Aitareya Upanishad refers to consciousness by the word prajnana. This word has been used for consciousness in view of its nature of awareness. The context in which the word has been used in this sense is the definition of Atman. What is Atman? This is the question put by the sage and has been answered in terms of prajnana as an equivalent of it. Having established the equivalence of Atman with prajnana, he feels the necessity of defining the latter itself. His summary statement of his view of consciousness which happens to be the most comprehensive one expressed anywhere through the entire Vedic literature.
The sage starts the statement of his idea of consciousness from the angle of its instrumentality in awareness beginning from the sensory. He defines it as that instrument by means of which one sees, smells, and tastes anything, listens to any word or statement, as also understands its meaning. Thus, in his view, it is consciousness which is the real instrument of knowledge one the sensory level and by no means the sense organs in themselves. With the identification of the tool with the means of understanding the meaning of words, he takes a turn in his exposition. He now comes to identify it with the power of understanding lying in the individual. With this move inside, he identifies it with what in the Vedas are known as hrdaya and manas. Hrdaya is the seat and instrument of intuition while manas is those of sensory coordination. The two are instruments of different kinds of knowledge, i.e. internal and external. The sage visualizes consciousness as the common basic factor behind both of them. (Aitareya Upanishad, V.1)
Thus, through the recognition of perception, intellection and intuition as different forms of operation of it, the sage goes into all possible functions of the inner being of man and finds them simply as products of consciousness. He enumerates them as awareness inside things as well as outside, awareness amounting to knowledge in depth and intensity, creative knowledge, insight, power of retention, mentation, higher intellection, quickness of understanding, memory, determination, practical understanding, vital force behind understanding, desire and control over desire (Ait. Up. V.2).
Thus, from the psychological standpoint, the sage turns to what in modern term is taken as mythological but from the Vedic viewpoint is known as adhidaivika, i.e. concerned with the divine. On this from, he sees Brahman, creator Prajapati, Indra and, indeed, all the gods as simply different manifestations or forms of consciousness (Ait. Up. V.3). This insight of the sage is significant from the religious as well as psychological viewpoint. Brahman, Prajapati and Indra are the most important deities of the Vedic age. They were most venerable for people of that age. Today, however, all of them are taken as just fabrications of the human mind made mostly out of respective natural phenomena. In other words, they are supposed to be projections of ideas of the then people over those phenomena of nature particularly due to their ignorance about the laws operating behind them. Interestingly, the sage also treats them as such but in a deeper sense which thinkers elsewhere even until now have scarcely been able to do. Be it God in the singular or plural, almost everywhere else in the world, He is treated as a person absolutely independent of everything else, being there in His own right and exercising His power in His own way in control individuals as well as the world as a whole. But the Upanishadic sage has been able to see even such a being as simply a form happening to be carved out of consciousness or representing consciousness as a whole. Thus, he looks at these divinities neither as individuals having definite shapes in the physical sense nor as just fabrications of the minds of the people of the age but as representatives of consciousness itself in its varying degrees of intensity, extensity and functional specifications. Prajapati, for instance, is regarded as that facet of consciousness which is involved in the creation of the world. Indra is supposed to be the knowledge-aspect of consciousness. It is for taking cognizance of himself via the diversity of forms he has projected himself in that he is obtaining himself in each and every object and being of the world, as per a vision of the Rigvedic seer Garga Bharadvaja (RV.VI.47.18).
The cobweb of misconception about consciousness gets removed by the next step the Upanishadic sage takes by way of defining the relationship of it with the tangible world of matter and life. In his view, not to talk of psychological functions and so-called mythological beings, even matter itself in all its tangibility is a product of consciousness. He explains that the five basic elements, namely, earth, water, light, air and ether also have emerged from and are guided by consciousness (Ait. Up. V.3). Thus, in his view, consciousness is not a by-product of Nature, but the very source from which Nature herself has emerged.
Consciousness, thus viewed as the source of the world, there is no problem left in taking life also as a product of it. This is obviously so on account of life lying midway between matter and consciousness. When the inorganic evolves organic unity within it, it comes to be imbued with life. The same life having evolved the brain from within it, becomes conscious. The sage starts this part of his exposition with the variety of small seeds of plants and trees having embedded in them luxuriant vegetations and tall trees. Then he moves upward to all the varieties of living beings born of water, seat, egg as well as viviparous ones in the form of developed animals such as horses, cows, elephants, and men (Ait. Up. V.3).
Thus, having taken note of the entire creation in all its ramifications, be they conscient or inert, mobile or stationary, elementary or developed, he comes to the conclusion that the whole of it is born of consciousness, has its being in consciousness, and is guided by consciousness in its multitudinous operations, no matter mechanical, organic, reflexive, emotional, intellectual or intuitive (Ait. Up. III.1-3).
These statements of the sage are highly significant for understanding the nature of consciousness as visualized by Vedic seers. Consciousness, according to this viewpoint, is not anything simply abstract and confined only to humans but it is the basic stuff of creation ranging from the infinite to the infinitesimal, intangible to the tangible and universal to the particular. It pervades everything as the very stuff of creation as well as the principle of its awareness.
