Dr. N.L. Kachhara
Consciousness, according to Jainism and most other philosophies, is a property of the soul. Consciousness, and hence intelligence, in no case can be a property of insentient matter. The concepts of emergent property, or epiphenomenon, i.e. that consciousness emerges from matter (or the brain), are fundamentally misunderstood. This materialistic approach stems from the assumption that every truth is empirically verifiable. According to Jainism some truths, including the absolute ones, are only experienced. The universe consists of two kinds of substances, physical and non-physical; the non-physical substances can be verified by inference only and cannot be measured empirically.
Another concept analogous to consciousness is awareness. Awareness is defined as the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects, or sensory patterns. At this level of consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without necessarily implying understanding. More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of something. In biological psychology, awareness is defined as a human or animal’s perception of and cognitive reaction to a condition or event. Awareness may be focused on an internal state, such as visceral feeling, or external events by way of sensory perception. Awareness provides the raw material from which animals develop qualia, or subjective ideas about their experience.
Soul and consciousness in Jainism refer to the same entity and one is meaningless without the other. Jain philosophy describes soul in great detail and deals with the methods and processes of its purification.
