Indian Antiquary Vol 59

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 192

176
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
SEPTEMBER, 1930
'I' is, thus, due to the identification of the Atman with its body, etc. Samkara, therefore, says: "Before the rise of discriminative knowledge, the nature of the Jiva, which is pure light, is non-discriminated from its limiting adjuncts, as body, senses, etc., and appears as possessing energies of seeing, eto."16
We are now in a position to understand the significance of the statement of Sankara and Vacaspati quoted before, viz., that coupling of the Alman and the body and organs, etc., are necessary for knowledge. The questions whether this mixing up is due to avidyd or not, whether the pure consciousness can possess activity or not, are metaphysical, and we need not spend time over them here, but the fact remains, as Vacaspati says, that "the subject must use the means of knowledge." "I see a tree' means that the subject uses the organ of eye and thereby sees the tree ; for if the subject ceases to have any connection with the eye, the eye, of itself, could not have seen the tree, as is found in the case of a man in a swoon, when self-consciousness goes down to the lowest limit. A man in sound sleep does not hear sounds, because the subject is in a very low degree of self-consciousness, and has no connection with the auditory organ. But the man coming to consciousness after rising from sleep or swoon, hears and sees-'I hear sound,' 'I see a tree. This shows that the subject must use his means of knowledge in order to gain knowledge. Similarly, in the case of inference, we need an effort to arrange the data and to draw a conclusion,
Now, how is it possible for the Jiva to use his organs, eto., unless he is self-conscious ? We see that when we wish, e.g., to touch a distant thing we stretch our hand towards it, and when the hand has touched the thing we feel the thing hard or soft. We should mark two important facts here-(1) when we stretch the hand we always think I stretch my hand,' or something like this, in which the 'I' is never absent ; (2) secondly, it is only after we have touched the thing that hardness or softness is perceived, so that our self-consciousness-the
I'-must precede the perception of touch, for before we can have the perception of touch, the self-consciousness is already there as we find in 'I stretch my hand.' There will perhaps be no objection to the first, for in all our activities we find that self-consciousness is neces. sarily found. It is not once or twice that we say "I taste,' 'I touch,' and so on. Even in cases of using our eyes and ears, where our activity seems to be least, the 'I' is present. When we use our tongue or hand we are palpably active, for the tongue and the hand have to be stretched; but in the case of eyes, ears and nose, the activity'eeems to vanish, for apparently we do not use them in the sense we use hand or tongue. But even there the activity is present, as is seen when we strain our eyes, ears or noee to see a distant Shing, to hear a low voice or to smell a mild smell, and we say my eye, ear and nose are strained,' meaning that I used them. We do not feel ourselves as active in seeing, hearing or emelling in the ordinary course, only because we have not to stretch them. Even in the case of tongue or hand, if any. body put sugar on our tongue or ice on our hand, we feel sweetness and cold, but not the activity of stretching the tongue or hand. We can, therefore, say that in the use of our organs of sense there is necessarily an activity, which may be felt or not, and the agent of activity is the 'I,' or, in other words, self-consciousness is necessary in the use of our organs.
Now let us come to the second point. Knowledge comes to us only when we use the organs, as we have seen a little before, and we have seen now that to use our organs self-consciousness is necessary. Our second statement that self-consciousnees must precede knowledge follows from a combination of these two conclusions. If using the organs of sense precedes knowledge, self-consciousness, which is a condition of using the organs, must precede knowledge. The statements of Sankara and Vacaspati, that knowledge is not possible without a coupling of the Alman and Andiman, thus amount to saying that without such coupling self-consciousness is not possible; without self-consciousnees the use of the instruments of knowledge is not possible, and lastly, without using the instruments of knowledge,
16 Brahmasutra-bhagya, 1. 3. 19.