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Jaina View of Life
immediate apprehension of the self. But the self can never be known as object of knowledge. It is only to be known as a subject. It is revealed by triputa samvit.
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The Jaina holds with Prabhakara that cognition is always apprehended by the self. Cognition reveals itself, the self and its object. Every act of cognition cognizes itself, the cognizing subject and the cognized object. But the Jaina denies that consciousness alone is self-luminous. He regards self as nonluminous. Self is the subject of internal perception. When I feel that I am happy I have a distinct and immediate apprehension of the self as an object of internal perception, just as pleasure can be perceived though it is without form. "Oh Gautama", said Mahāvīra, "the self is pratyakşa even to you. The soul is cognizable even to you.48 Again, unlike the view of Prabhakara, the Jainas hold that it is the object of perception, and it is manifested by external and internal perception. To the question 'how can the subject be an object of perception?", the Jaina replies that whatever is experienced is an object of perception.
William James made a distinction between the empirical self, the me, and the transcendental self, the I. The self is partly the known and partly the knower, partly object and partly subject. The empirical ego is the self as known, the pure ego is the knower. "It is that which at any moment is conscious." Whereas the me is only one of the things which it is conscious of. But this thinker is not a passing state. It is something deeper and less mutable.49 Prof. Ward holds that the pure self is always immanent in experience, in the sense that experience, without the experient will be unintelligible. It is also transcendental, in the sense that it can never be the object of our experience. The Jainas were aware that consciousness of self is not possible by ordinary cognition. Therefore, they said, it is due to internal perception.
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48. Ganadharavāda, Ch. I.
49. James (William): Principles of Psychology, Chap, X. 50. Ward (James): Psychological Principles, p. 380 (1920).
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