ABSTRACT
Surely no culture has been more preoccupied with the experiences and concepts of a ‘self’ than India. At least since around 1000 BC (during the earliest or Vedic period of Indian culture) no subject has been more central to Indian thought. Solutions to India’s self-questions have been extremely diverse, ranging from the orthodox Hindu attempts to assert the absoluteness and indestructibility of an inner self (atman), which develop from the earlier idea of a world-encompassing cosmic man, to the denial of that self’s reality or importance in the anatman (‘no self’) doctrine of Buddhism, to various sorts of immanent and transcendent selves (Yoga and theistic Vedanta) and highly social practices of life stages (in the Dharmasastras) which provide places for a special kind of self-realization. In a way, however, a certain consensus does prevail: concepts of self in India bifurcate early on, and consistently in the classical and modern traditions two sorts of self are opposed to one another. Although there are other concepts, and wide differences of meaning for these two selves in different schools of thought, the opposition of these two is almost universal, and it may be helpful to view them under the rubrics atman and ahamkara, more or less adequately translated as ‘transcendent self’ and ‘ego self.’ Both terms are present and developing in the Upanisads (around 700 BC), and have long and rich histories after this time. Atman, although always also a general term for all kinds of selves as we shall see in more detail later, comes to refer to a sense of ‘I-ness’ supposed to be independent of, prior to, and transcendent of the flux of temporal change (‘samsara’) and the particulars of personality and world. It is also ultimately interior, being for instance compared to a
thumb-sized man within the heart. Ahamkara, literally the ‘utterance of the word “I”,’ became closely related to pride and an inflated sense of personal worth which was thought to result from ignorance of one’s true nature. Two words often used with ahamkara suggest its narcissistic dimensions: gaurva, ‘swollen and heavy with a sense of self importance,’ and smaya, ‘the smile of pride of one who receives a compliment or views himself in a mirror, etc.’ (definitions from Hulin, 1978). Needless to say, atman is one of the most (if not the most) positively valenced of Indian philosophical terms, while ahamkara is one of the deadliest (if not the deadliest) of ‘sins.’
