In its active aspect, however, it feels itself one with the spirit and appears as the ego or subject which knows, feels and wills. Thus Patañjali says, in II. 6: _dṛgdarśanaśaktyorekātmateva asmitā_, i.e. the seeming identity of the seer and the perceiving capacity is called asmitā-ego. Again in _Bhāshya_, I. 17, we have _ekātmikā saṃvidasmitā_ (knowledge as one identical is asmitā) which Vācaspati explains as _sā ca ātmanā grahītrā saha buddhirekātmikā saṃvid_, i.e. it is the feeling of identity of the buddhi (mind) with the self, the perceiver. Thus we find that the mind is affected by its own rajas or activity and posits itself as the ego or subject as activity. By reason of this position of the “I” as active it perceives itself in the objective, in all its conative and cognitive senses in its thoughts and feelings and also in the external world of extension and co-existence; in the words of Pañcaśikha (II. 5) thinking the animate and inanimate beings to be the self, man regards their prosperity as his own and becomes glad, and regards their adversity as his own and is sorry. Here the “I” is posited as the active entity which becomes conscious of itself, or in other words the “I” becomes self-conscious. In analysing this notion of self-consciousness we find that here the rajas or element of activity or mobility has become predominant and this predominance of rajas has been manifested by the inherent sattva. Thus we find that the rajas side or “I as active” has become manifested or known as such, i.e. “I” becomes conscious of itself as active. And this is just what is meant by self-consciousness. This ego or self-consciousness then appears as the modification of the contentless pure consciousness of the mind (_buddhi_); it is for this reason that we see that this self-consciousness is but a modification of the universal mind. The absolute identity of subject and object as the egohood is not A part of our natural consciousness, for in all stages of our actual consciousness, even in that of self-consciousness, there is an element of the preponderance of rajas or activity which directs this unity as the knower and the known and then unites them as it were. Only so far as I distinguish myself as the conscious, from myself as the object of consciousness, am I at all conscious of myself. When we see that the buddhi transforms itself into the ego, the subject, or the knower, at this its first phase there is no other content which it can know, it therefore knows itself in a very abstract way as the “I,” or in other words, the ego becomes self-conscious; but at this moment the ego has no content; the tamas being quite under suppression, it is evolved by a preponderance of the rajas; and thus its nature as rajas is manifested by the sattva and thus the ego now essentially knows itself to be active, and holds itself as the permanent energising activity which connects with itself all the phenomena of our life.