PHILOSOPHIC AND PSYCHOLOGIC ISSUES OF VEDÂNTA
 

Vedântic Sources, the Question of their Dating and the Indian Invasion Theory

'Vedânta' means 'the End, or Accomplishment, of the Vedas, or Knowledge', possibly 'conclusion of knowledge'. It is a body of doctrines developed in the course of many centuries by mystics and scholars of different and evolving views, based chiefly on the Vedas, the Upanishads and other scripts: Puranas, Aranyakas, Brahmanas, constituting the Shruti, or revelation. Vedânta is an astika, or orthodox philosophical school that recognises Shrutic scripts as truly revealed. Other schools, or darshanas (literally, views’), such as Buddhism and Jainism, do not; therefore, they are said to be unorthodox.

A distinct and later body of writings, also a part of the Vedânta, is constituted by the Brahamsutras and by still later commentaries.

Before discussing the content of the Upanishads, we have to concern ourselves with the controversial issue of the dating of the above said scripts; this issue is strictly connected to that of the origin, both in time and in space, of the Vedic civilisation. This topic is one of the utmost importance and has twofold relevance for this book.

Firstly, it is important for epistemology, because it is a vivid and instructive demonstration of the constructivist theory, discussed in Chapter Three, that ‘scientific’ knowledge is not neutral and objective, but socially and economically constructed. In this case, construction borders on concoction and is used for propaganda, as we explained in Chapter Four.

Secondly, it is important for the interpretation of the Vedic and Vedântic scripts, because it conditions substantially their evolutional analysis and evaluation. The Western traditional analysis presupposes that they have been written between the XIII and the VII Century B. C. and that the diversity in style and content -say, between the Rig-Veda and the Baghavatam Purana- has consequently to be interpreted as an evolution through time. If they should turn out to be all more or less coeval and extremely older -as the Indian tradition states, dating their compilation back to 4000 b. C. and earlier- that interpretation would be invalidated and new perspectives would open up not only for their interpretation itself, but also for the earliest history of mankind.

Warning that the time when an ancient script is laid down in written form may be much later than the time of its composition, the problem of the origins of the Shrutic scripts is at least threefold:

Who composed them (what civilisation, what nation, where)?

When were they composed?

When was each one of them composed with regard to each other - that is, in what order and at what distance in time?

Obviously, we can only attempt to solve such problems by way of inference.

The still prevailing theory on the origin of Vedic civilisation and the chronology of its ancient scripts, whose fathers are renowned scholars like Max Müller and Paul Deussen, state that Hindustan was populated by dark skinned nations of Dravidian strain, speaking Dravidian languages (like the Tamil) and having an advanced civilisation and a religion based on the agricultural cycle.

In the XVI Century b. C. fair-skinned, warlike, nomadic Aryan tribes, speaking the Vedic language and having a different pantheon of sky-indwelling gods, coming from the West, began to move into the Sindhu-Gangetic plain and conquer the local kingdoms, introducing the horse, subjugating the natives, imposing their tongue and gods, till they became a sort of ruling white aristocracy.
The Vedas should be the poetry of these semi-barbaric conquerors. They were allegedly composed between the XIII and the XI Centuries. The Upanishads, Puranas, Aranyaka, Brahmana were written from the XI Century down. Some of their stories narrate the fights between the fair, lofty Aryans and the dark, devilish, luscious Dravidians.

The dating of those scripts is due to Max Müller, who made it by way of inference from indirect, outer elements and resorting to supposition. He first of all analysed philologically and glottologically the scripts and determined that 1) the Rig-Veda was the earliest of all; 2) the Vedas are earlier than the other scripts; 3) then came the Brahamanas; 4) last came the Upanishads and the Aranyaka. Then he decided that the advent of Siddharta Gautama, the Buddha (600 ca.  B. C.), must mark the end of the Vedic age. Up to this point, his steps are taken on solid grounds. But, as he sets about to establishing a theory on the several periods of time when, before 600 b. C., the scripts above where compiled, his moves become arbitrary. He simply adds 200 years for every group of scripts. Therefore we have: 600 b. C. for the Aranyakas and the Upanishads; 600 + 200 = 800 for the Brahmana;  800 + 200 = 1000 for the Atharva-Veda, Yajur-Veda, Sama-Veda; and  1000 + 200 = 1200 for the Rig-Veda.

This reconstruction is currently under massive criticism. This criticism rests on a wide range of grounds (Marie-Christine Sclifet, 2002):
 The observation that one thing is the dating of the language and one other thing the dating of the content (the Upanishadic, Puranic, Itihasic texts that we possess now might well have been written originally in Vedic sanskrit, then rewritten in classic sanskrit).
 There is an evolutional continuity in the alphabet from the Harappean writing through the Brahmi to Devanagari script.

 The Vedas contain references to precise astronomical facts (eclipses, conjunctions of planets, position of stars, precession of equinoxes) that entail that they were composed in much earlier times -ca. 3900 to 2.400 b. C.

 They also contain references to “ancient histories” that may well be the Puranas (which then would be earlier, not later than the Vedas).

 Archaeological excavations (conducted at sites that were closed down by order of the authorities during the British domination) and scientific analyses seem to prove that the Sindhu-Sarasvati-Gangetic area had some civilisation as early as the VIII Millennium b. C. while a splendid urban civilisation, that knew scripture and a proto-brahmic alphabet, peaked around 3.000 b. C in the present time Pakistan.

 Archaeological excavations and submarine surveys have spotted cities mentioned in the Vedas and a long dried up river that may have been the Sarasvati.

 Archaelogical excavations in Harappean and Mohenjodaro sites have discovered many statues and artefacts of the III Millenium B. C. that feature Vedic gods and symbols (e.g. the svastikalingam) matching with those used in the Vedic cult; as well as altars constructed according to the Vedic Vastu.

 Horse skeletons dating up to 5000 b. C. have been found in India; this implies that it cannot be true that horses were introduced from the late XIV Century; yet, this may still be true for horsemanship.

 War chariots, a favourite of Indian epos, are never found in association with nomadic tribes (they are unsuitable for wandering across mountains and swamplands), but rather with urban civilisations.

This is enough for disproving Müller's theory.

