Thoughts About Consciousness

The 30th of May A Day of Revelation Late Professor Amitava Chatterjee Editorial (Ritam, Vol.4, No.1, pp.3-8) Source: Uttarpara Sri Aurobindo Parishad, Sarasi Kunja, Mandirbati Ghat, 150 G.T. Road, P.O.: Uttarpara, Dt Hooghly, W.B.,Pin-712258, Phone: 033-2663 8362 (6 p.m. to 8 p.m.) Since the human being came out of the small rack shelters to the vast unbounded earth under the unlimited sky the question was asked to himself “Who am I? What for am I here?” For centuries this question has pondered over again and again and till now time and again it continues. The Aryan Rishis of our country have attempted to answer this question : Tśvarah sarvabhutanām hŗddeśerjuna Tisthati bhrāmeyan sarvabhutanām yantrārūdham māyayā (Gita- 18.61) Oh Arjun! The Lord is in the heart of all beings and He directs their movements like machine-driven captive dolls. And for this āpnāke ei jānā āmār phurābe nā ei jānāri sānge sange Tomāye chenā.(a) (Knowing myself shall never end with me and along with that knowing Thee too). The Self-conscience might, to some extent, help one to move forward to the self knowledge Chetasa sarvakarmāni mayi sannyasya matparah buddhiyogamupāśriritya machchittah satatam bhava. (Gita 18.57)

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a) Rabindranath Thakur, Song 75, Gitabitan, Visvabharati, Calcutta, 1968.

Surrender by your mind, all the works that you have done or will be doing and after this surrender, by pure and universal yoga and with complete devotion try to

concentrate all your thinkings only to me and for nothing else, only to me, At the Kalpataru festival on 1st January, Ramakrishna delivered the message to his disciples :

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“Let all of you have self-conscience in you.” The same idea has been postulated by Sri Aurobindo, apparently in a different ideational presentation, suggested “The realisation of the psychic being, its awakening and the bringing of it depend mainly on the extent to which one can develop a personal relation with the Divine, a relation of Bhakti, love, reliance, self-giving, rejection and self-asserting mental, vital and physical ego.”(b) Thus it becomes true that human beings can develop their own self conscience and they have to put all effort with concentration for it. A closer study of human nature considered from structural and humeral contexts, in their purely biological aspect reveals the Commonness that helps in the classification of human characteristics. The scientists in West have attempted this sort of classification either from the psycho-physical base or in psycho-social context. But the other aspect and possibly more important one of human nature in uniqueness that makes everyone to be himself / herself and no one else. The human nature in itself is in an integral whole in which these two aspects act and react upon each other. All empirical studies, the study of man not excluded, proceed on the assumption of pragmatic rationality, which inevitably makes the results of the investigation fall in a procrustean bed. The scientific study treats humans essentially as physical, vital and mental being. For the life, the mind, the body are the three terms of existence with which it has some competence to deal But this way of

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b) Sri Aurobindo, P.114, The Psychic Being. Pandicherry. Sri Aurobindo Trust, 1989.

looking at human personality furnishes only a truncated cone of the whole integrated phenomenon, that is human nature. Indian thinkers take a synthetic view of human personality. According to them empirical investigation, excluding all references to the larger whole of reality will not make the knowledge complete. According to Indian thought human personality is not just the end of a process of evolving historical episode, but has its root, like all other things in the being of the supreme reality. “Man and the cosmos are both of them symbols and expressions of the same hidden Reality.”(c) The evolutionary stages as propounded by the Western scientists and that by Indian thinkers do not differ much in substance. Initially this planet earth was only matter, out of which through evolution first of all to appear was the aquatic lives. With subsequent evolutionary stages appeared from lower to higher animals and then culminated in human lives. But there is a fundamental difference between oriential and occidental thoughts. The scientific thinkings in the West are based on materialistic rationality, while in the wisdom of Eastern philosophy all phenomena are discussed on a spiritual or wholistic perspective. Indian philosophy does not suggest that the creation of earth is something out of nothing. It’s main contention is that ‘nothing can exist, which is not there. That which is there, can never be destroyed completely, it only changes in form.’ “By energism of consciousness, Brahman is massed; from that Matter is born and from Matter, Life and Mind and the Worlds.”(d) The science of evolution investigating life has discovered that thousands of years passed before the process of evolution culminated in human species. Indian

c) Sri Aurobindo. The Human Cycle: The Ideal of Human Unity : War and SelfDetermination. 2nd ed. Pondicherry : Sri Aurobindo Ashram. 1997. pp. 5-6. (

