Consciousness
Its Beginnings in the Upaniṣads
The early Upaniṣads (c. 700 – 400 BCE) ignite India’s long debate on consciousness by equating ātman—the innermost witness—with brahman, the limitless ground of reality. Four terse proclamations, the mahāvākyas, distil that vision:
| Mahāvākya | Upaniṣad | Translation | Philosophical Force |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tat tvam asi | Chāndogya 6.8.7 | “That thou art.” | Bridges the personal and the cosmic. |
| Aham brahmāsmi | Bṛhadāraṇyaka 1.4.10 | “I am brahman.” | Turns doctrine into lived identity. |
| Prajñānam brahma | Aitareya 3.1.3 | “Consciousness is brahman.” | Raises awareness to ontological primacy. |
| Ayam ātmā brahma | Māṇḍūkya 1.2 | “This self is brahman.” | Collapses seeker and sought in the present moment. |
Every later Indian school—Advaita, Sāṃkhya-Yoga, Nyāya, Buddhism—must either deepen, debate, or re-route this starting gun.
While Vedic hymns praised cosmic powers, Upaniṣadic sages asked a starker question: Who sees, thinks, and dreams? Their answers survive in dialogues between fathers and sons, kings and sages, preserved in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Chāndogya, Aitareya, and Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣads (Olivelle, 1998). Consciousness shifts here from mental by-product to the very condition of experience.
Bṛhadāraṇyaka 3.7 calls the self the antar-yāmin, “inner controller”: unseen yet seeing, unheard yet hearing, unknown yet knowing. Because this witness lights every act of knowing, it cannot itself be placed before the mental camera. The Upaniṣads thus carve out a principle of self-luminosity (svayaṃ-prakāśatva): consciousness is always subject, never object. This insight anticipates later Advaita Vedānta and sharply contrasts modern materialist programs that try to reduce awareness to an emergent brain process.
If brahman is the name for the outward infinite, it is not a thing among things—it is the ground from which all things arise and into which all return. Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.1.1 describes it as satyam, jñānam, anantam—truth, knowledge, infinity. It is a triad that resists reduction. This is not infinity in a merely mathematical sense, but a reality without boundaries, without second, and beyond conception.
Upaniṣadic metaphors strive to suggest what cannot be stated: like the honey shared by bees, it is both one and many; like a seed hiding a vast tree, it holds the world in latency; like the ocean, it remains undisturbed beneath all surface waves. These images suggest a presence that that is hidden yet wholly sustaining.
And yet, every word distorts. Every label imposes finitude on what is by definition limitless. So the sages step back from description and embrace paradox: neti, neti—not this, not that.
The Five Koshas (Taittirīya Upaniṣad)
The Taittirīya Upaniṣad maps awareness into a five-sheath (pañca-kośa) model, peeling individuality like an onion:
Annamaya kośa – the physical sheath (food-built body).
Prāṇamaya kośa – the vital-energy sheath (breath, life-force).
Manomaya kośa – the mental sheath (sensory mind and emotion).
Vijñānamaya kośa – the intellectual sheath (discriminative wisdom).
Ānandamaya kośa – the causal/bliss sheath (subtlest veil of individuality).
Contemplative practice moves inward, piercing layer after layer until the sheaths fall away and pure consciousness shines forth.
The Four States (Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad)
The slender Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad (twelve mantras) complements the vertical kosha model with a horizontal clock of experience:
| State | Sanskrit | Phenomenology |
|---|---|---|
| Waking | jāgrat | Outward-turned cognition. |
| Dream | svapna | Inward-turned imagery. |
| Deep Sleep | suṣupti | No discrete objects, yet latent awareness. |
| Pure Consciousness | turīya | The underlying forth-state, silent, witnessing all three. |
Śaṅkara later argues that suṣupti proves awareness persists even when content lapses; darkness is object-absence, not unconsciousness.
Together, koshas and states sketch a topography of consciousness—one vertical (layers), one horizontal (temporal phases)—both pointing to the same core luminosity.
How to verify such audacious claims? The Upaniṣads lean on two intertwined pramāṇas (knowledge routes): śruti (revealed testimony) and anubhava (direct experience). Teachers rarely argue deductively; they invite students to see (paśya), know (vijānīhi), or meditate (dhyāyita), fusing scriptural hint and contemplative proof.
From Insight to Liberation
Upaniṣadic teaching aims at mokṣa—freedom from fear, sorrow, and cyclic karma. Ignorance (avidyā) mistakes flickering name-and-form for reality. The flash of any mahāvākya dissolves that error; self-knowledge reconfigures being itself. Liberation here is cognitive transformation, not post-mortem reward.
Neurophenomenologists hunt “pure consciousness events” in EEG and fMRI signatures of adept meditators (Travis & Pearson, 2000). Cognitive scientists probe self-referential processing in deep-sleep awareness (Windt, 2020). Quantum theorists flirt with ātman-brahman identity to illustrate observer-dependent reality, though skeptics warn against loose analogies. The kosha/state frameworks still inspire methodological innovation.
References
Olivelle, P. (1998). The early Upaniṣads: Annotated text and translation. Oxford University Press.
Śaṅkara. (2007). Brahma-sūtra-bhāṣya (S. S. Ranganath, Trans.). Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.
Travis, F., & Pearson, C. (2000). Phenomenological and physiological correlates of pure consciousness during meditation. International Journal of Neuroscience, 100(1-4), 77-89. https://doi.org/10.3109/00207450008985694
Windt, J. M. (2020). Consciousness in sleep: From inaccessibility to subtle presence. Current Opinion in Psychology, 33, 13-19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.06.002