PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: A contemporary introduction

290 NONMONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONS

qualities they did not have and to lose qualities they did have; through
such changes, substances continue to exist and of course retain their
essential qualities. Further:

The self’s essence is life... The distinctive characteristic of self

is attention... Those with minds are knowers.^21

“Selves are substances”^22 and their definitive characteristic or essence is
described as “life” and “attention.” Further:

That which should be grasped by self-discrimination is “from

the real point of view.”^23 “The soul has the nature of knowl-

edge, and the realization of this nature is Nirvana; therefore

one who is desirous of Nirvana must meditate on self-knowl-

edge.”^24

Jainism sometimes uses nirvana rather than kevala to refer to
enlightenment experience. Self-realization involves self-knowledge, and
it “has the nature of knowledge.” This obviously comes very close at least
to Descartes’s view of the person, mind, or soul as being a self-conscious
substance. In both introspective and enlightenment experience, one
appears to oneself as a thinking thing, a substance that possesses
cognitive mental qualities.

Ramanuja

In a passage that expresses the same sort of view as that of Descartes and
Jainism, the Hindu monotheist Ramanuja writes:

The judgment “I am conscious” reveals an “I” distinguished by

consciousness; and to declare that it refers only to a state of

consciousness – which is a mere attribute – is no better than to

say of the judgment “Devadatta carries a stick” is about the

stick only.^25

He adds:

Consciousness is the illuminating, in the present moment, to

its own substrate, by its own existence alone... Or else, it is

the establishing of its own subject by its own existence alone..

. A conscious act is the illumination of a particular object to its