I wouldn’t be so sure Sunyo.
It seems that in Buddhism, consciousness is divided per se. Why?
Because it first comes from the three pairs in the sankhara nidana of paticcasamuppada (bodily, mental and verbal). Then in the object/subject division in salayatana (the world of sense).
It is an old upanishadic concept also. See below (you can jump directly to the “The Upanishads” paragraph.
Buddhist pre and contemporary Indian philosophy
I will try to stick here to the Upanishads that Olivelle and most of the scholars consider as pre or contemporary to Buddhism. Yet this is in any case an attempt in chronology.
And sorry if I forgot the diacritics along the way.
Late Vedic era saw the springing up of a universal being, apart from the nature-gods of the early Vedic age.
Late Rig Veda (10:129) talks about a creation of the world in which desire (kama-काम) is the primal seed of mind (manaso-मनस).
Also, in the auspicious part of the Atharva Veda, attributed to Atharvan, there is this hymn: Hail to that greatest Brahma, who, born from toil and austere zeal (tapas), pervaded all the worlds, who made Soma for himself alone.
Here Brahma is the ultimate being that oversees past and future. That Skamba is depicted as all that breathes, moves, flies and stands. This Brahman is also the creator of the gods. And the mortal gods became immortal once pervaded by Brahman.
For once, the idea of a God, above the gods overseeing the diverse parts of nature.
Brahman (Prajapati) became not only the creator of man and animals; but also of the gods of nature.
However, Brahman remains an external deity. He is the creator and ruler of the cosmos. He is not yet the inner controlling entity behind our sensual, bodily and mental powers.
The spirituality of this Brahman is not intellectual thought, nor perception , nor feeling. All our powers are derived from this Brahman; yet He transcends these powers.
This is the god to which the late Vedic crowd was still sacrifying; until the Upanishadic philosophy laid that god directly in man. Something that the Buddha (and the Saṃkhya philosophy,) denied on different grounds later on.
Even if the pre-Upanishadic period still had a Brahman that was an external deity, the idea of sacrifices dear to the early Vedic age was profoundly transformed by the new idea that the magical value of the ancient sacrifices, could also be attained through meditations.
Just as a man could attain whatever he wanted through properly done sacrifices; he could now achieve the same result by the performance of tapas (self-mortifications) and meditation.
Even the power of the gods of nature were looked upon as lower ranked.
The late Vedic Rishis (sages) conceived an ultimate Being, whose creative activity was either their self-sacrifice, or their ardor of tapas.
Yet, both these sacrifices reanacted by men, were looked upon as immoral. One could perform tapas, and attain his immoral goal. Therefore these karmas were considered as magical, and therefore unethical. It is only later, that the law of karma becomes a moral law (Rig Veda 10,121).
Whatever this ultimate Being was called, Prajapati, Skambha, Visvakarma, Brahma or even Time; he was not yet one with the moral nature of man. This Brahman had not yet revealed itself in the self of man. He was still external to human nature.
When the Upanishadic time made its way in the late Vedic era, the question that was preoccupying the Upanishadic Rishis was about the nature of that Brahman.
“What is self, and what is Brahman (ko nu ātmā, kiṃ brahma)?”
How to relate the external Purusha or Brahman to the self.
These considerations started to appear only in the Upanishads.
Brahman was not an external god anymore; but the inmost reality of man’s being.
The goal of life was not anymore a happy dwelling in the heaven of the gods of nature as before; nor an individual survival through infinite time; but a deathless and undestroyable spiritual experience - namely immortality.
It was a decisive divergence from the construct of an external creator; something that however, was still traceable in the Kena Upanishad.
The Upanishads:
Yajnavalkya, in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, formulates that the self is the ultimate reality; and that everything else is true because of it. All divergences are false. The ultimate reality is the undivided consciousness (vijnana). And that vijnana is the basis of all knowledge.
The self is beyond postulation, and can be conceived only as the negation of what we know and postulate. Yet it is through it’s realisation that man gains immortality - and through it’s ignorance that he gains death.
This self as ultimate reality is unity. Multiplicity is denied.
Multiplicity is an illusion.
Yet there is a passage in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad which admits the reality of the world. Here the self is seen as the inner controller of the natural forces and phenomena.
In other words, an inner self of man that is an inner controller which dwells in things and controls them; though these things do not know it.
This notion of the reality of the world, we will see later, will also appear in the post-Buddhist Mundaka Upanishad.
The most important notion in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad still remains that the inner-self of man is of the nature of pure consciousness and pure bliss.
All the knowledge and all the bliss of man comes from this source, and are founded in it as their ultimate cause of reality.
By meditating upon and realising this self, everything becomes known.
It is only in the realm of dichotomy that there is a perceiver and a perceived, a hearer and a heard, a thinker and an object of thought, a knower and a known.
While this self is the invisible seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, and there is nothing else beyond it
In the self, the senses of man cease to operate. And the inherent consciousness of all knowledge remains the same.
This fundamental consciousness that is the underlying ground of all knowledge, radiates without any change, any adulteration or any limitation.
