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The Philosophy of Yamunācārya
[CH.
without the help of any other manifesting agency, now as well as during emancipation; for the manifestation of the self has always the sole form of "I"; and, if during emancipation the self manifests, it must do so as "I." From the sacred texts also we find that the emancipated sages, Vamadeva and Manu, thought of their own selves as the "I." Even God is not devoid of this notion of His personality as "I," as is attested by the Upanisad sayings, in which He declares: "I have created this world." The notion of "I" is false when it is identified with the body and other extraneous associations of birth, social rank, etc., and when it gives rise to pride and boastfulness. It is this kind of ahaṁkāra which has been regarded as false in the scriptures. The notion "I," when it refers to the self, is, indeed, the most accurate notion that we can have.
All our perceptions of pleasure and pain also are manifested as qualities of the "I," the self. The "I" manifests itself to itself and hence must be regarded as being of non-material stuff (ajada). The argument, that since the notion of "I" is taken along with knowledge (sahopalambha), knowledge alone exists, and that "I" is not different from it, may well be repudiated by turning the table and with the same argument declaring that "I" alone exists and that there is no knowledge. All persons experience that knowledge is felt to be as distinct from the "I," the knower, as the known object. To say that self is self-manifesting by nature is not the same thing as to say that the self is knowledge by nature; for the self is independent of knowledge; knowledge is produced as a result of the perceptual process involving sense-contact, etc.; the self is the knower, the "I," which knows things and thereby possesses knowledge.
The "I," the knower, the self, manifests itself directly by selfconsciousness; and hence those who have attempted to demonstrate the self by inference have failed to do so. Thus, the Naiyayikas think that the self is proved as that in which qualities such as knowledge, desire, pleasure, pain, etc., inhere. But, even though by such an inference we may know that there is something in which the qualities inhere, it cannot be inferred therefrom that this thing is the self in us. Since nothing else is found in which knowledge, willing, etc., might inhere, it may as well be argued that knowledge, etc., are not qualities at all, or that there is no law that qualities must necessarily inhere in a thing. They are regarded as gunas (qualities) only by their technical definition; and the Naiyayikas can accept these
