Philosophy and Religion / J. C. Chatterji: Kashmir Shaivism

Jagadish Chandra Chatterji

Kashmir Shaivism

Part II. The Main Doctrines of the System.

B.—The Limited Individual Experience

II. Maya and her progeny.

6—11. The Six Kanchukas.

The manifestation which now, that is after the appearance of the Shuddha Vidya, begins, is that of the Universe which constitutes the experience of limited, beings, who, as such, realise not the whole of the universal ‘All-this' but only limited aspects of it, and who also regard themselves as mutually exclusive, limited entities. This latter manifestation may therefore be spoken of as the Limited process, as distinguished from the Universal process described above. And, as consisting of limited states of Experience, the manifestation from this point onward is called the Ashuddhadhvan—the Impure and Imperfect Way or Order—and also the Mayadhvan, the Maya's Way, because the principle or factor which comes into manifestation as the first product of this Order, and which afterwards dominates all the rest of it, is what is called Maya.

How what is essentially pure and perfect comes to be impure, and how 'evil'—as it is put—at all enters the Universe will be explained later. For the present it is enough for our purpose just to recognise that, from this stage onward, the manifestation is of a limited and, therefore, an imperfect and impure Order; and that the first product of this order is what is termed Maya.

This Maya is, as will be seen presently, what may be called a Force, namely, of obscuration¹; and therefore, as a Force or Shakti, is and can be but an aspect of the Divine Shakti. Its chief function is to obscure and thereby limit the Experience in regard to the true nature of both what is experienced and the Experiencer himself.

And it comes into manifestation just at this stage for the same reasons and in obedience to the some or a similar law, as we find in operation in our daily lives under conditions which are also similar; namely, as we fall asleep², when, after the enjoyment of a thing for a while, our interest flags, or, after some activity, we are overtaken by a feeling of tiredness and lassitude, and the scene which we have been enjoying, or what we have been acting on, is obscured from our view.

Similarly, the All-Experiencer of the Shuddha Vidya begins, when he has enjoyed the 'All-this' for a time, to feel as it were a sense of tiredness and lassitude—if it may be permitted to use such expressions in regard to the conditions of such an Ideal state of Experience. He is overtaken, in other words, by what must be a Power or Force. And it is this Force which is called Maya. And, as he thus comes under the influence of Maya, he as it were falls asleep, and the universal 'All-this' passes out of his view as a clear perception; that is to say, it is obscured, there arising in its place but an Experience, rather a feeling, of a vague, indistinct and undefined something which is practically the same as the feeling of a 'Nothing.'

And as this happens, i.e., as the All-Experiencer assumes an aspect of as it were falling asleep, the relations which it previously had with the 'All-this' are all changed.

Although countless in aspects, these relations of the Universal Experiencer of the Shuddha Vidya to the Universal 'All-this'—prior to the latter fading into an indistinct something—are, as clearly defined and distinct types, only five, and may be symbolised, in terms which ore really only applicable in a lower stage of manifestation, as follows.

1. Co-evality or an alwaysness of presence with, and therefore of the experience of, the whole of the 'All-this;'—in Sanskrit, Nityatva. (lit. alwaysness or eternity).
2. Unrestricted access to and operation on the whole of the 'All-this', that is, all-pervasiveness or all-inclusiveness, without the necessity of being confined to a restricted area, and of having experiences therein under restricting conditions of cause, sequence, occasion and the like;—in Sanskrit, Vyapakatva (lit. all-reachingness or all-obtainingness.) ³
3. All-interestedness, that is, the relation of having an equal interest in, and therefore equally possessing and enjoying, the whole of the 'All-this'; that is to say all-completeness and therefore all-satisfaction, there remaining nothing outside its possession and therefore there being no feeling of want;—in Sanskrit, Purnatva (lit. fullness).
4. All—consciousness, all-knowledge or all-vision, being conscious of the whole of the 'All-this';—in Sanskrit, Sarvajnatva, (lit. all-knowingness or omniscience.) , and
5. All-authorship;—in Sanskrit, Sarva-kartritva, (lit. all-makingness.)

Now, as the All-Experiencer the assumes a 'sleepy' aspect, as he does under the influence of Maya, and as, on this account, the 'All-this' begins to fade away from his vision, there takes place a change in his Experience; and, with the change thus brought about, there arises a change also in these five typical aspects of his relation to the ' All-this'. And they then become respectively the relations of:

a. Time i.e. limited duration—that is to say the relation with the experienced as past, present and future (technically called Kāla; lit. counting or flowing. The determinant of When);
b. Restriction or Regulation, viz., in regard to presence in space, i.e., in regard to access, field of operation and so on, leading to the necessity of having experiences under the regulating conditions of cause, sequence, occasion and the like—such conditions never existing in the case of an Experiencing Being which is always and everywhere present with, or related to, everything, (technically, Niyati; lit. Restriction or Regulation. The determinant of Where);
c. Limited Interest, (technically, Raga; lit. sticking to, attachment to something or somethings in particular, and therefore dissatisfaction, according as interest in one thing flags, as it does and must, and it moves on to another thing );
d. Limited Consciousness (i.e. pure awareness) or knowledge, (technically, Vidya; lit. knowledge);⁴
e. Limited Authorship, (technically, Kalā; lit. art or power of limited creation).

And this happens in the following way:

In order to bring about the desired end, Maya makes the Experiencer feel himself one with the experienced—the experienced which is no longer what it was in the Sadakhya and the Aishvara states, but is already perceived more or less as an Anatman or not-Self i.e. other than the Self of the Experience. This is necessary, because there can really be no change in the Experiencer himself—he being, by his very nature as Chaitanya, absolutely unchangeable. All change and limitation, therefore, which he may ever experience in regard to himself, as distinguished from the experienced, can be only of a super-imposed character—being really changes in the experienced when the latter is already perceived as a something other, or at least partially other, then himself. For there can be no experience of change even in the experienced so long as it remains absolutely undifferentiated from the Experiencer who, remaining what he is, realises it as an inseparable aspect of himself. The super-imposition, therefore, is possible only when the Experiencer comes to identify himself in feeling with the experienced, after it has once been already perceived as not-himself,—at least to a certain degree, as it is in the Shuddha Vidya State. By this identification only can Maya infect the Experiencer with the changes of the Experienced. That thig is the way of Maya or the Force of Obscuration can also be seen in the experiences of our daily life. So long as what is vaguely called a man's 'spirit' maintains itself in a state of feeling—no matter whether it is consciously realised or is working as a sub-conscious element of experience—which makes the 'spirit' realise itself as superior to, and above and beyond, what is generally and equally vaguely termed the 'flesh', one seldom feels sleepy even when the 'flesh' is very weary. But the moment this feeling is gone and the 'spirit', as it were, succumbs to the weight and influence of the 'flesh' and becomes as it were one with the latter, instead of remaining a thing which is above and beyond it, that is instead of remaining in a state of elation, it is overtaken by the weariness of the 'flesh' and the man feels tired and becomes drowsy.

