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.
