Yoga psychology - 3: Consciousness and Witness

In the third post in this series on Yoga Psychology, let us visit some of the core concepts of our sense of self and understand some of its nuances. The concepts presented here are not directly from Yoga Sutras. They stem from Vedanta, which in turn form the basis for the psychology of Yoga. 

In the first post in this series, we saw how our "sense of self" as an entity is different from our body, thoughts, emotions, and even our hard-coded genetic "nature". We can talk about all of them as if they were objects of inquiry while we, or our "self", is the inquirer. 

One of the postulates of Vedanta is that our sense of "Self" can never be the object of inquiry. It is always the inquirer. Just like the eyes can't see themselves, the "Self" cannot see itself. Our eyes can however, see an image of themselves (say in a mirror or a photograph) and realise that this image represents the very eyes which are doing the seeing. 

Similarly, we cannot "see" our self-- but we can become "conscious" of its existence. We become conscious of our self when we detach our sense of self from our body, mind, thoughts, emotions, nature, etc. 

Earlier, we also said that the universe is but an all-pervading consciousness. But now we are saying that the consciousness is not our "self" itself. Consciousness can make us aware of something. It is consciousness that makes us aware of objects in our vicinity. When consciousness is focused on some element of our surroundings, to the exclusion of others, it is called attention. When we become conscious of our thoughts, we enter into a state of meta-cognition, which helps us become aware of our own thinking. When we become conscious of our emotions, we become "mindful" and aware of how we are being driven by our emotions. 

In Vedanta, consciousness and our sense of self are distinguished from one another. Consciousness is called chitta, while the self is called the "witness" or sakshi. When we become aware of our "witness" we are indeed our own witness. Hence the witness cannot inquire about itself directly as it inquires about the world outside. It has to inquire about itself indirectly-- via our consciousness or chitta. The self needs to "project" some part of itself on the consciousness and witness the reflection it creates in the consciousness. 

Because of this, our reflection in our consciousness needs to be "clear". It cannot be smudged by our emotions, thoughts and delusions. A large part of Yoga psychology is geared towards how to make our consciousness clear, so that our self can reflect itself. 

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We now turn to other nuanced differences between Vedantic models and how modern science views these concepts. 

In modern science, consciousness is seen as something that emerges from the physical interactions of neurons in the brain. In contrast, in the Vedantic models, our brain (and body) can only "tune" into consciousness that is already all pervasive. Consciousness that lead to present-day science and mathematics existed during the time of dinosaurs too-- except that their brains couldn't tune into it. Consciousness exists on Mars and Jupiter too-- except, no physical device exists that can tune into it there and make an impact. We don't "invent" mathematics we "discover" mathematics from the consciousness that is already there. Any machinery that can discover mathematical truths on Earth, can also discover these truths on Mars or Jupiter, if it can only physically sustain itself. 

Hence, according to Vedanta, conscious AI (or what might be termed AGI or Artificial General Intelligence) is very much possible-- if only we can figure out the logic for tuning into the all-pervasive consciousness. 

Because in modern science, consciousness is seen as an emergent property of neural interactions, it is considered that when we are in deep sleep, we have no consciousness. This is another point where Vedanta differs from modern science. In Vedantic models, when we are in deep sleep, we have no witness, but all we have is consciousness. Even in deep sleep, our body and mind are kept alive by our consciousness-- but because there is no one to "witness" it, there is "no one" to be aware of what is happening. 

The "witness" is so important to our existence that, without the witness, our consciousness cannot take decisions and keep us functioning for long. If the "witness" is away for too long, we may never wake up from our sleep. 

Samkhya philosophy of Vedanta proposes a complete model of universal reality based on this duality between consciousness and witness. It is called Prakriti and Purusha. Prakriti refers to existential reality of the physical universe that functions by the laws of physics. Purusha refers to the eternal reality of the universal Self or universal truths whose presence is critical for Prakriti to keep functioning. 

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Coming back to Yoga psychology-- we had earlier noted that Yoga means "to unite" or "forge" or "harmonize". The ultimate goal of Yoga is to harmonise our consciousness with our witness. Our consciousness is our driving force, while the witness is our driver. Our driving force is very powerful and autonomous-- in other words, it is an extremely advanced form of machinery-- not seen so far in the machines that we have built. And as is with any advanced machinery, configuring it to function properly (in this case, to harmonise with the witness) is not an easy job. 

Hence, the need for a complete philosophy of Yoga.