka's philosophy, criticizes Charvaka materialism in the following words:
The materialist's denial of soul as an independent principle of consciousness goes against the law of causality. The nature of consciousness is radically different from matter and so it cannot be the product of material elements. The effect must be essentially homogeneous with the cause and reducible to the latter in turn. The law of causality demands that the cause and its effect must be mutually reducible. Consciousness is not reducible to matter and hence cannot be a material product. Moreover, the existence of soul is proved by self-intuition (sasamuedana). We feel pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, which presuppose a conscious substance as their substratum. The materialist cannot deny self-intuition. He must accept cognition as self-cognized in order to cognize the object. It cannot be admitted that the cognition is cognized by another cognition, because the second cognition would require a third, the third a fourth, and so on ad infinitum, leaving the object uncognized for ever. Nor can the materialist regard the cognition as cognized by inference, because he does not accept the validity of inference. He is therefore compelled to admit self-intuition, and consequently the existence of the self or soul as the substratum of that intuition.
Being radically different in nature from the material products, the soul must be eternal unlike the latter.... The material elements are known as external objects while consciousness is felt as internal. This argues their absolutely different nature. Moreover, it is a common experience that a new-born babe has desire to suck the