The primary difference between the two approaches lies in this that Indian philosophers that do believe in the existence of a soul, do not only hold that we have a soul separate from the body but that the soul can exist without any physical or mental attributes altogether. An example is the Advaita Vedanta school and Sankhya school that holds the Soul to be of the nature of pure consciousness and on the other hand schools like Nyaya and Vaisesika that even though do not subscribe to the view that soul is pure consciousness, still believe that soul is a substance that can exist without the quality of consciousness and will. On the other end of the spectrum, even those who do deny the existence of the soul like Buddhists, even among them some like Yogacara school believe in pure consciousness even though they do not believe in a soul. To be clear the concept of a person is composed of two elements, one unity of consciousness and second, the substratum of desire and volition i.e. a person is a mental and physical agent of an action. Now the two concepts can be seen to come apart. If the soul is seen as a principle of unity in itself and its agency as the result of association with a body which is extrinsic to the nature of the self then human personality becomes a composite of two factors one coming from the side of the soul or the transcendental self and another due to its intimate relation to a body. We see that happening within Descartes's philosophy but Advaita Vedanta And Sankhya schools go one step further. Where Descartes believed a soul to be intrinsically a rational soul, a principle of intelligence, the above two schools see mind or intelligence itself as extraneous to the nature of the self which is pure consciousness, undifferentiated and ineffable and as I have pointed out above paradigmatically different schools like Nyaya and including even Buddhist schools separate power of cognition from consciousness and in case of Nyaya consciousness from the soul and so regard the mind itself as a defilement, a karmic bondage holding the soul in relation to the world thereby leading to misery.
In Western Philosophy by contrast even those who hold the Platonist view of the disembodied existence of the Soul unlike Aristotelians who believe that the soul and body and intimately related and so one cannot exist without the other, do not still believe that the soul is pure consciousness. The dominant perspective is that a soul is a rational soul and reason is not simply discursive but also intuitive and hence reason or within a man thought cannot simply be material but has to be immaterial. In later times a distinction between a soul or self and a person came to be drawn, the latter is considered to be the ground of attributes like reason, desire, will etc. and the former is a needed for a conception of unity of consciousness needing to be further augmented by rational and volitional faculties to be considered to be a person. A likewise distinction can be drawn in Indian philosophy as I pointed out above where we see Vedantins disagree on whether the soul is an agent and an enjoyer (karta and bhogta) or whether he is simply pure consciousness. Advaita Vedanta denies these attributes are essential to the soul while every other Vedanta school believes that agency is not precluded from the nature of the soul by being pure consciousness. Compare Upanishads saying that doubt, belief, knowledge etc. belong to the mind and not the soul and the two kinds of birds on the same tree, one of which is merely a witness while the other enjoys the fruits of its actions and Bhagavad Gita’s distinction between field (kshetra) and knower of the field (kshetrajna). But in the West mind and consciousness were never so dissociated because due to the Platonist tradition mind is not seen as material but something which is at once intuitive and discursive and thereby capable of grasping immaterial forms and universal and necessary truths, it must be considered immaterial itself.
In Indian philosophy perception and reason are separated in a way that they cannot be combined, reason is discursive and inherently dependent on perception but there cannot be an intuitive understanding. Higher immaterial or metaphysical truths are known either through scriptural testimony or in yogic perception. The only dissenter of this model was Bhartrihari. He urged that if consciousness or pure consciousness is seen merely as a kind of illumination independent of the concept or the Idea or the word, then it cannot really be said to have revealed anything because knowledge does not consist in merely illumination or presentation of an object of knowledge but it also consists in discrimination and understanding of an object for an ineffable and undifferentiated awareness does not real count as an awareness of something. Consider the highest nirvikalpa state of consciousness, there are no modifications of the mind and there are no concepts operational, then in that state it becomes difficult to understand how one grasps higher metaphysical truths. Presentation of an object must also be supplemented with conceptual grasp of an object or else the object will remain undifferentiated from everything else. Since we do not ever have any ineffable form of consciousness (which Dignaga would influentially challenge later) Bhartrihari argues that conceptual abilities are inherent in the consciousness and there can be no consciousness of anything that is also not at the same time a conceptual awareness (artha prakasha). Both emerge from the same root i.e. Shabda Brahman but at the grosser level of the ordinary world they come to be seen as different. He believes that pratibha or an a-priori insight or an intuitive understanding is at the root of understanding. This is to form an analogous distinction made in the West between Reason and Understanding. To explain when we hear a particular sentence, we grasp one word at a time and yet with passing time every word goes past with the flow of time, yet at the end all these words have to be connected together in their right order to grasp the meaning of the sentence as a whole. The grasping cannot be explained as Nyaya tries to do by invoking memory of words and retaining them in the mind because our understanding moves from parts to parts but the meaning is grasped as a one whole. How do we know which parts to combine to form a whole? It is the unity of sentence meaning that cannot be explained as a combination of parts or a unit by unit understanding of word meaning but as a single indivisible whole which is accessible to us via pratibha or an intuitive understanding which can grasp the meaning of a sentence as an intuitive whole. It is the word meaning that is the abstraction while sentence meaning is the true unit of linguistic understanding. Reason sees things as a whole while understanding moves by analyzing the parts, the two however are not opposed to each other but complement each other, the knowledge of the whole involves the parts and that of the parts involves the whole.
