Viruses & bacteria
No neural system, yet they process information at a genetic, biochemical and ecological level.
Rohan Roberts · A beginner’s guide to Advaita Vedanta
Consciousness
& the Spectrum of Mind
“In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of Vedanta.”Arthur Schopenhauer
Imagine a person born blind, deaf, and unable to speak.
Raised alone, in a dark and silent room.
Never once exposed to language.
Then a head injury, and every memory is gone.
No words. No images. No memories.
And yet this person is still conscious.
Consciousness is different from a state of mind.
The Spectrum of Mind
Just as light breaks into a spectrum of colours, mind breaks into many.
From a bacterium processing chemistry to a mind we have not yet met. Scroll sideways along the ribbon.
Plants & fungi
Mycelial networks trade resources and information underground, oriented to survival and growth.
Birds & mammals
Learning, memory, problem-solving, emotional states and complex communication.
Apes & cetaceans
They recognise themselves in mirrors and understand that others hold different beliefs.
Human babies
Innate capacities waiting on language, culture and abstract thought.
Human adults
Language, reasoning, metacognition, self-reflection, planning for a future.
Hive mind
Networked, bionic humans thinking in synchrony, a collective mind not yet witnessed.
Artificial
A super A.I. processing information in ways we cannot begin to fathom.
Extra-terrestrial
Alien senses, alien time, motives utterly beyond our comprehension.
And yet
Every point on this spectrum is a mind. None of it is consciousness.
Mind in Advaita Vedanta
Sanskrit has two words for mind.
- Manas मनस्
- The lower mind. Sensory perception, the stream of thoughts and impressions, the bridge between the world and the inner faculties.
- Antahkarana अन्तःकरण
- The higher mind, the “inner instrument”. Manas, together with buddhi (intellect), chitta (memory) and ahamkara (the ego).
Not this, not that
Consciousness is not
mind
नेति नेति0 / 18
All these attributes, states, traits, abilities and capacities of the mind are objects.
Internal, like emotions · External, like tables and chairs
I · the eye sees
You are looking at a book.
Ask who is looking. “My eye is looking at the book.” The eye is the subject; the book is the object.
II · the mind sees
Now close your eyes.
The eye’s power to see is gone, and something still knows it has closed. The mind is now the subject, and the eye is its object.
III · what sees the mind?
Thoughts arise and disappear.
Memories appear and fade. When you are angry, who is aware that there is anger? This pure awareness that witnesses the mind is called Consciousness.
IV · the seer
Consciousness is the subject. The mind is the object.
It shines by its own nature. Nothing stands behind it to see it.
In Advaita Vedanta
Consciousness is the subject with no object.
चित्Chit · consciousness
दृक्Drg · the seer
दृश्यDrshya · the seen
The observing self in the individual is called
Atman
Sadā sākṣī · always the witness, constant, choiceless
Only when light meets an object does light reveal itself.
The comet in space
The night sky looks dark, and yet sunlight streams through it in every direction.
A comet crosses the light and suddenly it can be seen. The rocky comet is the individual. The sunlight is Atman, the inner light that reveals our thoughts, emotions and experiences. You are holding that light now.
Symbols for Atman
Three images the tradition uses for what cannot be pictured.
Radiant light
A luminous sphere, self-illuminating, lighting everything else.
Mirror
It reflects every object and is touched by none of them.
Inner flame
A steady flame, unchanging amid everything that passes.
“An eye can see everything except itself. To see the eye, we need a mirror.”Vedanta and the Upanishads are that mirror
The absolute · the vast
Brahman
बृह्from bṛh: to grow, to expand, to evolve
“The circle whose circumference is everywhere and whose center is nowhere.”Attributed to Saint Bonaventure
The central realisation
Atman is Brahman
The individual self was never separate from universal consciousness. The illusion of separateness dissolves.
Mahavakya · the great sayings
Four sentences, four Upanishads, one statement.
Tat Tvam Asi
That art thouChandogya Upanishad. “You are it.” Not your body or mind: your Atman.