This being the way of the Force of Obscuration in any of its forms, Maya first leads the Experiencer to feel himself as one with the Experienced,⁵ which has already once been realised as something other than himself, i.e., as the ‘not-Self’—as the is the case partially at least in the previously produced Suddha Vidya state,—before she can fully bring on that sense of Obscuration which results in the above mentioned change in the fivefold relation of the Experiencer—a change which is due to that taking place really in the other term of the relation, namely, the Experienced. In other words, before this change in the relation takes place, the Self of the Experience becomes, as it were, one with its not-Self, which the Experienced at this stage is, and is thereby infected with the defects of the latter.

And the moment the Self becomes identified with the not-Self, the five typical forms of perfect relation mentioned above also become defective—they become imperfect and limited. They change, as also said above, respectively into the vague experiences of

1. Change in the Experiencer himself i.e. of Time which is the same thing as the experience of change (Kāla);
2. Confinement to limited location and therefore restricted access and Regulation as to cause, sequence, occasion and the like (Niyati);⁶.
3. Limited Interest so as to find oneself attending to one or a few things at a time (Raga);
4. Limited Consciousness (Vidya);
and 5. Limited Authorship (Kalā).⁷

And the way these changes in the Experiencer are produced by the operation of Maya is something like the following:—

The Experiencer, after he has for a time ‘gazed' at and enjoyed the grandeur of the ‘All-this,' feels as it were ‘proud' of it, und becomes 'immersed' in the thought: 'All-this' is mine; I am the author of 'All-this.' As this thought grows in strength, the Experiencer becomes entirely ‘absorbed' in it and with the absorption comes a feeling of identification, as it may to any of us in our daily lives, when thinking too much of a thing as 'I' and ' mine'.

With absorption, and therefore with identification thus produced by Maya, the Experiencer loses the realisation of 'himself' as the Self of the Experience; and as this happens he becomes sleepy .⁸

As the Experiencer falls asleep, the perception of the ‘All-this' itself, in which he had himself been at first lost, grows dim. It then is realised not as a clear and clearly defined ‘All-this,' but as a vague, indistinct and undefined something which is practically the same as ‘Nothing' (Shunya⁹), not unlike the 'nothing' of the experience of the really dreamless deep-sleep state in our daily life.

With this change in the Experiencer:—

1. What was Nityatva becomes Kāla as the Experiencer formulates in thought, however indistinctly, the new experience, and, as it were, says to himself: "I was erstwhile enjoying All-this and now I am feeling but a dim shadow of it." Needless to say there is in this experience scarcely a clear realisation of the 'I', such as would be necessary if the experience of this state were really expressed in words. is only a dim experience of the change and therefore of Time; and it would be expressed in the way stated above only if the realisation of the 'I' were as distinct as it is in the ordinary waking consciousness of daily life, or, better still, in the Shuddha Vidya stage described previously.
2. Vyapakatva changes into Niyati as the Experiencer is constrained to the dim perception of the vague 'some-this.'—and nothing else—as an inevitable sequence of the previously realised ‘All-this'.
3. Purnatva is reduced to Raga as the Interest in the universal 'All-this' flags, overtaken by the sleep of Maya as the Experiencer now is.
4. Sarvajnatva becomes only Vidya, perceiving only a limited something—a dim, vague and undefined 'Something' which is as good as Nothing, and
5. Sarvakartritva assumes the form of Kalā as the drowsy Being feels how little he is now capable of accomplishing.

Thus when, after the appearance of the Shuddha Vidya, Maya, the Obscuring Force, comes into play, she brings into existence, along with her, (or, more correctly perhaps, as her progeny ) five other forms of Limitation. And with these she enwraps the Experiencer—as a baby with swaddling clothes—who thereby becomes oblivious of his true Divine State; and, forgetting his own glory, falls as it were into a sleep in which he has but a vague notion of experiencing an equally vague, indistinct and undefined 'Something' into which the glorious 'All-this' of the previous state has now been reduced.

III. Two Principles of the Limited Individual Subject-Object.

12. The Purusha.

This Experiencer, thus put into sleep by Maya, who has hidden away from him his own Divine State and Glory, and has besides fully restrained him by wrapping round him the swaddling clothes of the five limitations of Kāla, Niyati, Rāga, Vidyā and Kalā, and thus vaguely feeling an equally vague and indefinite 'Something' as the content of his experience—this Experiencer in this state of experience is technically called Purusha, which we may translate as the limited Individual Spirit, or simply Spirit, (lib. Man; hence to be referred to as he).

And it is produced, let me repeat, by the operation of Maya in the way indicated above, after the manifestation of the Shuddha Vidya.

And as, in order to bring the Purusha into existence, Maya wraps him up both in herself and in the other five forms of limitation, these together with herself are called the six Kanchukas i.e. sheaths, cloaks or swaddling clothes of the Spirit.

And while Maya, together with the five other Kanchukas, makes the existence of the limited Individual Spirit as such—i.e. of the Purusha—possible, the Purusha himself and in reality is only the Divine Experiencer who becomes thus limited by allowing himself to be enwrapped and enshrouded by Maya and her progeny, but yet without undergoing any real, change in himself inasmuch as he still remains as he ever was, not only in the Shuddha Vidya stage but also in the other forms which come into existence previous to the manifestations of the latter, and, ultimately, as it were, behind and beyond them all and yet pervading them all, as Parama Shiva, or Para Samvit, the Supremest Experience. That is to say the All-experiencer becomes the Purusha, to use the technical language of the system, following the Abhasa process which leaves entirely unaffected the primary as well as each successively originating source, even when products come into manifestation.

