Emergence, Abhivyakti, and the Issue of Physical Reductionism

Introduction

Questions such as “How does conscious experience emerge?” or “What presents

phenomenality to consciousness?” are not new. The objective of this paper is twofold. On one
hand, the paper addresses a ‘monistic metaphysics’ that seeks to ground an alternative to Cartesian
dualism, and on the other hand, it explores an alternative model to reductionist materialism, in
precise term, the physicalism that boasts to be the dominant model of philosophical and scientific
inquiry in our times. At the same time, we will exploit some arguments from Chalmers with regard
to what he calls the “hard problem.” As David Chalmers argues, “. . .even when we have explained
the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—
perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a
further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by
experience?”1 I, however, do not follow the arguments suggested on behalf of the “binding
problem,” or consider that our subjectivity is an amalgamation of microsubjectivity in cellular
structure. On the contrary, I read the arguments on behalf of cosmopsychism more closely, and
argue on behalf of emanation (abhivyakti) as a process of differentiation. Meaning, the problem
then is not that of emergence of higher order consciousness or of subjectivity but of the emanation
of the manifold.
From the physicalist perspective, the brain, which in itself is in inertia, gives rise to
consciousness as an emergent property by means of neuronic interactions (Popper 1978; Crick
1994; Libet 2004), making consciousness inconceivable without the brain. Broadly relying on
supervenence wherein for example, if some alteration in B is necessary for any alteration in M, B
supervenes M, this model accepts that the emergent property of consciousness relies on the brain
state as a foundational necessity (McLaughlin 1997). Some argue, however, that there is no
supervenence but rather, a causal relationship between conscious states and the brain (O’Connor
2000a, 2000b). While there is no problem in a neural correlation with consciousness, the thesis
that a diametric opposition between consciousness and inertia and the proposition that a radical

