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The competent authority of the holy original scriptures of India, the writer Walther Eidlitz, is giving here an account of the Indian revelation of the comprehension of man, which is culminating in the teachings of atman, the true I, that according to Indian conception belongs to a completely different category than our body, our soul and our spirit.

Walther Eidlitz:

"Who am I?" This is a question that has been asked over and over again by earnest searching people in East and West. The question appears complaining in the old Israel and in the ancient Greece's dramatists, as well in the epos of Gilgamesh from the Babylon-Sumerian culture sphere. The famous request "Learn to know yourself" which was to read over the temple gate in Delphi, is also an earnest request to look for the answer to this question: "Who am I?"

As is well known, our Western culture is almost exclusively based on the foundation of the Greek-Hellenistic culture, Roman right and the Bible, even though the dizzy structures of modern technology and nature science have overshadowed it. Nevertheless, the proud structure of the security of our existence has, as we all know, begun to precariously falter and threatens to completely collapse. Therefore it would probably become a great help to learn to know what the ancient Indian wisdom can tell about the theme of what man is. Because even through the Vedas and the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita and Bhagavan Purana and the other Indian holy scriptures, sounds this same perpetual question: "Who am I? Why do I have to endure suffering? What is the purpose of my life?"

Western thinking, ever since the time of Socrates, makes continuously new attempts to with human sense, comprehend the signification of everything that takes place in time and space. Yes, and there are even endeavours at also submitting the Eternal Being of God to the human laws of logic. Indian knowledge takes a fundamental different direction. The difference between the Indian and the Western way of thinking is clear in a peculiar conversation, rendered by Aristoxenes. It is said to be assigned once between Socrates and a wise Indian man, who had travelled to Athens. Socrates told the guest from afar that his task was to reflect about the life of people. Then the Indian man smiled and said: "Nobody can comprehend what concerns to man, if he does not understand the divine."

What in the West is considered to be man in its entirety, everything called body, soul and spirit, is according to the Indian revelation merely a case, built from matter, from physical material.

The visible physical body, with all its limbs and organs, consists of gross material matter. What in man is called soul and spirit in the West, and that even is considered to be something eternal contrary to the perishable material, even this is described as a case of physical matter, although from finer, invisible, unponderable matter. This finer case is represented in the Sanskrit word antahkaranam, which can be signified as "the inner mind".

There are four layers in the inner mind, in which the conscience shows itself.

The deepest layer of conscience is called cittam in Sanskrit. Cittam is compared to the reflecting surface of water, which constantly reflects all impressions that reach it. A normal mirror has the quality that the images in the mirror vanish, as soon as the object withdraws. But in the mirror of cittam, all images are preserved. The impressions and images from all acts and sufferings, as well as from feelings and thoughts and everything else, that the person consciously or unconsciously has experienced, subside over the mirror of cittam; they descend even to the depth of the reflecting lake. In the lake of cittam, which from the beginning was pure, the countless impressions from the pleasurable and painful experiences has accumulated by the time, and they extend over the mirror of cittam like a layer of dirt, so that the mirror can reproduce the impressions only in a deformed and diffuse way. Here the Indian knowledge is not just talking about impressions from the present life, but also from innumerable previous lives.

In the Western way of expression, one might call cittam the unconscious or the subconscious. The presence and influence of the unconscious, are since thousands of years, well known in Indian wisdom.

Another layer of consciousness in the inner mind is called manas in Sanskrit. Manas manifests itself as the consciousness' readiness to experience something. This readiness that constantly lie in wait, leads to a desire to experience over and over again, what once gave pleasure. The patiently biding manas becomes an irresistible incitement, at least in fantasy, to stay on to the object which once gave the impression of pleasure, and to once more enjoy this pleasure. It is manas that makes us apprehend a thing as desirable and pleasant, and that so to speak, colours it to make it appear attractive. And it is this same manas that makes a thing appear repellent. Manas is the roving layer in the inner mind that feels, wishes, desires, hopes, entices or deters, hates or gets angry. Like high waves, the upset manas constantly evokes new impressions in cittam, impressions which later again will be enjoyed by manas.

