because it (consciousness) is not non-intelligent (jada), we ask what
you understand by this absence of non-intelligence.' If you reply
'luminousness due to the being of the thing itself (i.e. of the thing
which is ajada)'; we point out that this definition would wrongly
include lamps also, and similar things; and it would moreover give rise
to a contradiction, since you do not admit light as an attribute,
different from consciousness itself. Nor can we allow you to define
ajadatva as 'being of that nature that light is always present, without
any exception,' for this definition would extend also to pleasure, pain,
and similar states. Should you maintain that pleasure and so on,
although being throughout of the nature of light, are non-intelligent
for the reason that, like jars, &c., they shine forth (appear) to
something else and hence belong to the sphere of the not-Self; we ask in
reply: Do you mean then to say that knowledge appears to itself?
Knowledge no less than pleasure appears to some one else, viz. the 'I':
there is, in that respect, no difference between the judgment 'I know,'
and the judgment 'I am pleased.' Non-intelligence in the sense of
appearingness-to-itself is thus not proved for consciousness; and hence
it follows that what constitutes the Self is the non-jada 'I' which is
proved to itself by its very Being. That knowledge is of the nature of
light depends altogether on its connection with the knowing 'I': it is
due to the latter, that knowledge, like pleasure, manifests itself to
that conscious person who is its substrate, and not to anybody else. The
Self is thus not mere knowledge, but is the knowing 'I.'




The view that the conscious subject is something unreal, due to the
ahamkara, cannot be maintained.