experiencing the world from body to ĀTMAN 151
Centre in Trivandrum when we met him. His fi rst attempt to describe
his problem invokes another idiom that, again lacking terminology for
such fi nely parsed states of consciousness in English, we had to render as
“consciousness”:
Biju: What are the symptoms [lakshananngal—lit., characteristics] of your
illness?Santhosh: Symptoms of illness? When I sleep I will fall into a deep sleep with-
out any consciousness [ariyān vayāte uranngum—or “I will sleep without being
able to know”].Th ese patient accounts reveal an attention to distinctions of “conscious-
ness” that are reminiscent of the concerns of Indian philosophers. Lakshmi’s
reference to consciousness remaining “inside the inside” during possession, for
example, resembles Śankara’s eff ort to characterize ātman as the “witness” of all
that occurs in the mind and consciousness. For people suff ering “mental” dis-
tress in Kerala, these various types of “consciousness” represent a predominant
area of concern related to their suff ering, a place of rupture in their selfhood
or state of being that is expressed as an illness. Th ese modes of “consciousness”
constitute a realm that is less tangible than body or the mind (manas), and
represent an orientation to experience that cannot be characterized in terms of
(Western) mind-body dualism.
Relations Between Tangible and Intangible Modes of Experience
People in Kerala do express suff ering through the body in addition to their
mental and consciousness-based modes of expression. However, people suf-
fering distress who attend to their bodies appear more concerned about their
states of manas (mind) and bōdham (consciousness).
A Hindu woman, Santhi, who was receiving inpatient treatment at the
Trivandrum Medical College expresses her diffi culties through a combination
of somatic and disembodied idioms. Santhi was having fi nancial diffi culties
at home, she was worried about her husband’s drinking, and she complained
that her mother-in-law mistreats her. “Th inking [vichārichchā] about all this,”
Santhi explained, “I have mental troubles [manassinu vishamam].” But, she
later added, her problem also appears in bodily and aesthetic forms:
When I try to sleep in the daytime, sometimes I feel like my legs are shaking,
like my legs are moving and my head is heavy. And when my head is heavy, I
think I will lose my normal state/mind [samanila tetti pōkum].