Ātma-Tattva: Kṛṣṇa's Teaching on the Self

Ātma-tattva means “the truth about the self”. The 28th chapter of the 11th Skandha (book) of the Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa holds Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa’s clear, step-by-step teaching on this subject to his devotee Uddhava. He explains the difference between the ātman (the true self) and the anātman (what is not the self). He explains what bondage and freedom are, and how bondage comes from ahaṃkāra (the sense of “I” and “mine”) alone, even though the ātman is always free. He also describes how the jīvanmukta, one who is freed while still living, lives and acts in the world.

The teaching ends with a central idea: mokṣa (liberation) is not something new that one gets. It is the recognition of what has always been true. It is simply the removal of the veil of ignorance that hid the self’s natural light.

The Nature of Bondage

Uddhava asked a basic question. The ātman shines by its own light. It is never born, it is beyond the guṇas (the three qualities of nature) and it is untouched by ignorance. The body has no life of its own, like a log of wood. Neither of them can truly experience saṃsāra (the cycle of birth and death). So who is it that is bound?

Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa answered that bondage comes from the ātman seeming to take itself to be the non-self: the body, the senses, the prāṇas (life-breaths) and the mind. This mistaken identity (tādātmya) is produced by avidyā (ignorance), which has no beginning and which lays the non-self over the self. As long as this mistake lasts, saṃsāra seems real and important. Even though saṃsāra is itself mithyā (not truly real), it causes suffering just as strongly as a dream causes suffering to the dreamer.

A person who falls from deep sleep into a dream does not question whether the dream is real. In the same way, the jīva (the individual soul) caught in avidyā does not question whether the world is real. And just as the sufferings of a dream vanish the moment the dreamer wakes up, the sufferings of saṃsāra vanish the moment ātma-jñāna (knowledge of the self) arises.

What the Anātman Is

Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa listed what the ātman is not:

The physical body and all that comes from it
The five jñāna-indriyas (sense organs) and the devatās linked with them
Prāṇa, apāna and the other life forces
The manas (the mind that desires and doubts)
The buddhi (the intellect that decides)
The citta (the power of memory and reflection)
The ahaṃkāra (the sense of “I”)
The five great elements: ākāśa (space), vāyu (air), agni (fire), jala (water) and pṛthvī (earth)
The three guṇas and their source, avyakta prakṛti (unmanifest nature)

None of these is the ātman. The ātman is the unchanging witness, pure awareness, in which all of these appear and disappear.

The True Ātman

The true ātman is:

Svayaṃprakāśa: shining by its own light; it needs nothing outside itself to make it known
Aja: unborn; it was never born and will never die
Avināśī: imperishable; it cannot be lessened, changed or destroyed
Nirguṇa: beyond the three guṇas; sattva, rajas and tamas belong to prakṛti (nature), not to the ātman
Sarvajña: all-knowing, in the sense that it is the ground of all knowing
Kevala: completely one, with no second
Advaita: not two; the seeming many separate selves are māyā (the power that makes the one appear as many)

Words and thoughts cannot reach the ātman. They turn back from it, unable to hold it. Yet it is what makes all speech and thought possible. It is the witness of the three states, waking, dreaming and deep sleep, and is itself the fourth, turīya, the ground beneath all three.

Freedom Is Recognition, Not Gaining Something New

Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa set out the key principle. Mokṣa is not something newly made, or given, or reached by travelling to a far-off place. The ātman is already free. Mokṣa is the removal of the ignorance that made the ātman seem bound.

When the sun rises, it does not create light. It removes the darkness that was hiding the light already there. In the same way, ātma-jñāna does not create freedom. It removes the veil of avidyā that was hiding the ātman’s natural freedom.

The means of this removal are three:

Śravaṇa: hearing the teaching from a teacher who has realised the truth
Manana: reflecting on it with reason and making it one’s own
Nididhyāsana: steady contemplation, until the recognition becomes an unbroken, direct experience

The Jīvanmukta: How the Freed One Lives

Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa described the conduct of the jīvanmukta, one who has recognised the ātman while still living in a body:

The buddhi of the jñānī (the knower) stays settled in the ātman at all times, whether the body stands, sits, walks, sleeps, eats or does any natural act. The feeling “I am the doer” is gone.
Even when the senses take in sounds and sights, the jñānī does not take them to be finally real. He sees them as svapna-tulya (dream-like) creations of the guṇas, and is not fooled by them.
If the guṇas rise and stir the mind, the jñānī does not chase them. If they settle, he does not rejoice. He stays as untroubled as the sky is untroubled by the clouds that pass through it.
The jñānī neither praises nor blames what others do. Seeing the one Brahman as the ground of all, he moves through the world as the sun moves: untouched, shining, the same towards all.

“Just as the sky is not affected by the heating of fire, the cooling of water, or the drying of wind, because the sky is not involved in those actions, so the ātman is not affected by the guṇas’ actions in the body, though the ahaṃkāra-ridden person believes otherwise.”

The Place of Bhakti in Ātma-Jñāna

Even in this highest teaching about the self, Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa affirmed that niṣkāma-bhakti (devotion with no selfish desire) is central. The deep-rooted rāga-dveṣa (liking and disliking) forms the very core of saṃsāra, and the only sure way to remove it is firm, desireless devotion to Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa. Knowledge of philosophy alone, without bhakti, may not go deep enough to pull out the root vāsanās (hidden tendencies). But when the mind is made pure through bhakti, ātma-jñāna arises on its own, naturally, like the sun coming out from behind clouds.

Sources

Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 11th Skandha, Chapter 28

Ātma-Tattva: The Nature of the Self