Logo

Cart

Tag: ancient Indian medicine

Atman in Ayurveda: Understanding the Self, Mind, and Consciousness

Today, let’s talk about a concept in Ayurveda that is present in everything the system talks about, but not everyone gets into it or knows about it because the whole concept itself is too abstract on the surface.   I am talking about Atman, which translates to the self, the soul, or simply the knower.   Now, before jumping into what Atman really means, let’s start with something which we are more familiar with in terms of Ayurveda, which is the Manas, the mind.   So, mind is essentially the part of you that reacts. It takes in the stimulus and turns it into a response. It distinguishes between likes and dislikes. For example, if something you eat tastes good, you want to eat more of it, and if you experience pain, you pull away. You don’t want to experience it again.   This is what the Manas does.   However, Atman is something else entirely. It is a part of you that is aware that all of this is happening. It’s not the reaction itself, but it’s the one noticing the reaction.   While Manas distinguishes experiences into pain and pleasure, Atman is simply aware of the inside and outside, it is the very awareness of this experience.   Here’s a simple way of how I think about it.   When you’re feeling unwell, usually the food that you eat every time, or the food that you like, you don’t want to have it and it might even taste unpleasant to you.   But nothing about the food has changed. What changed is how it is being received by your body.   This shift, the change between you and your mind, is the job of Atman. It is adjusting your experiences based on what is happening inside you.   Now, Atman cannot itself be described the way we describe everything else in the body, because it has no color, no shape, no texture. Its presence is not known entirely or directly.   But even if you don’t see Atman, you infer it. How differently a person can respond to the same thing, and how something within them prompts them to respond in that particular way.   The whole Atman can also be understood through this perspective, from the whole idea of possession, how it naturally comes to us when we talk about our things.   When we say, “I am tired,” there is still this strange distinction between the one who is experiencing tiredness and the tiredness itself.   This distance implied between someone who possesses and something that is being possessed, is where the idea of Atman comes from.   All the parts of your body are what is possessed by you, the person. So, despite any changes or aging or anything, the one that is staying constant is me, my. The idea of the owner is what is Atma.   And this whole distinction isn’t just philosophical. There’s a real practical framework of diagnosis around it too.   In Ayurveda, illness comes in three severities. One is ordinary, one serious, and one that is heading to a very fatal outcome.   And the way you tell these apart isn’t just purely because of external signs, but how clearly the person can experience their own feeling.   How clearly can they experience things like their preference, discomfort, desire, how they feel, and if all of this is intact in a coherent way.   Because once illness starts to get serious, all of this starts to blur. The person struggles to clearly experience. Memory becomes hazy, and the coordination too falters.   And in most serious cases, the patients may not be able to experience anything at all. They might feel numb. They can’t tell you how they feel because the whole response, the whole connection between your Atma, Manas, and the senses has weakened and there’s only basic signs of life that’s left.   This is such a different way of thinking about diagnosis compared to how we actually imagine ancient medicine, which is reduced to something that is purely external, physical observation.   In Ayurveda, the presence of your mind and the clarity of your awareness itself is one of the most important ways to diagnose what is wrong inside you, and it is sometimes arguably more important than any physical sign.   Now, the takeaway from all of this is very simple, despite how abstract Atman sounds.   And before even Ayurveda gets into the details of the body, bones, tissues, or organs, it is first establishing that awareness that is present inside every one of us, and everything else is built on top of that basic confirmation.   Health is never only about visible, measurable parts of the body. It is always, at its core, something that is changing inside you.   And I think this is where Atman becomes much less abstract than it initially sounds.   Because when we hear words like soul or self, it can immediately feel like we’re entering a completely philosophical conversation, something very distant from the body and from medicine. But Ayurveda doesn’t really separate these things in the way that we might expect. The person who is experiencing the illness is not just the body that is carrying the illness.   There is the body, there are the senses, there is the mind, and there is this awareness that experiences all of it.   If ideas like this interest you, you can check out our courses on Charaka Samhita and Ashtanga Hridayam which talk in depth about how Ayurveda understands the self, the mind, and the body as one connected system and much more.