1
— David Chalmers (1995). Facing up to the problem of consciousness.
difference between the properties of cause and effect exists, as Strawson argues (2006) is “a
violation of a law of nature,” or as Goff (2017) argues, “physicalism is unable to account for the
reality of phenomenal consciousness.” An alternative generally presented to this thesis is an
argument following panpsychism. Panpsychists broadly argue that consciousness permeates all the
basic structures of reality; that is, it is ubiquitous and therefore distributed in particles and cells
alike. As Negal (1979) argues, “the basic physical constituents of the universe have mental
properties.” Broadly, panpsychism comes in two different flavors: micropsychism and
cosmopsychism. The first argues that the presence of the complex cognitive process is a result of
“binding” elemental conscious states in their micro-level. The “combination problem” (Seager
1995, 2010, Goff 2009; Chalmers 2013) relates to the issue of explaining how unified macro
experiences emerge from micro experiences. The problem for us is to explain how a singular
consciousness assumes the manifold. For both, the initial point is to reject the dichotomy between
mind and matter, and in this regard, I would like to trace some historical examples. The challenge
here is to analyze the issue from the top-down model: rather than explaining consciousness in its
complexity, the argument is that consciousness as such is non-fragmentary singularity, and that
embodiment and physicality provide the required complexity to manifest in the cognitive modes,
and that embodied and intentional states are not emerging as a result of synthesis of basic conscious
states, but that there is a fracturing of singularity, making it possible to segment, not just in terms
of different organic and cellular structures, but also in terms of different subjectivities while also
constituting the subjective and objective divide. The thesis then is that consciousness is the basis
for inertia, physicality, and mentality. As a consequence, to have the body is being both a subject
and also an object. This means that consciousness and materiality are not diametrically opposite
entities as the emergentists have made us believe.
Abhivyakti or emanation explains that the manifest tropes of consciousness or subjectivity
are not some radically new entities that are not present in causal materials. This also does not mean
that these properties are a mere transformation of base properties. Just like a oak tree manifests
from an acorn, or the oak tree's latency lies in the acorn, the higher order properties of
consciousness and subjectivity are latent in matter that manifests as inert. From classical India,
some competing theories involve the Cārvāka model of emergentism, Sāṅkhya model of fusion,
and the Nāgārjunian or Advaita model of non-origination (ajāti). If we read only the explanation
of creation, the physicalist theory of emergentism makes a similar conclusion to what the Christian
theology teaches us of creation ex nihilo, meaning that what emerges does not exist in its causal
structure. The model of abhivyakti or emanation argues that some homogeneity can be found
between the effect and its causal properties. Accordingly, what we call “material” is not
diametrically opposite to what we call “mental.” This mapping of consciousness with materiality
needs to be carefully done, as there is not one simple solution, and competing proposals in
panpsychism are diverse. When I am exploring classical examples from Hindu literature, I am
interested in exploring a dialogue with contemporary models that have similar positions. I am
therefore reading selected passages to sample the references that suffice in advancing these
arguments. The model of causality explored here is by no means exhaustive to Hindu literature, or
even to any of the texts being examined. An example that I particularly stress, that of firewood and
fire, underscore the problem: we cannot have fire without fuel but fuel and fire are nonetheless
different. However, when we analyze the basic structure, that what we call fire is merely an
emergence of the tropes that are pre-emergent in the firewood.
For the particular model being examined here, the closest counterparts can be found in
what we broadly categorize as panpsychism. However, this is a broad category and we cannot
make a general assumption regarding it. Since the objective of this paper is to address a specific
model, the model of emanation (abhivyakti), I will explore the possible congruence with
contemporary models after exploring the literature for abhivyakti. Even so, the very concept of
abhivyakti is vague, and different schools have used the concept to explain different theses. But
before that, it is relevant that we address the parameters necessary to address the model of
emanation, as the question of creation leads to the perennial problem of what does it mean for
something to come into being, whether ontologically to come into existence, or epistemically, to
be an object of veridical consciousness. And we are left with just a few options. When we say the
entities come into being, are we considering that the cause and effect are identical? For in that
case, causation does not make sense. And if the entity that comes into being is different, we need
to further explain what difference means. Is the difference between a mother and daughter donkey
the same as that between a donkey and a tree? And if not, we need to introduce a new category
that addresses partial homogeneity as a precondition for causality. It is within this homogeneity
that we can conceive of the class or of the universals. And thus, we also need to accept the category
'universal.' If what emerges is not distinct from the source, nothing has emerged; and if what has
emerged is distinct from the cause, anything should give rise to anything else.The argument for
emanation addresses this by accepting the generic identity while acknowledging particularity of
the manifest entity.
Following physical reductionism, consciousness can be explained by explaining physical
properties alone. If conscious states are the brain states, ‘emergence’ is merely a device to explain
the properties and not the substance. But this would then require a model of property dualism. If
we follow interactionism, mental and physical properties are completely different and they interact
