One Consciousness, Many Mirrors
Mirror of Nature, Mirror of Self July 2, 2023 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197665510.003.0004
Summary
This chapter examines the Advaita-Vedānta tradition, which argues that individual selves are merely reflections of a single transcendent self. It focuses on the concept of ahaṃkāra (the 'I-maker'), an entity that mediates between mind and consciousness. For the first time, it analyzes Śaṅkara's non-dualist reinterpretation of the Sāṃkhya model of consciousness, along with developments by Padmapāda, Prakāśātman, and later mirror models of identity between god and individual selves reported by Appayya Dīkṣita. These texts of the Vivaraṇa sub-school have been seriously understudied.
Study at a glance
| Design | historical analysis |
|---|---|
| Key finding | The Vivaraṇa sub-school of Advaita-Vedānta, with its reinterpretations of consciousness as reflections and the role of ahaṃkāra, has been seriously understudied. |
Abstract
Abstract This chapter focuses on the non-dualist tradition of Advaita-Vedānta, which holds that the multiplicity of individual selves is nothing but reflections of one transcendent self. This school develops the notion of ahaṃkāra (the “I-maker”) as an entity supervenient upon the illusory identity between the mind and consciousness and mediating between the two. The chapter examines, for the first time, Śaṅkara’s (seventh to eighth centuries) non-dualist reinterpretation of the Sāṃkhya model of consciousness reflected in the mind, its development by Padmapāda (eighth to ninth centuries), with further elaborations by Prakāśātman (eleventh to twelfth centuries), as well as later developments (mirror models of one consciousness reinterpreted in terms of identity between the god and individual selves, reported by Appayya Dīkṣita in the sixteenth century). The texts composed by these philosophers, representing what came to be known as the Vivaraṇa sub-school of Advaita, have been seriously understudied to date.