Realising this ultimate reality is immortality. The ignorance of it is death.
In Taittirrya Upanishad, the accent is put on the nature of Brahman as pure bliss; from which everything conscious and unconscious has sprung…
Hre we find some passages where Brahman creates the world through tapas (a pre-Upanishadic concept).
Brahma is also the only controller of nature.
However the question on how the cosmos sprung from bliss remains a mystery. The nature of this bliss is just unthinkable by the mind, and unatturable by speech.
The world occured out of bliss - man lives through bliss - and man ultimately return to this bliss.
There was nothing in the beginning, and it is through the ardor of tapas, that Brahma wished to be many, and created the cosmos and enter into it all himself. Anything being and non-being is all supported in Brahman.
As far as human personality is composed, Brahman divided it into five sheaths: annamaya, pranamaya, manomaya, vijnanamaya and anandamaya.
Annamaya is certainly about the amorphous constituents of the body.
Pranamaya is about the biological constituents which are permeated by the amorphous.
Manomaya is about the willing factor which is permeated by the biological.
Vijnanamaya is about the cognitive or the experiential factor. And,
Anandamaya is pure bliss.
Finally, it is only when man finds relief and serenity in this invisible, unutterable, and unfathomable self, that he attains peace.
In Chandogya Upanishad, Brahman is the subtle essence of everything; conscious or unconscious.
Everything comes from Brahman; Everything returns to Brahman.
The philosopher Hegel had seen in this, an immature form of the actualisation of spirit; as he saw the necessity of a forward move until man’s sacrifice (like Christ,) as the ultimate realization of the spirit. However, Hegel never took into account the notion of tapas so dear to the Indian philosophy.
Aruni says to his son Svetaketu, “It is this subtle essence, which is selfsame with the universe, that is the ultimate reality, and you are that essence.”
Or again:
“Though you do not detact anything in this seed, yet it is from this subtle essence that the big banyan tree grows”.
The cosmos and the ultimate reality, is just that subtle essence that is the self, said Aruni.
An important new notion introduced in Chandogya Upanishad is also that of the relation of cause and effect.
The self is cause; and the effect is mere name and form (nama-rupa)
The transformation of Brahman into the cosmos has for ultimate reality the causal agent that is Brahman alone.
Again Aruni asks his son if he can name something from which everything would be known.
As Svetaketu fails to answer, Aruni enunciates the doctrine of causation. And it can be resumed this way:
When a chunk of earth is known, all that is earthen is known.
For what is true of all earthen wares is but earth. The rest is just name and form. Jug, pot, etc. are just name and form.
Accordingly, the ultimate reality that is the self, can only be asserted from the substance of the transformation; that is to say, the Brahman.
It is interesting to note here, that the notion of vivarta in Chandogya, namely the notion that the effect is not an actual transformation of the cause (Brahman is immutable and there can be no transformation of it), unveils that this effect only serves as the substratum for the appearance of the universe, just as the rope serves as the substratum for the appearance of the illusory snake.
The world is just an illusion.
Interesting also to note that in Mundaka, a post-Buddhism Upanishad, the universe is looked upon as being a real transformation of Brahman.
In Chandogya, the material cause is the only reality and the transformations are mere illusory forms.
In Mundaka Upanishad, the universe is looked upon as being in some way a real transformation (parinama) from the nature of Brahman.
It is therefore interesting to note that, after Buddhism, the conception shifted from an illusory to a more realistic point of view; while still remaining a sort of absolute idealism.
It is also interesting to read the story in this Upanishad, in which Indra and the demon Virocana approach Prajapati for instruction regarding the nature of the self.
In Kena Upanishad, Brahman is directly driving man’s mind (mana), vital forces (prana), sensory and motor organs.
Yet neither eye can see him; nor speech can describe him.
His nature is unknown.
Kena Upanishad does not attempt to tell us the means by which this Brahman is the source of all these psychical and physical forces.
In Katha, (a contemporary - certainly post Buddhist Upanishad,) Yama (death) tells Nachiketas that the ultimate reality cannot be grasped by reasoning.
The self-illuminating and blissful experience is different from anything we can know.
What is common to the Upanishadic philosophy and Buddhism is that it is only when all the cognitive elements and thought processes are suspended and arrested, all the powers of reasoning are paralysed, that the spiritual touch by which it can be realised is attained.
The ultimate reality is undoubtedly nothing that can be called physical and it is also nothing that can be called psychical or intellectual. Though it cannot be cognized either by the senses or by the logical powers of thought, it can yet be somehow grasped or realised.
The ultimate reality is neither subjective nor objective, but is such that both the subject and the object derive their very existence from it.
“There is a snare moving in the sky,
says Mara.
Something mental (mānaso) which moves about
By means of which I’ll catch you yet:
You won’t escape me, ascetic!”
The Blessed One:
Forms, sounds, tastes, odours,
And delightful tactile objects—
Desire for these has vanished in me:
You’re defeated, End-maker!”
SN 4.15
Metta.
suci