Cit

Cit · cit, “pure consciousness”

Grammar: feminine noun, from the root cit (to perceive, to know): “consciousness”. Cidrūpa is “whose form is cit”.

Meaning: pure consciousness, whose very form is knowledge; the tattva beyond the knower, the known and the act of knowing.

In the scriptures: in the mokshadharma teaching of the Brahma Purāṇa, Vasishṭha Maharshi tells King Karāla Janaka how kshetra and kshetrajña are discerned. The body of five bhūtas is the kshetra (the field); the great ātmā who presides over it is the twenty-fifth tattva, the kshetrajña, the knower of the field. Based on this knower the tripuṭi, the triad of knower, knowing and known, arises. In a still subtler discernment, the pure twenty-fifth tattva, beyond the manifest tattvas, is what is to be known, and knowing it is called jñāna at the level of vyavahāra (practice). But at the level of paramārtha (the highest truth) that pure avyakta tattva alone is jñāna; it is beyond the activity called knowing; it is cit, whose form is knowledge (Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 243).

Vasishṭha goes on: the akshara tattva, the imperishable, transforms itself into the kshara form and enters the body; with the sense “I” it becomes doer, enjoyer, happy and sorrowful, then detached, a seeker of moksha and a knower. When this knower is freed, he is neither knower nor known, nor the knowing; he becomes the jñāna-tattva of the form of cit, beyond them all (Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 244).

Related terms: Akshara · Avyakta · Kshetrajña · Jñāna · Tripuṭi · Cidagnikuṇḍa

Sources

• Brahma Purāṇa, Chapters 243–244