The Self
What is the Self? That which stands apart from the gross, subtle, and causal bodies; which is beyond the five sheaths; which witnesses the three states; whose very nature is being, consciousness, and bliss; and which remains through it all. That is the Self.
What is the Self (ātman)? It is distinct from the three bodies (gross, subtle, causal), beyond the five sheaths, and the witness of the three states. Its nature is being-consciousness-bliss (sat-cit-ānanda). That which remains as this witness is the Self.
- ātman
- śarīra-traya
Where the schools meet, and where they part
The Self is real, eternal, and not any of the three bodies or the five sheaths; it is not the body, not the senses, not the mind, but that to which these belong.
The Self is of the nature of consciousness and is never an unconscious thing; it is the abiding awareness through which waking, dream, and deep sleep are known.
Liberation turns on rightly knowing this Self, which is why the primer pauses here, on the threshold of the inquiry, to settle what the word names.
The witness of the three states is the one consciousness itself, without parts and without a second, and it is identical with Brahman. Being, consciousness, and bliss are not three attributes a self carries; they are the single undivided nature of what the Self is. The individuality that knows this and that, the I that wakes and dreams, belongs to the sheaths superimposed by ignorance, not to the witness. When that is seen, the difference between the witness and what it witnesses is found to be no real difference at all.
The self is a real, eternal, atomic knowing subject, partless and self-aware, and it is never merely a contentless witness. Consciousness is its inseparable quality, the knowing that streams out to objects and is contracted by karma in bondage and unbounded in release; the self both is awareness and possesses it. It is a mode of Brahman, the body of which the Lord is the indweller, inseparable from Him yet really distinct, and its I-consciousness does not lapse even in liberation. So to call the Self pure witness without attributes would empty out the very knower the word must name.
The self is real, individual, and eternally distinct from Brahman, never to be folded into it. It is dependent on the Lord for its very being, the way a reflection depends on its original, while remaining its own enduring thing; the difference between self and Lord is one of the five differences that hold without end. Its consciousness and its bliss are truly its own, yet they are finite and graded, never the Lord's infinite fullness. So the being-consciousness-bliss the primer names belongs to the self in its own measure, and the self stands forever apart from the supreme, beneath Him and sustained by Him.
When the bodies and sheaths are set aside and only the witness remains, has the last separateness been set aside with them, so that the witness is simply Brahman; or does a real knower stand there still, its own self, awake before the Lord? The primer reads the witness as the one consciousness with nothing left over. Ramanuja and Madhva read a self that is never only the thing looked at, a knower that abides, distinct. We keep the question open.
The passage calls the Self the witness of the three states. What does this point to?
- That to which waking, dream, and deep sleep appear, which itself does not come and go
- A fourth state better than the other three
- The mind, which is busiest in the waking state
- The deep-sleep state, where the witness rests
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On the Advaita reading, calling the Self being-consciousness-bliss means that the Self:
- Carries these three as its finest qualities
- Is these as its very nature, undivided, with nothing real standing over against it
- Will gain these once liberation is reached
- Has consciousness the way a lamp has light
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What stays when everything else is set down
The primer has just said that the Self is real and all else is not. Now it asks the plain question that follows: then what is this Self? And it answers, almost entirely, by pointing away. Not the gross body that is born and grows and dies. Not the subtle body of breath and sense and mind. Not even the causal body, the seed of not-knowing you carry into dreamless sleep. Beyond the five sheaths, the layers of food and breath and mind and knowing and the sheath that is mere ease. The Self is named by clearing the room of everything it is not.
Only one mark in the list is not a clearing away, and the whole passage rests on it: witness of the three states. Each day you pass through three worlds. Waking, where objects are met through the senses. Dream, where a world is spun from impressions and met within. Deep sleep, where the worlds fall silent and you are simply at rest. Each of the three comes and each of the three goes. And there is something to which all three appear, and that something does not come or go. You were there before the dream began and there after it dissolved; you are the one who can say, this morning I slept well, having been awake to the very rest. That steady seeing, in which the states rise and set, is what the word Self points to.
Then comes the last phrase, and it is not one more thing on the list but the nature of all of it: being, consciousness, and bliss. Read in Sankara's tradition, these are not three fine qualities the Self happens to own, the way a person owns warmth or wit. They are the single undivided substance of what the Self is. Sat, that it simply is, never not. Cit, that it is awareness itself, not a thing that has awareness added the way a lamp has its light. Ananda, that it is full in itself, not made full by what it gets or emptied by what it loses. And this, the teaching says, is the very same reality already called Brahman. So on this reading the witness is not a small private watcher behind your eyes. It is the one consciousness, and the difference between it and what it witnesses is, in Sankara's tradition, no real difference at all.
On who that witness finally is, the schools divide. For Advaita the witness that remains when the bodies are set aside is Brahman itself, without a second, and the I that knows this and that was only ever the sheaths mistaken for the Self. Ramanuja's school answers that this empties out the very thing the word must name: the self is a real knower, each one a single point of awareness, never spread out, never the whole, and eternal, awareness that streams to its objects and contracts and expands, a mode of the Lord, inseparable from Him and yet truly distinct, and its I-consciousness does not lapse even in freedom. Madhva's school holds the line harder still: the self is forever its own, dependent on the Lord as a reflection on its original, real and individual and never to be folded into the supreme, its being and bliss truly its own but finite, graded, beneath His. The primer argues the Advaita case, for this is an Advaita text and it teaches that the difference is not finally to be held. We let it make that case without trimming it, and we let the other schools answer in their own voice.
You can test this for yourself across a day; the text does not hand you a technique here, it only names what that something is. Watch the three states change while you do not. Notice that you are never quite the body, never quite the thought, always the one to whom body and thought appear. That much every school here will walk with you. Whether the watcher turns out to be Brahman with nothing left over, or a real self standing awake and distinct before the Lord, is the question the schools carry differently, and the one we leave standing.
The witness that remains when everything else is set down: is it simply the one consciousness, Brahman without a second, or a real knower that abides, its own self, distinct before the Lord? The primer reads it the first way; the other schools read it the second; we keep both readings open.
Watch the three states come and go today. Are you ever one of them, or only ever the one to whom they appear?
In the commentaries
Sankara's method here is to define by removal, the via negativa: set aside whatever can be set aside, and attend to what cannot. The three bodies can be set aside, for each is known as an object; the five sheaths can be set aside, for they are named and numbered like things one possesses; the three states come and go, and what comes and goes is witnessed by something that does not. That witness is the Self. It is not reached by adding anything but by ceasing to take the seen for the seer. And its nature is not a bundle of qualities but one undivided being, consciousness, and bliss: sat, that it is; cit, that it knows; ananda, that it is full. The witness needs no second light to be known, for it is the light by which all else is known, and it alone is never absent in any state.