Then, if final evidence will be submitted, one day,  that the cities and the river above are truly those described in the Vedas, the latter have a home in the Hindustani region. Of course, the simple fact that the Vedas mention the city of Dvaraka or the Sarasvati River and that we find remains of a city called Dvaraka and a dried-up riverbed called Sarasvati, does not prove that these are the same Dvaraka and the same Sarasvati as the Vedas speak about. In the New World there are many place-names borrowed from the Ancient World. It frequently happens that emigrants and conquerors give their newly founded or occupied cities the names of their motherland’s cities. Just for an instance, in Eastern Ontario you can find a Moscow and a Verona a few miles from each other. Yet, we can but laugh at the idea that some historian of a remote, future age, who, on the ground of this evidence and his knowledge of William Shakespeare’s famous play, should argue that Romeo and Juliet were two English-speaking Russian redskins of Catholic religion; and that, consequently, Catholicism was the established belief in the Algonquin region in the age of Canadian Renaissance - so the European Invasion Theory of North America is exposed as a lie. Indeed, North America was settled and civilised by some Jewish tribe thousands of years before Columbus sailed from Palos, as stated in the authoritative book of Moroni, on which the splendid Mormonic Civilisation of Utahpradesh was founded.

Another sensible and intriguing theory concerning origin of the Vedas in space and time is worth mentioning. You find it nicely expounded in Bal G. Tilak The Arctic Home in the Vedas. It is based on the many passages of the Vedas describing nights that last at least two months, dawns that last 28 days and other precise astronomical facts that can only be experienced in a sub-polar region. In addition, this theory sets the time of the composing of the Shruti much earlier in time than Mueller’s theory.
 
Back to the Aryan Invasion Theory, and abstracting from the question of how far its fathers were scientifically honest, we still have to examine how it was used for political purposes and what social impact it had onto India.

In his article The Myth of Aryan Invasion, David Frawley comments:
“It served to divide India into a northern Aryan and southern Dravidian culture which were made hostile to each other.

It gave the British an excuse in their conquest of India. They could claim to be doing only what the Aryan ancestors of the Hindus had previously done millennia ago.

It served to make Vedic culture later than and possibly derived from Middle Eastern cultures. With the proximity and relationship of the latter with the Bible and Christianity, this kept the Hindu religion as a sidelight to the development of religion and civilization to the West.

It discredited not only the 'Vedas' but also the genealogies of the 'Puranas' and their long list of the kings before Buddha like Rama and Krishna were left without any historical basis. The 'Mahabharata', instead of the great war, became a folk lore. In short, it discredited the most of the Hindu tradition and almost all its ancient literature. It turned its scriptures and sages into fantasies and exaggerations.

It served a social, political and economical purpose of domination, proving the superiority of Western culture and religion:

1) Mobilize lower-caste people, supposedly the “subdued natives” forced into the Apartheid prisonhouse of caste by the invaders, against the upper-caste people, supposedly the progeny of the “invading Aryans”.

2) Mobilize Dravidian-speakers against speakers of Indo-European languages, esp. through the Dravidian separatist movement, which was started under British patronage in 1916 as the Justice Party... ... One of its gimmicks was the glorification of the “black Dravidian” hero Ravana against the “white Aryan” hero Rama, disregarding the Ramâyana information that Ravana was actually an Aryan coloniser of Sri Lanka and a performer of Vedic rituals, while Rama was dark-skinned.

3) Mobilize the tribals, who have been given the new name “aboriginals” (Adivasi) as part of this strategy, against the non-tribals, who are to be treated on a par with the European invaders of America and Australia. This in spite of the demonstrable foreign (East-Asian) origin of the Munda and Tibeto-Burmese languages spoken by the most local tribes.

4) Mobilize Indian politicians towards delegitimizing Sanskrit, that “foreign language brought by the Aryan invaders”, as India’s culture language and as a school subject, in order to further dehinduize India and weaken her cultural unity... ...

5) Mobilize world opinion against the “racist Aryans”, meaning the Hindus, since they are the “Aryan invaders who imposed the caste system as a kind of Apartheid to preserve their racial purity and dominance”, never mind the fact that the association of “Aryan” with “race” is a strictly European invention unknown to Hindu tradition. Now that “idolater” and “heathen” have lost their force as swearwords, “racist” is a brilliant new way of demonizing Hinduism.”

Turning back to the threefold question that we formulated hereinbefore, we can conclude, for the moment:

-that the Aryan Invasion Theory and the Western traditional chronology of the Vedic scripts are disproven;

-that the Shrutic scripts or the earliest of them were seemingly composed from the V Millennium down by a civilised, probably non-nomadic nation inhabiting a wide region stretching from present time Afghanistan to present time Nepal, and from the Himalayas down to Maharashtra;

-that this nation was a urbanised one and used an alphabet that evolved into Devanagari.

The remaining questions, and in particular the one bearing on when the Shrutic scripts were composed with respect to one another (whether they are contemporary or not), are still open - we can only say that there is hitherto no final evidence either of their being contemporary or successive in time has been submitted, although the mention of ancient histories made in the Chandogya Upanishad VII 1, 2 vaguely suggests that the latter, or parts of them, might be later than some Puranas (granted that such mention is not due to later addition); while the varying styles and contents respectively of the several Shrutic scripts suggest that an evolution in ideas and mentality has occurred in the course of time at the very least between the Vedas and the Upanishads and the Baghavad Gita. That an evolution in those respects is observable in the works of later ages, is undisputed.

On the other hand, we still have the above-mentioned, seeming evidence of the Vedic composers’ referring to the sub-polar nights and dawns.
 
 

Again on Shrutic Scripts

The Vedas are four, the Rig, the Sama, the Yajus and the Atharva. They chiefly consist in hymns to the many gods of the Vedic pantheon, mythical narrations, injunctions and ritual prescriptions, hardly in logical, systematic statements about the existence of beings (siddharta-vakya) (G. Tucci, A History of Indian Philosophy); yet, they also contain a few philosophical and psychological statements and implication of stunning modernity.

The Upanishads -a noun that literally suggests the idea of disciples sitting before their spiritual teacher-, or many of them, are more recent, some of them dating back to few centuries ago (not counting those written in the last century, like the Ramakrishnopanishad), while the most ancient may be contemporary to the Vedas or at least to the later of them.

The extant Upanishads are very numerous; but their number is said to be 108 by the religious tradition, because 108 is a sacred number. Many others were allegedly lost also owing to the Islamic invasions and devastations. The Baghavadgita is considered as an Upanishad, though it is also a part of the celebrated poem Mahabharata.

Other relevant texts are the Aranyaka, of forest books, that describe practices and meditations conducted by anachorites in the forests; and the Brahmanas, priestly commentaries on sundry scripts of the Shruti, or revelation (from the root 'shr', to hearken).

