4. Brain, Mind, and Consciousness

§4.1 In the last week of January 1984, I humbly requested His Holiness, “In case Your Holiness kindly permits me, I shall, when convenient to Your Holiness, present Your Holiness, in 30-45 minutes, an overview of information about the brain and its extensive effect on the mind and consciousness and then entreat Your Holiness to throw light on whether the scriptural teaching about the mind and consciousness can accommodate or is incompatible with the data.” His Holiness said, “Information about the brain will surely interest me. I shall let you know when to tell me.” He went to Sondekoppa (near Bengaluru) on 30th January. On 3rd February, He called me to His room in the afternoon, around 3 p.m. He told me, “Tell me about the brain now” and added, “You have brought pictures of the brain with you to Sondekoppa, have you not? Go and bring them.” I promptly fetched three sheets of paper with photocopies of pictures of the brain from books. His Holiness took them from me, looked at the drawings, pointed at the right ‘parietal lobe’ in one of the pictures, and said, “Start by telling me one consequence of damage to this.” I said that following damage to the right parietal lobe because of, say, a stroke, a person may neglect his left side and left visual space. He may shave just the right side of his face, not comb half of his hair, and eat from half his plate; asked to copy a picture, such as of a flower, he may sketch just its right half; told to bisect a line, he may put his mark towards its right half; questioned by an examiner on his left, he may respond without turning or looking to the left; if told to imagine a specific, well-known place and then describe what he perceives from a particular position there, he may refer to the structures that lie in the front and on the right but, unlike one without brain damage, omit those on the left.¹

Such persons are not conscious that they are neglecting anything. An explanation for unilateral neglect is that the parietal lobes are involved in directing spatial attention and that due to damage to the right parietal lobe, there occurs a disability in directing attention to the left space.

His Holiness asked whether damage to the area on the left side of the brain results in similar neglect of the right side. I replied that in most cases it does not and that a reason that has been given is that while the left space essentially lies in the purview of just the right side of the brain in right-handers, the right space is processed even by the right side of the brain. His Holiness nodded. He then looked at another picture of the brain, pointed to the ‘hippocampus’ that was marked therein, and asked, me, “What does this do? Highlight its role by means of an example. This is if you yourself intended to speak of this structure. Else, move on to something else about the brain as per your choice.” I told His Holiness that it is involved in memory and, by way of illustrating this, mentioned the case of a person, referred to as ‘H.M.’ He had, I said, a long history of fits and, in 1953, underwent brain-surgery to control them. This structure’s important role in memory was not recognized then and the surgeon removed parts of both his ‘temporal lobes’ (I indicated these using one of the sketches) as also much of this structure bilaterally. While he got some relief from fits and his perception, personality, intellect, and also early memories remained intact, he was, after the surgery, no more able to form new memories. He was, for instance, unable to remember the way to the toilet or recognize any of the hospital staff. Later, his family moved to a new house near and on the same street as the previous one; while he clearly remembered his previous house, he could not learn the address of his new one or find his way to it. He read the same magazines repeatedly, without remembering either their contents or that he had already read them. Half an hour after eating a meal, he could not name a single dish that he had eaten and did not even remember that he had eaten.¹ His Holiness asked whether his memory defect reduced over the years; I told Him that it did not. I paused, waiting for Holiness to point to some portion of the brain in one of the pictures. Noting this, He said, “It was only to set into motion your description of the brain that I indicated two parts of the brain. Now continue in any way convenient, whether by specifically referring to some part of the brain or without doing so.”

Since His Holiness had pointed to the hippocampus in a picture, I drew His attention to the ‘amygdala’ seen in the same picture nearby and then stated that it plays a role in mediating emotional responses and fight-flight reactions; that when this is electrically stimulated in animals, aggression is evoked while lesions in it reduce aggression and reduce reactions of fear in threatening situations; and that improvements following its surgical ablation have been reported in persons with behavioural disorders who had uncontrolled rage or were assaultive or broke things or were self-destructive, and non-surgical means such as medicines did not remedy the problematic behaviour.¹ I passed on to the ‘septal region’ near it and, pointing to it in a picture, said that electrical stimulation of this has been found to produce varying degrees of sexual arousal and a feeling of pleasure.²

As His Holiness had said that I could refer or not refer to a specific part of the brain, and as I had specified the amygdala and the septal region, I proceeded to speak of a few brain-related conditions without any recourse to the pictures. I said that Alzheimer’s disease is a disorder in which memory and thinking abilities are progressively destroyed, and, eventually, the affected one has virtually no memory left, cannot speak, and cannot perform even the simplest of tasks; many clumps (‘amyloid plaques’) and tangled fibres (‘neurofibrillary tangles’) form in the brain. Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome is, I then said, a disorder that is congenital and affects the brain and behaviour; the affected child uncontrollably injures itself, such as by banging its head against a hard surface or biting its fingers and lips forcefully, even to the extent of biting off a portion of them. After this, I mentioned the Tourette Syndrome and said that one of the symptoms is that the affected person compulsively voices a profanity even when and where this is wholly unwarranted and socially inappropriate; the person is aware of what he is doing but feels an increasing urge to utter a swearword like the build up to a sneeze, and feels relieved only on doing so.

I then stated that the brain is sensitive to the levels of sodium and glucose in the blood and if the levels of any of these falls below the normal range, adverse mental effects are seen. By way of an example, I said that an aged kidney-impaired person’s level of sodium may drop to somewhat below normal (‘hyponatremia’) due to his drinking too much water in a short interval and he may become confused and blabber¹; a greater drop in its level can result in seizures and coma.¹ When I stated an effect on the mind and behaviour of glucose in the blood being below the normal range (‘hypoglycemia’), His Holiness said, “A diabetic told me three years ago that a fortnight earlier, he had accidentally injected himself twice with insulin and his level of sugar fell. On a couple of times before this when his sugar-level had come down, he had experienced shaking and sweating, and he had restored normalcy by taking something sweet. That day, however, he felt odd and did not remember what happened after that. It was only later that he learnt to his embarrassment from his son that he had blankly taken off his clothes in the hall in the presence of relatives.” As His Holiness had mentioned insulin and drop in sugar-level, I indicated, with that as basis, an effect of low glucose by saying that about four decades ago, a form of treatment of mentally deranged patients (schizophrenics) consisted of putting them into coma by giving them injections of insulin and causing their levels of glucose to drop significantly and reviving them after some time by administering glucose.² Drug therapy for such persons became available since 1952, with the development of ‘chlorpromazine’; a drug for depression, ‘imipramine’, was also introduced in the 1950s. Chemical messengers (‘neurotransmitters’) from a brain cell (‘neuron’) pass through a gap (‘synapse’) and link to and act on another cell; these are also retaken from the gap by the cell that released them; imipramine, the drug that treats depression, blocks the reuptake of the chemical messengers ‘serotonin’ and ‘norepinephrine’ and, thus, more of these messengers become available to link with the next cell; chlorpromazine, on the other hand, blocks the chemical messenger ‘dopamine’ from the next cell; this drug, a treatment for insanity, is not effective in depression, and imipramine, a medicine for depression, is ineffective in treating insanity. I wanted to mention the reason for my having conveyed this when His Holiness Himself remarked, “You said this to convey that mental disorders such as insanity and depression are linked to the brain and that drugs that act differently on the brain can treat such different, abnormal mental conditions.” Anticipating how I thought of continuing, He said, with a smile, “You want to now tell me a few disease-and-medicine related cases of striking mental changes in persons, is it not? Go ahead.”

I said that in the second decade of the (20th) century, a disease (‘encephalitis lethargica’) that attacks the brain made its appearance in Europe, spread all over the world, and, in around 10 years, resulted in the death of lakhs of people. A survivor referred to in a book¹ as ‘Leonard L.’ could not speak or move, except for being able to make tiny movements with his right hand. His sharp intellect was unaffected and he spelt out on a small letter-board what he wanted to communicate. After he had been in this state for 15-20 years, in 1969, a doctor (Oliver Sacks) began to administer a drug, levodopa, to him. This drug passes, via blood, into the brain and yields the chemical messenger, dopamine. His Holiness said, “Oh, the drug that you mentioned as a treatment for insanity blocks this chemical messenger; on the other hand, this drug makes more of it available. I have heard of this drug; a person told me that he was prescribed this to treat his tremors and slowed movement and that he found it beneficial.”

