Does Experience Affect Consciousness?

In the Thousand Teachings of Shankara we find a dialogue between a student who has found a difficulty in the non-dual philosophy, and a teacher to whom the student turns for guidance.*

The problem is this: it is taught that the true Self is pure consciousness, which is not affected by any limitations and change; thus to know one’s true Self is to transcend suffering and physical death. It is also taught that Self as consciousness is the ultimate knower of all knowledge and happenings. But knowing is an action, which involves change, so how can the Self be both beyond the realm of action and change and also be the knower of all knowledge? Is there not a contradiction here? [The Thousand Teachings, prose part, section two, verse 74]

The teacher responds to the student in this way: You are saying that Self is the knower of everything that passes through your mind and therefore that the Self changes. But in truth, the fact that the Self knows all the changes proves that the Self does not change. If the Self changed it could not know all the changes in the mind. [2:75]

This is a subtle point, but reflection on it leads to deepening insight. The teacher is saying that the unchanging Self always knows everything that is happening in the mind at any one time. In contrast, the senses do change; for example, we can look in one direction and then in another, and therefore what we see is only a part of all there is to see. If the Self were changeful, then its knowledge also would be partial, but in fact the Self witnesses the whole of the mind-world simultaneously, and must therefore itself be unchanging.

What has been said so far points logically to the conclusion that the Self is unchanging. It has not yet directly addressed the student’s problem, which the student now repeats rather bluntly: ‘To know’ is a verb, which means activity. So it is a contradiction to say the knower is absolute and changeless. [2:76]

To this the teacher says: No. When an impression is produced in the mind this is action and change. But it is not yet knowledge. Similarly, the process of building a house is not the same as a house, although the house is sometimes included metaphorically in the idea of house-building. [2:77]

The student replies: The process of forming a cognition may not in itself be knowledge, but it ends in a result which is a change in what is known by the Self. So the example does not show that the Self is unchanging.

To this the teacher responds: That would be right if there were a difference between knowledge and the knower. The non-dual understanding is that ultimately there is no such difference. [2:79]

The student is distinguishing between knowledge and the knower. He is thinking that the impressions and ideas formed in the mind are knowledge, and the one who is conscious of them is the knower. He is forgetting that the processes in the mind which are commonly called knowledge, are not really knowledge, they do not know themselves. Real knowledge only occurs in consciousness. It is clear that there is no difference between consciousness and the one who is conscious; we do not ‘have’ consciousness, we are consciousness. Equally, there is no difference between knowledge and the knower, when we remember that impressions and ideas in the mind are not in themselves knowledge. When true knowledge is carefully distinguished from mental processes, it is found that true knowledge is identical with the nature of consciousness. When this is grasped, there is progress in Self-knowledge.