Sanatana Dharma in simple terms – 3

Sri:

Jivatma, the individual self

Understanding Jivatma: The Essence of Individual Consciousness

I would like to start off with a comment on what I said in my previous article about the philosophical explanations of the Upanishads (Vedas) presented in a logical way. When I say that I will put things across in a logical way as much as possible, it is not to be taken as saying that I want to fit the entire concept of Brahman into our existing system of logic. The so-called logical explanations should therefore not be taken as trying to limit in any way the description of Brahman which is infinite, and which transcends logic and words. Ultimately Brahman has to be ‘realised’ or ‘experienced’ and not necessarily logically understood. However, if Its nature and qualities, Its relation to the individual atmas (see below), Its relation to the universe etc. can be described in logical terms, then it is easier for us to ‘understand’ It ‘theoretically’ say, to appreciate the reason for seeking It and more importantly to understand the methodology to seek It.

Let me take a laukika (worldly) example. How can one describe logically the feeling of love for another person? One could give some explanations as to what characterises the love of A for B, but it cannot be fully described only through logic and words. Ultimately one has to ‘experience’ or ‘feel’ the love oneself. Another example is the sweetness of sugar. One can give any amount of technical explanation of the taste of sweetness but ultimately one has to taste sugar to experience its sweetness.  Similarly one has to spiritually ‘realise’ or ‘experience’ Brahman, and how? Precisely through love for It 😊 (unceasing loving meditation called upaasanaa or bhakti, we will see later). We can go as far as possible on the logical path but at some stage we have to go beyond the logical explanations and step into the act of spiritual experience. Then one can ask why we do need to learn about It? It is for us to be motivated to love It, meditate on It and attain the blissful state of realisation!

Sanatana Dharma is all about everyone being equally eligible to ‘realise’ Brahman ‘whether they have logically understood It or not’. There is a famous verse that appears in Mundaka as well as Katha Upanishads, which says,

नायमात्मा प्रवचनेन लभ्यो
      न मेधया न बहुना श्रुतेन ।

यमेवैष वृणुते तेन लभ्य-
       स्तस्यैष आत्मा विवृणुते तनूं स्वाम् ॥
(Mundaka Upanishad, III.2.3; Katha Upanishad I.II.23)

naayamatma pravachenana labhyaha
na medhayaa bahunaa shrutena |
yame viashya vrunute, tena labhyaha
tasyaisha atma vivrunte tanum svaam ||

“This Atma (Paramatma) cannot be attained by mere study of the Vedas, nor by intellectual power, not even by much hearing, but by one whom the Atma chooses to reveal Itself”.

Question 1: Whom does It choose?

Now, let us go to the subject of this article.

Jivatma and Its Eternal Nature in the Vedic Philosophy

Is there an (individual) atma and what is it ?

The rishis and rishikas who experienced a deeper reality affirm that each being has an atma (consciousness). That is, this is in the Vedas. What is atma? It is the ‘self-consciousness’ or ‘self-awareness’ principle. It is what is denoted by the word ‘I’ (ahamartha). In simpler words, it is what manifests as ‘I’. It is called jivatma or jiva (depending on the context or the school of thought). Every sentient being has an atma (consciousness) and a body. It is said that atma is ‘jnaanamayam’, that is, formed of consciousness and it has consciousness. It is what makes one be aware of oneself and its consciousness is what makes one aware of external things. Note that some interpretations may be slightly different in certain schools of thought, but all of them agree that all beings experience the ‘I’ consciousness.

Jivatma in Bhagavad Gita: Timeless Teachings

Sri Krishna says to Arjuna in Bhagavad Gita[1]:

न त्वेवाहं जातु नासं न त्वं नेमे जनाधिपाः।
न चैव न भविष्यामः सर्वे वयमतः परम्  ।।
— 2.12 ।।

na tvevaahama jaatu naasam na tvam neme janaadhipaahaa |
na chaiva na bhavishyaamaha sarve vayamataha param ||

There never was a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor any of these kings of men. Nor will there be any time in future when all of us shall cease to be.

This means that atma (and Paramatma) are ever existing. Only the body perishes. Another shloka from the Gita emphasises this.

न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचिन्नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूयः।
अजो नित्यः शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे ।।
— 2.20 ।।

na jaayate mruyate vaa kadaachinnaayam bhutvaa bhavitaa vaa na bhuyaha |
ajo nityaha shaashvatoyam puraano na hanyate hanyamaane sharire || 

The self[2] is never born: It never dies; having come into existence, It never ceases to be. Unborn, eternal, abiding and primeval, It is not slain when the body is slain.

The text ‘ajo nityaha shaashvatoyam puraano…’ appears in Katha Upanishad.

Jivatma is eternal (nitya). Although it is eternal, it is dependent on Brahman/Paramatma for its existence.

Jivatma or jiva is the knower (jnaataa), agent of action (kartaa), and the enjoyer of the fruits of action (bhoktaa).Jivatmas are anu (infinitesimal, spiritual) and infinite in number. Many scriptural statements are cited by scholars for these affirmations, they are omitted for the sake of brevity.

Important remark: I already said that the distinction between jivatma and Paramatma may be a point of debate for those who follow one particular school of thought. We may briefly go over the different schools of thought in a separate article. However, this school of thought also accepts that until ‘liberation’ the jiva experiences itself as a separate individual sentient entity, and ‘thinks’, ‘knows’, ‘acts’ and ‘enjoys’. All other schools based on the Vedas agree that jivatma and Paramatma are distinct sentient entities.