I continued that after this patient had taken five grams of levodopa a day for two weeks, an abrupt change in his state occurred; the rigidity of his limbs fully vanished; he was able to get up, walk with a little help, speak, write, and type. Over the next couple of weeks, he was full of happiness and enjoyed good health; he stated that he felt as if he had been born again and that levodopa was a wonderful drug. After this, the situation started to change for the worse with each passing day; he began to feel that he was a messiah; he talked with increasing speed and repeated phrases; he read faster and faster to the extent that he had to shut his book after each sentence or paragraph to understand what he had read; he felt an urge to clap, and when he started to clap, he could not stop; he became hypersexual and sought to have sex with all the nurses. In this period, his daily dosage of levodopa was greatly reduced and, finally, the drug was stopped. Abruptly, one day, he reverted to the state that he had been in for years before he received levodopa. Another such patient in that hospital who has been referred to as ‘Rachel I.’ was completely immobilised; however, she was able to speak. With her consent, she was given levodopa in 1970. Her reaction to the drug was catastrophic. In less than two weeks, she became extremely excited and started to hallucinate; she saw figures and faces on all the sides in her room; she repeated, in a screaming voice, hundreds of times what was said to her. Levodopa was stopped, and she was administered drugs to calm her, but to no avail. Her intellectual status began to decline. One day, her state of excitement abruptly ceased, and she became comatose. She emerged from coma after a month. However, she could no more recognize anybody or anything; she could only make some noises; she seemed to have become a complete mental blank, with no identifiable signs of a mind. She remained in this mindless condition until she died of pneumonia seven weeks later.¹

Moving on to visual perception, I pointed to the ‘occipital lobe’ in the back of the brain and said that this processes visual inputs, with the one on the left handling the right half of the visual fields of both eyes and the one on the right, the left half of the visual fields of both eyes. Hence, if the primary visual area in the left lobe is damaged, a person cannot see in the right half of his visual fields; partial loss of this area results in the loss of vision in a portion of the right visual fields, depending on the locus of the damage. I then stated that in an experiment, four persons with areas of blindness due to such damage were asked to gaze at a light and told that when they heard a sound they should shift their gaze towards where a light was shown in their blind area. They found the task odd and asked how they could turn their eyes towards what they could not see. Nonetheless, it was found that they moved their eyes towards the stimulus more accurately than would have been the case were they doing so just randomly.¹ In a different study, a person (‘D.B.’) who was blind in the left half of both his visual fields was asked to guess whether the lines that were presented in his blind area were horizontal or vertical and whether what was shown was ‘X’ or ‘O’. He said that he could see nothing. Nevertheless, he was able to choose between the options much better than just by chance.² Such seeing without conscious awareness has been termed ‘blind-sight.’ It is absent if the blindness is due to damage to the eyes, rather than to the primary visual area in the back of the brain. Damage to the brain can result in loss or impairment of colour-perception. For instance, a man referred to as ‘C.M.’³ abruptly lost colour vision in his 40s in the left half of the visual fields of both the eyes; a CT scan showed damage to his right occipital lobe; his colour vision in the right half of his visual fields was intact; he could see objects without any distortion of form even in the left half of his visual fields; his distant vision was normal in both his eyes (acuity ‘20/20’); he could read small letters with either eye and identify small objects, moving and stationary; when he was told to fixate on a spot in front and then coloured objects were presented, one by one, proceeding from the periphery of the left half of his visual fields to the midline, he was unable to identify their colours but on their passing the midline to the right, he readily did so; when a red flashlight was held such that half its beam fell to the left of his visual midline and half to the right, he reported that its right half was red but that its left half looked grey. As in the case of the perception of colours, brain damage can result in a loss or impairment of visual perception of motion. I told Him that an article of the previous year (1983) detailed the case of a woman referred to as ‘L.M.’ who became motion-blind following damage to her brain due to a blood clot;¹ she had difficulty in pouring coffee or tea into a cup as the falling liquid appeared still and she did not see its level rising in the cup; when people moved in a room, she found them at one place and, suddenly, elsewhere but not in motion; in a test, a black wooden cube was moved from 30 cm in front of her to 130 cm from her at different velocities, but on no occasion did she did perceive it moving even though she could see it; while she was impaired in seeing movement, she could detect it in tests involving touch and hearing; in a test, when she was blindfolded and a stick touching her was moved slowly or fast from her wrist to her elbow or vice versa, she was able to sense the motion and its direction; likewise, when she was blindfolded and a source of sound moved, she was readily able to identify this. There can arise, following brain-damage, an inability to visually recognize faces. I said that a few-months-old article (of 1983) presented in detail the case of a man referred to therein as ‘Mr. W.’; during hospitalization for a cardiac ailment, he started to experience difficulties in visually identifying familiar faces such as those of the nurses; subsequently, a CT scan showed damage on both sides of the back of his brain; he had no problem in visually identifying, for instance, his dogs and cats, familiar cars, houses, and streets but he could not visually identify any face even though he could perceive its constituents; he identified familiar persons not from their faces but from, mainly, their voices and also from their clothes and gait; when he looked into a mirror, the reflected face seemed to be that of someone else and ‘funny’ but he did realize that it must be his face only.¹ In a different article², it was reported that a man with this problem could recognize pictures of animals and inanimate things but could not clearly recognize his own picture; asked to pick out his wife from among five persons in front of him, he failed but the moment he heard her voice, he was able to do so. Moving on to sensations from and control of bodily parts such as the fingers, I drew His Holiness’s attention to two pictures; one depicted the ‘primary somatosensory area’ (in the front portion of the parietal lobe); the second portrayed the ‘primary motor area’ (in the rear end of the frontal lobe); the parts of the body as represented in these areas were also sketched in these pictures. I told Him that both these drawings had been published in a book by a neurosurgeon (Wilder Penfield) who had electrically stimulated the brains of patients while they were fully conscious during brain surgery for treating epilepsy.¹ His Holiness had a close look at the drawings and remarked, “The body is not represented uniformly; the fingers as also the lips have, for instance, greater areas meant for them than the toes.” I mentioned that the somatosensory and motor areas on the left side of the brain deal with the right side of the body and vice versa. He asked, “What were some of the effects produced when the surgeon who published the two drawings applied electricity to these areas?” I answered that depending on where the primary sensory area was electrically stimulated, patients reported experiencing tingling or numbness in different portions of the body such as a thumb, a wrist, or one side of a lip.

An effect observed when the motor area of a patient was stimulated while he was, as told, squeezing a doctor’s hand was that his hand relaxed instantaneously and he could not press until the stimulation ended; movements produced by such stimulation could not be volitionally prevented by the patients. When a patient’s motor area was stimulated, he began to make a long-drawn vowel sound that continued till the end of the stimulation; in spite of his best efforts, he was unable to stop or alter it.

I then told His Holiness that an American neuroscientist (Benjamin Libet) had, in one of his studies,¹ electrically stimulated the sensory area of patients (undergoing brain surgery) with a train of pulses that elicited a conscious sensory experience, as reported by the subjects, when the stimulation continued for about half a second. He applied to their skin a single electrical pulse of sufficient intensity to just elicit a sensation in the same area as the brain-stimulation. The subjects were able to distinguish the sensation elicited by the brain-stimulation from that elicited by the skin-stimulus. When the skin-stimulus was applied at any time during the brain-stimulation, it did not elicit any experience and the subjects reported only the sensation due to the brain-stimulation. Significantly, the skin-stimulus was not consciously experienced even when it was applied first and the brain-stimulation begun after a delay of up to 125-200 milliseconds in most of the subjects and up to half a second in one subject; only when the start of the brain-stimulation was delayed more, the subjects reported two experiences, first that elicited by the skin-stimulus and thereafter that elicited by the brain-stimulation.

Moving on to language, I mentioned to His Holiness that one hemisphere – mostly the left – is dominant for language. I showed the ‘Broca’s area’ in the left frontal lobe in a drawing and said that following damage to it, people have great difficulty in expressing themselves; they speak slowly and with lengthy pauses; their verbal output is telegraphic and ungrammatical; being aware that they are not able to find the right words to express what they intend to, they feel frustrated. Some persons in whom this area was normal and whose brains were exposed during brain-surgery were shown pictures and told to specify what was shown; when they were about to answer, this area was electrically stimulated; they were unable to find the apt words but when the stimulation stopped, they had no difficulty in doing so.¹ His Holiness asked if persons with damage to this area can understand what is said to them and if, as in the case of speech, they have difficulty in conveying through writing what they have in mind; my answer to both the questions was yes. I then pointed in a picture to the ‘Wernicke’s area’ in the left temporal lobe and said that following damage to it, while persons are able to speak without difficulty at the normal speed, what they say does not make sense; they are greatly impaired in comprehending what is spoken to them; while they write without difficulty, their writing is full of misused and misspelt words and, like their speech, is not meaningful; they are, unlike those with damage to the Broca’s area, not conscious of their impairment.

