We make use of words like knowledge, consciousness, awareness, intuition, almost as synonyms. Etymology, so far as abstract things are concerned, does not help us much. Usage takes us a long way but leaves us without taking us to the destination. Philosophical books with their various arguments and conclusions, confuse us. All this, because they try to explain what is at the root of all explanations and nothing can explain itself by itself. In course of any argument or explanation, talk or discussion, from start to finish, it is all consciousness. Neither in dreams nor in waking states are we free of any split moment. Being always in, at, and surrounded by it, how can we say what it is? To know a thing it must be put in front of us, so to say. Being everywhere, under all conditions, and in and around us and other things and beings, it cannot be known except in bits, leaving out an almost infinite part of it, thus giving us the uncomfortable sense that what little we know does not authorize us to assert we have known it. Still, no man, once he starts thinking about it, can ever remain satisfied with a piecemeal knowledge of it.

We would try to approach the problem from the Upanishadic point of view, and see how far the ancient Rishis, seers, have succeeded in their attempts. But as we have to put their thoughts and words in English, we have to add notes on the words and phrases the seers have used in Sanskrit, and which we are using in English.

The word the seers have used to indicate what we mean by consciousness is chit. The nearest translation of this Sanskrit word, especially as it is used in the Upanishads, is what Sir John Woodroff says, 'it is a feeling-consciousness.' To explain the compound word will lead us deep into its content; but we have to do it--even though it might lead us into troubled waters. Sir John has evidently not used 'feeling' to distinguish it from 'thinking' and 'willing', which, on the face of it, is absurd; for both 'thinking' and 'willing' are modes of consciousness, therefore consciousness. But 'thinking' and 'willing' include an element of activeness in it, which is absent in the connotation of chit. The English words, 'knowledge' and 'consciousness' or 'awareness' again have the same distinction in their implications--when we say 'we know'. But when we say 'we are conscious of it' we do not mean we have put forth any energy for being 'conscious of it'. But it does not debar the entrance of exertion altogether; we might have exerted previously whose result at the present moment is our being 'conscious of it.' In order to bring out this fine distinction, Sir John has added 'feeling' to consciousness. Chit is never active, it is never an agent of any kind of activity; it simply IS, and by its mere presence 'we know', 'we are conscious of'.

Why have the seers laid so much emphasis on this passivity of chit, we may ask? It is, because in our passive condition alone we know that we know, or are conscious of anything, or in other words consciousness itself. At other times we deal with other things, with objects--to such an extent that we forget, we are acting consciously, deliberately. Even when we appear to be inactive, not engaged in any particular act, sitting idle, our mind (consciousness) is full of ideas or concepts, i.e. objects, to the detriment of the consciousness of its own presence. We have to make a little effort to drive away all objects to feel the presence of consciousness, to feel our feeling, so to say. When our mind is thus made vacant we know, our mind is consciousness; our ultimate nature, our being (sat), is consciousness (chit).

It may be urged that here also there is activity, viz., activity in driving out the objects that hide consciousness. Yes, but only 'in driving out things which are not consciousness', and not 'in knowing consciousness'. Our idea is not to deny activity but its presence in the nature of consciousness. For, activity forces itself on our consciousness from all sides. To deny that would be sheer madness. In driving away the objects that cover consciousness we are not producing consciousness but only clearing the encrustations over it. When the covering is removed the thing covered is not produced, but its presence is revealed. So, activity does not enter into the constitution or nature of consciousness, which is not a compound but a homogeneous thing. Consciousness is mere consciousness; no attribute, no activity is admissible here.

When we know this, we know it is something which is not only unlimited but cannot be limited by any effort of man or nature. For, it is involved in all these efforts, and in all these limited things and persons. There cannot be any experience without its involvement--it is experience (anubhava). Do we then deny existence of matter as apart from consciousness, as different from it? We say, the so-called Kantian thing-in-itself, that unknown and unknowable thing, that axiomatic truth without which the Universe cannot be explained, is not so very axiomatic, unavoidable as must be taken for granted. At best, we can say it may or may not exist. The entire Universe can very well be explained without it, if only we understood consciousness properly. No doubt the experience of our dream state has been explained with consciousness alone. There all things and acts, subjects and objects, are made up of consciousness alone; and yet a full drama is enacted as vividly as in our waking state. If that is possible, why can it not be done in the waking state as well? There, as long as the dream lasts, is an interplay of matter and so called consciousness, which coming out of the dream we know to be a fabrication of mere consciousness. It will not do to say that the dream objects were the images of the real material objects of the waking state, for it would involve petitio principii.