Dignaga counters Bhartrihari much in the same way Hume counters the Platonic tradition. He separates the content of sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge, the object of former is a particular and of the latter a universal. But the universal argues Dignaga is a mental construct (vikalpa) that does not exist in the object of sens perception but is imposed on it by the mind. This allows Dignaga to see the object of sense perception as a unique particular devoid of all categories of substance, quality, universal, cause etc. Platonists admit that sensory knowledge is limited to changing particulars and requires augmentation by intellectual knowledge in order to discern stable objects in the world, the knowledge of which requires a mixture of sensory and intellectual elements. Dignaga and Hume use this suggestion, without the operation of the intellect we cannot see something as a substance, cause etc., so what we are aware of in perception is an ineffable particular, the object of awareness does not contain anything more that what we are aware of in such a sensory state. Since sensory knowledge is what gives us knowledge of existence, what exists is a unique particular of which no category can be predicated. So consciousness need not necessarily be enmeshed by conceptual capacities and this also allows us to re-conceive the person, who need not be seen as a rational soul but a highly sophisticated animal. Other schools of thought retain the difference between nirvikalpa and savikalpa perception but they do not subscribe to the view that in sensory awareness a non-conceptual awareness is awareness of a non-conceptual object. We are aware of the conceptual structure of the object but that awareness remains implicit and needs further operation of our intellectual faculties faculties to be made explicit in savikalpa pratyaksha. This became the general model of Indian epistemology, to differentiate between pre-predicative sense perception and predicative sense perception, so that the model of a consciousness that necessarily is conceptual consciousness is undermined but still the relation between consciousness and its object remains a contingent one, on the model of sense knowledge. This gives rise to serious problems because it seems to undermine our knowledge of a world of objects where objects exist as substances, causes etc. or where the objective validity of the categories demands a proof. This gives an edge to Buddhist epistemology.
Another possible dissenter is Kumarila. Against Nyaya and Prabhakara he believes that the state of release is not one where the soul becomes unconscious. The soul has the power of cognition or it has consciousness due to its very essence and even in release it cannot lose it. This view is different from Advaita Vedanta’s in so far as sentience or consciousness is understood as power of cognition and it also includes desire and will. The key is to differentiate between specific thoughts and the faculty or power of an action as such. A similar distinction was made by Leibniz in his Preface to the New Essays On Human Understanding against Locke, who believed that immateriality of soul cannot be demonstratively proved since it is possible that God can make matter think. Against this Leibniz urges that matter lacks the genus of reason or the faculty of thought which is why even if the soul which has such a faculty would nevertheless lack any specific thoughts, it would still possess reason due to its very essence. Since matter lacks that genus it could never think. But for Locke since thoughts are not modifications of a particular faculty of thought there is no improbability in taking matter to be capable of thought. Like Nyaya Locke believes cognition to be an adventitious feature of the soul which it could lack with no harm. But Kumarila like Leibniz believes that this faculty of cognition is something soul has essentially and cannot lack just like matter lacking it cannot think. But this theory of intelligence is still far from a Western perspective because Kumarila believes that in the state of release the soul has a faculty of cognition but no object of cognition. Here we note an important distinction between the two traditions. In the Platonic tradition, thought is immaterial and it has for its object the Idea or Form (or a universal) while senses grasp only the particular present to it. But in Indian tradition thought has an object only via perception. So even when Nyaya which believes in universals, according to them these abstract entities are objects of perception while for Platonists senses cannot grasp universal truths since they are condemned to a here and now. So a-priori knowledge is knowledge independent or ahead of all experience and this conception is lacking in Kumarila. The relation between sense and its object is a contingent one while of intellect and its object is a-priori and necessary but Kumarila sees the relation of intellect and its object as contingent since it requires the mediation of the senses and hence in the state of release there is the soul but no object (prameya) is present to it. His view however must have been influential for Ramanuja, Madhva and Nimbarka who similarly wanted a conception of a soul which is pure consciousness yet not devoid of agency and enjoyership, yet a state of release is seen as one that where a subject can exist without any knowledge of objects whatsoever.