After this, I pointed in a picture to the ‘corpus callosum,’ a set of fibres linking the left and the right hemispheres, and said that it had been sectioned in some to mitigate epilepsy by averting the spread of abnormal electrical discharges from one hemisphere to the other. They did not, subsequent to the bisection of their brains, report feeling mentally different; they were temperamentally and intellectually unchanged; they continued to be as socially aware as before the bisection and interacted with others normally. However, controlled tests revealed some consequences.¹ When, as they held their gaze at a spot on their visual midline, an image was flashed to the left half of their visual fields and, thus, to just their right hemisphere, they said – with such speech generated in their linguistically proficient left hemisphere – that they did not see anything; yet, when they were shown a set of pictures, they were able to point correctly with the left hand, under the control of the right hemisphere, to the picture that matched that image. On the other hand, when an image was flashed to the right half of their visual fields and, thus, to the left hemisphere, they were able to verbally describe it and to point with the right hand to the matching image from among the pictures shown to them. When the image of an object was flashed to just the right hemisphere and they were allowed to feel objects hidden from their view with the left hand, they were able to pick out the object that matched the image; they were unable to do so with the right hand. If the object that matched that image was not included in the items made available to them, they selected with the left hand that object which corresponded best to the image that had been flashed; for instance, when a wall-clock was flashed and no clock was available, the split-brain subject selected a child’s toy-watch with the left hand. When an image was flashed to the left hemisphere, they were able to feel and select the corresponding object with the right hand but not with the left hand. They did not, unlike people with undivided brains, find anything odd if, while they fixated on the visual midline, a composite image with the left half of one picture and the right half of a different picture was flashed. For instance, when a composite image with half a tree on the left and half a boat on the right was flashed, a split-brain subject drew a full tree with the left hand; he verbally reported seeing a boat. A split-brain patient (‘P.S.’) was, as he fixated on his visual midline, briefly presented the image of a snow-scene – with the ground covered with snow, a car with snow on it, and a cottage – to his right hemisphere and the image of a chicken’s claw to his left hemisphere. Then, he was shown eight pictures that he could see freely with his eyes. With his left hand, he pointed to the image of a shovel; this was the picture that related to the snow-scene. The picture of a chicken, which fitted the image of the chicken’s claw, was what he chose verbally. He, who had seen the left hand pointing to the picture of a shovel, said that he saw a chicken’s claw, chose the picture of a chicken, and pointed to a shovel as one needs to clean a chicken-shed; he had not been shown even a portion of a chicken-shed.

Researchers have reported several such left-hemisphere-based, fanciful justifications by split-brain patients. A split-brain patient (‘N.G.’) was briefly shown in her left visual fields some unmixed pictures, one after the other; on seeing one of them, she began to laugh; asked for the reason, she, who did not report seeing any of the pictures, said that the machine was funny; when this picture was flashed to her right visual fields, she again laughed but this time spoke of the picture. Another split-brain patient (‘L.B.’) was shown pictures in his left visual fields and required to indicate his approval by a thumbs-up sign or disapproval by a thumbs-down sign; he gave, with his left hand, a thumbs-down sign for Hitler and a thumbs-up sign for Churchill. He was then shown three pictures of strangers and one of himself; required to point to the picture he recognized, he pointed with his left hand to his picture; he showed a thumbs-down sign but did so with a self-conscious grin. It has been contended that this evidences that the right-hemisphere can self-recognize and display a sense of humour. The right hemisphere of ‘P.S.’ whose corpus callosum was sectioned in 1976 when he was 15 years old displayed a good degree of linguistic proficiency. In a test, he was asked questions with a crucial word omitted; this word was flashed to just his right hemisphere; he was required to spell out his answer by selecting and arranging chips marked with the letters of the alphabet. The idea was to investigate the mute right hemisphere’s knowledge and preferences. One question put to him was “Who are you?” with the words “are you” presented to just his right hemisphere. P.S. spelt out, “Paul,” his name. On being asked, “Would you spell the name of your favourite girl?” with the word “girl” shown to his right hemisphere, his answer was “Liz,” his then girlfriend. Asked, “What is tomorrow?” with “tomorrow” presented visually, his right response was, “Monday.” When asked, “In one word, how would you describe your mood?” with the key word “mood” not uttered but flashed, his answer, as expressed by the right hemisphere, was “Good.” When he was asked, “If you had a choice, what job would you pick?” with the word “job” shown to just the right hemisphere, his answer, as given by the right hemisphere, was “automobile race,” that is, a race-car driver; when he was orally asked this question after the test session, his verbal answer, given by the left hemisphere, was “draftsman.”¹

I then moved on from bisected brains to sleep and told His Holiness that on the basis of recordings of electrical activity with electrodes on the scalp and face (EEG), two forms of sleep, labelled REM (‘rapid eye movement’) sleep and NREM (‘non-rapid eye movement’) sleep have been identified, as also four stages of NREM sleep.¹ People awakened from REM sleep reported dreams 80- 90 percent of the time; on the other hand, dreams were reported in 5-10 percent of the awakenings from NREM sleep. NREM and REM alternate, with successive REM durations being longer than the preceding ones. During REM sleep, as is clear from the appellation itself, rapid eye movement occurs, in various directions; the skeletal muscles are relaxed (‘muscle atonia’), and hence, one is paralysed as it were. People sometimes – many at least once in their life – have the disconcerting experience of awakening and finding that, for durations from seconds up to a few minutes, they are unable to move; the reason is said to be the brief persistence of the brain-induced muscle relaxation of REM sleep after arousal. I pointed, in a picture, to the ‘pons’ in the brain stem and said that this is regarded as playing a vital role in generating REM sleep; bursts of electrical activity characterized by spikes originating here trigger REM sleep; there are reports² of damage to the pons reducing or abolishing REM sleep.

Sleepwalking (‘somnambulism’) is, I said to Him, a sleep disorder that principally occurs during stages¹ 3 and 4 of NREM sleep. In an investigation,² nine persons – seven males and two females – were chosen on the basis of their having a high frequency of sleepwalking and electrical signals recorded for several nights via electrodes placed on their heads and faces; the apparatus was such that the recordings continued uninterrupted even when a subject moved around. Several incidents of sleepwalking and of just sitting up in bed were recorded; every one of them occurred during periods of stage 3 and stage 4 of NREM sleep, characterized by recordings of slow waves. The activities ranged from sitting up, walking, tugging at the electrical cables, and, uncommonly, jumping, running or appearing to search for something; their eyes were open and expressions blank; their movements were somewhat rigid; when spoken to, they answered monosyllabically and as if displeased; they returned to bed themselves and lay down or could be led back easily; on no occasion did they recall anything of their sleepwalking when they got up in the morning; even when they happened to awaken spontaneously during an episode of sleepwalking, they had no recollection of what had happened earlier. Rather uncommonly, a sleepwalker may cause injury or death. For instance, a 50-year-old man with a history of sleep-walking felt tired while driving, stopped at the side of the road to rest, started his car subsequently, and kept on driving on the wrong side of the road, with a fixed, blank expression; a car coming in the opposite direction unavoidably crashed into his car and its occupants died; he had no recollection of what happened after he had parked his car earlier to sleep.¹ Another instance: During an episode of sleepwalking, a 28-year-old man (Simon Fraser) picked up his infant and banged its head against a wall, causing the child’s skull to split. His wife was awakened by the sound of her husband roaring and saw him rush out of bed. When she went after him, she found him smashing something against a wall. She then saw her child lying motionless on the floor. Her cries awakened him. When he came to know what he had done, he became extremely distressed and sorrowful and rushed to fetch a doctor. The child died. After hearing his account and the views of medical experts, the jury and judge concluded that he had killed his child when he was not conscious of what he was doing because of a condition arising from somnambulism and set him free.²

I then mentioned to His Holiness that severe damage to the brain due to, say, head-injury or oxygen-deprivation, may result in what has been termed a ‘vegetative state.’ A person in this state cannot speak, act volitionally or think and has no awareness of anything; however, he has regular cycles of sleep and wakefulness; his eyes open and move; he may make some sounds, reflexively grasp, like an infant, an object put in contact with his hand, gag, suck, swallow, and appear to smile, frown or be startled by sudden loud sounds; in this state, the upper portion of the brain (‘cerebellum’) that is associated with mental activity is non-functional but the brain-stem that controls wakefulness-sleep is active. A small percentage of those in a vegetative state slowly improve and become able to understand and communicate. With almost 45 minutes having passed, I ended my account here.

I was about to request His Holiness for scriptural light on the data when He Himself commenced His response and spelt out how the data about the brain is not antithetical to what has been said in the śāstra about the mind and consciousness. Having clarified for around 15 minutes, He said that He would continue later. He did so that night after he had performed pūjā and blessed the assembled devotees. He completed His explanation in His room in roughly 15 minutes. Then, gesturing to me to not get up, He sat fully upright with His right hand on his left with the palms facing upwards, promptly became absorbed in nirvikalpa-samādhi, and remained in that exalted state for over half an hour. He then retired for the night.

