The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: 4 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday 28, Aug 2024, 06:30.
Article
Scriptures
Upanishads
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 
Post-4.

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I am just repeating briefly, in outline, the processes of analysis that we conducted earlier on this issue. Consciousness is inside, and therefore it is not outside. How does consciousness know that it is not outside? The process of perception is the commingling of consciousness with that which it considers as its object. Consciousness has to contact the object in order that it may become aware that the object is existing at all. The contacting of consciousness in this manner, in respect of the object, would preclude the old opinion that it is only inside. If it is locked up within the personality of an individual, no one can know that there is anything outside one's own skin. You will not know that there is a tree standing in front of you. Consciousness has to be capable of outstripping the limitations that it appears to be imagining around itself. All perception is an obvious demonstration of the non-finite character of consciousness. It is not merely inside, it is also outside; that is to say, it is everywhere. It is infinite; this is the point.

Yajnavalkya tells us that when we love somebody, some thing, some object – whatever it be, that which pulls us in the direction of the object so-called, is not the object by itself, because this object is a subject in its own status. Its essence is not objectivity; its essence is as much a center of consciousness as our own subjectivity is a center of consciousness. In all love, in all affections, in all attractions, the Self pulls the Self. The Universal that is hidden in the so-called object outside, pulls  Itself (present in the subject) – as it were, in its own direction, and towards whichever side the action that is taking place. I hope you understand the point. It is as if one part of consciousness collides with another part of consciousness in perception.

As the Bhagavadgita tell us in another context, Sri Krishna, in one context, says that all perception which is sensory is actually the gunas of prakriti coming in contact with the gunas of prakriti. Gunaha guneshu vartante (BG 3.28): The gunas of prakriti – sattva, rajas and tamas – which are the constituents of the sense organs, come in contact with the very same properties of prakriti which also constitute the object of sense. So the object and the subject come in contact with each other because of the fact that both are constituted of the same substance, prakriti – sattva, rajas, tamas. On a deeper level, we may say that consciousness is the subject and it is also the object.

In technical language, the subject consciousness is called vishayi chaitanya. Vishayi is a Sanskrit word which means something or someone which is conscious of a vishaya, or an object. Vishaya means object, and the object consciousness is called vishaya chaitanya. The process of perception of the object by the subject is called pramana chaitnaya, or perceptive consciousness, or we may say perceptional consciousness; and the coming to be aware of the existence of an object – our being aware of the existence of an object – is called prameya chaitianya. 

The decision that we arrive at that 'we know the object' – the conclusion that the object has been known – is also a consciousness; and that conclusion consciousness in respect of an object being known is called prameya chaitanya. The subject consciousness, which is vishayi, is also called pramatr chaitanya; and the object, which is also essentially consciousness, is called vishaya chaitanya; and the process is called pramana chaitanya. You can forget all these words. I am just casually mentioning these technologies of perceptional psychology.

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Continued

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