Not only this; when the process reaches the stage in which the Purusha comes into manifestation, something more also happens. For when the Purusha comes into being, by means of the Abhasa process, the All-Experiencer is thereby not only not affected in any way and remains the same as he ever was, but he goes on producing such Purushas and multiplying their number indefinitely; that is to say, he goes on apparently dividing and expanding himself to an indefinite extent, without ever showing the slightest sign of exhaustion and diminution.

In other words, the All-Experiencer, while remaining ever the same, produces, by the Abhasa process, not only a single Purusha, but, by repeating the same process, becomes, i.e. experiences himself as, an endless number of such Purushas who realise themselves as all differentiated and even separated, from one another, as, let us say, a number of living cells may experience themselves as distinct and even separated from one another even though they may be, indeed are, produced and differentiated from a single source of life; or, as the various ‘personalities' 'dissociated ' i.e., differentiated from a single 'personality'—namely, the one 'subliminal self,'—may realise themselves as mutually distinct and even as independent of each other; or, even as the ultimate units of matter—by whatever name they may finally come to be known, electrons, ions or otherwise—may come to exist as mutually exclusive entities from an all-filling single source, by a process of apparent division which still leaves that source all unaffected.¹⁰

This happens just because the All Experiencer remains what he has ever been even when a Purusha is produced. And remaining always what he is in his aspect as himself, in another aspect he also constantly falls asleep that is to say, he is falling asleep, or, is assuming a limited aspect, every successive moment of time. [That is, as it would appear to us limited Experiencers. There are really no moments of time from the standpoint of the all-experiencer but only that Eternity which is beyond all time conceived as an aggregate, i.e. as a measureless successions of moments.] But while the aspect in which he ever remains himself is and must be one and the game, the 'sleeping' or the limited aspect he assumes every moment of time cannot be so. That is to say, while he is always one and the same in his aspect as himself, what he assumes as a ‘sleeping' or limited aspect every moment of time is a fresh or a new one; and he thus produces as many separate aspects as there are moments of time. That is to say, he produces an infinite i.e. unlimited number of aspects which are none other than the unlimited number of Purushas which constitute the aggregate of individual Spirits, actual or possible, in the Universe.

This happens at this stage, and not in the previous stages of the Pure Order—even though in those stages also the source from which the products come into manifestation remains ever the same and unaffected in itself—because in those stages there enters no element of limitation of the kind produced by Maya. There the products are universal and unlimited as to timee, space, form or characteristics; and as such none of them could be a manifold in the sense of having mutually exclusive limitation.

There indeed is sort of manyness even in the various stages of the Pure Order as will be seen later. But for all practical purposes the experiencing entity in each of the stages of that Order is a unity. For if there be more than one Experiencer in any one of those stages, they are all so alike in all respects and so much identified with one another as to the content of experience, equally experiencing the whole of the Experienced,—the ‘All-this’ and the This' of the Ideal Universe respectively in the Sad Vidya and the Aishvara Stages—or equally realising themselves as the pure Being of the Sadakhya and as the pure Bliss and the pure 'I' of the Shakti-Shiva stage, that they constitute in each of these stages practically a single and identical experiencing entity, without any one of them, in a particular stage, in any way whatsoever limiting or excluding the others belonging to the same stage. And if they are all identical in respect of the content of experience they are not, limited by time or space either. There being no sort of change in their experience, so long as the particular stage in which they are manifest lasts, they are beyond all conditions of past, present and future; that is to say, they realise themselves as existing eternally, or, which is the same thing, in an alwaysness which bears the same relation to the flow of past, present and future, i.e. of time, as a mathematical point does to the various extensions and directions of positional relation i.e. of space. Similarly, from one point of view, they occupy all-space, being universally present everywhere, and from another, only what is a mathematical point.

Thus, multiplicity in the product, in the sense of limited and mutually exclusive manyness, begins only with the introduction of limitation i.e. with the operation of the Self-hiding Power or Force of Maya, who or which is thus not only a power of ‘obscuration' but, as said above, also one of multiplication and differentiation.

Further, and finally, as, by obscuration, limitation differentiation and multiplication, Maya brings the Purushas into existence, each of these numberless Purushas becomes an Anu, a non-spatial point—almost like a mathematical point. For limitation of an omnipresent something which is itself non-spatial—as Parama Shiva is—cannot have any other meaning. It cannot be anything with a limited extension or with a 'middle measure' as it is technically called.¹¹

13. The Prakriti and the Gunas.

Simultaneously with the manifestation of the Purusha by the operation of Maya, there is produced another very important result. It is already said that, 'sleeping' as he is, the Purusha still has the Experience of a vague and indefinite 'Something', which forms at this stage the object—if such a term may be used in this connection—of the Experience. Now, this vague, undefined and indefinite ‘Something' is a factor which is not to be ignored. For it can be nothing else than the Universal ‘All-this' now perceived through the influence of Maya in this dim and indefinite fashion; and as such it is the root and source of all future experience. How it is so will be shown presently. For the present we have just to recognise its presence in the Experience of the Purusha. Indeed there can be no Purusha without it, so long as a Purusha is under the influence of Maya, as all Purushas are, till by a process to be explained later they can rise above it, and thus practically cease to be Purushas in the sense of experiencing entities enwrapped in the Kanchukas. For a Purusha is only a limited form of the All-Experiencer of the previous state; and as such it can no more exist without its relations than the All-Experiencer can. Relations there must be in the Purusha. Only these relations in the case of the All-Experiencer of the previous state are of a universal nature, while in the Purusha they become necessarily limited and completely contracted. But however contracted, they can never be relations unless there be, above and beyond the Purusha, some other term or terms which they relate with the Purusha. Thus for the existence of the Purusha as a being with relations—which relations, let me repeat, are essential to him for his very manifestation as Purusha—it is necessary that there must be a second term to which the Purusha is related. And this second term in this state can be no other than the Indefinite ‘Something' mentioned above. It is thus a most important factor—as important as the Purusha himself. And it comes into manifestation simultaneously with the Purusha. Indeed, if the Purusha is only the All-Experiencer, put to sleep and ‘cribbed, cabined and confined,' this ‘Indefinite Something' of the experience at this stage is nothing but the Universal 'All-this' now dimly and vaguely perceived.¹²

Coming into manifestation simultaneously with the Purusha, it is called his Prakriti—She who affects the or whom he has placed before him to be acted upon by and to react upon.

Thus the Purusha and the Prakriti are nothing but the limited representations of the two factors in the two-sided Experience of the Shuddha Vidya state. And as the number of Purushas produced by the process described above is, as has been pointed out, unlimited and unending, similarly the Prakritis are also infinite in number, one for each Purusha, the one universal All-this being perceived dimly by the different Purushas as so many different This'es diversely reflected in the ocean of Maya, as different persons may perceive the same sun as so many different reflections in different parts of the sea.¹³

The Experience of his Prakriti, on the part of a Purusha, is one in which, while there is no movement whatever of thought or activity,—it being a state, as it were, of no specific feeling of any sort either. That is to say, it is a state in which the Experienced does not produce in the Experiencer either that calm feeling of mere presentation or mere awareness in which the Experiencer remains blissfully motionless, calmly enjoying what is before him; or that disquieting feeling of excitement or interest which moves him forth into activity of some sort; or even that feeling of dulling callousness and stupefaction to which one quite inertly submits. It is therefore a state of Equipoise,—Equipoise, namely, between the calm and peaceful feeling of pleasing but unmoving awareness, pure and simple, the active feeling of a moving interest and the passive and inert feeling of stupefaction—Feelings or Aflictions for which the technical Sanskrit names are respectively Sukha, Duhkha and Moha (literally, Pleasure, Pain and Delusion or Bewilderment).

And this is so, because there is no one element or feature which is more prominent, rather more prominently manifest, than others in the Prakriti—it being merely a vague and undefined 'Something' in which all the distinguishing features of the various content of the Universal ‘All-this' are obliterated—so that there can be nothing standing out which can induce any of these feelings in the Experiencer. The Experience of Prakriti, therefore, being an equipoise of the three Feelings, of calm, peaceful and blissful Awareness, of moving Interest and Passion, and of dull and callous Stupefaction, Prakriti herself, that is the indefinite and undefined ‘Something' itself of the experience at this stage, is and must be a thing in which all Elements or Features capable of inducing, or affecting as, these three Feelings are held in B state of Equipoise.

Now, the Elements or Features which can induce the three Feelings of calm Awareness, moving Passion and dulling Stupefaction (of Sukha, Duhkha and Moha, as they are technically called in Sanskrit) are and must be themselves only three, corresponding to the number of the feelings they can produce in an individual—feelings which are essentially different from one another and of which there are no more than the three named above. They are called in Sanskrit the Sattva, the Rajas and the Tamas, (producing respectively Sukha, Duhkha and Moha)—terms which must be retained untranslated, because there are no single words in English that can adequately render all that these technical names imply; for they are not only the originators of the above named Feelings but also a great deal more as will be seen later. Collectively they are called the three Gunas, meaning literally the three Threads, as of a chord, or three Factors, Attributes or Features.

And as, in the Prakriti, all Feeling-inducing or Affective Features are held in a State of equipoise, Prakriti is, speaking technically, only the equipoise of the three Gunas of Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas.¹⁴

And as there is on the part of a Purusha, no specific experience in his Prakriti, but only a general feeling of a vague and indefinite something, Prakriti is called The generally-experienced (bhogya-samanya)’.

From Prakriti, as The generally experienced,' is produced everything of specific experiences, which the limited Individual Spirit or the Purusha can ever have, whether as objects or as the means whereby such objects are experienced.

And the process following which these means and objects of experience come into manifestation is much the same as has been recognised by the Sankhya system.

There are slight differences of course, but it is substantially the same process. One of the reasons why there are any differences between the teachings of the two systems is perhaps to be found in the fact that, while the Shaiva system makes a clear distinction between the Universal, or the Pure and Perfect, and the limited Individual, that is, the Impure and Imperfect processes, the Sankhya—i.e. the Sankhya as represented by the Karikas of Ishvara Krishna, the commentary on the Tattva-Samasa und apparently also the Sankhya Sutras, which is a much later work, but not the Sankhya of the Puranas—makes no such distinction. At least this distinction is not apparent from the above named main Texts on the subject, even though Vijnana Bhikshu seeks to establish it by regarding the process from a two-fold point of view, viz., the Samashti and the Vyashti i.e. Collective and Distributive, as indeed it can be and is so regarded even by the Trika, as will be seen later. However this may be, the process of manifestation from now on, as recognised by the Trika, is practically the same as that described in the Sankhya. We may therefore try to understand it in the light of the latter system. Indeed, our understanding of it will be greatly facilitated by a reference to the Sankhya.

Now, Purusha and Prakriti come into manifestation, as said above, by the All-Experiencer assuming, as it were, a sleeping aspect. In that state the All-Experiencer has no clear notion of the 'All-this' but only feels it as a mere 'Something,' which is entirely vague, indefinite and undefined. Nor does he realise himself with any better or greater clearness as the 'I' of the Experience. Indeed its self-realisation as the ‘I' is as vague as its realisation of the 'Something‘ of the Experience, and may be likened to the realisation of the 'I' in the deep and really dreamless sleep of our individual experience. And it is a point which should be clearly noted.

IV. Principles of mental Operation.

14-16. Buddhi, Ahankara and Manas.

This being the experience of the Purusha-Prakriti state, the manifestation which follows next is, in one respect at least, not unlike the experience we sometimes have immediately on waking¹⁵. It is technically called, as in the Sankhya, the Buddhi, which term may perhaps be translated as Consciousness-as-such, but which, like so many others, must be left untranslated. We shall only explain what it means. For a clear comprehension, however, of what Buddhi really is, we have to consider it along with two other factors the manifestation of which follows that of the Buddhi. These are technically called Ahankara and Manas, of which the one may perhaps be translated as the Personal Consciousness, Personal Ego or Self-apperception and the other as Imagination (which however is only one of the functions of Manas ).

Now, to understand what these three, Buddhi, Ahankara and Manas—or, as we shall take them here in their reverse order, Manas, Ahankara and Buddhi—really are, we must make an analysis of the psychical process which is daily and hourly going on in us.

When we perceive a thing and think or speak of it, saying ‘it is so and so'—it is a cow, for instance—our experience of this perception of a cow as expressed in words or expressible, i.e., conceived or thought of, involves a complicated process which consists of at least four¹⁶ clearly defined operations, even though they may not always be realised as thus defined at the time one has the experience, not only on account of the great swiftness with which these operations are gone through, but also because of their simultaneousness which is not unoften the case. They may be stated as follows:—

The first operation is that of the senses,—sensation as it is called; (Alochana in Sanskrit¹⁷). In this very first operation there is involved another, namely, that of what may be called Attention, without the co-operation of which there can be no sensation at all,—as is known to all from experience,—even when what are called the objects of sense perception are in relation with the senses. But, apart from this operation of the ‘Attention'—which operation may be considered as practically one with that of the senses, inasmuch as the latter can never work without it, and which therefore need not be separately noted here for our present purpose, although we shall have to take it into consideration later on—there is another operation, which as it were builds up, or rather carves, the image of the object to be perceived and thought of, out of the whole blocks of sensations which are, at the time, pressing upon the experiencing subject from all sides. This operation consists in 'desiring'¹⁸ i.e. seeking for and ‘selecting'¹⁹ a certain group, to the excIusion²⁰ of others, out of the confused and confusing heap, with a view to or with the intention of, making a particular image or a particular object of consciousness with this specially marked out group.²¹ Thus, for instance, as I am perceiving my cow, I am having, crowding upon me, a whole host of other sensations as well—those affecting me as the surrounding scenery, the blue of the sky, the green of the meadow, the singing of birds and so on. These are all being left out and only those affecting me as the cow are being sought and singled out and built into the image of the cow.

This 'desiring for,' this seeking and singling out a certain special group from among a whole crowd of sensations with the intention of building up, with the selected group, the image of an object (or, which is the same thing, the object itself) – this is an operation which is quite other than and different from the first operation of mere sensation. It is the second operation in the process leading to the perception of my cow so as to be able to think and speak of it. It is what may be called the 'Image-making' or Imaginative Operation—the operation, in this instance, of imaging forth the cow with the ingredients of a particular group of sensations 'desired for' i.e. sought and selected out of a whole mass of them.²²

It is an operation of image-making from another point of view also—I mean the standpoint of modern Western Psychology. For, according to the findings of that Psychology, the process of sensation consists in receiving by the senses not a completed picture extended in space, as, for instance, the colour or colours of our cow, like so many patches stretched out in space, but like so many points of that colour or those colours. The senses give us what is technically called a manifold—the manifold of the sense.

Now, in order that these colour-points may be made into a whole—a whole patch or patches of colours—assuming a particular shape and form, namely, that of a particular cow, there must be a second operation in the psychical process by which, these 'points of sensation,' the manifold of the sense, are gathered together and made into such a whole of a particular shape and form—in other words, into a picture or image.

However that may be, the image-making constituting the second operation in the psychical process would not alone enable me to speak or think of the object of my present perception as a cow. For what I am actually perceiving, i.e. , the actually given of the sense, is no more than a mere colour-form (supposing I am only seeing the cow but not hearing it a sound or produce any other sensation in me, in which case the imaginative operation would include also a synthesising or concreting process to be noticed later ) which is stretched out in space assuming a particular shape either moving or stationary. To transform this mere picture, which is hardly better than one on canvas, or than that of a cinematograph show, it must be endowed with various other properties as well, solidity, life and so on. Now these properties the sense now in operation, viz., that of sight, is not perceiving when it is revealing to me the cow's presence as a patch of colour or colours stretched out in space. They are supplied from somewhere else, namely, from the memory of my personal, experience of the past, stored up in myself as a particular individual or person, i.e., out of myself. There is absolutely no other source but myself from which they can be supplied. Nor can the elements supplied be anything else but a part of my own personal self as built up by and with elements supplied out of experiences I have had as a particular person born and brought up in particular situation or situations. That is to say, before my mere colour-form, carved out of the block of mere sensations, can be transformed into the live object I am thinking of as my cow, it has to be endowed with something of myself.

Not only this. It has to be assimilated to and identified with²³ what is in myself as a particular person. For how can I think or speak of the present object as ‘cow' unless I realise it as something similar to such an experience of my own in the past—an experience which is now part of myself? Again, how can this assimilation and identification be possible unless and until the new experience be taken up into myself—brought into the midst of what is me and mine? Thus not only must the mere image be endowed with part of myself, before it can be perceived and thought of as my cow, but the image itself will also have to be brought into me—into my own self. Thit is to say, to use the somewhat dry language of philosophy, it has to be referred to what is already me and mine.

It is this endowing of the sensation-image part of myself and assimilating it to what is already in me, which constitutes the third operation in the psychical process giving me the perception of my cow.

But even this operation does not quite give me my cow, so as to be able to think and speak of it as a cow—saying 'What I see before me is a cow'.

For, before I can speak thus of the now assimilated image, I must not only make a comparison with other cows I have seen and known in the past as my personal experiences, but also refer it to the species cow. Till this is done I can never speak of the image which is being perceived as a cow, which statement only means that it is one of a species called cow. But whence do we get this idea of a Species? I have never experienced such a thing as cow as a Species as one of my personal experiences—I have known only particular and individual cows. There must therefore be in me a standard of reference which has this experience of the Species; and it must be impersonal in the sense that its contents as such—i.e. as abstract or general ideas such as that of a species, of triangularity for instance—cannot be pictured by the individual mind of a person such as a Rama or a Jones, in the same way as a particular thing or act can; and therefore it must be beyond range of personal experiences which any of us as Rama or Shyama, as John or Jones, may have had in the past.²⁴ It is only by referring to this standard that we are able to form a judgment such as—"lt is a cow".

This reference to such a standard is the fourth operation in our experience of thinking and speaking of an object of perception as 'such and such a thing and not such and such another thing'—'as a cow and not as a horse or dog.’²⁵

Now, of these operations, the first is, as is obvious, the one which is carried on by means of what are called the senses—they are the means of gaining experience in so far as this first operation is concerned.

Corresponding to these means of the first operation, there are and must be for the other operations also what act as such means. And it is these means of the three subsequent psychic operations which are respectively called the Manas, the Ahankara and the Buddhi.²⁶

Manas is what ‘desires' i.e., seeks for and singles out a particular group of sensations from among a whole crowd of them, and builds up particular images therewith; or, to use a different metaphor, carves an image out of a whole block of sensations given by the senses at the time. From another point of view it is what synthesies the discrete manifold of the senses, and builds up 'mental images' of them.

Ahankara is what gathers and stores up the memory of personal experiences, and 'identifies' and ‘assimilates' the experiences of the present, of which experiences the sum total, thus held together by it, constitutes what we realise as our personal 'Ego'—as the individual and particular 'I' of the everyday life of limited experiencers, such as human beings ordinarily are. For, in so far as this 'I' is personal and peculiar to a man as Rama or Jones,—in so far as it is nothing but this—it is only an aggregate of these personal experiences either as memories or as actualities regarded as oneself. Ahankara is, in other words, what makes the 'artificial' or 'made up' 'I' of an individual, as distinguished from the real and innermost 'I', which every one is as Parama Shiva. The artificial ‘I' is only produced by the identification with and assimilation to the real Self of the now produced not-self.²⁷

Finally ‘Buddhi' is that which, holding in it such general ideas as do not form the direct object of experience as concrete facts,—facts which one can definitely picture to oneself, like, for instance, the mental image of a particular cow or that of the performance of a particular act of kindness, ideas, in other words, which lie in the background of, and are thus beyond, the 'personal Ego' i.e. the Ahankara—not only supplies that standard of reference which is needed for the formation of judgment, but also serves as the means whereby concrete experiences are, as it were, taken up unto itself for such reference and comparison. Buddhi may thus be spoken of as the impersonal or superpersonal state of consciousness, or experience in a limited individual (still as limited).²⁸

But though super-personal, Buddhi is not entirely or absolutely inconceivable. We all of us probably have often had an experience which may, as hinted at above, give us an idea as to what the experience of Buddhi may be like,—in so far only as it is an experience in which there is no definite and clear realisation of the 'I' or personal 'Ego.' This is the experience which is sometimes had, when on waking up from a state of deep and profound sleep, a man opens his eyes and is conscious only of what just meets the senses, while yet he is quite oblivious of himself as an ‘I'—as such and such a person. Buddhi is not unlike this experience, inasmuch as there is in the Buddhi no thought of the 'I' as yet, the latter having already been suppressed in the Purusha-Prakriti state when the Experiencer, as it were, fell asleep.²⁹

This Buddhi comes into manifestation from Prakriti, as the Experiencer, as it were, wakes up, following the same or a similar or principle which we find in operation in our daily lives, as our consciousness passes from a state of sleep to one of wakefulness.³⁰

Now the reason why one wakes up from a state of deep and profound sleep is, as will be readily seen, some disturbance in the body—either something from outside affecting the body and bodily organs or some change arising in the internal condition of the body itself, say, its being refreshed with rest, that is to say, its being revivified with fresh life and vigour, things which mean nothing else but some change in the condition of the body itself. And this is so, because sleep itself is due to a change in the condition of the body—of the 'flesh’ with which the 'Spirit' finds itself identified in feeling and experience. There can be really no sleep to the Spirit. If it finds itself asleep, it is only because it identifies itself with the 'flesh' in feeling and experience.

And it is only the sleepiness of the flesh which can at all affect it, and make it also fall asleep.³¹ This being the condition of falling asleep,—this change in the condition of the body with which the Spirit is identified—the waking up from sleep also depends on some change in the bodily condition. And, as, following this law, the sleeping Experiencer of the Purusha-Prak!iti state, wakes up into a new consciousness again, he does so only because there takes place some change, some disturbance (Kihobha) in the Prakriti which served the Experiencer in the Purusha-Prakriti state, as his body, and with which he had already identified himself in feeling and thug fell asleep.

It would be interesting to discuss here how this disturbance—this Kshobha, as it is technically called in Sanskrit—at all takes place in the Prakriti, which, being inert, cannot of itself move. But we cannot enter into this discussion here as it involves the consideration of various other questions which can be cleared up only as we go on. For the present, it will be enough to say that it is produced by the action or will of the Experiencing Entity which, or who, has for his experience all the separate Prakritis, of all the limited Purushas, as a collective whole. Such an entity in regard to any Tattva is called its Lord (Tattvesha) and it is the Lord of the Prakriti Tattva who creates ‘disturbance' in the Prakriti of an individual Purusha, so that he may wake up and start on the round of limited life, of mixed experience of pleasure and pain, and thereby realise his moral worth, his merits and demerits, to the fullest extent. For we must not forget that the Universe to-be comes into existence for a moral purpose the true nature of which we shall see later on.³²

Leaving these questions for the present then, what we have to grasp here is that, according to the Trika, in order that a Purusha may wake up from his sleep of the Purursha-Prakriti state, his Prakriti has to be disturbed by an influence other than that of either the Purusha himself, who has already completely identified himself with the Prakriti and thus indeed forgotten himself, or of the Prukriti itself which.is inert.³³

As the Purusha wakes up, this his first waking consciousness after the sleep in or of the Prakriti – the consciousness, which is hardly anything more than a feeling of the merest presentation,³⁴ without anything of the nature of a moving feeling in it—is what is called Buddhi.

And as the first manifestation of that type of conscious experience which follows a state of sleep, it is and can be, at this stage and in so far as it is the product of the experiences of the higher states of manifestation, only the memory of the experience of the state which preceded the state of sleep [the meaning of the qualification made here will be understood later]. Buddhi is, in other words, what may be called the memory of the Universal ‘All-this' which formed the Experience of the Shuddha-Vidya, but afterwards changed into a dim and indefinite 'Something' in the Purusha-Prakriti stage. It is therefore the blossoming forth anew of that, indefinite 'Something' i.e. of Prakriti.

As such, it is a state of calm but keenly conscious enjoyment, without as yet the manifestation of anything of the nature of either a moving Passion or inert, senseless Stupefaction. It is therefore the manifestation of the Sattva aspect of Prakriti as its most dominant Feature or Guna. Because a disturbance of the Prakriti, by which disturbance alone the new experience of Buddhi is produced, can mean nothing else than (a) that the equipoise in which the three Gunas had hitherto been held, and which alone is the sole being and essence of the Prakriti, has been destroyed; ( b ) that one or other of the three Gunas which had been hitherto held in a state of mutual neutralisation has been thrown into greater prominence than the others; and (c) that it is this prominent Feature thus produced which affects the Experiencer in a way which is other than the merely indefinite vague feeling of the Purusha-Prakriti State. That is to say, Buddhi is the 'affection' of the Purusha, as the blissful but unmoving feeling of mere presentation (prakasha only), by the Prakriti in that Aflictive Feature (Guna) of hers which can so affect (i.e. in her aspect as the Sattva Guna), and which becomes, at the time, more prominent than her other two Features or aspects, both of which are also present therein but held in comparative suppression.³⁵

And as the Buddhi, being such a manifestation of the Sattva Guna, is a glorious vision of ideas, (Dhi) i.e. the memory of the ‘All-this' at this stage, it is a state of pure knowledge or Intelligence in which the feeling is one of bliss no doubt, but without anything of a moving, reacting or passional nature in it. Thus the Sattva is—as has been intimated above and as may be now pointed out in passing—the originator of both calm pleasure and enjoyment (rather of a blissful feeling) and also an exalted state of Consciousness in us. Indeed it is the latter which is the real character of an affection by the Sattva, the feeling of bliss being but a concomitant result of it.³⁶

Further, as this experience of the Buddhi is one in which there is only the notion of a mere existence—of only the fact that certain things or ideas are³⁷—without any thought of an ‘I' on the part of the Experiencer or any movement of a passion, it is said to be an experience which may of Being only (Satta-Matra,): a fact which may account for the name of its chief Affective Feature, namely the Sattva, which literally means Existence, i.e. mere being or mere presentation.

So far we have considered Buddhi as the product of only the factors which come into manifestation, in the evolution of the Universe, prior to the individual having any experiences of the concrete sense objects. But Buddhi has other contents as well, which are derived from the later experiences of the individual. These are called the Samskaras—the refined and, as it were, the distilled essences abstracted out of the concrete experiences of one's daily life.³⁸ These will be considered later. For the present it is enough for our purpose to know (a) that 'Buddhi' is what may be spoken of as the memory of the Shuddha-Vidya Experience produced by the revivification of the dim and indefinite 'Something' of the Prakriti to which that experience had been once reduced; (b) that it consists of General and Abstract ideas which as such cannot be pictured by the individual mind of a man in the same way as can a concrete thing, a particular cow for instance, or a concrete act, a particular act of kindness for example; (c) that, remaining in the background of or beyond the personal consciousness of a man, as Rama or Jones, it acts as that standard a reference to which is needed before one can ascertain the nature of a concrete object of experience as belonging to one 'Species' or another and can form a judgment about it; and (d) that, finally, it is an experience of calm joy and pure Consciousness, of mere presentation as such, in which one is quite oblivious of the limited Individual Self as the 'I' of the Experience, and in which there is as yet no moving feeling.

And it is produced from the Prakriti, as said above, in much the same way as, and for a similar reason to that which, brings on, in our daily life, a state of wakefulness, following upon a state of deep and profound sleep.

From Buddhi is produced the above mentioned Ahankara.

Its manifestation from the Buddhi, i.e. its realisation as an Experience after that of the Buddhi, may again be likened to the stage immediately following that self-oblivious Consciousness which we sometimes have on waking up from a state of sleep, which corresponds in some respects, as we have seen, to the experience of the Buddhi. And it comes to be realised in much the same way and for similar reasons. On waking up—in the sort of case we have taken for our example—first this stage, consist only of such general elements or aspects of the already experienced Buddhi as are particularised for the purpose. And this particularization takes place in obedience to the same or a similar law which we find in operation in our every day life. It is a process, as will be readily seen, of selecting a special section out of a general whole and then being 'engaged' on it so as to make it one's own either as a particular object of thought or a particular field of operation. It is, in short, a process of selection and of making what is so selected one's own, as 'my and mine' or of building it into one-self as the 'I',—as for instance, when the body, consisting of materials particularised from a general whole, and built into one's self, is regarded as the 'I' of a man.

Following this process, a special section or aspect of the Buddhi is selected and is regarded by the experiencing entity as particularly its own and there arises the experience This is mine or these are mine', 'I am this' or 'I am so and so'—there is, in other words, the experience, of what, may be called self-apperception.

This realization of one-self as the 'I' and as the Self and owner of a 'particular this,' as distinguished from the 'All-this', is what is meant by the production of the Ahankara.

And Ahankara thus produced consists, —at this stage, let me repeat, and in so far as its elements are personal ones,—of a particularised aspect or aspects of the general Buddhi, and constitutes the 'particular this' or the 'so and so' of the experience. In other words, it is, at this stage, only the notion of a mere some body, a limited mere 'I am,' (asmita-matra)³⁹ both as a 'being' and 'possessor', and not I am 'Rama' or 'Jones' (na tu Chaitro Maitro va ham asmiti). The difference which there is between the Ahankara thus constituted and the Buddhi consists in the fact that, while the former is the experience "I am all this and all this is mine", the latter is simply the experience "all this is", without as yet the realisation of an 'I' or 'mine' in reference to it.

Further, as Ahankara exists by making its own selected and specialised elements either as a possession or as itself, it is essentially a thing of which the function is what may be called 'appropriation' or 'self-arrogation' or identification—in Sanskrit, Abhimana—by engaging itself in, or intently fixing the thought on, what is so selected (Abhi, on, about and Man, to think or feel). Indeed, Ahankara may be said to be only this power or energy of 'self-arrogation'—of building up materials into an 'Ego'; and, being a power, it is a product, ultimately, of Shakti through the intermediate Prakriti which obviously is a mode of the Divine Energy.⁴⁰

Finally, Ahankara is what may be called a static condition, to a certain extent at least, of the individual existence, inasmuch as thorc is as yet very little movement in it. It is the State or Experience of Self-realisation as the personal Ego, just preceding the state of movement, in much the same way as the state of Self-recollection, following the Self-oblivious consciousness of the first waking up from sleep of our illustration, is a state of comparative motionlessness preceding movements which are to follow directly. It is state of experience of what may be called a mental stock-taking on the part of the now limited experiencer, viewing round and realising, a it were, what he is and what he can do; and as such it may be said to correspond to the Sada-shiva stato of the Pure Way, mentioned before. It is a state of forming resolves as to what to do, by a survey and realisation of what one is and is capable of doing—by feeling oneself as a somebody with a will to do. It is thus a state in which, as in the Sada-Shiva-Tattva, the will aspect of the Divine Shakti is most manifest. But it is also a state in which, as said above, the Experiencer identifies himself with the 'so and so' of the experience. And as this identification means—unlike the Sada-shiva state where there is as yet no all this or some this—some movement of thought and feeling, as it were, towards and all round the 'so and so', it is a state in which there is already manifest, to some extent at least, also that Affective Feature of the Prakriti which can affect the experiencer as such a moving feeling, i.e. the Rajas Guna which was more or less suppressed in the previous Buddhic State. That is to say, Ahankara is an experience in which the will aspect, of the Divine Shakti and the Rajas Guna of the Prakriti are the more dominant elements.⁴¹

But, although Ahankara is an experience in which the Rajas is in more prominent manifestation, it contains in it the other two Gunas as well, only in a subdued and suppressed form, in the same way as there are the Tamas and Rajas in the Buddhi, even though Sattva may be most prominently manifest in it. Indeed Prakriti, being but the Gunas in a state of equipoise, all its derivatives, such as the Buddhi, Ahankara and the others to be mentioned later, cannot but have in them all the three Gunas, even though it is only one of them which is prominently manifest at a time while the remaining two subsist in a subdued form. This is a point which should never be lost sight of, if one is to understand the Trika, or the Sankhya, doctrines in regard to these later phases of manifestation.

From Ahankara again is produced the above mentioned Manas.

From what has been already said about Manas, it will be seen that it is a state of activity—it being busily engaged in building up images, as fast as the senses supply the manifold of the external universe. But this is not its only function. It has many activities besides. For it is also that something in us which constantly moves from sense to sense, as what is called attention, and co-operates with the senses before the latter can 'give' us anything at all. There may be the whole world before us and the senses in contact with and acted on by the different stimulating features of that world, yet they may not produce any 'sensation' whatever, if what is ordinarily called 'mind' is absent from them—if one is, as it is put 'absent-minded.' The senses, therefore, must receive the co-operation of this something vaguely called mind before they can at all act. Nor can this 'mind' be any other than what builds up images out of the 'given' of the sense; that is to say, it is none other than the Manas; because Manas is the factor which comes into operation immediately after the manifold of sense is given, all other elements necessary for the perception of a Thing' as a cow or a horse, being supplied afterwards. First the picture is built and then it is substantiated with and assimilated to the other necessary materials of previous personal experiences held together in and as the personal 'I' or Ahankara, and compared with the general ideas of the Buddhi—and indeed gone through several other operations in the other and deeper factors of our nature as will be seen later. And if any 'instrument' has to cooperate with the senses before they can at all give us anything, it must be this picture-making instrument, that is to say, the Manas; because Manas as it were lies next to the senses and intervenes, so to say, between the senses on the one hand and the Ahankara on the other, with the Buddhi lying beyond it still, as can be inferred from the successive operations of these. Nor need we suppose that the something which obviously does and must co-operate with the senses and which is referred to vaguely as 'mind' or 'attention', is other than the image-making and concreting Manas, lying, as it were, between this latter on the one hand and the senses on the other. There is no ground for such a supposition. For not only are we never conscious of the existence of such a thing, but it is far simpler and far more natural to suppose that what cooperates on the one hand severally with the senses—thus receiving from them all the manifold elements they can supply—and, on the other, gathers them together and builds them up into the concrete images of perception, should be one and the same thing.

Manas is, in this sense also, a concreting and synthesising factor. Not only does it put together the 'manifold' supplied by a single sense as so many points or 'pin-pricks' and build them up into an image, but it also 'puts together' and concretes the various sets of manifolds supplied by the different senses and makes of them a single concrete image.

Thus it is, that Manas is intensely active and restless⁴² as it moves constantly, on the one hand from sense to sense, and on the other from the senses to the Ahankara to which it 'hands over' the sense-manifold after it has been transformed into images to be presently endowed with other elements by the Ahankara itself from its own store-house.

Manas is, in other words, a state of activity—a Kinetic State—following that of the comparatively Static Ahankara.

And it follows the Ahankara in much the same way—and for more or less the same reasons—as the state of Self-recollection, i.e, the second state on waking from sleep in our example, is followed by that of activity when a man begins to move or move about.

The mutual relation of the three States of Buddhi, Ahankara and Manas may not inaptly be illustrated, at least in certain of their aspects, by the behaviour of a cat or a tiger when catching prey.

Let us suppose that our tiger was sleeping. Then suddenly he is waked up by the movements of some animal he can devour; and he is all awake, only eyeing his prey and without any thought of himself. This may be likened to Buddhi.

Then he makes a resolve to kill the animal and gathers himself up and assumes a crouching position—a motionless state of Self-possession, but one which is going immediately to be followed by one of activity. This is not unlike Ahankara.

The next moment, he takes a tremendous leap and is immediately on his prey, and there is a great struggle and fierce activity. This is not quite a bad picture of the Manas.

This illustration would be still more complete if we could suppose that our tiger remained simultaneously in the three positions—existing simultaneously as three tigers, the last as the outcome of the second and this of the first. For, we must not forget that when Manas is produced from Ahankara and the latter from Buddhi, neither this nor the Ahankara ceases to exist, but on the contrary they remain what they have always been, even after their respective products have come into existence.

But although so active, Manas is not an experience in which the Rajas,—the Affective Feature of the Prakriti, affecting primarily as moving feeling ( moving the experiencer into activity of some sort )—is most manifest. For the activities of Manas by themselves produce neither any intelligent and illuminating results, nor any moving feeling of pleasure and pain. The images which the Manas builds up by its activity are by themselves never of an illuminating nature; i.e. they do not und cannot reveal themselves independently to the experiencer. Before they can be so revealed and realised as objects of perception, they will have to be taken up, as we have seen, not only to the Ahankara but also to the Buddhi without whose intelligent light they would be but dark forms, unseen and unknown by the experiencer, and the efforts of the Manas but blind and 'stupid' gropings in the dark.⁴³ Nor can the images built up by the Manas affect, of themselves, the experiencer so as to move him in any way until and unless the experiencer identifies himself with them by Ahankara, i.e. by making them his own in feeling and experience. The Manas by itself, being thus an experience of activity in the dark, unseen and unrevealed by the light of Buddhi, and not moving the experiencer till he identifies himself with it in feeling, is one in the Tamas Guna is the most manifest. ⁴⁴

But, although blind and moving and working in the dark, still Manas is an experience of groping, of seeking, however unintelligently. It is therefore the seat of 'desires'. Indeed Manas is 'desire' incarnate.⁴⁵

And, as said above, this manas comes into manifestation from the Ahankara.

Footnotes

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