Aham Brahmasmi
I am BrahmanBrihadaranyaka Upanishad. The individual self is none other than the supreme reality.
Ayam Atma Brahma
This Self is BrahmanMandukya Upanishad. The inherent oneness of the self and the ultimate.
Prajnanam Brahma
Consciousness is BrahmanAitareya Upanishad. The essence of individual existence is the ultimate reality.
The veil
Mayaमाया
Brahman’s creative power, the veil through which one reality appears as a world of many separate things.
Maya is not a negative force. It is the world of names and forms. Seeing through it is liberation.
The parable of the snake and the rope
In the dim light, a snake.
A man walking home at dusk sees a venomous snake on the path and cries out in fear. A passer-by brings a light and the snake turns out to be a coiled rope.
The rope was always a rope. At no point was it a snake.
The mirage
In the desert, light and heat paint a lake that is not there. It shimmers and seems real. The world of separate things, says Advaita, is an appearance of this kind, veiling the one reality beneath it.
Some say it is the only true mahavakya
Hold the syllable. Let it pass through the three states.
Press and hold · or hold the space bar
AJagrat · waking
The world of names, forms and the senses.
USvapna · dreaming
The subtle realm of thought, desire and imagination.
MSushupti · deep sleep
Undifferentiated, dreamless, at rest.
TuriyaThe fourth
The silence after the sound. Aware of the other three.
Deep sleep is not an absence of awareness. It is an awareness of absence.
The ocean metaphor
Every wave reaches the shore.
The waveJiva
The individual self, big or small, rising for a while.
The waterAtman
The essence of every wave, still there after it breaks.
The oceanBrahman
Water and ocean are one and the same.
The sun and the pots of water
One sun, shining in every pot.
Each pot is a body and a mind. The sun’s reflection looks different in each one, rippled or still, clear or clouded. The light is the same light in all beings.
Adi Shankaracharya · 8th century
Nirvana Shatakam
निर्वाणषट्कम्Six verses of negation. Body, mind and ego are set down one by one, until only what cannot be set down remains.
Verse one
I am not mind, nor intellect, nor ego, nor the reflections of inner self. I am not the five senses. I am beyond that. I am not the ether, nor the earth, nor the fire, nor the wind.
Verse two
Neither can I be termed as energy, nor the five types of breath, nor the seven material essences, nor the five coverings. Neither am I the instruments of motion, grasping, or speaking.
Verse three
I have no hatred or dislike, nor liking, nor greed, nor delusion, nor pride, nor envy. I have no duty, nor any money, nor any desire, nor even liberation.
Verse four
I have neither virtue nor vice. I have no happiness or sorrow, pain or pleasure. I am none of the triad: the one who experiences, the experiencing, or the thing experienced.
Verse five
I do not have fear of death, as I do not have death. I have no father or mother, nor did I have a birth. I am not the friend, nor the guru, nor the disciple.
Verse six
I am all pervasive. I am without any attributes, and without any form. I have no wishes for anything because I am everything, everywhere, every time, always in equilibrium.
शिवोऽहम् शिवोऽहम्
I am indeed That: eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva, love and pure consciousness.
Tejobindu Upanishad · an attempt to describe the indescribable
Satसत्
Existence
That which is, without beginning or end.
Chitचित्
Consciousness
The light by which everything else is known.
Anandaआनन्द
Bliss, or fullness
Not an emotion. The harmony of the universe, the absolute perfection of reality exactly as it is.
मौनं व्याख्यानम्
Mounam vyakhyanam
Silence is the best explanation.
Epilogue · a noun that is a verb
Be-ing
Consciousness is not a static thing or a fixed state. It is an ongoing process of being aware and knowing, continuously present in every moment as it unfolds.
Many rivers, one ocean
Every path, every tradition, flows into the same water.
The rivers are the world’s religious and philosophical traditions, each a unique approach to the nature of reality. However different they look, they converge in the same ocean.