Except for His use of Tamil in His prelude, which forms Section 4.2, and in the concluding portion, which is given in Section 4.8, He spoke entirely in Sanskrit. Section 4.3 has His Holiness’s establishment, through citations from the scripture and Bhagavatpāda’s bhāṣyas that, as per the śāstra, a body is required for the functioning of the subtle mind, which accompanies the jīva from birth to birth; the functioning of the mind is influenced by what is ingested; physical factors are involved in the onset of dreams and dreamless sleep; bodily factors can lead to even the derangement of the mind and medicines given to the body can positively impact an affected mind; the expression of mental impressions of experiences does depend on the body and its state. Having illustrated in five ways that the śāstra does accept that the mind can be and is extensively influenced by somatic factors, His Holiness expounded in depth the scriptural account of the mind, Ātman of the nature of pure consciousness, jīva, misidentification, due to avidyā, of consciousness with the mind, and consciousness in deep sleep and set out the framework and laid the foundation for establishing that nothing in the data about the brain is antithetical to the scriptural teaching about the mind and consciousness; this constitutes Section 4.4. In continuation of this, His Holiness took up scriptural statements on waking, dream, deep sleep, their subdivisions, and unconsciousness with and without convulsions, and then pointed out how the scriptural classification of states is wide enough to cover sleepwalking, etc. This forms Section 4.5. His Holiness presented three scriptural accounts and drawing upon them pointed out that adverse impacts on the mind on account of physical causes as also abnormal behaviour without subsequent recollection are not antithetical to the scriptural teaching; this forms Section 4.6. After this, His Holiness considered the role of prāṇa in some detail and brought out, in the light of scriptural statements, that activities without conscious awareness are recognized. This forms Section 4.7. His Holiness then showed that the data about perception, hemi-neglect and brain-bisection is not dissonant with the scripture; this forms Section 4.8.

§4.2 His Holiness: Even if it were to be established that every kind of thought, emotion, perception, conscious experience, and conscious and unconscious behaviour may be elicited, modified or blocked by manipulation of brain-states, the teaching of the śāstra about the mind and consciousness would not be undermined.¹ This is because the śāstra never states or even hints that corporeal factors cannot affect the mind; on the contrary, it highlights that the mind can be extensively influenced by physical factors such as what is ingested. Were the scripture to have ruled out the influence of corporeal factors on, for example, memory, this would have been contradicted by the fact that brain-damage can adversely impact memory, with ‘H.M.’ being a case in point. However, the scripture neither does anything such as this nor does it mention any limit to the extent to which any mental act can be impacted. The scriptural teaching that there does exist a jīva that is distinct from the body and is eternal; that, on account of ignorance, it transmigrates as associated with the mind, senses, and prāṇa in accordance with its karma; and that it is intrinsically of the very nature of changeless, limitless consciousness pertains to what transcends the domains of perception and inference¹ and, therefore, brain-data can neither rule this out nor establish it. To specify the scriptural view of the mind and consciousness, I shall, almost wholly, limit myself to what is taught about them in the prasthāna-traya (the Upaniṣads, Bhagavad-gītā, and the Brahma-sūtras) as explained by Bhagavatpāda in His bhāṣyas. In view of the categorical statement in the Mahābhārata that, “itihāsa-purāṇābhyāṁ vedaṁ samupabr̥ṁhayet — The Vedas should be clarified with the aid of the Itihāsas and the Purāṇas”² and since these texts have been relied upon in the Brahma-sūtras and in Bhagavatpāda’s bhāṣyas, I shall draw upon them also but only as supportive evidence and occasionally. There is no mention of the ‘brain’ in the prasthāna-traya, in Bhagavatpāda’s bhāṣyas thereon and in the Itihāsas and the Purāṇas; as I have no intention of overstepping the traditional interpretation of the Vedānta-śāstra, I shall not conceive references to the brain and its functions in these texts in the light of what is known now; there is, anyway, no word denoting the brain in the Amarakośa (traditional, metrical Sanskrit lexicon that is memorized). Since what you wanted me to consider in the light of the śāstra is the data about the brain’s effect on the mind, how the mind acts on the body is not pertinent here.

§4.3 His Holiness (continuing): The scriptural position is that in the absence of a body, the jīva has no knowledge of anything and has no willed activity. Bhagavatpāda states in His bhāṣya on the Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad in the context of bliss being the very nature of Brahman: kāryakaraṇābhāve ’nupapatter vijñānasya…śarīrābhāve ca karaṇānupapattir āśrayābhāvāt…dehādyabhāve ca vijñānotpattau sarveṣāṁ kāryakaraṇopādānānarthakyaprasaṅgaḥ — In the absence of a body as also the subtle sense-organs and mind, no knowledge is possible…In the absence of a body, there would be no functioning of the sense-organs and the mind, for they would have no base. If knowledge could arise even without the body, organs, and mind, it would be meaningless for anyone to possess these.”¹ Not only the jīva that is bodiless in the interval between discarding a human body and passing, due to its sinful karma, into a lower form, such as that of an animal or plant, but even the jīva that is on the way to Brahma-loka is like one in coma; explaining the Brahma-sūtra, “ubhayavyāmohāt tatsiddheḥ — That (guiding deities are referred to) is settled because both (the person travelling and the path) are not conscious,”² Bhagavatpāda has written, “ye tāvad arcirādimārgagās te dehaviyogāt sampiṇḍitakaraṇagrāmā ity asvatantrāḥ — Because of their separation from their bodies, all their organs and mind become lumped and, therefore, those who proceed by the path of flame, etc., are not capable of independent activity.”¹ Whether it be in the higher realms from those of the manes (pitr̥loka) onwards or on earth or in the lower realms down to pātāla (the lowest hell), the jīva, accompanied by the mind, the organs, and prāṇa, is functional only when in a body suitable to that realm, not otherwise. That jīvas need bodies in order to experience delights in higher realms is inferable from the teaching of the Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad about rebirth that: “tad yathā peśaskārī peśaso mātrām āpādāyānyan navataraṁ kalyāṇataraṁ rūpaṁ tanuta evam evāyam ātmedaṁ śarīraṁ nihatyāvidyāṁ gamayitvānyan navataraṁ kalyāṇataraṁ rūpaṁ kurute pitryaṁ vā gāndharvaṁ vā daivaṁ vā prājāpatyaṁ vā brāhmaṁ vānyeṣāṁ vā bhūtānām — Just as a goldsmith separates and takes up some gold and makes another form that is newer and better, likewise, this Ātman (jīva) sets aside the present body (stops identifying with it as when starting to dream) – renders it senseless – and makes another newer and better body that is suitable for the manes (suitable for experiences in the world of the manes) or gandharvas or devas or Prajāpati or Hiraṇyagarbha or other beings.”²

When the jīva’s puṇya responsible for its stay in, say, the world of the manes is exhausted, it returns to this world without knowledge of anything, like one in coma, till it gets another body. Thus, as per the scripture, any activity of the mind or of the senses –– and, so, any experience by the jīva of the fruits of its karma –– takes place only in association with a body.

His Holiness (continuing): While in a body, the mind’s functions are influenced by physical factors. In order to teach that just like the external world, the mind, prāṇa, and the organs are composed of the elements (such as earth) and that these have no existence apart from the non-dual Reality, it is said in the Chāndogya-upaniṣad: “annam aśitaṁ tredhā vidhīyate tasya yaḥ sthaviṣṭho dhātus tat purīṣaṁ bhavati yo madhyamas tan māṁsaṁ yo ’ṇiṣṭhas tan manaḥ — Food that is eaten is (following digestion) divided in three ways. Its grossest constituent becomes faeces, its middling ingredient becomes flesh and its subtlest part becomes the mind.”¹ The mind is already present in the body, having accompanied the jīva and, hence, what is meant by the statement that the subtlest part of the ingested food becomes the mind is that it nourishes the mind; Bhagavatpāda has clarified in His bhāṣya on the Chāndogya-upaniṣad that following digestion, the subtlest part eventually passes into the naḍīs (nerves) known as ‘hitā’ (in the Upaniṣads) and nourishes the mind; He has then pointed out, “annopacitatvān manaso bhautikatvam eva – Because the mind is nourished by food, it is certainly elemental”²; as per the scripture, the mind is subtle, material, and, per se, inert; any conception of the mind as something that is non-material and characterized by consciousness finds no favour at all in the scripture. In this portion of the Upaniṣad (that has the form of a dialogue between Sage Uddālaka Āruṇi and his son Śvetaketu), the relationship between food and the mind is then pressed home as follows. After conceptualizing that a person consists of sixteen parts, Uddālaka Āruṇi instructs Śvetaketu to fast for 15 days, drinking as much water as he wishes to sustain life. Having fasted, as told, for 15 days, the son presents himself to his father. The father asks him to chant the passages of the R̥g, Yajur and Sāma Vedas. Though having studied the Vedas, together with their six auxiliaries, for 12 years, Śvetaketu finds, as per the story, that he is unable to recall any of the passages; his memory fails. Uddālaka Āruṇi then tells him, “yathā somya mahato ’bhyāhitasyaiko ’ṅgāraḥ khadyotamātraḥ pariśiṣṭaḥ syāt tena tato ’pi na bahu dahed evaṁ somya te ṣoḍaśānāṁ kalānām ekā kalātiśiṣṭā syāt tayaitarhi vedān nānubhavasi — Amiable boy, just as one ember of a firefly’s size left as the residue of a large blazing fire cannot burn anything bigger than that, likewise, amiable boy, (after your fast,) only one of your 16 parts remains as residue and with just that little, you cannot remember the Vedas now.”¹ He directs him to eat and states that he would then correctly understand him. The boy takes food and thereafter approaches his father. This time, Śvetaketu correctly answers every question that Uddālaka Āruṇi asks him regarding the Vedas and the meanings of the passages. Uddālaka Āruṇi then tells him, “yathā somya mahato ’bhyāhitasyaikam aṅgāraṁ khadyotamātraṁ pariśiṣṭaṁ taṁ tr̥ṇair upasamādhāya prājvalayet tena tato ’pi bahu dahet / evaṁ somya te ṣoḍaśānāṁ kalānāṁ ekā kalātiśiṣṭābhūt sānnenopasamāhitā prājvālī tayaitarhi vedān anubhavasy anna-mayaṁ hi somya manaḥ — Amiable boy, just as when the one ember of a firefly’s size that is left as the residue of a large blazing fire is made to blaze up by adding straws, it burns up much more than before, likewise, amiable boy, of your 16 parts only one part remained and it has blazed up by being nourished by food, and, with that, you now apprehend the Vedas. Amiable boy, the mind is decidedly constituted by food.”¹ The Upaniṣad later points out that, “āhāraśuddhau sattvaśuddhiḥ — When food is pure, the mind becomes pure.”² The well-known meaning of the word ‘āhāra’ is food; Bhagavatpāda has quoted this passage in the Brahmasūtra-bhāṣya in the context of food.³ Pure food is sāttvika food such as that described by the Lord in the Bhagavad-gītā: “āyuḥsattva-balārogyasukhaprītivivardhanāḥ / rasyāḥ snigdhāḥ sthirā hr̥dyā āhārāḥ śāttvikapriyāḥ — Foods that enhance life, steadiness of the mind, heath, joy, and cheerfulness, and are succulent, oleaginous, substantial, and appetizing are dear to those in whom sattva-guṇa preponderates.”¹ Just as some foods are conducive to the mind becoming pure, some others act negatively on the mind, such as by fostering irritability or dullness; this is recognized in the scripture.

