Anand Vaidya and Manjula Menon
Ideas from classical Indian philosophy help illuminate the enigmas of selfhood, consciousness and the nature of reality
A note from Manjula Menon: My husband Anand Vaidya died on 11 October 2024, from complications due to cancer. He was only 48, yet had already carefully forged multiple trails through the contemporary philosophical landscape. He did philosophy till the end, leaving behind detailed book proposals, carefully drawn drafts of papers, and numerous abstracts and proposals for projects yet to be written, from which we can trace where he wanted to go with his scholarship. This essay was the last piece he actively worked on, one that I helped shape when he was already very sick. If we hadn’t run out of time, I believe he would have liked to include here further arguments for how notions of self from classical Indian thinkers could shed light on the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. It was an idea on which he had already done substantial work, and I am grateful to his many friends and colleagues who are helping ensure that his efforts do not go to waste. For this piece, I am particularly grateful to Jonardon Ganeri who generously helped finalise the article after Anand was no longer able to. I am also grateful to Sam Dresser and the team at Aeon for shepherding this through. It would have meant a lot to Anand to see it.
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The Kaṭha Upaniṣad tells a story about a boy named Naciketas who meets the God of Death, named Yama. Naciketas is granted three wishes by Yama. To Yama’s surprise, the boy does not ask for worldly riches or great powers. Instead, he wants answers to the kind of questions that only the God of Death can answer: what happens when we die? What is the secret of immortality? Yama pleads for Naciketas to ask for something else, but the boy stands firm. He demands that Yama not renege on his word. Nothing that Yama can say will change his mind. So Yama complies.
To answer Naciketas’s questions, Yama explains that the true hidden nature of reality is that there is only one, all-pervading consciousness called brahman, which is timeless, unchanging and the only non-illusory thing that was and ever will be. And it is this brahman, says Yama, that is also immanent in all living things as ātman, the individual ego or self:
As the single fire, entering living beings, adapts its appearance to match that of each, so the single Self within every being adapts its appearance to match that of each, yet remains quite distinct. [This and subsequent translations are the authors’ own.]
Naciketas presses Yama for clarity about the nature of the relationship between brahman and the world of experienced reality. Yama says that the way to think of consciousness is that it is the thing that ‘illuminates’ and that allows for all mental phenomena. Consciousness, in turn, is itself illuminated by brahman – the one and only source of all illumination. Without brahman there would be no light of consciousness and therefore no experience, no knowledge, no perception. ‘Him alone, as he shines, do all things reflect; this whole world radiates with his light.’
There is only one reality, brahman, which takes myriad illusory forms, but like fire it is both an individual flame and a blaze. This one reality is both the transcendental brahman and the immanent ātman. Everything else is fleeting, illusory, sprung from ignorance. Consciousness is illumination. As the light of a blazing lamp brightens a dark room, so consciousness lights up life….
https://aeon.co/essays/how-classical-indian-philosophy-helps-us-understand-the-self
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