What is Consciousness? (According to the Non-Dual Teachings of Advaita Vedanta)

What's the difference between consciousness & awareness or between witness consciousness & reflected consciousness? Like Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow, Advaita Vedanta has many words to accurately describe your essential nature as pure consciousness, the true Self, atma. Q&A series #26

0:00 Intro
5:36 Difference between consciousness and sentiency
11:09 Relationship between thoughts and consciousness
18:23 Unchanging consciousness
20:48 Witness consciousness, Sakshi
23:02 Reflected consciousness, Cidabhasa

Unchanging consciousness
Intro to Vedanta, part 2    • Atma: Sat Cit Ananda - Intro to Advai...  
"States" of Consciousness
Turiya, Fourth State of Consciousness    • Turiya – The FOURTH State of Consciou...  

Advaita Vedanta describes the nature of atma, your true self, as sat chit ananda, eternal, limitless consciousness. Chit means pure consciousness, the consciousness that makes you aware of everything that's happening right now. Sat means existence, your existence as a conscious being. The rishis of ancient India discovered that atma is actually unborn, uncreated, eternal and unchanging. That means, your true self, atma, is not subject to aging, illness, or death. That's why it's called the divinity that dwells within you.

The rishis also described atma as being ananda. Here, the word ananda doesn't really mean bliss as it's often translated because it refers to atma, experiencer of bliss, the conscious being who is aware of blissful experiences. So in this context, ananda is better translated as perfect fullness, wholeness, or completeness. Traditional scholars often add the word ananta to the expression, sat chit ananda. Ananta means limitless, infinitely vast, that which is all-pervasive.

So, atma, the true self, is your essential nature as eternal, limitless, pure consciousness. But, to simply understand the meaning of these words is not the goal here. Conceptual knowledge that atma happens to be sat chit ananda is merely information, and accumulating more information will never result in enlightenment, no matter how profound that information might be.

On the other hand, the teachings of Advaita Vedanta can lead you through a life-changing process of self-inquiry. With that guidance, you can retrace the footsteps of the ancient rishis, in a manner of speaking, and personally discover what they discovered. That is, you can directly recognize or realize your true inner nature as sat chit ananda.

Swami Tadatmananda is a traditionally-trained teacher of Advaita Vedanta, meditation, and Sanskrit. For more information, please see: https://www.arshabodha.org/