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d) Sri Aurobindo. Essays on the Gita. Pondicherry : Sri Aurobindo Ashram. 1983.

philosophy suggests that one Absolute has transformed Himself into different relative forms at different stages of evolution. The omnipresence of Absolute Self is in matter as physical self through plants and animals as self of life and to human beings with mental faculties as self of mind. Thus man as a thinking being, can play with ideas and here lies the difference between man and animal, the presence of life in both of them, notwithstanding. The Samkhya metaphysics lays down that the core of human personality is cilta whose real pivot is desire (Vasana).(e) In modern psychological expression desire or need, the force from within or the will-to-live is the spring of all human action and behaviour. All these needs can be classified into five different hierarchical categories, from lower to higher-physical, security, social, esteem and self actualization. Man is distinguished from the animals because he is endowed with higher-order needs which are not there in animals. The least differentiated stage of human evolution is probably what ancient Indian scriptures mean by pasu, i.e., human being who moves within a narrow life sphere and is bound to it by sheer habit in response to the compelling outward circumstances just as animals are ideally adjusted by “instinct” to the narrow confines of their environment. The human individual cannot linger long at the lower stage of need dynamism. The vital will-to-be forces him to move forward using his body, as the instrument and to which the powers of intellect (buddhi) are the guiding stars. Man driven by inquisitiveness and creative desires to know the unknown-wants to be much greater than what he is. This is the working of the highest order need, need for selfactualization. But the western thought limits the scope of this need to the material world. The Indian philosophy, on the other hand, suggests, not only self-actualization but self-realisation. Thus expression of the Absolute Self is not

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e) Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy. Motilal Banarasidas. 1975

limited to physical, biotic and mental selves. The self of Mind moves for the upward to be transgressed to the self of Truth-Knowledge and finally to self of Bliss. The man who realises truth and conscience transcends into eternal bliss. According to Samkhya school of thought this world of ours is the manifestation of Prakriti which again is constituted of three ‘Gunas’, Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas. The three Gunas are essential modes of energy and in Prakriti these remain in a state of equilibrium. In creation the equilibrium is disturbed and the three Gunas fall into a state of inequality. They act upon each other and finally one prevails upon the other two. Since human being is the creation of. Prakriti, it follows that the personality of an individual is accounted for by the Guna which is dominant is his constitution and which overshadows the other two: Sattwa, the seed of intelligence conserves the workings of energy; Rajas, the seed of force and action creates the workings of energy; Tamas, the seed of inertia and non-intelligence, the denial of Sattwa and Rajas, dissolves what they create and conserves.(f) It becomes obvious that individual needs are influenced by the dominant Guna, though the other two Gunas may also be there but in a somewhat passive state. The human being has evolved out of the animal life and so many of its natural tendencies are present in him. The vital self of the animal is concerned with only the lower order needs. Man has to conquer Tamas and Rajas and live in the realm of Sattwa guna. But this is not the end of journey of the ascending man. The self-exceeding of the sattvika nature comes when we go beyond the great but still inferior sattvika pleasure, beyond the pleasure of mental knowledge and to the eternal calm self of bliss. Mail has developed in many directions including his intellect of which he is so rightly proud. Nevertheless these

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f) Dasgupta, Op. cit.

are no longer sufficient for him. He likes to discover himself more and more and it becomes a never-ending process. Bu t all his pursuits appear as an exercise carried in a circle, short-lived attempt of mind and life, done for themselves. We should rather try to be on the right road to become outselves, to find our true perfection - to live in our true, satisfied existence in our real being. Man’s quest for himself should be a means for the discovery of a greater Truth behind mind and life and for the bringing of its power into our human existence. ātmānam chet vijnāniyādayamasmiti purusah kimichehhan kasya kāmāya sariramanu samjaret (Brhadaranyokopanisat 4/4/12) If a person knows the self as ‘I am this’, then wishing what, and for desire of what should he suffer in the body? Amitava Chatterjee