The Self in Indian
Philosophy
Who am I?
What am I?
Hinduism
• Hinduism is the primary religion of India
• It regards the Upanishads (900- 200 BCE) as
sacred
Henotheism
• There are many gods,
• But all are forms of one being, Brahman
Rg Veda
• “They have styled Him Indra (the Chief of the
Gods), Mitra (the Friend), Varuna (the
Venerable), Agni (Fire), also the celestial,
great-winged Garutma; for although one, poets
speak of Him diversely; they say Agni, Yama
(Death), and Matarisvan (Lord of breath).”
• All these gods exist, but as diverse
appearances of one God, “the divine architect,
the impeller of all, the multiform.”
Bhagavad Gita
• “Even those who are devotees of other gods,
And worship them permeated with faith,
It is only me, son of Kunti, that even they
Worship, (tho’) not in the enjoined fashion.
For I of all acts of worship
Am both the recipient and the Lord. . . .”
• “I see the gods in Thy body, O God. . . .”
Concepts of Brahman
• Nirguna brahman: God without attributes; neti
. . . neti (not this)
• Saguna brahman: God with attributes
Attributes of God
• Abstract:
– Sat: being
– Chit: awareness
– Ananda: bliss
• Concrete
– Creator (Brahma)
– Preserver (Vishnu)
– Destroyer (Shiva)
Six Orthodox Schools
(Darshanas)
• Vedanta (end of Veda,
or sacred knowledge)
• Samkhya (nature)
• Yoga (discipline)
• Purva Mimamsa
(exegesis,
interpretation)
• Vaisesika (realism)
• Nyaya (logic)
Who am I? What am I?
• Advaita Vedanta, Samkhya, and Yoga answer
that I am a higher consciousness than I might
realize
• Desire, will, and effort are extraneous to me
Who am I? What am I?
• Not all Indian philosophers agree
• Theistic Vedanta, Nyaya, and Mimamsa all
defend what they consider our commonsense
conception of ourselves:
– having bodies,
– having thoughts and desires, and generally
– being part of nature
Vedanta
• Brahman: the Absolute, ground of
all being, reality as it is in itself, God
• Atman: the soul
Advaita
• Nondualism: soul (atman) =
Brahman
• Monism: Everything is ultimately one
• Everything is Brahman
• Brahman is a child and an elephant,
you and me
• We are one with everything
• Everything is holy
Advaita
• Idealism: The world
as it appears is not
real
• Distinctions are
illusory
• The world is maya
(play, illusion)
Theism
• Dualism: soul (atman) ≠
Brahman
• Not everything is
identical with everything
else
• Realism: Some aspects
of the world are
independent of us
• At least some
distinctions are real
The Higher Self
• The Upanishads affirm that each of us is in some
way a soul (atman): a spiritual self that has, or is
capable of, awareness superior to our everyday
consciousness
• This, our higher self, is continuous with the best
of our surface or waking consciousness
• What is that? Our self-awareness—our
awareness of being aware
• Reflecting on our own consciousness and nature
brings us closer to our higher self
Self-Awareness
• Our self-awareness—the gateway to Brahman—is
self-illumining, like light
• It is transparent to itself—and self-authenticating
• What we experience could turn out to be an illusion
• All objects of experience could turn out to be
something other than what they seem to be
• But self-consciousness is not like that
• We might misidentify an object lit by a lamp, but we
cannot misidentify its light
Self-Awareness
• We do not really have bodies; we do not really
own property; we do not really hold jobs
• But we really are conscious beings
• Our awareness that we are aware is not an
illusion
Samkhya
• “Analysis of nature”
• Dualism: reality consists
of two irreducible
elements:
– nature (prakrti) and
– the conscious being
(purusa)
Samkhya
• Samkhya proposes careful understanding of nature
– organizing principles
– subtle presentations of nature as thoughts and emotions
• We come to recognize that we are distinct from our
body and our mind
• Samkhya sees mental occurrences as external to the
true person
• Consciousness, the awareness of thoughts and
emotions, is a separate substance—the real person
Samkhya
• What am I, really?
• Samkhya answers: consciousness
• External events, thoughts, feelings, and so on
all happen to me
• I am, essentially, the inner person, the
consciousness to whom they happen
• I am thus transcendent: I am not merely a part
of nature. I lie beyond it
Samkhya
• Personality is a mask
• We have various personas that the true person identifies
with for a time
• In doing that, the true person thereby alienates himself (or
herself or itself: the true person has no gender) from its
native state of self-absorption and bliss
• We do not create these masks. Nature presents them to us
• By understanding them, we can more easily discover
ourselves as the transcendent beings we are
• Because we are really transcendent, inner selves, we are
not really shaped by nature; we are free
Strands (gunas) of nature
• sattva (light, clarity, intelligence)
• rajas (passion, dynamism)
• tamas (darkness, inertia, stupidity)
Conscious being
•
•
•
•
the body and senses
the sensational or emotional mind (manas)
the ego-sense (ahamkdra)
the rational mind, or intelligence (buddhi)
Katha Upanishad
Know thou the soul as riding in a chariot,
The body as the chariot.
