The Self, source of consciousness

CHENNAI, JUNE 29. The understanding of the process of gaining knowledge of an object enables a person to gain insight into the nature of the Self (Atman). When we take, for instance, a flower, and try to understand its parts one by one, first there are the petals, then the stamen and the stem. Each part of the flower which we have separated from it becomes a non-flower entity and when we remove all its parts finally nothing remains of the flower. Where has the flower gone? All the parts put together becomes the flower, whereas, bereft of the parts the flower as an object ceases to exist. This is true of all objects in the world. Whatever object we consider, the parts assembled together meaningfully with a form as a whole only becomes the object.

When the reality of an object is considered, it is apparent that reality is a feature one attributes to something which exists independently. Likewise, in the process of gaining knowledge of an object, when we objectify something, we presuppose the existence of a subject. In relation to the subject, the object becomes the ``not-I''. If the ``I'' is dismissed to understand the ``not-I'' it is evident then that it is the person (I) who has the consciousness of the object - consciousness of the space, consciousness of the star and so on.

When we objectify space by saying ``space is'', what we exactly mean by that is ``space consciousness is''. So also when we look at a star, the actual process of knowledge of it is the awareness ``star consciousness is''. So also, is the case with more subtle forms of knowledge like thoughts that arise in the mind and also our ignorance, the difference being that the thought or our ignorance is always about some object. So we have to ask the question ``of what?'' to see the relation between the subject and the object.

In his discourse, Swami Dayananda Saraswathi said that ``consciousness is'' was common in all these knowledge processes. Knowledge gained through the five sense organs shines because of the mind and the mind shines because of the Self (Atman) which is the source of consciousness. The Self is self-evident and we cannot afford to miss this. So it is the subject (Self) which is the locus of all knowledge processes and it is self-revealing and all the rest about which knowledge has to be gained are not-self. Consciousness alone is. Whatever is not consciousness has to come to light but in the case of consciousness it is self-luminous. It is not limited by space and time, yet, lends itself to space and time. It is infinite bliss.

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