Nyāya presents a strikingly sober and analytic account of self and consciousness. The self (ātman) is affirmed as a real, eternal substance, distinct from body, senses, and even mind (manas). It is the enduring subject that underlies and “owns” experiences such as knowledge, pleasure, pain, desire, and effort. Each individual is associated with a numerically distinct self; there is no single universal consciousness but a plurality of selves. This self is all-pervasive and persists through changing mental states, providing the continuity that makes recognition and memory intelligible. When one remembers a past experience as “mine,” Nyāya takes this as evidence that the same enduring subject was present then and is present now.

Consciousness, by contrast, is not regarded as the essence of the self but as a quality that arises in it under specific conditions. Nyāya describes cognition (jñāna) as a guṇa, an adventitious attribute that appears in the self when there is proper contact among self, mind, senses, and external objects. Consciousness is therefore episodic and contingent: it begins and ends, and is absent in states such as deep sleep or unconsciousness, even though the self itself does not cease to be. The internal organ, manas, plays a crucial mediating role, linking the self to the senses; without this subtle connection, no ordinary conscious experience occurs, despite the continued existence of the self.

This framework leads to a distinctive vision of spiritual liberation. For Nyāya, bondage consists in the self’s entanglement with ignorance, afflictive mental states, and the cycle of pleasure and pain. Liberation (mokṣa) is not the attainment of an everlasting stream of blissful awareness, but rather the cessation of all such experiential fluctuations. The liberated self continues to exist as a bare, contentless reality, devoid of pleasure, pain, and even cognitive activity. From this standpoint, the highest good is not an expansion of consciousness but its quieting, so that the self abides free from all disturbance.