Sankaracharya’s Atmabodha

By Prof. V. A. Thiagarajan, M.A.

SWAMI NIKHILANANDAJI’S edition of Atma-bodha, Self-knowledge, reminds one of Milton’s definition of a good book, “the precious life-blood of a master-spirit preserved and embalmed for all ages.” It is also a timely reminder of the fact that, apart from his commentaries upon the sacred canon, there is another approach to the personality of Sankara. The traditional approach to Sankara has been by way of these commentaries, and the orthodox student of Sankara begins his study of the great master with a daily salutation to him as the author of the Sutra-bhashya. This traditional approach to Sankara, like the traditional approach to Mt. Everest by way of Tibet, while it has its undoubted advantages in acclimatising the aspirant after truth to the rarified atmosphere of the master’s thought, has still its disadvantages, for the personality of the master still eludes our grasp. When an original mind, the equal of the system makers, is engaged in expounding other people’s thought there are well-defined limitations within or which the mind works. There is little scope for originality when one is defending a given thesis. That is why Sankara is most truly himself in his minor works. He who approaches these minor works takes a flight as it were over Mt. Everest, nor can one do better than take that flight to the higher regions of thought in the company of such a seasoned pilot as Swami Nikhilandaji.

The aim of Sankara’s Atma-bodha is to catch humanity in its work-a-day moods, and set it on the grand quest–the discovery of the kingdom of the Self. Some there are who take a purely nihilistic attitude to life, who say that “nothing is.” In so far as they have not stood at the brink of things and seen complete annihilation, their testimony is of as little value as the words of an absentee witness. Even then there must be somebody to say it, and that somebody would be the witnessing consciousness which cannot deny itself. Others there are who, like the grammarian in Browning, keep on rattling parts of speech even when they are at death’s door. It is the aim of Sankara to rescue life at once from nihilism and from trivialism.

“Day follows day, night follows night;
New moon, full moon ever returning;
Summer and winter see the planet;
Ever inclined on its axis;
Year follows year unfailingly.”

But the gift of life is something higher than the machinery of existence. Life is not a grinding of grammar but the pursuit of truth. The relative values of the world keep the spirit bound to the world, but the ultimate values of the spirit confer liberation. And it is the aim of Sankara to confer upon man the freedom of the spirit.

Religion, it has been said, is what one does with one’s own solitariness. Sankara catches the mind, not when it is reacting to its environment, and by consequence taking upon itself the colouring of that environment, but in its isolation. He raises the fundamental question:

“Who am I? And who are you?
What is the place from which I come?
Who is my mother, who my sire?”

By pursuing this line of enquiry he isolates the self as the seer, apart from its relationship to the environment, the seen. As Sankara aims at the pursuit of truth by verified experience, he gives to the seeker after truth this great counsel:

“Devote your mind to righteousness,
And let dispassion be your law.”

An ethical attitude to life is the starting point, because that alone assures intellectual clarity. A calm mind is the only guarantee that truth is weighed in scales which have been brought to the zero point. Ultimate truth, the goal of life, is consistent only with equanimity of vision. And this ultimate timeless truth, thus gained by the enquiring spirit by pursuing the path of reason, is consistent only with the knowledge of the Highest. In the words of Sankara:

“Unless a man pursue the Real,
His pangs surpass the pangs of hell.”

With a calm and restful mind Sankara sets out to sift the transient from the true. He answers the question which he has raised earlier, and he strips human personality of all that is transient and accidental. In his Six Stanzas on Nirvana he says:

“I am neither the mind,
Intelligence, ego, nor chitta,
Neither the ears nor the tongue,
Nor the senses of smell and sight.”

And as he dissociates the spirit from the swaddling clothes of birth and death he comes to the conclusion:

“Death or fear I have none.
Nor any distinction of caste;
Neither father nor mother
Nor even a birth have I.”

As he realises that his ultimate nature is eternal awareness, he realises also that in that awareness there can be no division of parts and whole; for, to do so would be to reduce the ultimate into an assemblage, subject to growth and decay and subservient to some extrinsic purpose. That is why he says:

“Vishnu alone it is who dwells
In you, in me, in everything;
Empty of meaning is your wrath,
And the impatience you reveal.
Seeing yourself in everyone,
Have done with all diversity.”

The position of Sankara, says Mme. Blavatsky in her Secret Doctrine, is logically sound. It is wrong to say that Sankara’s position suffers from the fallacy of infinite regression. All that he says is that the sense of diversity is due to the self-imposed limitations of the spirit, and that from the point of view of the Eternal the self-imposed limitations of the individual being have no validity. From Sankara’s point of view the liberation of the spirit can come only with knowledge. He says in his Atma-bodha:

“Action cannot destroy ignorance, for it is not in conflict with ignorance. Knowledge alone destroys ignorance, as light destroys dense darkness.”

Prayer for him is a means of unification with this universal awareness. His prayer is, “O Parvathi, grant me alms. I supplicate thee for the boon of wisdom and renunciation above all.” In moods of mystic communion he feels his identification with this universal beneficence. Just as Jesus said, “Myself and my father in Heaven are one,” Sankara says:

“The All-pervading am I,
Everywhere I exist,
And yet am beyond the senses.”

This does not mean that he the singer has himself become the Eternal. He says elsewhere, “My Mother is the Goddess Parvathi, my Father is Siva.” Sankara clarifies his philosophical position in his Six Stanzas on Vishnu. He says:

“Even when I am not duality’s slave, O Lord,
The truth is that I am Thine, not that Thou art mine:
The waves may belong to the ocean,
But the ocean never belongs to the waves.”

Sankara thus destroys the bonds of ignorance, and makes the Self, “which does not admit of any multiplicity whatsoever truly reveal itself by itself.” In the language of Indian philosophy, Atma is swatassiddha, and swayamprakasha. It is compared to a lamp which does not require another lamp to illumine it. Sankara thus talks the enquiring spirit behind the veil and the bar of things which seem and are as long as they seem; and he reveals to us the nature of the universal and underlying spiritual reality. He says:

“All the various forms exist in the imagination of the perceiver, the substratum being the Eternal and all-pervading Vishnu, whose nature is existence and intelligence. Names and forms are like bangles and bracelets, and Vishnu is like gold.”

Sankara thus awakens the spirit from the sleep of the senses and reveals the nature of the living soul. He thus confers upon man the freedom of the city of God. He thus unfolds the nature of the pure spirit as the witnessing consciousness. “The nature of Atman,” he says, “is Eternity, Purity, Reality, Consciousness and Bliss.” Sankara describes the Supreme Brahman in exactly similar words, as that which is Eternal, stainless and free; which is One, indivisible; non-dual; and which is of the nature of Bliss, Truth, Knowledge and Infinity.” To Sankara, therefore, life and the goal of life, the summum begum, become identical and he says, in the fullness of his faith in his verified awareness, “I am verily that Supreme Brahman.” There is nothing more to be desired when the goal is reached. The rest is silence. We cannot do better than offer our silent thanks to Swami Nikhilandaji for his splendid edition of Atma-bodha.