The content of most of these texts is multifarious, ranging from hymns to ceremonial formulae to philosophic speculations. They treat very fragmentarily cosmological, psychological, epistemic topics. Their language is often archaic, poetical, or cryptic. Not seldom it baffles our understanding, but, in its frequent semantic uncertainty and slackness, it also allows for diverse interpretations (e.g. the Upanishads sometimes refer to the brahman as having, sometimes not having, qualities and attributes: respectively, savishesa saguna and nirvishesa nirguna).
This made it possible for diverse doctrines to be developed that, though mutually incompatible, could nonetheless claim to be grounded on the authority of the holy scripts, thus deriving legitimation from that same and common revealing authority.

But for this, we would not have a Vedic philosophy at all. Indeed, where the ultimate source and validation must be a revealed, that is, received, teaching, no philosophy, but only a commentary on that teaching is possible, by definition: a theology or theodicee. Philosophy is, in its essence, that all-questioning knowledge that is, or strives to be, founded solely on its internal demonstrations, its own consistency; and is therefore impossible so long as a supposed or believed binding ‘truth’ external to it and unquestionable has to be accepted. The Vedic and upanishadic scripts had to be accepted, but their teaching is semantically loose enough, that some form of philosophy might arise, albeit seldom if ever completely unhinged from revelation.
 
The Upanishads in particular also contain philosophical and psychological arguments and speculations, though still more in the form of flashing insights and utterances than of an organised logical system.

With regard to the problem of contemporaneity or not contemporaneity of the various Shrutic scripts, we can distinguish three basic positions:

-All Shrutic scripts are coeval and consistent in content with one another; no evolution in their basic tenets has occurred;

-The several Shrutic scripts were composed in different ages; there are contradictions in content between many of them; in the course of time, essential changes in their views have taken place;

-The several Shrutic scripts present a number of features strongly suggesting that they have been composed in the course of many centuries; a significant evolution not only in language and style but also in ideas and perspective is recognisable; yet, most if not all of the ideas and perspective are more or less explicitly found in the Vedas or at least in the oldest of Upanishads.

Objectively speaking, in the course of the centuries the conception of man, god, the universe, truth, knowledge, ultimate goal undergoes substantial changes, as does the terminology and the names of the gods and their respective roles. The very idea of a supreme personal god, encompassing the whole of reality, does not appear in the earliest Upanishad -the Brihadaranyaka and the Chandogya- but at a later stage and gradually.

Maryla Falk’s remarkable essay, The Psychological Myth in Ancient India, is an exhaustive investigation of that evolution based on the assumption that the Shrutic scripts have been composed over the centuries, beginning with the Rig Veda and continuing with the other Vedas, the series of Upanishads, the Baghavad Gita and even later writings. Please note that throughout this book the word ‘evolution’ is intended in its proper meaning and not in the sense of ‘advances’.
For an instance, Falk points out that the Vedas are not at all concerned with the brahman and liberation, nor is the relation to a Supreme Person their preoccupation; they focus on this mundane life which is described in positive terms; in the later Upanishads, terrene life is presented as problematic and tends to be seen more and more as a source of suffering and delusion, while the goal of mystic practices becomes the transcension of this world and its dualisms, included the dualisms consciousness-matter and consciousness-god. Still later, the idea of the Supreme Person is introduced also in order to solve some logical apories.

Of course, in a mentality and culture like the hinduist, where priority in time entails bigger authoritativeness, we will expect that the apologists of late ideas contrive to track the latter back to the earliest scripts or ages and to shift backwards in time their own texts.

Yet, some principles and tenets emerge clearly enough, if not always directly from those scriptural texts, at least from the most important commentaries on them; and they can be said to build up the Vedântic Philosophy. Those principles and tenets have been compiled especially in the Brahmasutras, also called the Vedântasutra, attributed to Badarayana, and subsequently commented diversely by a number of scholars. Also these sutras are un-organic and semantically rather loose; thus they lend themselves to diverging interpretations too.
 
 

General Features of Indian Philosophical Speculation

As we anticipated in Chapter One, the predominant concern of Indian 'philosophy' is not a theoretical, logical, or even scientific one, as it strictly is in the West. It is a soteriologic, therapeutic, hygienic one - the salvation of the jiva (living being), its liberation from delusion, suffering, conditioning of nature, desire, and attachment. (Giuseppe Tucci, Storia della Filosofia Indiana, p. 11).

Consequently, ancient Indian thought does seldom -unlike Western thought- build complex logical structures contriving to establish a chain of logical deductions or inductions that illuminates the ultimate reality starting from the ultimately simple or self-evident principle(s).

The objective demonstration of theories, that constitutes the core and the preoccupation of Western philosophy from its very beginning, is not a priority and, in a sense, would not be consistent with the transcendental assumptions that we are going to discuss hereinafter.

The aim of Indian 'philosophy' is to discover how it happens that we find ourselves in this unsuitable condition and how we can overcome it. Therefore it focusses onto the subject, the I (we are not entering here the Sanskrit terminology describing the articulations of the living being), its immediate experience (Falk, 334) origin, functioning, relation to a posited universal I or Mind. It focusses moreover on the course of actions to be taken in order to bring about desired changes. Every change has a twofold value: it is always, at the same time, a transformation of what one is and what one cognises (sees, perceives, understands), because being and consciousness, sat and cit, are one and the same thing.

The Western commentators, and above all Paul Deussen, were preoccupied with analysing and order the theories and views of Indian philosophies, tracking them back to established Western categories, like idealism, realism, nominalism and so on; this practice brought a large deal of distortion and misunderstanding in this field (Maryla Falk, 15 ff.).

The ancient Rishi, the Sadhu, the Kavi, the Yogi is aware of, or rather senses, the delusory (though not unreal or meaningless) nature of the phenomenal world, but is not shocked nor troubled by this awareness. He does not flinch into scepticism or subjectivism, nor does he feel oppressed by the phenomenal world or his fallacious senses and mind (indriyas and manas). On the contrary, because he is not simply aware of that delusory nature, but also is aware of being aware of it, he seems to be confident as to his ability to descry the ultimate Reality and 'work' with it.

I have always found the mood of the Upanishads an optimistic, cheerful one. It is not the helpless, passive hand of the Qoelet who writes the Vedas and the Upanishads; it is the active hand of a self-reliant, 'progressive' atmân. Indeed, the Upanishads could be seen as pessimistic books only by persons who cling desperately to a realistic-materialistic way of perceiving and conceiving of 'reality' and feel emotionally or cognitively unsteadied if confronted with a worldview that questions it and confronts them with a new one, which includes and handles the extreme polarities of both experience (darkness and light, pain and bliss, craving and renunciation, refutation of time-space-causation) and logic (one and many, eternal and impermanent, delusion and final truth, polytheism and monotheism) without  the least embarrassment.