in both directions, meaning that mental causation affects our physicality just like physical
causation determines our mental states. Epiphenomenalism, on the other hand, maintains that while
mental and the physical properties are quite distinct, only physical properties affect the mental. In
all accounts, emergentism following hard materialism rests on the argument that the mental is an
emergent property of an underlying physical substrate. It is not necessary, nor is it possible, to
revisit the arguments for and against these models. For us to move forward, we can read Thomas
Nagel (2012) and David Chalmers. In particular, their arguments for the intrinsic property, what it
is like, or their qualia, do not explain the qualitative state of consciousness that is absent in the
corresponding physical substrate. The argument here is that consciousness is an intrinsic property
and cannot be fully explained externally. It will be interesting to see how and whether some of
these observations can be furthered by reading the classical examples at hand.
Emanation or abhivyakti can only extend so far, since the contemporary discussion on
panpsychism has already been nuanced, and the emanation model can provide only some original
insights. In that regard, this model is akin to panpsychism in the sense that they both agree that
something mental extends throughout all the entities that exist. Emanation model (EM), however,
stresses that something like ‘experience’ does not need to exist in the micro-level, for there can be
some properties manifest only in the higher order structures that are not visible in the micro level,
again extending the example of the seed and the plant. We do not need ‘micro-subjectivity’ for
subjectivity to arise, for a simple reason that subjectivity is not a complex entity having parts. In
some accounts, the emanation model can be a explanatory bridge between emergentism and
panpsychism, for the EM does not require micro-experience or micro-subjectivity as a starting
point. Just like red or yellow colors are not there in the rose plant but nonetheless has the potential
to manifest when the rose plant blossoms, the same way several properties are latently present in
causal form even though they are not yet expressed. The EM starts from the totality, a singular
entity full of life and conscious, that retains within its belly the potency to be many, and the
challenge here is therefore not in explaining the emergence of higher order structures but about
explaining the basic organismic and non-organic structures as a process of self-differentiation of
the singular entity.
Following a passage in the MB, matter and consciousness are comparable to firewood and
fire. We cannot isolate and extract fire from firewood; they are not identical; nevertheless, fire is
merely an expression of the energy that is within logs. The concept of “emanation” (abhivyakti)
here is not to argue either that the element fire is original or irreducible to the log. The argument,
on the contrary, is that, that what we call fire is merely an expression of already existing energy,
manifesting merely in its external property of being a log. Now, this example allows us to identify
a qualitative state as distinct from the external or objective state. The quality of being fire is
intrinsic to the log, but this requires friction or certain conditions to be met for it to be expressed.
It is different from the ‘micro-experience’ or ‘micro-subjectivity’ model because it does not
assume there are any such states in the basic states of materiality. But it also is different from the
physicalist ‘emergence’ model in the sense that what manifests is not a radically different property,
and all the manifest properties are intrinsically there in the form of latency in the cause. A broadly
exploited example in the literature subsequent to MB to explain EM is that of peacock egg. The
core of the argument is that if you crack open an egg, you do not see the array of colors, but when
hatched and the chicks come to maturity, we see millions of colors. This example does not explain
the manifest property as a simple continuum of the cause and accepts originality of the effect. At
the same time, this does not argue for a complete newness as the emergentists would have
advocated. Just like the energy that manifests in fire is already present in the log, the traits for
colorful feathers are likewise latent in the genetic structure in the egg. The original application of
nāma-rūpa or name and form is to suggest this very uniqueness of emergence, that the specific
designation and particular structure are available only from the emergent property and are not
present in its causal structure. That the abhivyakti model is not reducible to common monism or
panpsychism can be confirmed through two additional metaphors from the MB 12. 320.95-96,
given to explain the relationship between matter and consciousness: that of lac and mud. While
the primary material is the bark, lac is not to be reduced to its material cause, as it emerges into
something original. The example of mud is used to establish the same argument, that water and
soil are different elements that commingle and constitute a new entity, with the new name and
form of mud. Both examples elucidate a new name and structure. However, we can retrieve soil
and water from the mud, but shellac is a new emergent property. If we read closely, these examples
are not meant to establish the primacy of consciousness, but that emergence of consciousness is a
natural process. Not all the samples are the same, though. Fundamentally, describing materiality
from ur-matter of caitanya is as commonly found as describing vijñāna or intentional modes of
consciousness from inertia. For, no inertia is absolute inertia that lacks consciousness as its
potential. This fluidity has historically confused scholars, as some have read EM merely a classical
category of reductionist physicalism. Noteworthy in the context of MB, the “vyakti” here
underscores continuity, that complex properties of consciousness emerge from basic elemental
properties found in matter. But does this lead to the position of micro-subjectivity in particles? Or
are there micro-thoughts to constitute thought? Is there something like micro-transparency for the
reflexivity of consciousness? I do not believe so.