What Your Body Is Telling You Before You Ask It

There’s actually a lot we can tell about a person without asking them a single question.   If they are not feeling well, you can notice the way they look unusually pale, or that their voice sounds different, weaker than usual. Their eyes may look different, their skin may look dry, their lips may look chapped, or maybe they might just look exhausted.   These are just some observations.   Ayurveda actually has an entire section in the Charaka Samhita talking about this kind of observation called Indriya Sthana. The very first chapter is called Varṇasvarīyam Indriyam where Charaka describes how a physician should pay attention to changes in a person’s complexion, voice, and other signs when assessing an illness or the severity of a disease.   Because Ayurveda doesn’t look at the simple question of what disease this person is actually having. It instead goes a little deeper into asking what the body is telling us about the illness.   It is actually our body that gives out the first signs of illness before it becomes something more obvious. Disease isn’t always the beginning of the story. It is ultimately important to keep in check the signs that our body is giving away, always.   यच्चान्यदपि किंचिद्वर्णवैकृतमभूतपूर्वं सहसोत्पद्येतानिमित्तमेव हीयमानस्यातुरस्य शश्वत्, तदरिष्टमिति विद्यात्।   An abnormal change that was not present before, appears suddenly, and occurs in someone whose condition is already declining. Such a change, Charaka says, should be recognized as an ariṣṭa, an ominous prognostic sign.   Now, one of the most important ideas in the chapter is the distinction between Prakriti and Vikriti.   Prakriti refers to a person’s natural state, while Vikriti refers to the deviation from that state.   A person’s appearance may naturally vary depending upon their constitution, age, environment, and other individual characteristics. So we can’t just vaguely determine that one particular complexion may be healthy or unhealthy. We need to look a little deeper.   Charaka’s list of things to examine is very extensive. He not just mentions the complexion and voice, but also the smell, taste, touch, eyes, ears, nose, the mental state, and many more. The list goes on.   In fact, Charaka tells us that a person should be observed as a whole, because a single unusual sign doesn’t entirely tell the entire story.   A temporary change with an obvious explanation is different from a sudden change that appears without apparent reason in someone whose condition may already be deteriorating.   So generally, the whole idea is that observation becomes meaningful when it is placed in context.   The entire emphasis here is on the change that you witness within your body.   And I think this is where this idea becomes useful even outside the context of an Ayurvedic physician examining a patient.   Because most of us don’t necessarily pay attention to our own bodies or the signs they are giving out.   We know how we feel ultimately, whether our face is looking normal when we wake up, or if our skin is feeling as usual. We know our baseline.   But when you wake up feeling different we brush it off as, “Maybe I have not rested well.”   But you need to understand that the baseline is important.   Because if you suddenly feel unusually tired for several days, or maybe your appetite has changed, or there are other signs your body that are trying to tell you, then I think this is where we need to stop looking and start observing what is wrong.   Because from an Ayurvedic point of view, disease is never something that simply comes overnight. Long before it becomes serious, your body is already trying to protest against it through different signs.   None of those signs individually might feel like a big deal. And that is exactly why they get ignored.   But when you look at the whole picture, these small signs can slowly lead up to something more serious.   Disease isn’t the starting point, it is actually much closer to the end of the story that your body has already been trying to tell you for a while now.   We are often quick to notice when there is something wrong with our phones, our cars, or our laptops. We notice that the battery is draining faster than usual, or the screen is running slow, or the phone is lagging a bit.   But when it comes to our bodies, we often ignore the same signs.   And maybe it is because our lifestyle has changed. We sleep less, work more, eat at odd hours, and keep pushing ourselves through the day.   We think our body is adaptable, but it isn’t.   Your body is constantly giving you information. The question is whether you are paying enough attention to notice it.   You don’t have to become an expert at interpreting every single sign. You just need to know what your normal looks and feels like, so you can recognize when something starts to change.   If you want to understand your body a little more deeply, you can explore our courses on the Charaka Samhita and Ashtanga Hridayam, and learn how these texts approach the body, health, and the signs it gives us.