A third layer in the inner mind consists of the capacity for deliberating and making conclusions, as well as the ability to determine differences and choose. This faculty is called buddhi in Sanskrit. We call it reason, intelligence. By buddhi, reason, one learns to know what object it is, that evokes an impression in the mirror of cittam, and wherefrom it derives its origin, and also how it can be attained. The result of buddhi is objective judgement. However, without one being aware of it, buddhi's objective judging and consideration often becomes blurry and mislead from impulses or passions, which penetrate from the depths of cittam.

Even a fourth layer of the inner mind is described in the Indian scriptures. This consists as well of a finer physical matter and is like an organ to experience man's all cases as a wholeness. The Sanskrit word for this is ahamkara. Ahamkara is the fine physical organ that is needed to experience the sense of the own I, or ego. In a later context, I will talk more exhaustively about this ego.

It is said with emphasis that all these layers consist of matter, which in itself is dead. Then arises the question: From where then, comes life into the body of flesh and blood and into the finer layers that we call soul and spirit? The answer is: Body as well as soul and spirit have connection to an unknown, an X, whom is to thank for his life.

This completely unknown X is in the Indian revelation called atman. Every atman, who belongs to and exists in each living man, each animal, each plant and who gives them life, belongs to another category than our body, soul and spirit. The being of atman is completely separate from what we can observe with our senses, measure with instruments or perceive with our reason. This atman is in the Upanishads called "the eye of the eye", "the ear of the ear" and "the spirit of the spirit". According to the scriptures, atman is, in any living entity, a tiny spark of true eternal life. His being is called imperishable existence, pure under-standing, pure joy, pure I; the tiny spark, the individual atman, due to his nature, does not belong to the world, but to the great Atman, to God, to the eternal kingdom of God, which does not depend on time and space.

In Bhagavad Gita - the most well known Indian revelation document - it is said: "Come to know him (atman), by whom everything is penetrated. This atman is not killed by swords, not wet by water, not burned by fire, not dried by wind… Inscrutable is atman, indestructible, imperishable, unchangeable, eternal."

The Upanishads say: "Atman is not born and does not die"

The foundation in all Indian wisdom is the knowledge of atman. Without that, one cannot understand any of the Indian revelation scriptures. In the West, however, the knowledge of atman is missing. Among the indologists from the Western Hemisphere and also some modern Indian indologists, the science of atman is considered as mere speculation. In the quoted conversation in the beginning, the Indian wise man nevertheless hinted to Socrates, that without knowledge about atman, one cannot understand neither the world, nor God nor oneself. Knowledge about atman is the obvious condition for the ancient Indian ways of deliverance, above all for jñana yoga, the way of knowing, and for bhakti yoga, the way of serving competent love for God.

How is it possible then that atman, who belongs to the eternal world of God, has become involved in the cases of bodies which are essentially alien to him?

The Holy Scriptures explain: Atman, which is a spark of divine life, is also talented with some of God's free will. As each atman has its free will, also the freedom to choose is significant for him. He can choose whether he - in accordance with his nature - still wants to love and unselfishly serve God, who is his origin and foundation, or if he desires enjoyment for his own.

If atman chooses selfish pleasure, which means if he turns away from God, atman will be given sense organs and bodily cases of dead matter, such ones that he will need to enjoy the world. After all, he can enjoy the world only when the eternal existence is hidden for his eyes. By the curtain, which constitutes the world, and by his own bodily cases, the eternal reality of God is hidden for him. But something even more disastrous occurs at this self-chosen fall: atman, the true I, who has the full right to say "I am atman - I belong to God", henceforth will say "I" and "mine" about something that he is not at all and that he identifies himself with, although it is essentially alien to him. Atman says "I" about soul and spirit, yes, about the perishable body. From now on, he believes that the destiny that these cases may go through, to which he himself has given life, is his - atman's - own destiny. And when atman in consternation discovers the perishable in all of this, about which he says "I" and "mine", he is caught by fear and suffers and strives and grabs - and prays. What does he pray for? For health, for wealth on earth, for wife, for husband, for children, possessions and power, about thousands of things in this foreign world of matter and death, to which he more and more clings firmly. He even prays that the false ego will remain. He prays for eternal bliss for the illusory personality, which is binding his eternal being (which belongs to the absolute reality of God) to the bodily cases (which belongs to the world, the relative reality).

Thus, the tied atman goes on, tormented by hunger and thirst and multiple suffering, during humiliation and injustice and enjoying only fugitive worldly happiness, drifting hither and thither by sense impressions. He is drifting not only from birth to death; no, forced by manas's still unsatisfied desires, which are arising from the impressions in cittam and follow him over the threshold of death, he wanders through death to new birth and new death, without end, in many forms of existence, always through worlds in which he is a stranger.

"Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you… nor in the future shall any of us cease to be…" This speaks Krishna, God himself, as teacher to his disciple Arjuna in Bhagavad Gita. The same text continues: As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the body-carrier (atman) similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones.

The Indian revelation scriptures say with emphasis that a firm justice is done at the reincarnation. It is done in accordance with the impressions from the human being's own thoughts, desires and actions, which is covering the mirror of cittam. And in the texts it is emphasized that there is ONE present, an unbribable, the great Atman, also called "the inner observer to all", "the silent witness", " the inner guide", who is a portion aspect of the one living God himself, and who follows each atman on his endless wandering through the perishable kingdoms. By His mere presence, He guarantees justice in each self-inflicted fate to come and the just interplay between everybody's fates.

The Upanishad says: Those who here are leading a gratifying life, has the chance to enter a good womb (in the next re-birth)… but for those who here are leading a stinking life, is the prospect to enter a stinking womb, in a dog or a pig or the womb of a casteless."

In the Indian revelation it is described how atman is wandering to higher and lower stages, from life to life, corresponding to the law of his own previous actions. In details there is also described the ways of deliverance that lead atman to complete liberation.

What is happening then, is called that the "knot of heart" is untied. The "knot of heart" is the false I, the false ego, by which the eternal atman identifies himself with the gross perishable physical case and with the more lasting soul, which nevertheless is made of physical matter.

In Bhagavata-Purana, is related in this way, the wonderful course of events that leads to the real liberation of atman:

The knots of heart are cut off
all doubts are wiped out
and all power of fate is broken
when in heart, when in atman,
somebody has seen God.

Perhaps these aphoristic insinuations are already enough to give an inkling of that the sneaking fear of complete destruction, which is intruding us in this age the A-bomb, altogether is put to flight when one seriously engage in the Indian science about atman, under competent guidance.

Also our range of vision expand thereby in an amazing way. It may just be reminded of how deep-psychology expands and deepens by knowledge about atman. Not only some impressions out of the depth of our subconscious from the present life will be revealed, but all the hidden impressions from innumerable lives in many forms of existence and culture circles. Incomprehensible experiences, for instance the "collective subconscious" and the "archetypes" appear thereby in a new light. It is not from a hazy collective subconscious, that the strange images arise, but ourselves we have experienced it all. In our own mirror of cittam, it was engraved, and the overloaded cittam is never dressed off at death, as happens with the visible physical body, but this cittam accompany the bound atman, who has forgotten its own true nature, like skin that one cannot pull off oneself; it is accompanying on atmans roving from life to life.

Therapy in Indian scriptures goes further than just to separate symptoms of the diseases. The disease itself shall be cured from the bottom, completely. The disease is the turn-away from God. This disease, by which the eternal atman is tied into a straitjacket of matter and forgotten itself, is the reason to all our suffering; physical as well as psychical. Here belong not only the several consuming diseases, decrepitude and fear from the constantly recurrent death, but also the disease of selfishness and lovelessness. All these diseases have the same reason, which is that atman says "I" about something he is not at all.

The individual atman is in the texts compared with a jewel, which is wrapped into a silk cloth and put into the box. The box is the gross physical body, the silk cloth is the finer physical case, in which our consciousness and subconscious are put. This means that as long as he is bound, atman believes that he, the eternal jewel, is the silk cloth and the box. And as a consequence hereof, the silk cloth thinks itself to be the box and the eternal jewel.

Many years ago in India, I had a conversation with my guru Sadananda. My guru said: "In the West they so easily mix up the clothes with the real character. I mean the eternal atman and its grosser and finer bodily cases. You know, I appreciate a lot the social aspirations in the Western Hemisphere. Yes, care for the old and sick people, right to job for each and everyone, right to education for everybody, all of this is good. Protection of children, sick and feeble and persecuted, it should be found, it has to be found! - But if I observe all these numerous efforts for welfare and higher standard of living, it seems to me many times, as if a man has fallen into the sea and is in big danger to drown, and other helpful people come running there, and saves with great pains - the drowning man's clothes. They save eagerly his glasses, his hat and coat and trousers and underwear, but about himself, the eternal atman, nobody cares; him they let drown".