Fire and the Firewood

If we were to explain consciousness following the metaphor of the fire-log and fire, we
need to introduce a third category, the friction that is necessary in addition to logs and fire, which
mediates the process of emanation. Accordingly, neuronic triggering or the firing of neurons can
be compared with the metaphoric friction to make fire. Reading through these reductive lines, just
like the logs supervene the fire, the body supervenes consciousness. I am not seeing any problem
in this causal relation, as the argument has never been about establishing a disembodied mind or
consciousness expunged of materiality. The only argument is, if we consider tidal waves as
epiphenomena, with fluidity in water as an emergent structure, the potential for such structure is
presented in the very building blocks of what constitutes water. The fire and the fire-logs example
come in the context of sensory faculties and their double-intentionality. While being directed to
their reciprocal objects, they reveal themselves at the same time. The example of the king and the
ministers can be confusing to those unaware of the constitution of the Gaṇa-kingdom, where
different clans are represented by the ministers, and the king is one among them. This is how the
explanation of a “part of consciousness” (jñānaikadeśa) makes sense. The same applies to reading
the epistemic process of consciousness flowing through the sensory faculties, manifesting the
external objects. In all accounts, the way we are used to understanding consciousness as separate
from materiality prevents us from faithfully reading these passages, and once we liberate ourselves
from this predisposition, we can consider consciousness as an emergent structure that does not
violate the claim of it being in its potential form in the causal materials.
Two separate issues merge here. While the entities of fire and log have their inherent nature
as to what constitutes logs as logs and fire as fire, as solidity and its burning character, it is also
true that they are not entirely independent, as Nāgārjuna argues, like a man and a woman (MMK
X.6). In the context of the MB, the issue has not been about establishing that fire and fuel are two
separate entities. There is no reason why we cannot have both: following MB, there is the potential
for fire in the fuel, even if not expressed; and following MB, fuel and fire as cause and effect are
mere designations. And there is no contradiction of something being both the cause and its effect,
or being both the metaphoric axe and the log being chopped. For consciousness is assumed to have
the potency to assume different roles, with a fraction (bhāgaikadeśa) assuming subjectivity, with
the remainder being its object. Now, if we were to reframe a model to address consciousness along
these lines, consciousness is a global event, and it assumes a pre-divided state of singularity before
it fragments into the poles of subject and object, and what we consider as consciousness in
everyday terms identified here as vijñāna, intentional modes that are the manifest modes, similar
to the fire manifesting from a fire-log. Exploring the Buddhist literature further, Vasubandhu cites
an example of fire and fuel in the context of refuting the Vātsiputrīya view, according to which
there exists pudgala, a Buddhist equivalent of the ātman, that, although not distinct from five
skandhas, does have its own originality.2 The arguments from difference and identity, as
Nāgārjuna has presented, sustains even in Vasubandhu, with an iteration that fire cannot be
confirmed as neither identical to nor distinct from the fuel. Following both presentations, what is
addressed by the Pudgalavadins is that consciousness, similar to fire, is an emergent property that
cannot be simply reduced to its cause, a neural network for instance, or fire logs in our example.
They argue that, just as we do not feel heat in a log but from the fire that demonstrates this property,
pudgala in the same way is an emergent property although as an epiphenomenon, it rests on causal
attributes. An example from MB is almost identical to what the Pudgalavādins present here:

Just as the fire within wood is not visible by splitting the wood, the self within the
body is likewise. This is realized within body (atra) only by means of yoga. Just

2
See the Abhidharmakosabhasya, Pudgalaviniscaya. P. 1193-xx
 as [the drops of] water in a river or the rays in the sun are assembled, the bodies,
accordingly, [assemble] in the self.

Now, the fire and log example can be further analyzed with aid of other metaphors: water
and waves, whereby the river and the sun are not distinct from these properties, but nonetheless
maintain a distinctive identity.

Is the Emergent Property Distinct from the Cause?

One problem with the abhivyakti model and any other model of Advaita that accepts
creation, is: if there is an actual causation, is the effect identical to its cause or if this is different,
how is nonduality confirmed? A few examples from the Upaniṣads and their analysis help us
respond to this question:

(i) Just as smoke, that is distinct [from its cause] spreads from the assembled fire with wet
logs, this [creation] is an exhalation of this absolute principle (mahato bhūtasya).
(ii) . . . Accordingly, this absolute principle that is endless [in time] and boundless [in
space] is merely the mass of consciousness. This [mass of consciousness] emerges from
these very basic elements [of the mahābhūtas] and it dissolves back to these very
[elements].
(iii) Just as a spider extends [its net] and reabsorbs, just as plants grow on earth, just as hair
and nails of a living person, the world comes into being from the endless [absolute] the
same way.