The upanishadic sages are not daunted by the multifarious, rutilant, ever-changing phenomenal world. The latter does not deter them in their pursuit of  liberating insights and final truth, does not make them feel impotent. They know at all times that they are holding the chariot's rein in their hands. And it could not be otherwise, as we will see soon.

The subject, the consciousness or I, is optimistic, stands upfront before both chaos and truth holding the reins even because he is the transcendental, all-unifying horizon of experience: bridles indeed harness the steeds to one another and to the chariot. In the act of holding the reins, the yogi is (also) (to an extent) the Sanatana Sarati, the eternal charioteer - Krishna. Thus, mythical image is one with transcendental reality.

"Knowing that great pervasive Atmân
as that through which one can perceive
both states of waking and of sleep,
the wise man will no longer grieve."
(Katha Upanishad, IV, 4). (Translation by H.B, Phillips, Gems from the Upanishad, Shri Ramakrishna Math, Madras).

“This whole world was still immanifest (avyakta). By means of name and form he made it manifest, he gave every thing its own name… … Thus he pervaded every thing thoroughly… … like the blade in its scabbard, he is not visible: when he breathes, he is called breath; when he speaks, he is called voice; when he watches, he is called eye; when he hears, he is called ear; when he thinks, he is called thought. But these are merely the names of his actions (karmanamani). Those who consider them severally, they are unknowing, for he manifests himself only partially through this and that. One must recognise the atmân, for in him is the unity of all things, that one has to find - for through him one knows all.” (Br. Up. I, 4, 7.) And, short later (I, 4, 10):
" brahma va idam agra asit, tad atmânam evavet, aham brahmasmiti: tasmat tat sarvam abhavat, tad yo yo devanam pratyabudhyata, sa eva tad abhavat, tatha rsinam, tatha manusyanam. taddhaitat pasyan rsir vama-devah pratipede, aham manur abhavam suryas ceti, tad idam api etarhi ya evam veda, aham brahmasmiti sa idam sarvam bhavati; tasya ha na devas ca nabhutya isate, atma hy esam sa bhavati. atha yo anyam devatam upaste, anyo' sau anyo' ham asmiti, na sa veda; yatha pasur, evam sa devanam; yatha ha vai bahavah pasavo manusyam bhunjyuh, evam ekaikah puruso devan bhunakti; ekasminn eva pasav adiyamane'priyam bhavati, kim u bahusu? tasmad esam tan na priyam yad etan manusya vidyuh. "

 “Truly the brahman was in the origin this whole universe. It recognised itself  [atmân]: “I am brahman”  said it, and it was the All. Then every one of the gods that were waking up to thought [pratyabudhyata] became that, and likewise did the rishis and the humans. Upon realising that, Vamadeva the rishi said «I was Manu, I was Surya». Likewise up to this day he who knows thus «I am brahman», he is the All, and the gods themselves are unable to prevent that, for he becomes their own self [atmân]. He who prays to a godhead considering this godhead to be other [than him, the atmân], «God and I are different», he knows not. To the gods he is like a head of cattle. As innumerable animals provide food for mankind, likewise the gods feed upon every man. When a head of cattle is abducted, that is annoying. Imagine when many are abducted. This is the reason why gods do not want people to know the above.”

The last four sentences -where ‘gods’ clearly stands for ‘clerics’, ‘brahmins’- represent the fact that the clergy economically exploits those who deem god to be other than themselves, or their selves; and therefore clergy do not want people to realise the truth.

By the way, it should be noted how these passages of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad express very clearly that the brahman or supreme self is conscious, self-conscious, and not oblivious of any partial identities that the particular souls or consciousnesses happen to take up. It states that in the awakened state all ‘previous’ identities are retained, as memories (“I was Manu, I was Surya”) and do not dissolve into the nothing; which implies that the latter are real, and that, consequently, the real, ultimate reality, does have determinations, attributes.

The same passages also point out that the relation between the individual, limited consciousness and the supreme self or being ought not to be imagined in the likeliness of the relation between two individuals -say, son and father, or the devotee and a given god- where the father or god is posited to be other than the son or devotee and outside him, and vice versa.

But it should not be imagined either -this is extremely important- as a part-to-whole relation too -like, say, between the left centre-forward and his football team, or between a piston and the whole engine- because, while in a part-to-whole relation no individual part but only the whole ‘has’, expresses, the function -playing a football game, propel a car- when we speak of the atmân as self-consciousness, the individual’s transcendental consciousness as we have explained above, we are speaking of  something that, by logical essence and function, is not a part of anything (else), is not a part at all. The “unknowing” who prays to a god considering this god to be other than him is the person who, more or less consciously, thinks “I ‘have’ a man-size atmân, my dog a dog-size atmân, my god a god-size atmân, and all these atmâns are parts of the whole, universal, atmân, containing, or made up of, all partial atmâns, and ‘belonging’to the supreme being.”

 ‘My’ transcendental consciousness, my atmân, is  not ‘mine’ more than it is yours or the godhead’s. Nay, it is not other than myself, it is my self, your self, god’s self - ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘godhead’ are determinations of it, of the self, atmân. In every case, with every individual, the atmân is the same and ‘performs’ the same. It is, in the sense that we discussed in Chapter Two, ‘holographic’. Whatever one thinks of, or prays to, for the very reason that one conceives of it, it does not transcend one’s transcendental consciousness. Therefore, praying to a god other than your-self is not simply unrecommended or foolish, is impossible. You only delude yourself that you are doing that, but in fact you are not. Hence, the Upanishad says that you do not know.
 

Vedânta, an Objective and Transcendentalist Idealism

From the very beginning, from the earliest scripts, Indian thought is aware of the transcendental, all-unifying horizon constituted by self-consciousness. It is from self-consciousness out, that it looks onto the issues related to phenomena, existence, reality, becoming and sets up problems, questions and theories. Consciousness, not matter (not Thales’ water, nor the apeiron nor fire), is the assumed ultimate reality.