His Holiness (continuing): That physical factors play a causal role in the mind’s passing from the state of waking to that of dream is implicit in the following passage of the Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad: tā vā asyaitā hitā nāma nāḍyo yathā keśaḥ sahasradhā bhinnas tāvatāṇimnā tiṣṭhanti śuklasya nīlasya piṅgalasya haritasya lohitasya pūrṇā atha yatrainaṁ ghnantīva jinantīva hastīva vicchāyayati gartam iva patati yad eva jāgradbhayaṁ paśyati tad atrāvidyayā manyate — There are in him the nāḍīs (nerves) termed ‘hitā’, which are fine like a hair split into a thousand parts and are filled with white, blue, brown, green and red serums. Such being the case, (there is his state of dream) when he feels as though somebody is killing him or is overpowering him or an elephant is chasing him or he is falling into a pit, that is, when he fancies through ignorance what fears he had experienced in the waking state.”² Bhagavatpāda has explained in His bhāṣya on this passage that the said colours of the serums in the nāḍīs, which are spread all over the body, are on account of the intermixture, in different proportions, of ‘vāta’, ‘pitta’ and ‘kapha’ (the three ‘doṣas’ described in texts on Āyurveda); that the mind with all its impressions, the ten organs (five sense-organs and five organs of action) and the fivefold prāṇa have as their habitat these nāḍīs; and that on account of contact with these serums therein, the colourless-crystal-like mind undergoes, as per karma, transformations and manifests with impressions in the form of what all is seen in the dream.¹ In the following passage of the Praśna-upaniṣad, there is a mention of the causal role of a physical factor in the onset of deep (dreamless) sleep: “sa yadā tejasābhibhūto bhavati / atraiṣa devaḥ svapnān na paśyati — When that deva is overcome by light, he does not see dreams.”² In his bhāṣya on this passage, Bhagavatpāda has clarified that by the word ‘devaḥ (the bright one)’, it is the mind that is referred to; the word ‘tejas (light)’ here refers to the ‘pitta’ in the nāḍīs; when the mind is overwhelmed by the ‘pitta’ in the nāḍīs, the doorway for its impressions to manifest in dreams becomes shut and it does not dream; in the state of deep sleep, the mind in the body is like non-manifest fire in wood.³

His Holiness (continuing): It is stated in the Atharva-veda: “kr̥ṇomi vidvān bheṣajaṁ yathānunmadito ’sasi — Knowing the remedy, I prepare the medicine such that you will be free from insanity.”¹ The Garuḍa-purāṇa describes a herbal medicine for insanity: “brāhmīrasa-vacā-kuṣṭha-śaṅkhapuṣpībhir eva ca / purāṇaṁ sevyam unmāda-grahāpasmāranud ghr̥tam — Juice of brāhmī (Bacopa monnieri), vacā (Acorus calamus Linn.), kuṣṭha (Sausseurea Lappa), and śaṅkhapuṣpī (Convolvulus pluricaulis Choisy) with ghee is a treatment for insanity, possession, and epilepsy.”² The Agni-purāṇa mentions this preparation as a first-rate memory booster and as a remedy for insanity and epilepsy.³ The scripture thus recognizes that a medicine given to the body can act beneficially on even a deranged mind, with reasoning, thinking, and emotions affected. It also recognizes that physical factors may be involved in a mind becoming deranged. For instance, in a set of verses beginning with, “hr̥droganidānaṁ vakṣye — I shall speak of the aetiology of mental ailments,” it is said in the Garuḍa-purāṇa, in line with what is spelt out in Āyurveda texts such as the Suśruta-saṁhitā and Caraka-saṁhitā, that insanity may be triggered by vāta or pitta or kapha or all the three.⁴ His Holiness (continuing): The Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad teaches that when the jīva leaves a body: “taṁ vidyā-karmaṇī samanvārabhete pūrvaprajñā ca — The jīva is followed by its knowledge (of all forms) and karma (virtuous, sinful and neither), and impressions of past experience.”¹ The word ‘pūrvaprajñā (past experience)’ refers to all the mental impressions of past experiences of the results of actions. These play a role in the next life in initiating unperformed activity in that life, such as a new-born infant suckling, and in the fruition of karma. In the present context, it is pertinent that the operation of mental impressions in any life depends on the body and its state. Thus, while one’s mind has impressions of experiences had in past lives as a human, a peacock, a monkey, etc., during rebirth as a monkey, only those mental impressions that are compatible with that body manifest, such as to hold on, even upside down, to the mother-monkey’s abdomen when quite young.² Bodily factors do influence which impressions emerge when. It is well-known, for instance, that inclinations differ with age; the Viṣṇu-purāṇa says, “bālye krīḍanakāsaktā yauvane viṣayonmukhāḥ / ajñā nayanty aśaktyā ca vārdhakaṁ samupasthitam— Engrossed in play in childhood, drawn to objects of pleasure as youths and with powerlessness in old age is how the unenlightened lead their lives.”³

§4.4 His Holiness (continuing): The Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad confirms the existence of a mind apart from the senses and presents the mind’s nature thus: “anyatramanā abhūvaṁ nādarśam anyatramanā abhūvaṁ nāśrauṣam iti manasā hy eva paśyati manasā śr̥ṇoti / kāmaḥ saṅkalpo vicikitsā śraddhāśraddhā dhr̥tir adhr̥tir hrīr dhīr bhīr ity etat sarvaṁ mana eva tasmād api pr̥ṣṭhata upaspr̥ṣṭo manasā vijānāti — (People say,) ‘My mind was elsewhere (I was absentminded); I did not see it. My mind was elsewhere; I did not hear it.’ It is through the mind that one sees, and it is through the mind that one hears. Sexual desire, judgment about sense-inputs, doubt, faith, disbelief, firmness, irresoluteness, shame, understanding, and fear; all these are but (forms of) the mind. Even when one is touched from behind, one knows it (discerns what touch that is) through the mind; therefore (there exists a mind apart from the sense-organs).”¹ A boy in fine fettle having sharp eyesight is seated in the front portion of his house and is facing the road. It is midday, and the road is brightly lit by the sun. An old bull goes by. Moments later, a person comes there from a path on the side of the house, draws his attention, and asks him, “Did you see my old bull pass this way?” The boy truthfully answers, “No, I did not see it; because I was mentally preoccupied, I could have failed to perceive it.” The bull went in front of him, the place was bright, there was nothing between him and the bull, his physical eyes were unimpaired, his subtle sense-organ of sight continued to be functional, with no reason for it to lose its functionality just when the bull passed, and, being changeless and of the very nature of consciousness, there was no possibility of his Ātman losing its capacity to illumine even for an instant. Yet, because of the non-involvement of the mind, the boy had no conscious perception of the bull. Suppose that his mind was not preoccupied. He would, decidedly, have then consciously perceived the bull and answered, “Yes, an old bull did pass by; I saw it.” The example of the non-perception of an old bull is not one thought up by me. Sureśvarācārya gave it in his Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad-bhāṣya-vārtika¹ to elucidate the words, “My mind was elsewhere; I did not see it” of the Upaniṣad, and all I did now was to build on that, keeping in mind the Brahma-sūtra, “nityopalabdhyanupalabdhiprasaṅgo ’nyataraniyamo vānyathā — Otherwise (that is, if the existence of the mind is not admitted), there would arise the contingency of perpetual perception (of objects on account of the contiguous presence of objects, sense-organs and the Ātman) or of perpetual non-perception (due to the triad’s insufficiency), or else, it will have to be admitted that the power of either the sense-organs or of the Ātman becomes (discontinuously) debarred.”²

