We skip over the figurative and unreal self-consciousness as...

We skip over the figurative and unreal self-consciousness as that of identity card. We have several kinds of real self-consciousness: I. Innate Self-Consciousness: Man is self-conscious innately. It is in his nature to be self-conscious. It is not so that first man's ego is formed and thereafter he becomes conscious of it. The birth of ego is tantamount to the birth of self-consciousness. At that stage the knower, the knowing and the known are one and the same.

Ego is a reality which in itself is the knowledge of self. In later stages when man more or less becomes aware of other things he knows himself also in the same way as he knows other things. In other words, he forms a picture of himself in his mind. Technically speaking, he becomes aware of himself through acquired knowledge. But before knowing himself in this way and even before knowing anything else, he knows himself through innate and ever-present self-consciousness.

The psychologists who usually discuss the question of self-consciousness, take into consideration only the second phase of it, that is the acquired mental knowledge, but the philosophers mostly concentrate on the first phase, that is the stage of non-mental innate knowledge. This kind of awareness is the same which in philosophy is described as one of the convincing proofs of the abstraction of ego.

In the case of this kind of knowledge there is no question of any doubt or such questions as: "Am I or am I not? If I am, who am I?" Doubt arises only in the case of acquired knowledge that is in that case in which the knowledge of a thing is different from its actual existence. But where the knowledge, the knower and the known are one and the same, and the knowledge is of ever-present kind, the existence of doubt cannot be imagined.

In other words the existence of any doubt in such a case is impossible. It is here that Descartes made a basic mistake. He did not realize that 'I am' cannot entertain any doubt, and hence there is no need to remove it by saying: "I think, therefore I am". Though innate self-consciousness is real, it is not a thing to be acquired. Like the existence of ego it is a basic human characteristic.

Hence this inborn self-consciousness is not that self-consciousness which man has been called upon to acquire. Mentioning the various stages of the development of a fetus in the womb, the Holy Qur'an describes the last stage by saying: "Thereafter we made it a different creation".