Generally, Vedântic philosophy is inclined to an objective idealism, in that it considers 'matter' and the physical world - the Virhat - as a production or emanation of a universal Spirit or entity (Paramaatmân, Brahman, Ishvara) that is (in the views of most schools) not transcendent, but immanent to the particular spirit (jivatmân) and of its same nature. It would be a subjective idealism -such as some buddhistic schools- if it were to posit that the experiential world is entirely originated by 'my' mind.

Immaterialism is a quite interesting philosophical view that denies the existence of matter and the world outside, basing on the fact that our mind’s content consists in perceptions, reflections, ideas. Esse est percipi - every thing’s existence is its being perceived. Therefore, it presupposes an experiencer, a subject, and is inconceivable without him. The only thing that mind can know immediately, directly, is mind itself. Therefore, there cannot be any evidence of a world outside the mind. Such is the stance of George Berkeley, an Irish philosopher and bishop who flourished in the early XVIII Century, as presented in his Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge.

Some Vedantists posit instead that real things exist outside the mind and interact with it. Swami Krishnanada says, to this subject:
“In the Vedânta, creation by the mind has three phases. There is a secondary creation or rather imagination, which can be attributed to individual minds. These individual minds cannot affect the realities of things as such. When a perceiving individual comes in relation to an external object, what happens is that the external object greatly influences the mental condition of the individual, and the individual, in turn, perceives in the object those characteristics, which lie latent in its mind. In essence, the individual's mental constitution gets unconsciously objectified in the perception of an object. Nothing can be perceived as it is, but everything is perceived as modified by the relations which the mind of the perceiving individual bears to it. This projection of the inward constitution towards the external object is called Jiva-srishti. The objects themselves, in their independent capacity, belong to the creation of the Cosmic Mind, which is independent of and is superior to the individual mind. This latter process of the manifestation of objects may be called primary creation or Ishvara-srishti. The latter process of creation has universal validity and reality. There is also a third way in which objects get influenced by mental phenomena; and that is the condition of objects when they are conceived of as being acted on by the collective totality of the individual minds existing in the universe.

“It does not, however, mean that there is nothing outside our individual perceptions or ideas... ... The basis of our perceptions or sensations is a material world outside, which, again, has its support or reality in God, the Supreme Spirit... ... The Vedânta, however, would accept Berkeley's position that the world is not extra-mental in the sense that it is a perception of the totality of minds or of the Mind of God. That other minds also perceive the same objects as I perceive proves not the independent existence of the objects, but that all minds are limited to a similar constitution... ...  Berkeley establishes the existence of an eternal Spirit, which is the cause of our sensations, by the observation of the fact that our sensations are not voluntary actions; they occur independently of our willing them to be or not to be. Moreover, our sensations are stronger than our imaginations, for they present a greater reality with greater steadiness and order. Berkeley here approaches the distinction made in the Vedânta between Jiva-srishti and Ishvara-srishti when he says that our imaginations are less real, being only images of things represented or copied, while the ideas of sensations received from the eternal Spirit are real things. In the latter modified aspect of his theory, Berkeley comes nearer to the Advaita-Vedânta, for which the universe has a relative reality, more real than the imaginations of the individuals, and the universe is a manifestation of God Himself. Materiality and mechanism are not in God, but His form as the universe appears to be so endowed on account of its being made a sense-object in the realm of space-time.”

It should be also be borne in mind that George Berkeley, through his remark that reality is mental and nothing outside mind or the spirit can be known, removes the ultimate cause of skepticism. Skepticism maintained that mind is essentially unable to attain any knowledge of reality, because reality is outside the mind. Berkeley’s immaterialism highlights that there simply is nothing to know outside consciousness. Therefore, what my consciousness is conscious of, even that is reality, is the being - esse est percipi - although it is not the whole of reality.

Once we understand that immediate consciousness is always the consciousness of reality, of being; and that, consequently, it needs not reach out for a reality outside of it - once we understand this, the issues becomes how we can know whether anything exists beyond immediate consciousness; and, if so, what it is.

Vedânta is also a transcendental idealism, because it is centred on the unifying function of self-consciousness, atmân - a function that the atmân cannot possibly 'lose', that is inseparable from it, because it is the a priori structure of all possible experience. Indeed, there cannot be any experience at all, unless there is a consciousness; and every 'bit' of experience has a consciousness-property, a subject-character.  Atmân is notably the function that unifies

-the madly changing, fragmented, contradictory phenomena of mâya into one experience and one horizon;

-the expanse of time and space into one moment - the present.

How does the subject know of this immanent, unifying principle, the atmân? Certainly not through the senses, including mind, because it is not an object of perception.  On the contrary, it is required that the consciousness purifies itself from the identification with the several 'objects' of sensory experience (Marco Ferrini, La Filosofia delle Upanishad, pag. 9). Indeed, the I, the consciousness, is not an object or a phenomenon among others. This purification can be described,

-as to its the negative side, as one's becoming aware of  one's not being this or that phenomenon (neti neti);

-as to its positive side, as one's becoming aware of being all of them (iti iti)- of being their horizon, their connecting factor, their meaning-giver;

Thus, there is no contradiction between the iti iti and the neti neti principles: you are other than the parts because you are (identified with) none of them; your are all the parts, because you are their horizon and none of them has an ontological ‘root’ or ‘far end’ outside consciousness.
Consequently, it can be stated that one can be atma-conscious by paying attention to the manner itself, in which one has experiences and the universal (transcendental) characteristics of this experience: their being related to consciousness and their being structured in what is called space and time.

Because the structuring of experience -the experience of world, life, pain, joy, lust, peace- is an act of the consciousness, or the subject, the charioteer will always be holding the bridles, even when the terrain under the chariot's wheels is rough; but his steering skills will vary according to his clarity of mind and steadiness of attention.

At least to this peculiar and limited extent, Vedânta is a personalist philosophy - it is not and cannot be a philosophy denying the eternal reality of the Atmân, or self.

"That which dwelling within all things is yet other than all things, which all things do not know, whose body is all things, which controls all things from within, that is your own self (atmân), the inner controller, the immortal." (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, III, 7, 23) (Translation by H.B, Phillips).
 
 

Brahman, Atmân, Self-Consciousness

The self-consciousness, the atmân, the brahman is everywhere, is ubiquitous, like a dash of salt that has been solved in a vessel of fresh water, or like the salt in the sea water. Though invisible, "whatever that subtle essence may be, the whole universe is constituted by that, that is the true reality, that is the atmân; that thou art, o Svetaketu."  (Chandogya Upanishad, VI, 13, 1-3).

