MAN THE UNKNOWN:WORKING OF THE MIND: VEDANTIC VIEW 

 

Thousands of years ago Indian sages conducted elaborate in-depth explorations of the human mind, its function and relation to the gross body. The oldest accounts of these psychological studies have been detailed in the Sānkhya System of philosophy of Sage Kapila and the Upanishads which are the essence of Vedic wisdom. As per ancient Indian wisdom mind belongs to the subtle body which is formed out of the fundamental particles (tanmātras) of the five essential elements called panchabhūtas. The grossification (panchikaranam) of the tanmātras gives rise to the panchabhūtas or five elements namely space (ākāṡa), air (vāyu), fire or energy (Tejas or Agni), water (apas) and earth (pṛthvi). Materials of all living and nonliving entities in the universe are made of these five elements. Thus the physical basis of the mind is the subtle aspect of the body and the difference between brain and mind is  only in terms of a measure of subtlety. Subtle matter is more pervasive and that explains the presence of a conscious mind in each and every cell of the body complex in a multicellular body and in the subtle realms of the body of a unicellular organism. According to Vedānta thoughts are vibrations (energy?) as a reaction to the impact of sensory stimuli brought to the mind by the sensory system more or less like the impact of stone creating waves of water in a lake. These thoughts are analysed in deeper realms of the mind called intellect (buddhi) and the discriminated thoughts are recognised by the soul which is but the reaction of the light of the Spirit or Ātman, the Supreme Consciousness. This concept of awareness of the conscious mind is first enunciated by the Sānkhya system and adopted by the Vedāntic system.

 

. Vedānta subscribes to the same philosophy and psychology when it says, “It (the Ātman) is the ear of the ear, the mind of the mind, the speech of the speech, the prāṇa of the prāṇa, and the eye of the eye. Wise men separating the Ātman from these (sensory system) rise out of sense-life and attain immortality” (Kenopanishad, ).

 

Modern physiology also would vouch for the fact that external sense organs are not the real organs of sense, but that they are in the various nerve centres of the brain. Modern science also agrees on the fact that subtle centres which constitute the mental apparatus are also formed of the same material (the embryonic ectoderm) as the brain itself. The Sānkhyas arrived at this truth centuries before modern science had any