Buttressing the point made, the Upaniṣad refers to the experience of people failing to hear something due to their being mentally preoccupied. A boy is engrossedly watching a calf frolicking on the road or is engrossed in some thought and his brother calls him from inside the house. He fails to respond. On his brother asking him afterwards, he says truthfully, “My mind was elsewhere; I did not hear your call.” In the Mahābhārata in the Śānti-parvan and in the Bhāgavata-purāṇa in the Uddhava-gītā, an example is given of a maker of arrows being so engrossed in the task of making an arrow that he was completely unaware of the king passing nearby;¹ in the Śrīdharī (the authoritative gloss, Bhāvārthadīpikā, of Śrīdhara on the Bhāgavata-purāṇa), it is explicated that the arrow-maker did not hear even the sound of kettledrums playing as the king advanced. By mentioning people’s failure to see and, without stopping with this, also referring to people’s failure to hear because of their minds being elsewhere, the Upaniṣad tacitly includes as similar, cases of people failing to consciously apprehend some touch, taste or smell (the objects of the remaining three sense-organs) when their minds are occupied with something else. Suppose a person becomes distracted just when he takes a little milk into his mouth. He would then not consciously apprehend its taste and may even swallow it reflexively. The Upaniṣad points out here, via people’s experience, that there exists something — the mind — other than the five sense-organs without whose involvement none of the sense-organs can bring about conscious perception of its object in a person and in the congruous presence of which, each of them does so. That the mind is the common means by which one is able to consciously perceive an object is specified in the portion, “It is through the mind that one sees, and it is through the mind that one hears.” His Holiness (continuing): The Upaniṣad speaks of the nature of the mind in the portion, “Desire, resolution, doubt, faith, disbelief, firmness, irresoluteness, shame, understanding, and fear; all these are but (forms of) the mind.” All these that are mentioned, from desire to fear, are forms of (rūpāṇi)¹, are transformations of, the mind, just as a golden bracelet, diadem and armlet² are of gold and, hence, are said here to be the mind (mana eva), just as the bracelet, diadem and, armlet of gold are spoken of as gold, other than as which they have no separate existence. One of the examples of the ‘vr̥ttis’ of the mind given here is ‘śraddhā (faith)’; this includes faith that rites, such as jyotiṣṭoma, prescribed in the scripture are efficacious means to attain heaven after death; while the sense-organs can grasp only what is perceptible and present now, the mind can think of even what pertains to the future and what is unseen.

His Holiness (continuing): The Upaniṣad once again draws on human experience to point out that there does exist a mind apart from the five sense-organs and says: “Even when one is touched from behind, one knows it (discerns what touch that is); hence (there does exist a mind apart from the sense-organs).” A person touches another on the back with his hand or with his knee.¹ The latter’s sense-organ of touch can detect whether the touch is soft or hard but cannot identify the touch as that of a hand or a knee. However, people are able to recognize what touched them on the back. This calls for something over and above the organ of touch; this is the mind. Likewise, if a person is seated with his eyes closed and the fragrance of jasmine flowers wafts into his nose and he thereafter hears his name being called, he is able to recognize that the smell is that of jasmine and that the sound is his mother’s voice even though his sense-organs of smell and of hearing can only detect the smell’s and sound’s characteristics; for such recognition that is a matter of experience, something apart from the sense-organs of smell and hearing is needed; this is the mind. In some places, the scripture categorises the inner means of knowing (antaḥkaraṇa) as manas (mind) with reference to its function of thinking and as buddhi (intellect) in view of its function of deciding; this division is not done by it in some other places, inclusive of here.

His Holiness (continuing): The mind is thus a material entity that undergoes various transformations in the form of vr̥ttis such as those illustratively mentioned by the Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad; being but inert, it cannot, by itself, perceive or make known any sense-object, just as clay plastered on a pot¹ cannot make it known nor can a mirror turned towards it in the dark. It is only on account of being lit up by the Ātman of the nature of pure consciousness that it is able to do so, like a mirror bearing the reflection of the sun illumining, by the sun’s light, a pot in a room or like an iron rod, which cannot scorch on its own, being said to burn when associated with fire. Some contextually relevant passages of the scripture about the Ātman, the jīva, and the mind are as follows. It is said in the Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad: “sa eṣa iha praviṣṭaḥ — The Supreme entered (in the form of the jīva) into these bodies, from that of Hiraṇyagarbha to a blade of grass.”² Likewise, it is conveyed in the Taittirīya-upaniṣad: “tat sr̥ṣṭvā tad evānuprāviśat — Having manifested the universe, Brahman entered into that itself (in the form of the jīva).”³ As Brahman is all-pervasive, eternal, changeless, and without parts, there is just no question of the Supreme literally entering anything from elsewhere at any time. What these texts reveal is that the non-manifest Supreme is perceived in the body in the intellect as the jīva; as the one who sees, hears, thinks, knows, etc.¹ Thus, the Praśṇa-upaniṣad says, “eṣa hi draṣṭā spraṣṭā śrotā ghrātā rasayitā mantā boddhā kartā vijñānātmā puruṣaḥ — This one who fully pervades the body and is of the nature of knowledge is the seer, toucher, hearer, smeller, taster, thinker, knower, and doer”² and the Kaṭha-upaniṣad states that, “ātmendriya-mano-yuktaṁ bhoktety āhur manīṣiṇaḥ — The discerning ones term the Ātman when associated with the body, organs, and the mind as the experiencer (the jīva).”³ A limited parallel for the appearance of the Supreme Ātman in the body in the form of the jīva is the appearance of the sun in a body of water; a Brahma-sūtra is, “ābhāsa eva ca — The jīva is surely a reflection of the Supreme (like that of the sun in water).”⁴ Though the sun remains as it is, in the form of its reflection in water, it conforms to the condition of the water, such as being still or shaking when the water is still or unstill. The Br̥hadaraṇya-upaniṣad brings out the distinctness of the Ātman from the intellect, mind, organs, and the body and that, as manifesting in and being identified, because of avidyā, with the intellect, it conforms to the intellect: “ātmanaivāyaṁ jyotiṣāste palyayate karma kurute vipalyetīti / katama ātmeti yo ’yam vijñāna-mayaḥ prāṇeṣu hr̥dy antarjyotiḥ puruṣaḥ sa samānaḥ sann ubhau lokāv anusañcarati dhyāyatīva lelāyatīva — It is by the light of the Ātman that a person sits, goes out, works, and returns. Which one (among the body, organs, prāṇa, and the mind-intellect) is the Ātman? The infinite being who is identified (on account of avidyā) with the intellect, is amidst the organs, and is the light of consciousness within the intellect. Seeming to be the intellect (because of one’s failure to distinguish between the Ātman, which illumines, and its limiting adjunct, the intellect, which is illumined), it travels between the present life and the next life (since the intellect does so). It meditates as it were (when the intellect meditates) and shakes as it were (when the intellect and the rest are unstill).”¹ That the jīva, which is seen conforming to the activities of the intellect, etc., is intrinsically non-different from the Supreme is taken up in the following Brahma-sūtra (His Holiness’s explanation in line with the bhāṣya is reflected in the translation): “prakāśādivac cāvaiśeṣyaṁ prakāśaś ca karmaṇy abhyāsāt — The effulgent one (the Ātman of the nature of consciousness) appears differently during activities (like meditation of the intellect-mind) as in the case of light etc., appearing differently (that is, as in the case of the effulgent sun appearing different in the form of a sunbeam that looks straight or crooked when a finger is held straight or bent in the sunbeam, and as space in a pot seems to shift when the pot is moved though space is actually all-pervasive, and as the sun, in the form of its reflection, appears to be still or unstill when the water in which it is reflected is still or unstill); yet, intrinsically, there is non-difference (of the jīva and the Supreme Brahman), for this is repeated in the scripture (with the teaching, ‘tat tvam asi - You are that’ being repeated nine times in the Chāndogya-upaniṣad).”¹ While the jīva is intrinsically Brahman and, even as reflected in the intellect like the sun in water, consciousness is distinct from the body, organs, mind, and intellect, nevertheless, on account of avidyā, it identifies itself with the intellect. It is this jīva as misidentified with the intellect that is object of the notion “I,” not the changeless Ātman. Thus, it is said in the Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad, “na dr̥ṣṭer draṣṭāraṁ paśyer na śruteḥ śrotāraṁ śr̥ṇuyā na mater mantāraṁ manvīthā na vijñāter vijñātāraṁ vijānīyāḥ — You cannot see the ‘seer of sight’ (the eternal consciousness, which pervades the mental act of seeing and is, figuratively, the witness of vision). You cannot hear the ‘hearer of hearing’ (the perpetual consciousness, which pervades the mental function of hearing and is, metaphorically, the witness of hearing). You cannot think of the ‘thinker of thought’ (the eternal consciousness, which pervades the mental act of thinking and is, figuratively, the witness of thought). You cannot know the ‘knower of knowledge’ (the eternal consciousness, which pervades intellect’s act of knowing and is, metaphorically, the witness of knowledge).”¹ Here, the text differentiates two kinds of vision. One is the ordinary, familiar vision; this is an act of the mind-intellect (with reflected consciousness) as connected with the sense-organ of sight and the object seen; it is characterized by a mental cognition of the object such as, “This is a pot.” This vision has a start and end; it can be lost if the eyes are damaged; it is absent in one who is congenitally, fully blind. The Ātman of the nature of consciousness is, with respect to such cognitions, the unfailing witness; its ‘vision’ is eternal; never does any visual, mental vr̥tti arise unwitnessed by the Ātman and never can any mental, visual cognition take place without the consciousness that is the very nature of the changeless Ātman; highlighting this, the text speaks of the Ātman as the seer of sight. Likewise, it refers to it as the hearer of hearing, thinker of thought and knower of knowledge. The Ātman — the seer of sight, the hearer of hearing, the thinker of thought, and the knower of knowledge — cannot, at any time, be known objectively.