Going through the preceding lines of this Upanishad, I find that the actual meaning of this famous statement - Tat tvam asi - is “Svetaketu, stop asking for a definition, an indication: you yourself are that, which you are inquiring about. No answer, no word can name it. Stop searching for definitions, names. These are only metaphors, meanings, and tags for something other than what they mean. Language, reasoning is a metaphor. You do not need metaphors for - yourself! The brahman is not something that you know and study by means of descriptions, names. You cannot separate the knowing of it from being it, from yourself.”

This That is completely pure, devoid of contents, free of relations, without parts, timeless.
The view above is confirmed by Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, III, 4, 2: “Thou cannot see that, that seeth by means of sight; thou cannot hear that, that heareth by means of hearing; thou cannot think that, that thinketh by means of thought; thou cannot know the knower of knowledge; that is thy atmân that is in every thing.”

Albeit it cannot be described, for the reasons explained above, one can be aware of it in the act of recognising its transcendental and necessary function, its all-unifying horizon-nature: "There is no manifoldness down here... .. he passes from death to death, who deems that he sees manifoldness in this world." (Katha Upanishad, II, 4, 11).

The many, the particular things (the items of the manifoldness) are experienced as objects and have a sensorial quality of materiality.
The one, the all-encompassing entity is devoid of attributes; yet, it does not suppress or make inexistent the many:

"Tajjanla: Verily everything here is brahman; brahman is that (taj), from which all things originate (ja); that which sustains (an) all things; that into which all things will be dissolved (la) so one may meditate in tranquillity."
(Chandogya Upanishad III, 14, 1) (Translation by H.B. Phillips)
 
 

Vedânta and Kant's Transcendentalism

This conception has a striking similarity with Immanuel Kant's theory of apperception as expounded in § 16 "On the original synthetic unity of apperception" of his Critique of Pure Reason:
"The 'I am thinking' [intended as the Cartesian 'cogito',  'I am conscious of being conscious'] must be able [können] to accompany all my representations; for otherwise there would be something represented in me that could not be thought, which would entail that the representation is impossible or is nothing for me. That representation, which can be there before all other representations, is the Anschauung [usually rendered with 'intuition'; the idea is that of looking at].  Therefore all the manifold of the Anschauung has a necessary relation to the 'I am thinking [am conscious of being conscious]' in the same subject in which that manifoldness is found."

This representation is an act unconditioned from outside, is spontaneous "cannot be considered as pertaining to the senses. I call it pure apperception, for it is the same self-consciousness that, as it generates the representation 'I am thinking [am conscious of being conscious]' that must be able to accompany all other representations and is the same in every consciousness, cannot be accompanied by any other. Its unity I also call 'transcendental unity of self-consciousness’ in order to denote the possibility that an a priori knowledge may come out of it. For the manifold representations that are found in a given Anschauung would not be mine own if they did not belong to one self-consciousness, i. e. as my own representations (even if I am not immediately aware of them), they must needs conform to the condition for staying all together in a common self-consciousness; otherwise they would not pertain to me altogether [durchgängig].

"That is, this complete [durchgängige] identity of apperception of a manifoldness found in the Anschauung contains a synthesis of representation and is possible only because of the consciousness of this synthesis, for the empirical consciousness, that accompanies sundry representations, is itself scattered and lacking relation to the subject's identity. That synthesis is not yielded by the simple fact that I accompany every representation with consciousness, but requires that I piece all representations together and be aware of their synthesis. Thus, only if I can bind together in one consciousness the manifoldness of the given representations, is it possible for me to represent to myself the identity of this consciousness in these same representations; that is, the analytic unity of apperception is only possible on the condition of some previous synthetic unity."

"The connection is not located in the objects and cannot be isolated from them by perception and be taken up at first in the intellect, but is itself just an outfit of the intellect, that on its turn is nothing more than the faculty to connect a priori the manifold representations."

Let us now try to better penetrate this theory through a modern rendering. As Jonathan Shear writes, "All of our experience, inner and outer, Kant argued, is extended in time, and all outer experience extended in space as well. Thus, for example, if an experience, whether inner or outer, had no temporal extension, it would be too short to be perceived, and if an outer experience had no spatial extension, it would be too small to be seen. Consequently, Kant argued, every experience, whether inner or outer, must have separate parts. Thus a visual experience, for example, must have a left and a right, and a top and a bottom, etc.

“But for any experience to exist as a single experience, all of its parts must be given to a single experiencer. If you look at your hand and see it, you will necessarily see a left and a right aspect. These will be parts of your experience. If, for example, one person saw only the left aspect (say, the little finger) and another only the right (say, the thumb), then these would be different experiences (above and beyond being experienced by different people) than your original one. And even for each of these different experiences, a single person would have to see both the left and the right aspects, too, or that experience would not have existed. Similarly, Kant argues, if each of a number of people (heard or) thought only a single word of an extended sentence, no one would experience of the entire sentence or thought. In ways such as these, Kant argued that self as single, simple, and abiding is the absolutely necessary precondition for the existence of any experience or thought whatsoever. "

According to Shear, one of Kant's conclusions about the self is "that it cannot have any experiential quality of its own at all. That is, it has to be a "pure, original unchanging consciousness," a "bare consciousness" with "no distinguishing features" of its own." "Thus the paradox: self as single, simple and continuing is at once both absolutely necessary and absolutely unexperienceable and unknowable."

"Roughly put, he argues that the self has to be an aspect of (or at least connected to) all of one's possible experiences. Otherwise these experiences would not be one's own, and one would not be able to say of them "I have them," "I recognize them," "They are mine," etc."
In short, Kant's analysis appears "to lead to the striking conclusion that self cannot be experienced, or even defined, in terms of any empirical quality, or even any empirically significant set of empirical qualities, at all."

This is practically demonstrated -says Shear- by the fact that we perceive our continuity and sameness though passing through transformation due to ageing, mutilations, growth etc. Even more clearly, this happens with dreams: in dreams we can experience having a different body than we truly have, even a non-human body. Yet, on waking up we instantly recognise which body is the real one.

No identifications can restrain our true self, whilst our true self can recognise, rank and pinpoint all identifications. It can even weaken or strengthen one or more of them. It does that ceaselessly, although it cannot be singled out from the realm of experiences.

The analogy with the vedântic view is patent. The manifold is, in Kant like in the Upanishad, unified by an innate, transcendent agency, that is immanent to every conscious being and forms (by binding together the representations) the meaningful, sense-ful connection between the manifoldness of ever changing, space-scattered fragmented experiences on the one side, and the unchanging, spaceless, featureless oneness of the I on the other side.

