This impossibility of knowing the nature of consciousness arises on account of our
trying to define consciousness in terms of the body and its relations. We have always
a prejudgement in respect of what we are; and in terms of this judgement that we
have formed about ourselves, we try to define things—even consciousness itself—not
knowing the fact that it is at the very background of even the attempt at thinking. A
great thinker said, “I think, therefore I am—cogito ergo sum,” but this is to put the
cart before the horse. We do not think because thoughts are the cause of our being.
Rather, our being is the cause of thought. Our existence is prior to the very process of
thinking. “I think, therefore I am,” is not the way of putting it. Instead we should say,
“I am, and therefore I think.” If we are not, how can we think?
The thinking is a subsequent arrangement which comes into manifestation in respect
of external relations, but there is a prior being which is the reason for and the
condition for the processes of thought in respect of objects. The association of
consciousness with the mind, as we have studied earlier, is the reason behind our
defining consciousness as a means of knowledge, as if it is an adjunct to the process
of knowledge and only auxiliary to an ulterior purpose, which is the contact of senses
with objects—which again we define as real knowledge.
Our definition of knowledge in this world is such that it amounts to nothing more
than a comprehension of the characteristics of an external object by means of the
senses. But we are not able to discover that the very activity of the senses is due to the
operation of the mind inside; and, the function of the mind itself is due to the
presence of a consciousness which is different from the mind. We have to distinguish
between mind, or mentation, and consciousness. While the mind is a process,
consciousness is not a process. The mind is conditioned by the gunas—sattva, rajas
and tamas. It is constituted of these gunas and has, therefore, mutations. It
undergoes transformations, and it has a meaning only in respect of objects that it
knows. But, consciousness has a meaning of its own. It has a status of its own. It has
an intrinsic value and worth not dependent upon anything else that it knows or does
not know. External conditions do not affect consciousness, because it is
consciousness that gives meaning to every external condition.
Such is the nature of the pure seer. Drisimatrah: knowing without an object, existing
without space, living without time-awareness—all these are involved in
consciousness. We cannot imagine how one can live without time, because to live is
to be in time. But here, there is a type of existence which is not limited by the
existence of space or of time, and it can be independent of every value that we
associate with life and knowledge in this world. We cannot understand what is
drisimatrah, or pure consciousness. Many philosophical schools have come a
cropper due to their inability to comprehend what pure consciousness can be,
independent of objects, because consciousness is always supposed to be something
which has a relation to that which it knows—consciousness having content. Minus
content, what is consciousness? It looks featureless. But it does not mean that
drisimatrah, or the pure consciousness condition, is a featureless transparency
bifurcated from the content.
The consciousness that we are speaking of is not a mere transparency without any
content inside. It is more solid than the heaviest of objects; it is inclusive of all
contents that we can think of. Inasmuch as it has already been accepted that
consciousness, by its nature, should be indivisible and, therefore, spaceless and