experiencing the world from body to ĀTMAN 143
is also a term that people I interviewed used to refer to something like an
authentic self.
Identifying the nature of ātman was the primary concern of the philosopher
Śankara. Born in the eighth century in what is now central Kerala, Śankara is
known throughout India for his Advaita Vedānta philosophy, which aimed to
demonstrate that the true self, ātman, is identical to brahman or god/the abso-
lute. Śankara makes a considerable eff ort in his analyses to reveal phenomena
that are wrongly attributed to ātman and must be recognized as such to realize
this true self. Th inking that one’s self is the body or that one perceives reality
though the senses is erroneous according to Śankara. Even less tangible parts
of the person, such as the mind or what we think of as one’s personality, are
not part of one’s true identity, one’s ātman. One perceives in Śankara a scale of
decreasing tangibility as one goes from what in his estimation are false attri-
butes to what is true and valued: from body to senses to mind to intellect to
the completely intangible, nonmaterial ātman.
Early on in his treatise, Upadeśa Sāhasrī, Śankara emphasizes the Self ’s (i.e.,
ātman) separateness from the body:
Th e Self, if in contact with the body, would be existing for the benefi t of another
and be non-eternal.... Moreover, the Self, supposed by other philosophers
to be conjoined with the body must have an existence for the sake of another.
(Śankaracharya 1973: 37)In this passage, Śankara distinguishes himself from certain other philoso-
phers including those he calls the “materialists,” supporters of the Cārvāka
school of skepticism, which advocates that reality consists only of what is per-
ceived by the senses and that the self/soul exists only in the body.
In another section of Upadeśa Sāhasrī, Śankara narrates in the voice of
ātman, and describes the nature of this self:
Ever free, ever pure, changeless, immovable, immortal, imperishable and bodiless
I have no knowledge or ignorance in Me who am of the nature of the Light of
Pure Consciousness only. (Śankaracharya 1973: 121) [Emphasis added.]Th is passage may help explain why in the following excerpts from interviews,
people suff ering illness appear concerned about their bōdham or “consciousness,”
which in its purest form is associated with ātman according to Śankara.
Śankara also distinguishes between mind (manas), intellect, memory and
knowledge, all of which would be contained within the mind in Western
epistemologies. He observes, for example, that “[t]he peculiar characteristic
of the mind is refl ection and that of the intellect is determination” (164). Th is