His Holiness (continuing): In the state of deep sleep, the intellect-mind is, points out the scripture, latent; with its limiting adjunct, the intellect, latent, the jīva abides as the Ātman. Considering the objection that if consciousness is the nature of the Ātman, how does it cease to know anything during deep sleep, the scripture teaches that the Ātman being eternal, its consciousness is never lost but there is nothing apart from it then for it to witness. The words of the Br̥hadaraṇyaka-upaniṣad are (the clarifications based on the bhāṣya given by His Holiness are included in the translation): “yad vai tan na vijānāti vijānan vai tan na vijānāti na hi vijñātur vijñāter viparilopo vidyate ’vināśitvān na tu tad dvitīyam asti tato ’nyad vibhaktaṁ yad vijānīyāt — (Do not think that it does not know in the state of deep sleep.) That it does not know in the state of deep sleep is because even though knowing since the power of knowing of the Ātman can never be lost as it is Imperishable, it does not know since there is then no second thing besides it (no subject of knowledge, ‘I’, as this is dissolved), there is nothing other than it (no means of knowing such as the sense-organ of sight as this is dissolved) and there is nothing apart from it (no object of knowledge appearing as distinct), which It can know then.”¹

§4.5 His Holiness (continuing): After describing, with stress on the experiencer, the three states of waking, dream, and dreamless sleep, the Māṇḍūkya-upaniṣad teaches the non-dual Ātman through negations thus: “nāntaḥprajñaṁ na bahiṣprajñaṁ nobhayataḥprajñaṁ na prajñānaghanaṁ na prajñaṁ nāprajñam — It is not conscious of what is within (as in the dream state), nor conscious of what is without (as in the waking state), nor conscious of both the internal and the external (in an intermediate state), nor a mass of consciousness (as in the state of deep sleep), nor conscious of everything simultaneously, nor insentient.”¹ Bhagavatpāda has said that the term ‘nobhayataḥprajñam, not conscious of the internal and the external’ effects ‘jāgrat-svapnayor antarālāvasthā-pratiṣedhaḥ, negation of a state between waking and dream,’ and the term ‘na prajñānaghanam, not a mass of consciousness’ effects ‘suṣuptyavasthā-pratiṣedhah, negation of the state of deep sleep.’² In the Nr̥siṁha-uttaratāpanī-upaniṣad, waking, dream, and deep sleep are each sub-divided into four;³ this text (which has no bhāṣya on it by Bhagavatpāda) has a gloss (‘dīpikā’) by Vidyāranya⁴, who has also explained it in verses in the Anubhūti-prakāśa; as per Vidyāraṇya, one of the subdivisions of the waking state is characterized by the perception of objects through the senses, one by thinking, and the third by being quiet while awake. In the Br̥hadāraṇyaka-bhāṣya-vārtika, Sureśvarācāya has, while giving an alternative explanation of the passage “sa vā esa etasmin samprasāde ratvā ...”⁵ apart from that given in the bhāṣya, said that the states of waking, dream, and deep sleep are each subdivided into three; the second of the three subdivisions of the dream state is, for instance, marked by a dream within a dream.¹ Thus, the states of waking, dream, and deep sleep have been taught in detail in the scripture and subdivided also, explicitly in the Nr̥siṁha-uttaratāpanī-upaniṣad and implicitly in the Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad as per an interpretation of Sureśvarācāya. Unconsciousness (mūrcchā) is mentioned in the Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata, and the Purāṇas; for instance, it is said in the Rāmāyaṇa that when Rāvaṇa tried to lift Lakṣmaṇa but could not, Hanumān struck him forcefully on the chest with his fist and Rāvaṇa become unconscious;² Sage Nārada, as per the Bhāgavata-purāṇā, told Prācīnabarhis while making known the Truth that the sense of ‘I’ does not manifest in deep sleep and unconsciousness (mūrcchā).³ Epilepsy (apasmāra) is explicitly mentioned in the Mahābhārata a few times; an instance from the Śānti-parvan that first comes to mind is of Sage Vasiṣṭha telling Karāla-janaka in the course of his elaborate exposition of the means to liberation that though the jīva is intrinsically beyond pleasure and pain, due to false identification with the body, it experiences pleasure and pain, and, though transcendent of all ailments, it regards itself as having ailments such as headache, toothache, fever, burns, leprosy (kuṣṭha), and epilepsy (apasmāra).¹ In the Brahma-sūtras, it is concluded that unconsciousness must be regarded as a state apart from waking, dream, deep sleep, and death, which are the conditions that are distinctly detailed in the scripture, and should not be included under any one of these four heads: “mugdher ardhasampattiḥ pariśeṣāt — In the case of swoon, there is only partial attainment of the state of deep sleep, as this is the only alternative that is left.”² How this pithy aphorism distinguishes swoon from the states of waking, dream, deep sleep, and death has been spelt out in the Brahmasūtra-bhāṣya by Bhagavatpāda; for instance, it results from causes such as a blow by a club unlike deep sleep; a person in deep sleep breathes rhythmically, has his eyes closed, and looks calm, while a person who has swooned because of, say, a blow, may have convulsions with his eyes open, an unrelaxed visage, and interrupted breathing; a person in deep sleep can be awakened by pushing him with the hand while he who is convulsing without consciousness cannot be made conscious even by striking him; it is partially a form of sleep in as much as in both there is lack of awareness of anything and is different too from sleep; it is also partially like death as it is a door to death since a person may well pass away without regaining consciousness unless he has residual karma to experience in this life. In both deep sleep and in swoon, the jīva abides as Brahman; the term ‘ardhasampattiḥ, partial attainment’ of the aphorism does not refer to any difference between swoon and deep sleep with regard to the jīva’s abidance as Brahman. To sum up, the śāstra describes the states of waking, dream, and deep sleep, subdivides them too and even considers the existence of a state between waking and dream, refers to unconsciousness, accompanied by and without convulsions, and classifies it as a distinct state that is partially like sleep and partially a doorway to death. This scriptural coverage of states is comprehensive enough to at least indirectly accommodate the condition of one adversely affected mentally due to liquor or low sugar in the blood, one walking in sleep, etc.

§4.6 His Holiness (continuing): The Chāndogya-upaniṣad brings out the greatness of prāṇa through a fictional¹ story of the organs – organs presided over by deities² – arguing as to who among them is the greatest.³ They approach Prajāpati; he tells them that the one on whose going from the body, it would become a corpse is the greatest. The organ of speech leaves the body, comes back after a year, and asks the others how they were able to survive till then without it. They respond that they lived like the dumb; while without speech, they lived by means of prāṇa, seeing with the eye, hearing with the ear, and thinking with the mind. The organ of speech re-enters the body. The organ of sight goes out and returns after a year and learns that the others had lived as do the blind; next, the organ of hearing goes out for a year and returns and is told that the rest had lived as do the deaf. The mind leaves for a year, comes back, and asks how they survived without it. They say, “yathā bālā amanasaḥ prāṇantaḥ prāṇena vadanto vācā paśyantaś cakṣuṣā śr̥ṇvantaḥ śrotreṇaivam iti — Like infants, whose minds are undeveloped, living by means of prāṇa, speaking by means of the organ of speech, seeing with the eye, and hearing with the ear.”¹ The mind re-enters the body. Prāṇa starts to leave. The organs are pulled up, like a spirited horse uprooting the pegs to which it is tethered. Unable to continue in the body, they admit to prāṇa that prāṇa is the greatest among them, ask prāṇa to be their master, and request it to not depart from the body. This story finds a place in the Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad also;² here, on the mind returning after a year and asking the others how they survived without it, they answer that they lived as do “mugdhā avidvāṁsaḥ, ignorant idiots.”³ Bhagavatpāda has clarified that the body in which the organs operated was animated by a distinct jīva, not by the deities such as Agni who graced the organs such as that of speech.¹

I communicated all this to point out that in two major Upaniṣads wherein much is spelt out about the mind, jīva, and the Ātman, this story too is presented in which a person, the one with the organs, abruptly becomes (with the supposed exit of the mind) mentally disabled, mentally equivalent to just an infant or unlearned idiot. In the Mahābhārata, wherein too the scriptural position about the mind, jīva and the Ātman is enunciated, there is a story in which Sage Jamadagni pronounces a curse on four of his sons named Rumaṇvān, Suṣeṇa, Vasu, and Viśvāvasu and they become greatly stunted mentally.² Ipso facto, these texts find no contradiction between their teaching about the mind, jīva, and the Ātman and the occurrence, for some reason, of even an abrupt, great drop in a person’s mental level. When such is the case and loss of consciousness due to injury is spoken of, one need not look upon adverse impacts on the mind due to physical causes as antithetical to the scriptural teaching. The Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata, and Purāṇas narrate that Saudāsa, a righteous king and an ancestor of Rāma, became, due to a curse, unable to resist killing and eating humans for a period; at the end of his time as a cannibal, he did not remember it.³ The scripture is not contradicted by such changes due to physical causes.

