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The Soul and Consciousness :: 139
hatred, as Hume did. According to Jaina philosophy, as we have seen, the soul is not absolutely distinct from its attributes and modes. Hence self consciousness must mean the consciousness of the soul's attributes and modes. The Mimāṁsā School of Indian Philosophy, which divides itself into the Bhātta and Prabhākara schools, maintatins that the conception of self consciousness is untenable. The Bhātta thinks that, when we know an object, we are not conscious of the knowing self. The knowledge of the self is inferred from the knownness of a cognition. For the Prabhākara self consciousness is impossible, for the self cannot be the subject and the object of the same act of knowledge. The phenomenon of self consciousness may be interpreted in two ways. We must note that, from the analytical point of view self does not stand only for knowledge, it is much more than knowledge. So the conception of self consciousness yields two meanings. Firstly, it may mean the consciousness of the states of the self by the self's own cognitions. Secondly, it may also mean the comprehension of the cognitions themselves by the self. But such a comprehension must take place in terms of the modes of the knowledge-attribute. Hence self consiousness would mean the cognition of the cognitions themselves. The Nyāya school holds that cognitions are not known by themselves but by other cognitions. This is the first meaning of self consciousness. Psychology distinguished among emotions, cognitions and many other states of the psyche. The comprehension of its own emotions by the self does not present a difficulty. We can cognize our own emotions. If various capacities of the soul are recognized, this type of self consciousness becomes quite compatible. Expounding Śankara's view A.C. Mookerjee observes: “Self consciousness is the consciousness of the self as mediated through the conciousness of the objects, and as this mediation is impossible when there is no object, there is, consequently no consciousness in the absence of the objects."1
1. A.C. Mookejee: Nature of Self, p. 226
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