Unmana-Manonmana

Abstract

The greatest tragicomedy in the human enterprise, esp. in psychology, is the challenges in defining the philosophies of mind and consciousness. Euro-American philosophies assume that the philosophy of mind is the philosophy of consciousness. Vedānta, which is perhaps the only authentic philosophy of consciousness and not a philosophy of mind assumes that mind is a particular process through which consciousness is channelled and, therefore, by itself unreal. In this chapter, after travelling through the understanding of the body-mind, a transformed affect and valid cognition, we now look at the intriguing proposal of manonaśa or no-mind as the outcome of sustained practices in Indian psychology. This chapter thus transcends the contemporary psychology that stops at relaxation for body-cognition and regulation for affect. What does it mean when the idea of no-mind is discussed, and how do persons live with this freedom from the mind; these are some of the questions discussed in this chapter. The chapter starts with basic notions of mindlessness or machine cognition. Next, the chapter focuses on human cognition, which loses itself frequently in immersive states such as play, sex, creativity and curiosity/discovery. Indeed immersion is a feature of human consciousness itself, even though advanced meditative states are cited as the most frequent examples of losing oneself. After understanding immersive states, including meditative states, the chapter focuses on the implications of reviewing mind and consciousness as conceptual frameworks through discussing the framework of Ālaya-vijnāna of Yogācāra Buddhism and the step by step progression model offered in the advaita text of Jīvanmukti Viveka. The chapter concludes with the idea of living in freedom as the goal of Indian psychology. Does this mean living in isolation from others? The chapter concludes with the possibility of living in freedom in the society, thereby transforming the relational and community networks.