Self, Four Stages

Brahman is real, the world is illusory, the self is not-different from Brahman.

Atman#

Atman, the highest Self, is that pure, undifferentiated, self-shining consciousness, which is timeless, spaceless, unthinkable, and is not-different from Brahman, and that underlies and supports the individual human person. It is a supreme power of awareness, transcendent to ordinary sense-mental consciousness, aware only of the Oneness of being. It is that state of conscious human being wherein the divisions of subject and object, which characterize ordinary consciousness, are overcome.

Since thought functions only with forms, in multiplicity, Atman, being without determinate form and being ultimately simple, cannot be an object knowable by the mind, perceivable by the senses.

Individual human person#

Individual oul, the jiva, is both reality and appearance. It is realiy so far as Atman is its ground, and is appearance so far as it is identified as finite, conditioned, relative. The individual self is empirically real but is transcendentalyl unreal, for the self in essence is identical to the Absolute.

Two theories/metaphors regarding the status of the jiva:

• Reflection theory (pratibimba-vada): the jiva is a reflection of Atman on the mirror of avidya and ais not-different from Atman. The reflection of the Absolute varies according to the state of avidya upon which it is reflected. - but what's the status of avidya and how can the transcendental be reflected by that which is not transcendental?
• Limitation theory (avaccheda-vada): the individual is a limitation of pure consciousness which is constituted by the upadhi (limiting condition) of ignorance. An upadhi here is the limitation, owing to mental imposition, of infinity by finitude, of unity by multiplicty.

The limitation theory gives a greater empirical reality to the jiva than does the reflection theory, in that the jiva in the former is a necessary “practical” reality, while in the latter it is a mere fleeting image.

The world is false in that it may completely disappear from consciousness when subrated, the self (jiva) is only misperceived, since it is realyl Brahman - it is revealed rather than denied by Brahman when Brahman is realized.

Phenomenology of consciousness, four stages#

By what process of mis-identification do we form the belief in the reality of what is in fact an illusoy appearance? So far as we are aware of things, events, and processes, when we are being awake in relation to a world of external objects, we take ourselves as “I” or “me”.

Waking consciousness (jagarita-sthana) or premitive I-consciousness is intentional, in that it must have an object in order to be, and that being awake means being awake to. This being awake is dynamic: waking consciousness ceaselessly shifts its attentive energies to different objects and to different aspects of a single object. Thus it is time-bound, and is constrained to a successive representation, to a considering of thigns one at a time. It is involved in desire and consequently is dissatisfied, for no object is capable of fulfilling the demands that we make upon it. Waking consciousness is the first stage in the development of self-awareness.

Then is the state of dream consciousness (svapna-sthana). It is the level of self that is inwardly cognitive of the impressions carried over from the waking state. The level of self that draws its sensuous and pasional materials from past experiences and in turn influence future experience within the waking state. It is the state of fancy and wish-fulfillment. After the cessation in sleep of the activities of the senses, the individual creates a subtle body of deires, and shapes his dreams according to the light of his own intellect. In the dream state, the independence of the subject of experience from its object perists, hence there is a continuity of consciousness from the waking to the dream state, but no matter how deeply involved one is with the objects of dream, one retains an independence from them and indeed a greater freedom w.r.t. them than is possible in waking consciousness. Rules of spatial-temporal relationships that hold between empirical objects can be violated in the dream state. In the dream state the contents of one's quasi-liberated consciousness, called subtle elements (tanmatras), which subtly influence the whole fabric of waking consciousness, constituing the material out of which so much of “personality” is formed, makes it difficult for the jiva to know itself, to become fully aware of the forces that motivate it and that mold its attitudes and values. A complete freedom to choose the contents of consciousness is denied the jiva, since the contents of the dream state are largely involuntary and present themselves without conscious control or selectivity. Associated with the dream state, the three kosas, that constitute the subtle body of the self - pranamayakosa (the sheath of vitality), manomayakosa (the sheath of mind), vijnanamayakosa (the sheath of understanding/intellect). The self is identified as a vital being, or mental life, or intellect, make the individuals self-possessed.

Then is the state of deep sleep (susupti). Absence of objects, desires, and activities. Its kosa counterpart is the anandamayakosa and is referred to as the karana-sarira, the “causal body” of the self. Distinctions are not yet abolished but are present in a kind of pure potentiality. The jiva is said here to perceive pure avidya, the cause or source of all distinctions. Its counterpart self-identification, the anandamayakosa, is the ground for future actions: the various sheaths that are manifest in the waking and dream states are latent here ready to unfold as prompted by the effects of one's past experience (karma).

Last, the pure state of consciousness associated with Atman. First, in savikalpa samdahi, the self is aware of Reality and is passing into Atman by an awareness of the presence of non-duality (unlike in suspti where the emphasis is on the absence of duality) and hence Reality, and in nirvikalpa samadhi, it is Reality.

Waking - dream - deep sleep - pure state.