"Know that the Self is the master, the body is the car, 'tis plain;
Know the intellect as the driver, and the mind of course the rein;
The senses are the horses, sure; the objects, roads that here, there wind;
The wise him call the enjoyer, combined with body, sense and mind."
 (Katha Upanishad, III, 3-4). (Translation by H.B, Phillips).
 
 

The Evolution of Mind Functioning

If you have some familiarity with the thought and mindset of ancient civilisations (Egyptians, Homeric Greeks), you will marvel at the striking modernity of the much more ancient Vedic thought. especially with regard to consciousness and self-consciousness.

Modern man is normally aware of himself, is conscious. When he thinks or recalls, he is aware of doing this within his own mind. Likewise, when he experiences emotions or insights, he is aware that the same are internal facts. The fundamental characteristic of our mental functioning is that we are aware that we, as minds, operate on and within ourselves (our minds) whenever we perform a cognitive operation; and that also mental facts, that are not produced wilfully, such as emotions and insights, are located inside us (our minds). That is, we spatialise our mind - we have opened up or discovered our minds as an internal space.

This is not the case with the archaic mind as we know it through many ancient writings from Egypt, Babylon and even Greece. The archaic men -say, of Sumer or the Ancient Kingdom of Egypt- were probably unconscious, that is, not aware of themselves, of their mind - as Julian Jaynes argues in his essay. This is not inconsistent with the fact that they could develop a complex civilisation, for actually man (and animals) can, and actually do perform many, if not most of their mental functions, unconsciously. As psychology demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt, consciousness is not necessary for mind, concepts, for learning, for thinking, for reasoning, not even for judging (Jaynes, 30-46).

The Iliad, which was probably composed in the X Century b. C., still displays many features of the archaic thought in that it has no concept or term for 'mind' as a function. Jaynes, in Chapter III, examines the language of the Iliad and the terminology used for what we would call mental functions and facts. ‘Psychè’, in the Homeric language, does not mean what it later comes to mean, mind. It denotes a sort of internal cooling function of rather material nature, as also shows its etymology (psygròs means ‘cool’). ‘Noos’ (later nous), likewise, does not mean ‘intellect’ as in classic Greek, but ‘sight’. The verb ‘noein’ does not mean ‘to think’ but ‘to see’. Other words, like splanchnos (spleen), stethos (chest), kradiè (heart) etc. refer to physiological functions and do not express any reference to thought. Nowhere is a word found that describes any mental function as a mental function - which is more than singular in a poem of that extension and subject. Emotions and insights are described as this or that god influencing the involved character from outside. Gods appear as personifications of still unconscious mental functions rather than actual, full-fledged, independent persons. In the language of the Iliad and of myth in general, they ‘manifest’ themselves to this or that character and address him communicating information and directions. In modern language, we would say that one has an idea, insight, intuition, and realisation as an outcome of a previous, subconscious mental elaboration.
The awareness of the mind and the inner volition, including the ability to plan a deceit, faintly begins to develop in the Odyssey. The guileful, strong-willed Odyseus is a crucial character because he embodies the transition from the unconscious man to the self-conscious one. His ability to lie is a good marker of this passage for it is, after all, the ability to wilfully represent to others reality in a manner different from that the subject knows it - that is, to be aware of the other’s mind as other than one’s own and to plan its deception.

Jaynes analyses sources pertaining to other ancient civilisations, included the Jewish, finding in every case the evidence of this unawareness of mind and mind functions on the one side, and their personification in gods on the other side. This structure Jaynes calls ‘bicameral mind’, for it consists of two communicating ‘chambers’: one containing what the archaic man describes as the character (and located in the left hemisphere); the other (located in the right hemisphere) containing the ‘gods’ that inspire, possess, address man. In almost all civilisations, but most conspicuously in the Jewish, a “series of steppingstones” from the archaic mind to modern one is recognisable.

All the above applies -argues Jaynes (p. 313) also to the language of the Vedas and their being allegedly emanated from the supreme atmân or godhead: “Indian [literature] hurtles from the bicameral mind into the ultra subjective Upanishads, neither of which are as authentic to their times.”

This conclusion is conspicuously disproven by the contents and the language of the Vedas. Indeed, albeit on the one hand the Vedas are rich in descriptions of the behaviour of gods that lend themselves to the Jaynesian (and not only Jaynesian) interpretation as personification of mental functions of man, on the other hand we find plenty of loci clearly and joyfully depicting the discovery or opening up of the internal space of awareness. This discovery is the very soul of the Vedas, that describe in cosmic and cosmogonic terms or metaphors what ostensibly is a psychogonic process or the discovery of consciousness from the obscurity of night, with a dramatic emphasis laid onto the idea of light, daybreak, dawn (Ushas), effulgence. “The earliest Vedic thinker who investigated the problem of the origin of the Universe -that is, of the world as a unity and totality, and of the relation between this world and the one of the manifold reality- sets forth absorbed in this search, prying into the sources of his own psychic life. The document that he bequeathed to us on his discovery, is a cosmogony” (Falk, 25). So, once more, the focus is onto consciousness as transcendental unity or unifying principle.

“Tamas aasit tamasaa guutham agre ‘praketam salilam sarvaam idam
tuchenabv’ apitham yad aasiit tapasas tan mahinaajaayataikam;
kamas tad agre sama vartataadhi manaso retah prathamam yad aasiit
sato bandhum asati nir avindan hrdi pratiisyaa kavayo maniisaa.”
(R.V. X, 129).

“Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent. Darkness there was. A darkness-hidden unconscious waving was all this. That immense was closed up in the small; by the power of tapas was born that One. And from it flowed forth desire at the beginning, which was the first thing to proceed from the manas. The bond of being to not-being  was discovered the knowing kavis, observing in their heart." Griffith translates: "sages who searched with their heart's thought".) The word ‘tapas’ corresponds, also etymologically, to the Latin ‘tepus’, ‘warmth’, and to ‘temperature’. It denotes the heat of the mystic, yogic fire - see Svetasvatara Upanishad, I, 7; 14-16, where the generation of tapas is metaphorised by the confrication of the two wooden sticks used for lighting the fire. Later, ‘tapas’ will be used to designate the practices that are supposed to generate that heath.

