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The General Conception of Knowledge
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only a minute spot in the body and thus, cannot experience pain or pleasure occuring simultaneously in different parts. If it is as big as the body it occupies, it would become perishable. It will have to increase or decrease according to the size of the body, for adjustment. Knowledge oj the Self
According to Vaiseșika the self is the object of inference? only. It argues that the existence of the organs of senses and their appropriate objects imply a distinct knower who can use them. The activity of organs must have an agent to account for it, for every instrument requires an agent to handle it; as for instance; the axe requires a cutter in the act of cutting. Some of the Naiyāyikas hold that the common self is capable of being perceiveda also while the supreme soul is only inferrible. The common soul is also inferrible as substratum of the eight qualities of consciousness, pleasure, pain etc. The Self and Consciousness
The qualities of knowledge etc. are accidental phenomena appearing in the physical bodies only. There is nothing in the intrinsic nature of the self which is spiritual as that word is ordinarily understood. The point in respect of which it differs from other entities, whether atomic or all-pervading, is this, that it comes to possess knowledge, feeling and volition; while the rest can never do so. In other words, the self is the basis of psychic life, but that life is only adventitious to it. The knowledge or experience here is neither essence nor a constant feature of the self, but that it only appears when certain external factors, none of which is spiritual, cooperate. It will be seen that the Nyāya system in this regard is not far from materialism.
All the special qualities of soul disappear in the state of 1. Kārikāvall, 50; Prasastapādabhāsya 69; Nyāyakandall, p. 71 2. Nyāyamañjarī p. 429-34
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