Common to all the above examples is that the emergent property cannot be returned to its
primal form, smoke cannot be returned to the log, conscious subjects are distinct from the elements
that constitute their bodies, and a spider and its web are different. Nevertheless, these examples
underscore some form of continuity, that there are some properties in the log, for example, being
wet that results in smoke, and the base elements, when certain conditions have been met, give rise
to life, just like spiders, orb weavers for example, reabsorb their web. These are not the examples
to demonstrate identity, unlike the examples of gold and ornaments or of clay and clay-pots which
underscore identity. The former are examples that underscore distinction, as even the term
‘distinct’ (pṛthag) is applied to explain the distinction between smoke and the wet logs. So the
model of causality that can accommodate these examples is not the one that denies creation, or the
model that grounds creation on difference, or the one that establishes creation as identical to its
cause. There is something unique to the emergent structure but at the same time, there is something
like it in the cause itself that is only manifest in the emergent structure. Yet again, the abhivyakti
model helps explain all these examples.

Puruṣavāda and Panpsychism

Both the monistic system of Puruṣavāda and cosmopsychism, a variation of panpsychism,

share some common ground. First, they both maintain that consciousness is primary, and is
intrinsically given to all that exists. They can both be explained in terms of property dualism, as
something in consciousness is distinct from inertia, but that does not make them substantially
different. Furthermore, they both maintain some form of emergence to explain embodied and
intentional states of consciousness. If the “assemblage” theory of De Landa is incorporated
following Deleuze’s initial insights, panpsychism explains new emergent properties derived from
elemental properties which are not qualitatively distinct, making the case for soft emergence. There
are many models within panpsychism and what is common among them is that embodied forms
of consciousness are similar in kind but nonetheless distinct from the micro-level consciousness
in the base structures. Most of the differences among models result from the binding problem, how
lower-level consciousness assembles and gives rise to complex structures, and eventually to human
consciousness. Strong panpsychism maintains that “fundamental physical entities have conscious
experiences” (Chalmers 2016). This position leads to panexperientialism, that the ultimate
constituents of physical reality are capable of having experiences, or to pancognitivism, that these
constituents are endowed with cognition.
By accepting mentality as fundamental to the natural world, the focus for panpsychists is
to explain how the micro-levels of subjectivity and micro-levels of experience combine in giving
rise to our conscious states. Even though at the first glimpse the position of the panpsychists appear
indefensible, this is not the only model that they propose. Advancing the argument for
panprotopsychism, Benovsky (2018, 3) argues, “fundamental entities that compose a tree are not
‘tree-like’ or ‘wood-like’ or ‘leaf-like,’ and fundamental entities that compose a brain are not
‘brain-like’ or ‘neuron-like.’ As long as panpsychists argue that there are micro-subjectivities and
micro-experience and micro-cognition, and bundling these together makes our subjectivity or
experience or cognition, it conflates the phenomenal quality of consciousness or self-givenness of
subjectivity that we experience with size and complexity. If what makes phenomenality unique is
its self-givenness, its transparency, this never is the case that my pain is given to me as a synthesis
of micro-pains, neither is my subjectivity given as a collection of organic or cellular subjectivities.
On the other hand, if the argument is that while mentation is foundational to nature, fundamental
entities lack phenomenal qualities as well as micro-subjectivity, this model conflates with brute
emergence as far as subjectivity and phenomenality are concerned. In response to these objections,
Chalmers (2016) proposes panprotopsychism, arguing that

“panprotopsychism is the thesis that fundamental physical entities have protophenomenal

properties. Protophenomenal properties are special properties that are not themselves
phenomenal (there is nothing it is like to have them) but that can collectively constitute
phenomenal properties.”