This draws our attention to the paramount role of the warming up, the tapas, for the bringing about of the enlightenment, disclosure, insight. Tapas is incensed by desire, and desire originates in the manas. No wonder, then, that the main character of the Vedas is Agni, the Fire-God that brings the gods hither. Thus, if the ancient sage wished to produce tapas and work the enlightenment, he needed stir the manas in an appropriate way, enticing it with catch-visions of wealth and magnificence, inspiring it with ideas of immortality and glory, devotionally tying it to elating representations of the gods who stood for the functions of the consciousness to be activated in order to accomplish the mental development.
 

 This may account for the somehow puzzling ‘duality’ of content of the Vedas:  the bulk of seemingly ‘objectivistic’, naturalistic poetry (sometimes truly exquisite and dwarfing most of all other poetry ever written worldwide) that sings the glory, feats etc. of the gods and their cult on the one side, having the function of enkindling the manas and starting the process in the right way and with the assistance (awareness) of the required function-gods; on the other side, the goal of this same process, depicted in a few passages of stunning subjective insight and utterly sophisticated introspection, which ostensibly constitute the culmination, purpose or essence of all the Vedas, the discovery of the inner space and brightness and the power to expand it.

Most explicit with regard to the central role of consciousness is the celebrated Gayatri-Mantra, from Rig-Veda III, 60, that is considered to be the Vedasara, the Essence of the Vedas:

"Tat savitur varenyam bhargo devasya dhiimahi
 dhiyo yo-nah prachodayat."

These words admit different translations, some of them personalistic and theistic, some not: "We meditate upon that heavenly divine brightness of  Savitar (the Sun); may that (or he) broaden (or enlighten) our dhi (intelligence, intellect, insight)." Or else: "May our dhi expand."

Another Leitmotiv, intertwined with the one of light and insight, is that of the inner space, the heart's space, sometimes called hrdayesamudra or heart's ocean (RV IV, 58, 11b; X, 5, 1; 117, 1).
The psychological myth narrates that the waters (or cows) were frozen, stopped, locked in ancient times by Varuna, the old priest-god, magician and snake; and Indra unstopped them by slaying Varuna; thereupon they were released and could flow or run again. Atharva Veda X,  2, 31-32, explains that the body (called the citadel of the gods) has an inner space or shrine, a sky enveloped by light; what atma-possessed yaksha is in it, this is known by the knowers of the brahman. This shrine contains the pearl that is the atmân (AV IV, 10, 4; 7; X, 8, 6-7), the atmân is likened to a single hub (AV 2, 32-34), common to the whole universe (again the stress lays onto the transcendental properties of consciousness).

In the Upanishads we find even more numerous and frequent references, descriptions and comments pertaining to the selfhood and self-awareness. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, IV, 3, 7-9 describes the atmân as “that purusha, that being, consisting in the awareness of perceptions and constituting the inmost light of the heart.” It ‘commutes’ between different states: wake, deep sleep, the beyond, witnessing all of them. IV, 4, 22 has: “Truly this great, uncreated atmân is made of consciousness (vijñanamâya) in sense perceptions. That ethereal inner space inside the heart, there it dwells as the Lord of All.”

And Chandogya Upanishad, IV, 15, 1: “What it that, that thou holdest to be the atmân?” “It is space, Sire”  said he. “Verily thou deemest the boundless expanse of Vasivanara atmân to be the atmân.” VII, 25, 1-2 insists: “The term ‘boundless’ applies to the I (aham)… … the same term applies to the atmân.” VIII, 1, 3 maintains: “This space that is found inside the heart is as broad as the space that our eye encompasses.” VIII, 12, 4 emphasises: “He who is conscious that he wants to think,  is the atmân. The mental is for him the divine eye; when he, by this eye, by the mind, evokes the objects he desires, he enjoys them.”

Concluding, we can state that plentiful evidence shows how the Vedas were composed by people who, thousands of years before any other known civilisation, had developed a sharp self-consciousness and were dedicated to the expansion and illumination of it, this very activity being for them the way to fulfilment, eternity, power, bliss.

Self-consciousness cannot possibly have dawned in all persons of a given population at the same time: some individuals, a strict élite, must have developed it before. This is confirmed by Br. Up. I, 4, 10, where gods and men are said to “wake up to self-awareness” one after the other.  The first ones to develop it probably appeared as exceptionally wise men, seers, special beings, endowed with something precious. We can therefore suppose that the Vedic hymns were means or aids for awakening self-consciousness in persons in whom it had not dawned yet; which was effected by means of the chanting of hymns and the drinking of soma (clearly a psychotropic drug), that helped unstop the waters, kindle desire, enlighten the mind and so on. This disclosure of the self-awareness may well be the essence of initiation in those times the second birth.

If this was the purport of the Vedas and other Shrutic scripts, their resorting to evocative, emotionally charged symbols, images and archetypes rather than cold logical reasoning, is sufficiently accounted for.

You will perhaps wonder where has gone that enthusiasm for the search for the inner light, for it eventual discovery. It seems, indeed, to fall in abeyance, if not dissolve altogether, in the later vedântic and postvedântic literature.

You can track it again in Tibet, where some buddhist schools (especially the Dzog-chen or Zog-qen) highlight some vedic and upanishadic topics, such as the production of psychic warmth (tapas) -the practice of dum-mo- and adopt as the beacon to spiritual fulfilment the Clear Light, viz. le light of consciousness in its primeval state, prior to ahamkara, the identifications with things and senses - these both being recognised as void, having no own nature and impermanent. This light shines up during the intervals, or bar-do’s, between vrittis of functional states, modes, of the mind, such as the moment between falling asleep and the beginning of dream, and the moment of passing over. It is as though, upon changing over from the one mode to the other, consciousness is released, or works itself free, from conditionings and identifications, finding itself at liberty to take action. This corresponds to the idea of nirodha’ in the well-known sutra of Patanjali, “Yogah cittavriddi nirodha”, where ‘nirodha’ means interval, pause; thus “yoga is the interval between mental functional modes.” If one is able to remain in that light, in that interval, one can discover the natural state of mind, or rig-pa, a bright, boundless space of super-individual consciousness, that is not caught up in the process of samskara, of change, identifications, befuddlement.

A basic continuity between the above-quoted upanishadic statements and these views of the Tibetan Buddhism can also and even more clearly be recognised in the following feature: both views, once they overcome the skeptical stance through the realisation of the identity of being and consciousness, do not set out to engineer chains of synthetic judgements or deductions in order to bridge over to a divine or impersonal reality beyond mind and the immediate; on the contrary, they endeavour to steady that state of self-effulgent brightness, boundless and unconditioned, of pure, void mind, which, owing to its very voidness, is the transcendental home to all beings, included the ‘gods’ and their individual personalities.