One Consciousness, Many Mirrors
Mirror of Nature, Mirror of Self July 2, 2023 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197665510.003.0004 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that the Advaita-Vedānta tradition's concept of ahaṃkāra mediates between mind and consciousness, and that the Vivaraṇa sub-school's texts have been 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.