If the argument for panpsychism began on the grounds that there is homogeneity between
cause and effect, accepting difference between cause and effect as token while maintaining type
identity, lacking and having phenomenality underscores their distinction. There is no reason to
argue for panpsychism and not accept brute emergence if phenomenality and subjectivity are to be
attributed to the emergent structure while also accepting that its basic constituents lack such
properties. In rejection of this argument, Benovsky (2018, 4) argues, “properties of macroscopic
entities (both physical and mental) are a result of the arrangement of micro fundamental entities,
but this does not mean that the micro entities must ‘already have a smaller version of them.” Of
course, there are no small peacocks inside the peacock eggs or small trees inside the banyan seeds.
The argument, then, from panprotopsychism is that the kind of mentality that the fundamental
entities possess is qualitatively distinct from what they constitute. Yet again, an assemblage theory
could better explain this constitution, for, in all accounts, the emergent structure is always
something unique or something more than the properties of the mere parts.
 What I am proposing is to invert the process: rather than finding consciousness in
complexity, accept two tiers of consciousness as the base caitanya and mentation or everyday
consciousness (identified by manas and vijñāna in classical Sanskrit texts). Base consciousness,
cantanya, is not divided in terms of organic or inorganic. It is not lacking phenomenality or
transparency but lacking the ways these are given to us: our embodied modes of experiences and
our embodied subjectivity. If every cellular structure is mirroring or in a sense encasing the same
caitanya or nondifferentiated being consciousness in its singularity, our organic structure makes it
possible for the multiple mirroring and assemblage of emergent structures, making it possible to
feel pain as pain or subjectivity as my embodied subjectivity. Someone advocating for brute
emergence initiates his analysis from the basic cellular structure, studying the assemblage in the
rise of complexity. What I am proposing is to explain the elementary form of embodiment and
subjectivity on the basis of nondifferentiated singularity, successively emerging by means of
differentiation. What an organic structure bestows upon us is the modes of encapsulating the same
singularity in a myriad of modes, in the same way different pieces of mirrors and their assemblage
makes it possible to reflect the same image in endless ways. We can initiate this analysis by
exploring the converging points between Puruṣavāda and dual-aspect monism. To begin with,
they both accept aspects of the singular entity, puruṣa or phental (something that contains the
aspects of the mental and the physical). One thing we should not conflate is that “aspects” are not
identical to “properties” and so dual-aspect monism is not identical to property dualism. In
property dualism, the single ontological entity, matter, is endowed with the properties of both mind
and materiality. However, for dual-aspect monism, there exists only a single entity, as they call
“phental” entity, that has aspects of both consciousness and materiality. Because of the aspects
sharing a single ontological status, the problems of binary causation again emerge: just like
physical aspects, our brain structure determining our modes of experience, the same applies to the
mind affecting physical states. Speaking in embodied terms, the person that I am is not merely
mind or body: it is both. Accordingly, the aspects of mind and matter are not to be reduced one
into the other. As is evident, this example evokes the early metaphor of puruṣa. After all, what
Puruṣavāda is saying is, mentality and materiality do not exceed the being of puruṣa, translated in
layman’s terms as a “person,” and puruṣa has both aspects. If the early Vedic texts used pāda or
quarter to describe the expression of materiality, we find the terminology of kalā or aspects in the
works of Bhartṛhari to describe the singular entity assuming the manifold by means of the
expression of its aspects. In many ways the metaphors that we explored in the earlier section can
be better explained following this model. Besides the very concept of puruṣa or person with
multiple aspects, the next example we had was of a turtle, expressing its limbs. When a turtle is
completely enclosed within its shell, we only encounter its external, metaphorically material
aspect, whereas when it peeps out, we see a creature, a living subject, capable of having its own
phenomenal state. But in reality, a shell includes bones and nerve endings and a turtle cannot exist
a turtle without its shell. It is not like a cave for a bear or a house for the human, but rather an
extension of the turtle itself. If there is no clean separation between the body and the mind, there
is no separation between the turtle body and its shell. Then the convention of the turtle and its shell