The Indian philosophical view is intimately linked to Hindu, Jaina and Buddhist traditions which believe in Karma, Rebirth and Liberation through yogic practices. Prof Dasgupta explains this connection:
“On the moral side, the assumption of the unconditioned as emancipation led to the view that all our experiential states are states of bondage. Bondage, thus considered, has to be regarded as the natural tendency of some mental states to flow towards other mental states (which in the moral terminology is called '‘trishna” or desire), and the actual flow of it and its resultants are called Karma. But as the hypothetical emancipation is never experienced by any one of us and as its reality cannot be denied on account of the scriptural testimony, the only way left was its indefinite postponement. Such a postponement necessitated the postulation of a practically endless series of succeeding lives, through which the relational mental structure persisted. The cause of this rebirth is trishna or Karma, which represents the relational tendency and the actualisation of it, which is inherent in the very structure of the mind. The possibility of emancipation necessitated the postulation of the possibility of the destruction of mind and this implied the assumption of an inherent contradiction in mind, such that, while at certain stages in co-presence with the unconditioned it would produce relational groups, at other stages it would cease to produce them.” (In the article 'Philosophy Of Dependent Emergence')
The person is not only a composite entity in such a case, he is also in itself a bondage, something to be got rid off. The way to get rid of the person while the soul remains as remnant is to destroy the mind (chitta vritti nirodha/ manonaasha as said in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras). Prof Dasgupta tells us how surprised in an interview Dr Freud was to hear about the possibility of destruction of the mind:
“The theory that mental states can be arrested by our efforts is an extremely original one, and up till now we know of no country other than India where such a possibility was ever conceived. In an interview that I had with the famous psychologist Dr. Sigmund Freud, he expressed great surprise, in the course of a long discussion, that such a thing should be conceived possible, but he admitted that this experiment had always been made and that therefore it would be hazardous to deny its possibility.”
In the Christian tradition in contrast but yet similarly to Vedanta systems of Ramanuja and Madhva, the concept of person is important because in the state of release the person continues to exist. So we see Leibniz arguing against Cartesian and those who distinguish the soul from a person, that only the latter is the important notion for religion and morality and whose continued existence after death is the sense in which man is claimed to be immortal. The mere notion of consciousness cannot fulfill that task.
So we see the basic difference between the two traditions is a) The West has no notion of a pure-consciousness devoid of the mind and a state of release which demands destruction of the mind as a condition to return to original purity of the soul even those who subscribe to the view that consciousness is always consciousness of a person to a certain extent subscribe to this picture as can be seen from Kumarila's case who conceived the state of release to be one in which the person exists but without any corresponding object of thought, desire, volition, b) In the East with the possible exception of Bhartrhari there is no conception of the distinction between Reason and Understanding and so of an immaterial thinking substance which has a potential to think even when all connection with the body is severed. Personalists of both traditions had to deal respectively with theories of pure consciousness and pure thinking substance to retain a robust and sui generis conception of human personality. But Western personalists had two advantages, first, of a faculty of reason which explained the possession of universal and necessary knowledge while the Eastern counter-parts had to look for yogic perception or scriptures for that knowledge and also had to demote mathematical knowledge as a form of empirical knowledge and had to see all forms of understanding as discursive and second, they did not need to invoke a pure-sattvik body or a continued association with manas (which is not the mind in the Western sense but a sense organ) to explain knowledge in the hereafter. The Eastern personalists still retained a sense of disembodied existence as the pure nature of the soul which for the purpose of divine enjoyments had to be made to connect with purer forms of matter but the connection still remained external or contingent rather than essential as was seen in the Western Aristotelian tradition.
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