Our body is just a tool

Many of us equate ‘us’ to our body. ‘We’ means ‘our body’. That is exactly the way even the modern science sees it. But ancient Indians did not think that way.

Ancient Indian Sankhya philosophers for example, put forth an elaborate reasoning to show why this view is meaningless. They did not expect you to blindly accept their view. But they gave reasons using which you too can logically arrive at the same conclusion.

I have discussed these arguments in some of my books and most prominently in my book “Missing dimensions in our current understanding of the Mind”, chapter “Sankhya theory of mistaken identity”. I will skip those details here. Very briefly, Sankhya view is that the root cause of all our misery is this mistaken identity – identifying ourselves with our body.

We interact with the world through our sense and action organs. We ‘enjoy’ the world through them. But have you ever pondered what this ‘enjoyment’ means?

When you see some beautiful thing, it is not the eyes that actually enjoy, The eyes only carry the images to the brain and enjoyment or otherwise is actually generated in there.

Similarly, all enjoyment whether it is from sight, smell, hearing, taste or touch are all actually produced in the brain. The sense organs are only the means that carry the inputs from external world to inside.

It is the brain that processes these inputs and interprets as enjoyment or otherwise.

The brain is not just an interpreter, but also the one that controls our action organs that we use to indulge in our enjoyment. So brain is a coordinating mechanism.

Who actually controls this coordinator?

Modern science identifies our Mind with the brain. It does not very clearly demarcate various aspects of our Mind. It stops at this coordinating aspect of the brain and leaves the rest hazy.

But ancient Indians recognized various aspects of our Mind. They called the coordinating aspect of the Mind as ‘Manah’. It is this Manah that coordinates all our organs – sense as well as action. These philosophers assumed that there is something called Buddhi that is the one that actually guides the Manah.

This Buddhi is the one that takes decisions, uses discretion, enforces will, keeps track of past experiences and so on. Based on all this, the Buddhi decides what the Manah should be doing. So it is the master to the Manah, which in turn is the master of the organs.

Ancient Indians, like the modern scientists, assumed that organs, Manah as well as the Buddhi are all material in nature. In that way they have some agreement. But Indians went further deeper and pointed out that just material things cannot act on their own since they are insentient.

So, there has to be some non material entity that uses all these material entities for its own use. What is that non material entity?

Unlike the modern science, ancient Indians believed that Soul is the sentient non material entity for whose sake all material entities exist. In other words, all material entities are the tools, and the soul, the user of the tool. In particular, our body is just a tool used by the soul.

The same thing is depicted beautifully by this Upanishadic story by means of an allegory.

The Upanishad says that the body is like a chariot used by the Soul who is actually the rider.

Let us discuss more on this chariot allegory in the next episode.

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A story of Nachiketa from Katha Upanishad, which is part of Yajur Veda. Upanishads are concluding parts of ancient Indian Vedic scriptures believed to be at least 5000 years old. The interpretation is by Dr.King (Copyright © 2019 Dr. King).