object. What is this insight? It is the recognition of the fact that any kind of empirical
relationship is brought about by the contact of senses with the objects due to the
similarity of structure. The gunas are the same, both in the senses and the object:
guṇā guṇeṣu vartanta iti matvā na sajjate (BG III.28). We will not be attached if we
know that this attachment has arisen on account of a peculiar movement of the
senses towards their own mother, which is the object also. Thus is viveka, or
understanding, to be developed, and mastery over attachment to be gained.
Chapter 67CONSCIOUSNESS IS BEINGDraṣṭā dṛśimātraḥ śuddhaḥ api pratyayānupaśyaḥ (II.20): The pure seer or experiencer is
consciousness, absolutely uncontaminated by features that are extraneous; yet, this
pure seer principle seems to get associated with the faculties of perception. This is
the meaning of this sutra. The drasta, or the pure experiencer—the seer of all
things—is a principle of consciousness whose existence is very strange when
compared to the existence of anything else in the perceptible world. While everything
in the world is made up of certain things, consciousness is not made up of anything.
It is what it is. It is not constituted of anything other than what it is, while everything
in the world is made up of things which are components and are dissimilar in
character. For instance, the atoms which constitute a physical object do not have the
characteristics of the object. The colour, the shape and the sensory reaction which
the object evokes cannot be found in the atoms which are the basic essences of the
object. Every physical object, and everything that is sensible in any manner
whatsoever, is an effect of permutations and combinations of forces or essences
which are different in nature from the object itself as it is visible, tangible, etc.
Not so is consciousness. Consciousness is not constituted of atoms or forces. It is not
anything that one can imagine in the mind, it is not anything that one has seen with
the eyes, and it is not anything that the senses can comprehend in any manner
whatsoever. It is not an object that sets up reactions. It is not capable of coming in
contact with anything, and it cannot be set in relation to anything other than its own
self. It is impossible to say anything about it, because it defies all definitions. It has
no characteristics; it has no features; it has no length, breadth and height; it has no
weight. It has no qualities that can distinguish it from other things and, therefore, it
is logically indefinable, sensorily ungraspable, mentally unthinkable, and
intellectually un-understandable—such is the pure seer. Apart from these
peculiarities of the principle of the seer which is consciousness, it has another
strange characteristic: it is not capable of partiteness or division. It cannot be divided
into parts and it cannot be mathematically calculated, because that which has no
parts cannot be subject to arithmetical calculation.
Hence, logic and mathematics fail in respect of the assessment of the nature of that
which is consciousness. It is not divisible, and it is not of the nature of indivisibility
that we see in atoms and electrons. Electrons also are supposed to be indivisible, but
this is not the kind of indivisibility that we are speaking of when we refer to the
nature of consciousness. While the electron is indivisible, it is only an arithmetical
indivisibility, not a metaphysical one, because the definition of indivisibility is the