The subject: atman, jiva, antahkarana
The subject can be conceived in three forms: firstly as the atman, the one highest reality, secondly as jiva or the atman as limited by its psychosis, when the psychosis is not differentiated from the atman, but atman is regarded as identical with the psychosis thus appearing as a living and knowing being, as jivasakshi or perceiving consciousness, or the aspect in which the jiva comprehends, knows, or experiences; thirdly the antahkarana psychosis or mind which is an inner centre or bundle of avidya manifestations, just as the outer world objects are exterior centres of avidya phenomena or objective entities. The antahkarana is not only the avidya capable of supplying all forms to our present experiences, but it also contains all the tendencies and modes of past impressions of experience in this life or in past lives. The antahkarana is always turning the various avidya modes of it into the jivasakshi (jiva in its aspect as illuminating mental states), and these are also immediately manifested, made known, and transformed into experience.
These avidya states of the antahkarana are called its vrittis or states. The specific peculiarity of the vrittiajnanas is this that only in these forms can they be superimposed upon pure consciousness, and thus be interpreted as states of consciousness and have their indefiniteness or cover removed. The forms of ajnana remain as indefinite and hidden or veiled only so long as they do not come into relation to these vrittis of antahkarana, for the ajnana can be destroyed by the cit only in the form of a vritti, while in all other forms the ajnana veils the cit from manifestation. The removal of ajnana-vrittis of the antahkarana or the manifestation of vritti-jnana is nothing but this, that the antahkarana states of avidya are the only states of ajnana which can be superimposed upon the self-luminous atman (adhyasa, false attribution).
The objective world consists of the avidya phenomena with the self as its background. Its objectivity consists in this that avidya in this form cannot be superimposed on the self-luminous cit but exists only as veiling the cit. These avidya phenomena may be regarded as many and diverse, but in all these forms they serve only to veil the cit and are beyond consciousness. It is only when they come in contact with the avidya phenomena as antahkarana states that they coalesce with the avidya states and render themselves objects of consciousness or have their veil of avarana removed. It is thus assumed that in ordinary perceptions of objects such as jug, etc. the antahkarana goes out of the man’s body (shariramadhyat) and coming in touch with the jug becomes transformed into the same form, and as soon as this transformation takes place the cit which is always steadily shining illuminates the jug-form or the jug.
The jug phenomena in the objective world could not be manifested (though these were taking place on the background of the same self-luminous Brahman or atman as forms of the highest truth of my subjective consciousness) because the ajnana phenomena in these forms serve to veil their illuminator, the self-luminous. It was only by coming into contact with these phenomena that the antahkarana could be transformed into corresponding states and that the illumination dawned which at once revealed the antahkarana states and the objects with which these states or vrittis had coalesced. The consciousness manifested through the vrittis alone has the power of removing the ajnana veiling the cit. Of course there are no actual distinctions of inner or outer, or the cit within me and the cit without me. These are only of appearance and due to avidya. And it is only from the point of view of appearance that we suppose that knowledge of objects can only dawn when the inner cit and the outer cit unite together through the antahkaranavritti, which makes the external objects translucent as it were by its own translucence, removes the ajnana which was veiling the external self-luminous cit and reveals the object phenomena by the very union of the cit as reflected through it and the cit as underlying the object phenomena. The pratyaksha-prama or right knowledge by perception is the cit, the pure consciousness, reflected through the vritti and identical with the cit as the background of the object phenomena revealed by it. From the relative point of view we may thus distinguish three consciousnesses:
- consciousness as the background of objective phenomena,
- consciousness as the background of the jiva or pramata, the individual,
- consciousness reflected in the vritti of the antahkarana; when these three unite perception is effected.
Prama or right knowledge means in Vedanta the acquirement of such new knowledge as has not been contradicted by experience (abadhita). There is thus no absolute definition of truth. A knowledge acquired can be said to be true only so long as it is not contradicted. Thus the world appearance though it is very true now, may be rendered false, when this is contradicted by right knowledge of Brahman as the one reality. Thus the knowledge of the world appearance is true now, but not true absolutely. The only absolute truth is the pure consciousness which is never contradicted in any experience at any time. The truth of our world-knowledge is thus to be tested by finding out whether it will be contradicted at any stage of world experience or not. That which is not contradicted by later experience is to be regarded as true, for all world knowledge as a whole will be contradicted when Brahma-knowledge is realized.
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