Rising above the physical, we come to the botanical and biological. That there is some sort of consciousness in the botanical. That there is some sort of consciousness in the botanical has already been demonstrated scientifically by Jagdish Chandra Bose, thus, no scope for any doubt about its verity. What Mr. Bose could find out only after his rigorous experimentation carried out for decades, is a matter of commonsense experience for the seer. He is found talking to trees, herbs and grasses around him with the same feeling of love and intimacy as one displays in talking to a close relative. The seer could not have continued to do so for aeons without having got some sort of feedback in terms of conscious response from his addressee.
Next stratum of consciousness is the biological. Its area ranges from the lowliest creature up to man in certain respects. Coming up to the biological, consciousness ceases to be just a blind energy of the physical. Here the physical energy gets transformed into the vital force and the latter into consciousness proper imbued with self-consciousness. No more does it remain sheer mechanical, as is the case with the physical energy. Nor does it remain only sensitive and bereft of feeling, as is true about it at its earlier stage of vital force. Here it comes to itself fully equipped with self-consciousness and the capacity to react to stimuli from the external world discreetly in alternative ways. Free will, instead of mechanical repeat, is mostly the order of the day prevailing here.
The autonomy of consciousness comes to be restored to it at this stage bringing immense variety in its manifestation. In most of the creatures of the biological stage, consciousness is only reflexive. Coming up to developed animals and birds, it goes on getting increased in its emotional and thought content. Man forms the apex of this evolving series, imbued, as he is, with the highest possible degree of consciousness embodied in him. In him, consciousness has the possibility of getting restored to its original status of perfect self-consciousness, universality and transcendence. This is brought out beautifully in the Aitareya Upanishad’s allegory of the Atman choosing man as the medium of its direct entry into the creation.
According to this Upanishad, Atman, as the absolute concentricity of consciousness, essence and agent of creation, when willing to create the world, brought out of itself the creative stuff in the form of a set of four basic elements called ambhas, marici, maram and apas. Next, it evolved out of these a personal figure having the potentiality of giving birth to gods from His different organs. Being born of respective organs of the Person, the gods wanted to have an abode suitable for themselves where they could live and enjoy. In response to it, a bull was brought to them and subsequently a horse. Both were rejected by them having found them inadequate for the purpose. Then was fetched a human figure which was readily welcomed by them as their suitable above. Gods represent supramental forces of consciousness involved in the running of various facets of Nature including expansion of space, continuation of time, dynamics of energy, velocity of light, movement of heavenly bodies, flow of liquids and solidity of matter. Scientific laws discovered by man until now are but a few abstractions made out of the colossal stock of wisdom and intellectual content involved in the running of Nature by these supramental agencies. Man has been able to share in that stock by virtue of the inherence of these agencies in him. That also, however, is not all. He has embedded in him something more precious in terms of consciousness.
This is indicated in the Upanishadic account in the same continuation. With the entrance of gods in the human body through different openings in it and the conduction of its behaviour fairly well, the Creator, seeing no other way to enter into Himself, decided to enter through the sagittal suture at the top of the head. Having done so, He, in the form of Indra, is said to keep on moving from the point of entry up to the heart in different states of the human consciousness or rather create those states of consciousness in him through His movement from one point to another in that area (Ait. Up.I.1-3).
The entrance of the Creator Himself in the human body in the capacity of the absolute concentricity of consciousness has opened the vista of infinite potentialities by use of which man is capable of knowing anything and everything in the world as well as within himself. By knowing himself fully, he can know everything in the world outside.
This does not mean to deny the presence of lower grades of consciousness in man. He, indeed, is an embodiment of all grades of consciousness beginning from the vital to the supramental. This has been noted in the Katha Upanishad. While taking note of different grades of consciousness operative in the human personality, the Upanishad begins with the sensory. Senses are the crucial points in our body involved in the impingement of the external world on us. In this impingement, sensory and motor nerves in our bodies number some seventy-two thousand in the estimation of the Upanishadic sages, serve as carriers of consciousness in the form of sensation and motor reaction. The senses receive only the stimuli which are of physical nature. By virtue of the sensory consciousness involved in their functioning, they transform the stimulus into sensation and feed the mind with it through the sensory nerves. The Upanishad considers the sensation fed to the mind as of a higher degree of consciousness than the same as received by the senses in the form of the stimulus. But a still higher degree of consciousness is represented by manas, the mind work as a coordinator of sensation and supplier of the processed sensation to the intellect. The intellect, in its turn, is taken to represent a still higher grade of consciousness, as it brings discretion to the otherwise indiscrete stuff of mentation submitted to it by manas.
To the modern intelligentsia, intellect represents the highest grade of consciousness, as it has at its disposal the same grade of consciousness which is involved in the discovery of the scientist and the disquisition of the philosopher. The Upanishadic sage disagrees with this proposition and looks ahead at Atman, self, as embodying a still higher grade of consciousness in it. Though higher than intellect, this self is by no means the highest. It is an intermediate concentration of consciousness serving as the source of what in Indian philosophy came subsequently to be taken as various aspects of the inner sense – manas, buddhi, citta, and ahankara (Katha Up.III.10). It is something like the mahat of the Sankhyas getting individualized in the form of buddhi and giving birth to ahankara which, in its turn, is taken to have given rise to manas and the senses on the one hand and to five essences of the physical world and through them to the latter itself comprising either, air, fire, water and earth, on the other. But to think of it as identical to mahat of the Sankhyas would be fallacious as actually it has happened in the Sankhya system itself resulting eventually in the admittance of the dualism of Prakriti and Purusha as mutually irreconcilables and yet supposed to get reconciled adventitiously to result in the creation of the world.
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