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śramaņa, Vol 59, No. 4/October-December 2008
and object. It is not possible that the cognition of object can happen to a subject, who does not intuit the act of cognition. It cannot be supposed that the cognition of such an act effected by second cognition, as it will lead to regressus ad infintum. If the cognition of act is be made dependent upon the cognition of object, it will rise to fallacy of logical see-saw (inter dependence). Thus the conclusion is inescapable that as cognition is invariably felt as self - regarding, it must be admitted that it is cognizant of its own self as well.
If it is argued that if cognition is the object of cognition like jar it would become non-cognition (i.e. It would cease to be cognition) Hemacandra says you cannot argue like that 'since a cognition is felt as cognition just as self'. Nor is there, any logical absurdity in the fact that cognition is also cognizable, since it is a cognition with reference to the object and cognizable with reference to its own self (that is to say cognition cognizes its own self just as it does know the object). There is no incompatibility in the situation just as there is none in same person his father and son. Nor can a compatibility be alleged in the action of the self upon itself, since incompatibility cannot occur in a thing attested to be true by direct experience. 18 The usual example given in the Jaina texts in reference to the self and other revealing nature of cognition is an a analogy of lamp.
Just as a lamp illuminates itself and others so also act of consciousness or cognition reveals itself and others. In latter works too this characteristic of consciousness has been stressed in the following verse of Yaśovijaya as
"(tatra) jñānam tāvadātmanaḥ svaparāvabhāsakaḥ asādhārano
gunah.'!
"The unique characteristic of soul (consciousness) is to illuminate self and other.”
Thus it is to say that not only soul i.e. consciousness and its attribute knowledge, an inalienable characteristic of consciousness, is also self and other revealing in nature similar to that of Sartre's reflective and pre-reflective states of consciousness.
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