§4.7 His Holiness (continuing): Like the mind, prāṇa is subtle but its functional manifestations in the body in the form of, for instance, inhalation and exhalation can be observed and investigated. The scripture holds that the mind and prāṇa are interrelated. For instance, it is taught in the Śāṇḍilya-upaniṣad that: “pūrakādy anilāyāmād … manaḥspando nirudhyate — By the restraint of inhalation and exhalation, the fluctuation of the mind becomes restrained.”¹ Likewise, it is said in the Skanda-purāṇa that, “cale vāyau calaṁ cittaṁ sthire tasmin sthiraṁ tataḥ — When the breath (prāṇa) fluctuates, the mind is unsteady. When the breath (prāṇa) is still, the mind is still”² and in the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha that, “yaḥ prāṇapavanaspandaś cittaspandaḥ sa eva hi — Prāṇa’s fluctuation is indeed the same as the fluctuation of the mind.”³ The correlation between the mind and prāṇa is when the mind is not dormant. As per the scripture, while the mind becomes fully dormant in deep sleep and during unconsciousness, prāṇa is uninterruptedly active, right until death; life begins with the entry and ends with the exit of prāṇa. It is because of prāṇa, in its five aspects, that inhalation, exhalation, and digestion, which are functions of prāṇa, continue normally during deep sleep; as evacuation falls under the purview of prāṇa, a child may pass stools and urine even while it is fast asleep. Every physiological function and movement during a period of unconsciousness depends on prāṇa and none on the mind, which is then latent. Even when the mind is active, many a bodily function is handled by prāṇa without involving the mind and without one being conscious of it; for instance, the body remains erect even when one is fully unaware of the body and one’s mind is fully focussed, in the state of samādhi, on, say, some form of Kr̥ṣṇa. A person may continue walking, swinging his arms, even when, for a time, he is conscious of just what he is very absorbedly thinking about. It is stated in the Chāndogya-upaniṣad about a person who has realized the Ātman, “sa tatra paryeti… nopajanaṁ smarann idam śarīraṁ sa yathā prayogya ācaraṇe yukta evam evāyam asmiñ charīre prāṇo yuktaḥ — He moves there…without remembering the body born of the contact of a man and woman. Just as a prayogya (a horse or bullock) is yoked to a vehicle, likewise, prāṇa is yoked (by Īśvara) to this body.”¹ Interpreting the word ‘prāṇa’ here in its literal sense and not as referring to the jīva (as done in the bhāṣya on the Chāndogya-upaniṣad), the word ‘prayogya’ as referring to a well-trained horse, and the example as meant to clarify how the body of an enlightened sage is able to function aptly even as he has no sense of identity with it and does not remember it, Vidyāraṇya (author of noted works on Vedānta and 12th pontiff of the Sringeri Sharada Peetham) has explained this passage as follows in his Anubhūti-prakāśa: “rathe prayogayogyo ’śvaḥ śikṣitaḥ sārathiṁ vinā /svayam eva sadābhyāsād gantavyaṁ prāpayet khalu // īśvareṇāsya dehasya preraṇāya niyojitaḥ / prāṇas tat tad bhogadeśe dehaṁ nayati karmaṇā — A well-trained horse that is fit to be yoked to a chariot surely takes, because of much practice, the chariot to the destination by itself, without any charioteer. Likewise, prāṇa, which has been assigned by Īśvara to impel the body, takes the body (of the enlightened person) to each place of experience in accordance with karma.”¹ In the Bhāgavata-purāṇa, in the Uddhava-gītā, a verse speaks, as brought out in the Śrīdharī (Śrīdhara’s gloss, Bhāvārthadīpikā), of an enlightened person whose mind is so inward-turned that he is not aware of even whether his body is seated or is getting up or is going somewhere or is returning: “dehaṁ naśvaram avasthitam utthitaṁ vā siddho na paśyati yato ’dhyagamat svarūpam / daivād apetaṁ daivāvaśād upetaṁ vāso yathā parikr̥taṁ madirāmadāndhaḥ — He, who has attained perfection, does not realize whether his perishable body that enabled him to realize his own true nature is seated or has got up or whether, as per karma, it has gone out or come back, just as a person deadened by drink is not conscious of whether the cloth on his waist remains or drops off. ²

His Holiness (continuing): Whereas every single mental vr̥tti is unfailingly witnessed by the Ātman and is never unknown, one does not have conscious awareness of mental impressions (saṁskāra, vāsanā). It is said in the Muktika-upaniṣad that fluctuation of prāṇa and mental impressions (vāsanā) constitute the seeds of the tree of the mind: “dve bīje cittavr̥kṣasya prānaspandana-vāsane — The tree of the mind has two seeds, these being the fluctuation of prāṇa and mental impressions.”¹ It is also said therein that prāṇa and mental impressions interact: “vāsanāvaśataḥ prāṇaspandas tena ca vāsanā — There is fluctuation of prāṇa due to mental impressions, and mental impressions (are triggered) by the fluctuation of prāṇa.”² Thus, prāṇa can carry out some bodily activities even in the absence of conscious awareness of them and it can be triggered by mental impressions, of which one is not conscious. In short, the śāstra accepts that actions can occur without one being conscious of them.

§4.8 His Holiness (continuing): Regardless of which vr̥tti arises in the mind and no matter when it does so, one is necessarily conscious of it without any delay at all; this is discernible from the scriptural teaching that the Ātman is of the nature of consciousness and is eternal, that it is the ‘seer of sight’, etc. It does not, however, follow that the scripture would be contradicted if, for instance, an object comes into contact with one’s hand at some time and one does not consciously apprehend it then itself. One will have no conscious experience of it if the mind does not become linked, via the organ of touch, with it or one will sense it after it has been there for some time in case one’s mind becomes associated with it through the organ of touch only after that time; this is discernible from scriptural statements such as, “My mind was elsewhere; I did not see it.” You spoke of an experiment in which the conscious experience of a stimulus applied to the hand was prevented by a brain-stimulus whose application began up to a fraction of a second later. While, no doubt, the scripture does not speak of what was experimentally ascertained, it can, on the basis of the scriptural teaching, be said that a mental vr̥tti related to that hand-stimulus did not, for whatever reason, arise and, hence, the stimulus was not consciously sensed; whether or when a vr̥tti arises in the subtle mind that is associated with the jīva in all lives was neither determined nor findable by this study. Next, whatever be the vr̥tti that arises, one’s conscious cognition accurately corresponds to that; the śāstra has referred to the Ātman, to consciousness, by words such as “sākṣī, witness.” Therefore, depending upon the vr̥tti, one is aware of a pot, a pungent taste, anger, fear, etc.; from the standpoint of the śāstra, such were the vr̥ttis that arose in the minds of ‘L.M.’, ‘C.M.’, and ‘Mr. W.’, whose cases you described, that ‘L.M.’ saw a person in motion in just distinct positions, ‘C.M.’ saw not a circle of red light but half a circle of grey light and half a circle of red light, and ‘Mr. W.’ saw each of his dogs identifiably but not a human face. While the scripture mentions the association of the mind, sense-organs, and objects in the perception of objects, it does not detail perception’s modus operandi and impairments, and nothing said in the Upaniṣads, Bhagavad-gītā, and the Brahma-sūtras about perception is called into question by these cases.

His Holiness (continuing): The Br̥hadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad teaches that though one is changeless consciousness, one erroneously identifies oneself with the body and that while dreaming, one sets aside the body as it were, and identifies oneself with a dream-body. Ipso facto, if one’s identification with a part of the body were to become inhibited for any reason, one may not direct attention to or treat that part as before; the data about persons neglecting one side of the body following brain-injury is not incompatible with the scriptural teaching.

His Holiness (continuing): The presence of two jivās, each with a mind, must be admitted in conjoined twins and I had told you how the śāstra has room for this (vide chap. 1, pp. 77-80); hence, even if it were supposed that two jivās are there in one with a split-brain, that would be unproblematic for the śāstra; such being the case, it is not necessary for me to detail now why there is no need for two jīvas here and only thereby show that the split-brain data is unopposed to the scriptural teaching.

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