Know thou the intellect as the chariot-driver,
And the mind as the reins.
The senses, they say, are the horses;
The objects of sense, what they range over.
The self combined with senses and mind
Wise men call "the enjoyer."
Plato & Hinduism
• Plato's chariot has no
passenger
• Plato's horses are desire and
emotion, not the senses
• Plato’s picture is closer to the
Hindu account of the strands
(intelligence, passion, inertia)
than to the distinction between
soul, intellect, mind, and
senses
Mind, Body, and Soul
•
The soul is separable from body, mind, and
intellect
Separability of the Soul
• Consequences:
• Enlightenment: You can detach yourself from
each manifestation of nature
• Reincarnation: The soul may occupy a
different body and mind
The Self is a Hierarchy
•
•
•
•
•
Great Self
Intellect
Mind
Objects of sense
Senses
To Master Yourself
• Higher items must control lower items firmly:
• Objects of sense —> senses: be objective, see
the world as it is. Pay attention!
• Mind —> objects of sense: be active, focus!
• Intellect —> mind: reason —> thoughts and
emotions
• Soul —> intellect: Brahman is ultimate reality;
follow path of renunciation
Yoga
• Yoga (self-discipline) is thoroughly practical
• By practicing yoga, we can discover a higher
self
• Postures and breath control remove physical
distractions
• Meditation removes mental distractions; we
concentrate to achieve complete mental
silence
• We thereby find or achieve a transcendent
consciousness
Nyaya-Vaisheshika
• Argue for the endurance of the self
(against Buddhists) and the conception
of a self as distinct from the body
(against Charvaka materialists)
– We can see the same thing through
different sense modalities
– We can recognize something perceived
previously
Udayana’s Refinement
• Properties exhibited by physical things are
signs of things unconscious
• Since the precise material composition of the
body is all the time changing, it could not be
that which remembers
• An amputee remembers experiences
mediated by the severed limb, and so the
bodily part is not crucial to remembering
Udayana’s Refinement
• The causal link between effort and
action, on the one hand, and previous
experience, on the other, which is
established though invariable positive
and negative correlation, requires
postulation of previous experience
whose subject is clearly not the body
Buddhism
“What are you?”
“I am awake.”
Buddha (563 - 483 BCE)
Four Passing Sights
• Old age
• Disease
• Death
• Monk
Quest for fulfillment
• Self-indulgence (path of desire)
• Asceticism (path of renunciation)
Four Noble Truths
• 1. Life is suffering
• 2. Desire, craving, or clinging is the cause of
suffering
• 3. Nirvana extinguishes craving and hence
suffering
• 4. The path to Nirvana is the Eightfold Noble
Path
Other Core Doctrines
• There is no soul or self (anatman—no soul)
• What we call the self is really just a bundle
(skandhas)
• Everything is impermanent
No Self
• There is no self to fulfill
• No-self (anatman, anatta): there is no self
• Idea of self —> desire —> suffering
Absent Self
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•
•
•
•
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Introspect: what do you see?
Thoughts, feelings, perceptions . . .
You don’t find anything else
You don’t find yourself
There is no self or soul
A person is just a bundle of thoughts . . .
Absent Self
• Self-knowledge?
• Knowledge of others?
• No self: no essence
within me to know
• The best I can do is
understand patterns in
bundle of thoughts
Buddhaghosa (-400)
• There are 89 kinds of
consciousness
• Nothing unifies them
• There are only streams of
consciousness
• Nothing unites past,
present, and future
Buddhaghosa
• A living being lasts
only as long as one
thought
• People, minds,
objects are only ways
of speaking
People and Passengers
• Jane flies from Austin to Houston and back
<———————————>
• She is one person
• She is two passengers
• ‘Passenger’ is just a way of counting
• Buddhaghosa: every noun is like ‘passenger’
Questions to King Milinda
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•
•
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“There is no ego here to be found.”
“There is no chariot here to be found.”
No one element is the whole
The combination isn’t the whole; parts
could change while object remains the
same
Reincarnation?
• There is no soul to
occupy a different
mind or body
• But there is a cycle
of birth and death
Reincarnation?
• There are connections
between lives through
cause and effect,
similarity, etc.
• We construct people
(like “passengers”)—
we can do so across
bounds of death