Sacred Philosophy

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

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(e.g., increase of animation and consciousness by the use of such things as musk and coffee), and how, in its own turn, it is capable of affecting matter and conditions dependent on it, as the curing of disease by purely mental suggestion or will
power.
As for consciousness, it is an inalienable property of spirit, though liable to be affected by matter, as already observed. This is tantamount to saying that knowledge is the very nature of spirit (jiva). If any one will put to himself the simple question: what is knowledge? he will readily agree with me that there can be no knowledge apart from or independently of a knowing being. For knowledge is not a reflection of an object in consciousness, like a reflection in a mirror, nor anything other than a sense of awareness, which may be occasioned by the instrumentality of an external object, but which is totally different from all objects of knowledge or their reflections in the ordinary sense of the term. Reflection will show that the sense of awareness which we term consciousness is an inner, subjective, psychic state that is best described by the term feeling of awareness, so that my knowledge of a thing is my feeling of awareness of its presence or existence. As such, my consciousness of an object implies the simultaneous awareness of my own being as well as that of the ob