The question is, whether matter, apart from consciousness, exists or not, we are not entitled to take it for granted. All our amorphous objections will vanish if we take consciousness not in the narrow sense it is generally taken, but in the sense the Vedanta has taken it, viz: as something which expresses itself as both matter and awareness. Consciousness appears as matter when it is an object of thought or experience, and as ordinary consciousness or awarenes of our everyday life when it is the subject, the thinking and understanding principle. Much more than that; if we but try a little to grasp it, we see that in it rests and plays, bobs-up and bobs-down, everything experienced and being experienced. And outside it--what? We are not entitled to say anything, nay, we cannot even formulate the question. For the formulation itself involves consciousness. So the real consciousness, the basic consciousness of the Vedanta (chit) appears both as matter and as conventional consciousness (vyavaharika chit). This real chit is sat-chit and the other consciousness is chitta-vritti (modes of consciousness, each of which is a mixture or combination of subject and object). Even the limited subject is a vritti, a mode of consciousness for the same reason.

Do we not actually see it in our ordinary life that all objects of thought appear as matter? For example, all the 'first person singulars' i.e. the experiencers experience themselves as consciousness or modes of it; and the same 'first person singulars' viewed by others are seen as bodies. Why, we ourselves, when we look at us, take us as bodies; but when we reason, consider a little deeply i.e. we look in, we take us as mind or consciousness. If we reason about it we shall find out that during a very large portion of our lives we are consciousness; and only when we are engaged in some physical work we forget ourselves and identify ourselves with bodies. When we think, reason, feel, plan or even sit idle, we are consciousness. Bodily exercises force us out of ourselves to what we call the material plane, which itself again is upheld by consciousness. It is for this reason jada or matter is equated with objects (vishaya) in Vedanta--all objects are matter, all matter is object. All subjects are conventional consciousness. The rock-bottom of all planes of existence is the real consciousness, the basic one, which is sat-chit.

So much, as to the reason why such great emphasis is laid on the passivity of chit or depth-consciousness. Standing on the bed-rock of this consciousness, and therefore, being sure of our own position in the investigation, we go on testing on the touchstone of reason the value and existence of other things, even of the touchstone itself. If we are ourselves shaky, if we are helpless changefulness, being one thing one moment and another the next moment, what faith can one place on the conclusions drawn by us? All knowledge acquired by human labour over the millennia will be jeopardized. Even for the establishment of relativity something permanent must be assumed, and when the assumption is questioned--and it is bound to be questioned--we are landed in an infinite regress. The entire logic or laws of thought or consciousness is based on an integral substance at the centre of which there is unshaken and unshakable permanence and the other parts are in ceaseless movement, rather, everywhere, from the centre to the no-where-to-be-found circumference, there runs one immovable permanence engaged in a mad dance of restless appearances. Shankara has made it clear in his commentary on verse 2.16 of the Gita.

Now crops up an important question: If consciousness is really passive, inactive and ubiquitous, is the only thing that exists, how is it that we find all around us, force and activities, down to the seemingly quiet of a proton in a nucleus? How to explain the existence of this force-the force, that has built up this Universe and is still building, breaking and re-building it?

Sciences have taught us how relative forces are generated, one from another, and how even the most innocent-looking ingredients of a nucleus of an atom is not so calm and quiet as they appear to be but are full of energy; and it needs no lesson of psychology to convince us that even in the internal world of ourselves there are movements of thoughts and ideas, of emotions and volitions. So, in or out, forces and movements are everywhere and they act and react and interchange and coalesce. But the 'where' of it has not been pushed to the ultimate point. We can go farther and say with the emphasis of all thinking humanity that they all occur in, around, and with the objects and never in the subject. The deeper we dive into the subject, the quieter is our experience; and when the rock-bottom of consciousness is reached it is calm absolute.

What conclusion can we draw from this phenomenon? Is it not that consciousness, which comprises both subject and object is either both passive and active--at rest and in motion, or neither of them. Inasmuch as the latter alternative contradicts experience of rest and motion in all effects with which we deal every moment of our life, their causes must contain both; so the former alternative is the only rational one. Therefore consciousness is both passive and active, static and dynamic. But the more we try to understand it as it is, apart from its adjuncts, the more passive it appears. And when we are busy with objects we forget all about it, it disappears from our view. Hence consciousness of consciousness, i.e. self-consciousness is bound to be passive, or else we don't have it at all; as we said, it disappears! But consciousness of consciousness is absurd for it will lead to consciousness of consciousness of consciousness ad infinitum, therefore consciousness and self-consciousness are not two things but one. Consciousness is always conscious of itself. In every conception, i.e. act of forming a concept, it (consciousness) knows itself as well as the object. The Upanishad, Kena, has asserted it in sloka 3.2.

To be concluded