According

formulation itself involves consciousness. So chit,
the real consciousness, the primary consciousness
of Vedanta, appears both as matter and as conventional
consciousness: vyavaharika chit. This real
chit is sat-chit, existence-consciousness, while our
empirical consciousness is a chitta-vritti, mode of
consciousness, a mixture of the subject and the object.
For the same reason even the limited subject
is a vritti, a mode of consciousness.
Do we not actually see that all our mundane
objects of thought appear as matter? For example,
all the ‘first person singulars’—the experiencing
beings—experience themselves as consciousness
or modes of it; and the same first person singulars,
when viewed by others, are seen as bodies. In fact,
we ourselves, when we look at ‘us’, take ourselves
to be bodies; but when we reason, consider things
a little deeply, look inwards, we perceive ourselves
as mind or consciousness. If we are observant and
reason carefully, we shall find that during a very
large portion of our lives we are consciousness;
only when we are engaged in some physical work
do we forget ourselves and identify ourselves with
our bodies. When we think, reason, feel, plan, or
even sit idle, we are consciousness; bodily exercises
force us out of ourselves to what we call the material
plane, which again is upheld by consciousness.
It is for this reason that in Vedanta the jada, insentient,
is equated with the vishaya, object: all objects
are material, all matter is objective. Conversely, all
subjects are constituted by conventional consciousness.
Sat-chit, the real primary consciousness, is the
bedrock supporting all planes of existence.
Permanence and Unceasing Change
So much for the reason why such great emphasis is
laid on the passivity of chit. Standing on the bedrock
of consciousness, and thus being sure of our
own position in the investigation, we can go on
testing, on the touchstone of reason, the existence
and value of other objects, and even that of the
touchstone itself. If we are ourselves shaky, if we
are nothing but helpless changefulness—being one
thing this moment and another the next—what
PB August 2009
Consciousness 17
faith can one place in the conclusions we draw? In
such a situation all knowledge acquired by human
labour over the millennia will be in jeopardy. Even
for the establishment of relativity something permanent
must needs be assumed. When the assumption
is questioned—and it is bound to be
questioned—we land in an infinite regress. The
entire framework of logic, or the laws of thought
or consciousness, is based on an integral substance
with unshaken and unshakable permanence at its
centre. Rather, everywhere—from the centre to the
nowhere-to-be-found periphery—there runs an
immovable permanence engaged in a mad dance
of restless appearances. Acharya Shankara has made
this clear in his commentary on verse 2.16 of the
Bhagavadgita: ‘Of the unreal there is no being; the
real has no non-existence. The nature of both these,
indeed, has been realized by the seers of Truth.’
Now crops up an important question: If consciousness
is really passive, inactive, and ubiquitous,
and is the only thing that exists, how is it that we
find forces and activities all around us, right down
to the seeming quiet of the proton in the atomic
nucleus? How does one explain the existence of
the force that has built up this universe and is still
building, breaking, and rebuilding it?
Science has shown us how relative forces are
generated—one from the other—and how even the
most innocent-looking ingredients of the atomic
nucleus are full of energy. Again, we need no lesson
in psychology to be convinced that even in our
internal world there is a perpetual movement of
thoughts and ideas, of emotions and volitions. So,
in or out, forces and movements are everywhere—
acting, reacting, coalescing, and interchanging. But
the ‘where’ of it has not been pushed to the ultimate
point. We can go further and say, with the cumulative
experience of the entire thinking humanity,
that all these movements occur in, around, and
with objects, but never in the subject. The deeper
we dive into the subject, the quieter is our experience;
and when the rock bottom of consciousness
is reached, there is absolute calm. What conclusion
can we draw from this phenomenon? Is not the
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