Buddhi, the Mirror of Consciousness

 by Spandan (Michael McCann)

Yoga and other spiritual philosophies often use images of mirrors and reflections to express subtle concepts and profound truths, and for this reason they feature in meditations and in Yoga Nidra. A key image of the mind is a lake rippled into whirls and eddies by the action of thoughts that come and go like restless winds and breezes. When the lake of the mind is stilled by meditation it becomes a mirror into which we can look deeply and glimpse reflections of truths that are normally obscured. Yoga says “when the mind is immovable, the Self is like the bottom of the lake when there are no ripples; it shows its true form”. But from where come these glimpses, transcendent flashes and intuitions? Are they from the mind? Or from another source? To understand this more fully we have to become familiar with certain subtle Yoga concepts. Yoga calls our thinking day to day mind the Manas, but further teaches that we are endowed with a higher faculty called Buddhi.

Buddhi – the Gateway to the Spirit. Roughly translated buddhi means intellect, but is not to be confused with the Western understanding of intellect. Buddhi means “awakened sensibility”, “higher-” or “wisdom mind” (in Greek, gnosis). It is the higher awareness and the wisdom which springs from the awakened Agya Chakra1. Indeed, the Buddhi has nothing to do with intellectual activity: many academics and philosophers cannot be said to be “awakened”, and many great yogis, unschooled and illiterate, developed extraordinary wisdom as a result of the Buddhi. Ramakrishna and Ramana Maharshi are classic examples.

How does the Buddhi Awaken and from what does its wisdom derive? All religions and spiritual paths awaken the Buddhi, but ultimately, as Christ stated, “the Spirit bloweth where it willeth”. Spiritual traditions teach (and here we come back to our symbolical theme) that the Buddhi is a mirror and that it reflects the light of the Spirit (Sanskrit, Atman). However, like the lake that is obscured by ripples, the mirror of the Buddhi is often covered by stains and impurities and therefore cannot reflect the inner light ever radiating from the effulgent Atman. The stains and impurities derive from selfishness and ignorance, and a mind assailed by passions, emotional turbulence, the actions of the Gunas, and ultimately from the unregenerate Ego (ahamkara). Ahamakara literally means “it is I who do”, and in its literal translation conveys a sense of hubristic self-importance and pride.

The Marriage of East and West. In his book “The Marriage of East and West”, Bede Griffiths describes the soul as “a glass which is held up to the light of the Spirit; when the glass is clouded by sin and ignorance, then the light cannot shine through, but when the glass is clean, then the soul is illuminated by the divine light and the whole being, body and soul is irradiated by the divine presence”. It is interesting that while the Buddhi is a faculty of the higher mind, traditional wisdom often locates its throne not in the head, but in the centre of the heart. Again to quote Bede Griffiths, “this conception of the world as a reflection, an image of God is entirely acceptable from the Christian point of view. According to biblical tradition, man is an image of God, and the Greek fathers interpreted this in the sense that man (and with him the whole creation) is like a mirror held up to the light of God”. Elsewhere, he states “in this sense the world can be said to be a manifestation of God. It is like a mirror which is held up to the face of God. The created world is a reflection of the uncreated archetypal world. Like an image in a mirror, it has only a relative existence.”

The Yogic/ Samkhya concept of Purusha and Prakritti. Yoga also teaches that this world is a reflection of the Divine Essence, and Samkhya uses the expressions Purusha (Spirit/ Consciousness) and Prakriti (Matter/ energy, created substance) to express the correspondence between the two. Tantra uses the expression Shiva and Shakti to express the same concepts. In his Satsangs (lit., ‘meeting together to investigate truth’), my teacher often invokes the image of the moon reflected in water to explain the relationship between Purusha and Prakriti; Prakriti, although real, owes its existence to Purusha, and to believe that the reflection is self-existent is truly an illusion (Maya). Yoga teaches that the world is illusion only in that it has no intrinsic existence apart from the ever sustaining power of the creator. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna refers to His Maya, the warp and weft of the universe, spun from His Divine essence. However, if we believe that the world is self existent, a fortuitous conglomeration of matter hatched by a random Big Bang, then we are under the spell of Maya and have confused the effect with the cause, the reflection with the Seer.

Keeping the Buddhi Mirror Polished. Sufi teachings and poetry abounds with images of mirrors, and in fact, the Sufis believe that all of creation is a mirror of the Divine. The Sufis situate the Buddhi in the heart and encourage us to keep our inner mirror clear. Al-Ghazzali says “your heart is a polished mirror; you must wipe it clean of the veil of dust that has gathered upon it, because it is destined to reflect the light of divine secrets”. Rumi asks “Dost thou know why the mirror of the soul reflects nothing? Because the rust is not cleared from its face”. And again, “purity of the mirror is beyond doubt the heart which receives images innumerable”. The Sufis say that Dikr (remembrance, mantra or prayer) is a powerful way to remove rust from the mirror, as is right living, observance of the Yamas and Niyamas, and Yoga practice. When the Buddhi is polished and clean, it is like a full moon that reflects the light of the Atma into the mind, melting illusions, delusions, conditioning and ignorance, in turn integrating the ego and controlling the senses. We then begin to see things as they are, and to draw again on mirror imagery, this time from the enigmatic words of Saint Paul,

“we see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face”.

Wisdom as a Feminine Principle. What is the nature of the wisdom that comes with the awakening of the Buddhi? It is the wisdom associated with the heart, a feminine intuitive wisdom, that is known in Buddhism and Yoga as Prajna, and as “Sophia” in the Greek mystery tradition. It is the wisdom that is sought after in the mysterious verses attributed to Solomon in the “The Book of Wisdom” - “Her have I loved, and have sought her out from my youth, and have desired to take her for my spouse, and I became a lover of her beauty. For she is an effulgence from everlasting light and an unspotted mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness”. This is the wisdom that Dante associated with Beatrice, the wisdom that led him from entrapment in the centrifugal circles of Maya to the Divine Centre. It is a wisdom that is associated with Mary, the mother of Jesus ( the Seat of Wisdom, Sedes Sapientiae), and with Fatima the daughter of the Prophet; in the Kena Upanishad, she is Uma the spouse of Shiva, beautiful daughter of the Himalayan snows, who manifests in a clear open sky to teach true wisdom to the deluded gods. In the biblical Book of Proverbs, she is the woman who cries out in the streets, “I love those who love me/and those who seek me diligently find me” and she is the “dark and infused wisdom” spoken of by Saint John of the Cross. Ultimately, we are speaking about a feminine principle, open and receptive to receive, and then to give birth to truth. In his essay, ‘The Virgin, the Child and the Wise Men’, Sahajananda says “Knowledge burdens but wisdom frees one from the burden of knowledge”. The state of simple receptive openness is beautifully expressed in the Chinese Tao Te Ching, “In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao (wisdom and direct perception), every day something is dropped”.

The Buddhi Awakens through all forms of Yoga. This wisdom is the same Sophia that awakened the Buddha under the Bodhi tree. It is an intuitive knowledge that gushes forth from an open and receptive heart, and a wisdom that is awakened by the various and integrated practices of Yoga. Ultimately, it is wisdom associated with love (Bhakti Yoga). As Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita “To those steadfast in love and devotion I give spiritual wisdom (Buddhi Yoga) so that they may come to me. Out of compassion I destroy the darkness of their ignorance. From within them I light the lamp of wisdom and dispel all darkness from their lives.”