The above shloka says that only the body (shariram) perishes; the atma never does. Let us pause for a minute and see what the ‘body’ is all about. The body comes in the category of ‘matter’ or ‘acit’ in our threefold classification. Recall that in the first article we said Reality is three-fold: matter or the universe (prakriti, also called acit – insentient), the individual atmas (jivatmas, cit – sentient) and the Supreme Being (Paramatma, of course sentient). These entities are called tattvas (realities), and the three together are called tattvatreya. We have to include other dimensions such as time (kaalaa) as the universe is clearly described as a space-time entity in our scriptures but we may not go into that now.

The Connection Between Jivatma, Mind, and Body

So, body is insentient, and it is ‘controlled’ by the atma. We said jivatma and Paramatma are made up of ‘consciousness’. Now what is acit or ‘body’ made up of? We are not going to go into the biology of body parts or the physics/chemistry of substances but give an account of what constitutes ‘acit’ in broad terms as found in our texts. We leave it to science to go into the details! Readers can skip this part if it is too technical or if they feel that it is not relevant for them.

[Beginning of extra paragraph:
According to most Indian philosophical systems, the list of the constituent entities (tattvas) of matter is as below. As mentioned above, they are ‘broad’ components and do not go into the level of minute particles.

Important: The order of the list below does NOT reflect the order of evolution of matter/universe described in the scriptures. We will address it later. I have tried to divide the items according to their nature – say ‘gross’ or ‘subtle’, that is, the easily comprehensible/perceivable items first and the less obvious items after.

‘Gross’ entities are:

• 5 gross elements (pancha bhutaas) – space (aakaasha), air (vayu), fire (agni, heat energy), water (ap, liquid), earth (prithvi, solid),
• 5 sense organs – eyes – organs of vision (chakshu), ears – organs of hearing (shrotra), nose – organ of smell (ghraana), organ of taste (tongue, jihva), organ of touch (skin, tvak); the organs responsible for perception,
• 5 action organs – hands (paani), legs (paada), speech (vaak), organs of excretion (paayu), organ of reproduction (upasthaa)

And the ‘subtle’ entities are:

• 5 subtle elements (pancha tanmaatraas) – sound (shabdam), touch (sparsham), form (rupam, shape), taste (rasam), smell (gandham); that are perceived by the sense organs,
• manas – mind, that which collects information from the senses,
• mahat – intellect, that which ‘sorts out’ the information, also called buddhi
• ahankaara (egotism, not the common meaning of self-conceit, but the general principle which makes one feel the sentient ‘I’; sometimes it also denotes the principle that makes one wrongly think that the body is the sentient atma)

The above 23 broad entities (tattvas) are all matter and are evolutes of moola prakriti (primordial cosmic matter).

Repeat: Note that the order in the above list does NOT reflect the order of evolution of prakriti (matter) that is described in the scriptures, although the same items are found in the description of evolution. We might discuss the latter in another article.

Note that all items need not always be present in all acit things.

Question 2: Name an acit thing that does not have any sense organs. Name a sentient being with a body (acit) that does have some sense organs but not all.

As the sense organs are directly responsible for gaining jnaanam (cognition, knowledge) of things, they are collectively called jnaanendriyas. Indriya is organ.

The organs of action are called ‘karmendriyas’. Karma is action (in the direct sense) and the organs responsible for action are karmendriyas.

Note that manas (mind) as well as buddhi (intellect, the discriminatory power) are all acit (matter) in all Hindu systems. They are ‘instruments’ of knowledge which in turn abides in jivatma (‘I’).
End of extra paragraph]

Coming back to jivatma, let me end with one of the finest descriptions of it through the parable of the chariot (ratha) given in Katha Upanishad. Taking the analogy of the owner of a chariot riding in her/his chariot driven by a charioteer and horses, it says the owner of the chariot is the jivatma, the chariot is her/his body, the charioteer is the buddhi, the reins are the manas, the horses are the senses, and the objects in the paths are the objects in contact with the senses. So the jivatma has to control the senses (horses) through the mind (reins) guided by the buddhi, and make sure that the senses (horses) do not waver in all directions but go in the right direction!

Let us stop here. So far, we have learnt that, according to the Vedas, in addition to the material universe, there is a spiritual Reality in the form of individual jivatmas and a Paramatma. In the previous article we learnt (a bit!) about Paramatma. In this article, I have tried to give some descriptions of the jivatma.

Answers to questions in the previous article:

Answer to Q 1: Suppose shabdam seems to contradict pratyaksham. Which one do we take? According to the generally accepted rules, all pramaanams are equally valid. Pratyaksha is a very important one as it serves as the basis for the other two. So if there is a contradiction, pratyaksham is stronger. However it does not mean that scripture is wrong. It only means that it has to be interpreted in a way that will not contradict pratyaksham. Having said that, when we say pratyaksham, we are talking about pratyaksham that is not erroneous (not sublated by deeper investigation). Hence one has to overcome the conflict and reconcile the two. One can go on with other possible pramaanam conflicts but let me stop here for the answer.

Answer to Q 2: If everything happens due to Its will, then don’t we have any free will? The short answer is we DO have free will to decide on all our actions. But once we have decided, our will can only get executed if Paramatma ‘allows’ to be so, even passively. Let us come back to this later when we talk of the concept/theory of karma. So Sanatana Dharma does not advocate determinism.

References (mentioned in the article):

1. Mundaka Upanishad
   https://sanskritdocuments.org/doc_upanishhat/mundaka.html
2. Katha Upanishad
   https://sanskritdocuments.org/doc_upanishhat/katha.html
3. Srimad Bhagavad Gita (with English translation, I give below two links to commentaries by two important acharyas in Sanatana Dharma – Shankara and Ramanuja)
   https://archive.org/details/gitaramanujagitabhasyadevanagariandenglishrenderingbyswamiadidevanandasriramakrishnamath
   https://archive.org/details/GitaBhashyaTranslationCVRIyer/page/n323/mode/2up