This leads us to mark out the areas in Indian metaphysical systems that are still of interest to modern philosopher. These areas comprise speculations about the self and its liberation insofar as it can be realized in life here itself. The self has been variously conceived in different Indian systems. The differences relate mostly to the conceptions of relationship between the self and its introspectively known modes or states. Thus the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, the Sāṁkhya and Advaita Vedānta, and Kaśmīra Śaivism (to name only the more important systems) hold widely divergent views in the matter. I shall indicate here what I take to be the distinctive and more interesting features of the aforesaid doctrines of self. According to Nyāya-Vaiśesika, alt the qualities of the self including consciousness, are adventitious. The disembodied or liberated soul, lacking connection with the manas (the atom-sized organ of attention) and the body (or the sense-organs), through which alone it relates itself to the world, is without consciousness altogether and so, of course, without

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attachment, aversion, etc. If the soul cannot be conscious without the body, one wonders if there is tiny justification for cherishing the dualism of mind and body at all. The Nyāya attempt to relate qualities like consciousness to the soul through samavāya, an independent entity (padārtha), is highly unsatisfactory, for samavāya can hardly answer for the organic relationship between mind and its modes.

　　  Regarding the position of the Sāṁkhya and Advaita Vedānta, they both tend to conceive the mental phenomena more or less materialislically, thus robbing the self of any power or function as an explanatory principle. However, they are able to account, in a unique manner, for the attitude of detachment toward everything necessary to sustain and advance the life of man's biosocial being, characteristic of the religious saint. On the contrary, the Buddhists provide for such an attitude by denying the existence of the substantival self, which is declared by them to be a mere aggregate of the five skandhas. The matter deserves attention particularly at the hands of religious philosophers.

　　  An adequate and satisfying conception of the self should be able to do justice to our entire conscious life, its ugly facets no less than its nobler aspects. The religious prejudice that the soul should be immortal or nearly "immortal so that it may be able to face God on the Day of Judgment or to enjoy everlasting salvation has prevented philosophers from approaching the problem of the self on the basis of our total perception of its conscious life. The Pratyabhijñā system of Kasmīra has the concept of an Absolute, regarded as the world cause, like the Aclvaita Vedanta and several other absolutistic systems. That part of the system, according to us, is now altogether obsolete. But its doctrine of the self, which is conceived as a creative principle on the analogy of the world-creating Parcmui-Śiva or Absolute, is highly interesting and significant. Abhinavagupta, the great commentator of the system and a great name in the history of Indian aesthetics, is able to connect the Pratyabhijñā doctrine of the self with the theory of camatkāra as the essence of poetic consciousness.

　　   The Pratyabhijñā system, as elaborated by Utpaladeva, seems to have been influenced by the Vākyapadīya of Bhartṛhari, a seminal work that stresses the role of language in knowledge. According to Bhartrhari, consciousness or knowledge is essentially intertwined with words: all cognition is verbal. Here it may be noted that the word with which knowledge is interpenetrated is not necessarity the spoken word; Bhartrhari talks about speech (vāk) that is an internal principle different from the word which is spoken and heard. This is accepted more or less in the same form by the Pratyabhijñā system according to which ihe uttered conventional speech belongs to the state of māyā. We are not interested here in the details of Pratyabhijñā ontology. The interesting point in their theory of consciousness is that such consciousness includes something more than mere manifestation or illumination of the object. Such manifestation or mirroring of the object can be affected even by a crystal (sphayṭika), but that would not entitle the crystal to be regarded as conscious.

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Consciousness, therefore, consists in something more than mirroring and/or manifestation. The additional element according to the Pratyabhijñā system is vimarśa; the Vākyapadīya uses the term pratyayamarśa. which connotes recognition-cum-identification. The point seems to he that cognition or knowing is an active process involving meaningful contemplation of the object.

　　 The Kārikā 15.30 of the Iśvara-pratyabhijñā also uses the term pratyavamarśa-marsa, which is said to characterize consciousness. Abhinavagupta's careful yet complicated comment on this Kārikā is thus summarized by K. A. S. lyer: