Our modern inquiry about the nature of our sense of self was very much the chief preoccupation of multiple religious traditions in ancient India. This central preoccupation became a celebrated debate –centering around the nature of the self and later, reality– with the emergence of Buddhism ~ 2500 years ago. This debate lasted at least a 1000 years in classical India until Buddhism almost died out in the land of its birth.
Writing as a layman, with no expertise and only preliminary study, this post might be incorrect in places, hopefully not substantively so. At a minimum, it is missing important ideas and contexts.
The central focus on the self in ancient India originates with the concept of átman, translated as ‘soul’ or ‘self’ in English. This term made its appearance in the Rgveda ( ~ 4000 years ago), the oldest sacred text in the world. Átman is extensively clarified in the Upanishads, the philosophical texts associated with the four Vedas, some of the most sacred texts of Hindus.
In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad (~ 3700 years ago), the sage Yājñavalkya while debating Gārgi (a learned woman), explains átman:
The sages call it the eternal self. It is neither big nor small, neither long nor short, neither hot nor cold, neither bright nor dark, neither air nor space. It is without attachment, has no taste, smell, or feel, is without eyes, ears, tongue, mouth, breath, or mind, without movement, without limitation, without inside or outside. It consumes nothing, and nothing consumes it.
The Self is the seer, Gārgi, though unseen; the hearer, though unheard; the thinker, though unthought; the knower, though unknown. Nothing other than the Self can see, hear, think, or know (BU 3.7, 8, 11)1.
The átman, as described in the first part above, is eternal and seemingly devoid of any qualities. It appears metaphysical, not directly accessible to our senses or our mind. In the second part of the sage’s explanation, where he directly addresses Gārgi, the átman seems to be more like a witness or a subject of all the experiences a person has. It is closer to our sense of self which we explored in earlier posts. But, we don’t think of it as eternal. In fact, our existential angst originates in the fear that this self, this I, will disappear forever once we die.
Many people experience the self as a ‘thing’ or entity within themselves looking out on to the world, just as described by Yājñavalkya. It is in line with modern cognitive thinking about the self being the subject of our conscious experiences.
Both explanations given above aren’t very satisfactory. though. They seem like a bare-bones kind of a definition of átman or self. The first explanation by Yājñavalkya seems like a total cop-out: the átman is not this, nor that or not anything that you might think it is, but it exists and is the true self within each living creature? The second part at least suggests that the átman has certain abilities including being able to sense the world, understand and think.
As we read the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad2, we encounter multiple explanations of átman, as Yājñavalkya debates several learned scholars. Eventually we reach a question answer session between Yājñavalkya and king Janaka, the chief organizer of the scholarly debate.
This question-answer session between Janaka and Yājñavalkya is profoundly significant in the history of the human quest to understand the self. Its historical significance was explained to Evan Thompson, the well-known philosopher, by his father William Irwin Thompson, as narrated by Prof. Thompson in his book3.
The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad is the first time in the written history of the world that we encounter a clear conceptualization of consciousness.
Briefly, and being true to content not language, the king begins with a very simple question, all the while knowing where he is headed with this line of questioning.
He asks Yājñavalkya: “what light (illumination) does a man use in his everyday life?” To which Yājñavalkya answers: “the Sun, it provides light for a man to go out, work and return”. “What if the Sun has set?” Then the Moon provides light, replies Yājñavalkya. “What if both Sun and Moon have set?” Then fire, says the sage. “What if the fire has also gone out?” Then it is speech (sound) answers Yājñavalkya. A person can follow a sound in pitch darkness. “What if there is no sound also?” asks Janaka. Then, the sage answers: “the innermost source of light is the self”.
For all the other sources of light (Sun, Moon, fire, sound etc) to illuminate any thing, they need a conscious subject to illuminate for, else they illuminate nothing. The self sits at the source of all sensory perception. In other words, it is the subject to which all conscious experiences are directed at. In its absence, there will be no conscious experience or perception, only photons hitting and bouncing off of objects or pressure waves (sound) traveling through air, or volatile chemicals (odors) wafting on a breeze.
It is the old meme: if a tree falls in the forest does it make any sound if there is no one (no conscious being) to hear it?
This really is the modern formulation of the self as the subject of consciousness; as is used in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy today4. It was clearly conceptualized almost 4000 years ago in the Upanishads!
Finally, king Janaka asks the question really on his mind: “what is the self?” Yājñavalkya explains that the átman has two properties: it is luminous (can provide illumination) and is knowing (conscious). He goes on to explain the nature of consciousness. He explains how consciousness changes in the waking, dream and deep sleep states. He postulates that consciousness is ever present, since even after a deep, seemingly ‘all lights out’ sleep, we wake up to a feeling (memory) of having slept well. He argues that this feeling implies we have experienced consciousness in absence of all sensory stimulation, else how could we (remember) feel the quality of deep sleep?
Neuroscience agrees with Yājñavalkya’s assertion of being conscious during waking and dreaming; it disagrees about being conscious in deep sleep. But modern neuroscience has no way of proving that deep sleep lacks any consciousness at all, since it does not have any objective way with which to measure changes in consciousness and its quality.
Yājñavalkya further explains how the self / consciousness constructs our own body, other people, emotions inside our dreams. It is luminous since it allows us to see things inside dreams where there is no other source of light.
A later Upanishad (Māṇḍūkya) postulates a 4th state of pure consciousness (turiya), a state of non-dual awareness, which forms the ground on which all the other states -waking, dreaming, deep sleep- must be built on, since, they (the ancient Hindus) claim, consciousness is fundamental and cannot be created or destroyed. Even more boldly, they claim, all four states of consciousness, including deep sleep and turiya, can be experienced personally, if someone is willing to put in the work (meditation) needed.
Modern neuroscience has essentially arrived at formulations of the self as the subject of consciousness and of at least three global states of consciousness (waking, dreaming, deep sleep) similar to that described in the Upanishads. Of course, notable differences between this ancient formulation and the modern one exist e.g. general anesthesia, the postulated consciousness in deep sleep, turiya, to name the biggest; but the similarity between the Upanishadic and the modern formulations is striking.
It appears modern neuroscience is trying to solve a 4000 year old problem identified by the ancient Hindus!
Chadha, Monima, "Personhood in Classical Indian Philosophy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL
Thompson, Evan, “Waking, Dreaming, Being self and consciousness in neuroscience, meditation, and philosophy”. Columbia University Press, 2015.
Blanke, Olaf and Metzinger, Thomas, “Full-body illusions and minimal phenomenal selfhood”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, (13) 1, 2009, 7-13.