is similar to saying, ‘me’ and ‘my head.’
We can read neutral monism and Puruṣavāda along the same lines, making ‘manifestation’
as the explanatory device for causality. The category “phental” helps explaining reality that is
neither exclusively mental nor physical. One can object to this position by pointing out that this
simply tries to create a third category, a different set of entities in order to resolve the existing
problem, the problem of explaining the subjective or experiential mode of presentation versus the
descriptive or objective modes of presentation. A thing, in other words, is both external and
internal, has both materiality and phenomenality. This indeed is not the description of what exists,
as it anticipates the manifest subjective and phenomenal modes, their expressed horizons
constituting externality, and the thing that is grasped as external or as an object. There is circularity
in reasoning that there is something mind-like as well as matter-like within ur-matter but these
aspects are confirmed only upon the rise of sentient beings that rely on combining micro-level
consciousness and subjectivity in giving rise to macro states. I do not see a problem in accepting
“phental” as merely an explanatory category, for what lies within the singular entity, the mental-
type property in addition to physical-type property, is only necessary for subjects capable of
conceptualization and self-differentiation. Going back to the earlier example of fire and firewood,
that something can be called ‘firewood’ only upon the wood being a material cause for fire. If the
‘log’ is its name that does not describe its aspects, “firewood” is another name that is possible only
upon the log burning.
These models require an explanatory model different from the combination theory to
address consciousness, intentionality, and subjectivity, and the concept of “emergence”
(abhivyakti) meets this requirement. This is not the emergence of non-existent tropes or properties,
although this term has been much abused by materialists. The very terminal meaning of
“emerging” does not explain something coming into being out of oblivion. It only explains
something coming to prominence, being noticeable, or finding its distinctive identity. When fire
emerges of the logs, this is a transformation of the existing potential contained within the log. The
biological examples examined above, of peacock egg and banyan seed, explains the same
phenomena, that the inherent traits or potentials within the causal form of peacock egg or banyan
seed do not demonstrate the subjective or biological states of propagation and digestion, as long
as they are not in their expressed form of peacock or tree. The body serves as a suitable metaphor
for the rise of subjectivity: it is both subject and object, depending on intentionality. Here, the
primordial entity puruṣa is not the subject but rather the totality of things and beings only in the
sense of its potential to manifest in diversity. However the rise of subjectivity is credited to
externalization, just as the emergence of adhi-pūruṣa coincides with the transcendence of space
and manifest realms. By avoiding the category of ‘combination,’ we also evade the problems that
come with “bundle” theory of self.
The real issue then is not of emergence of phenomenality from inertia or of combining
micro-subjectivity to constitute the type of subjectivity with which we are endowed. On the
contrary, it is the issue of differentiation. When we consider the singular entity as having different
aspects, we are accepting the potentials within the singular entity yet to be expressed. We can
credit this very mode of expression as giving rise to the two poles of subjectivity and objectivity.
Similar to a person emerging from deep sleep, gaining his subjectivity and recognizing the
objective world surrounding him, the ur-matter puruṣa comes to actualize its potentials as they are
expressed, embracing the polarities of subject and object. The examples I have examined, such as
that of the firebrand releasing sparks or a spider spinning its web, are used to explain
differentiation, where the first example simply explains the manifold, as a single spark retains the
same capacity as does the flame in generating a big fire, and the spider does recognize its net as
something external to itself, and while maintaining a subject-object relationship in sustaining its
web, it is also able to re-absorb it, meaning, retrieving its externality. But without a web, the spider
is not a subject; subjectivity relies on objectivity.
The metaphors of seed and egg address differentiation. The single entity giving rise to the
manifold can be explained not by adopting the thesis of combination but by relying on abhivyakti,
that the singular entity is endowed with multiple aspects and those aspects or potentials are
expressed when certain conditions are met. In embodied terms, a single gamete gives rise to the
complexity of our body. But what is the objective of differentiation and complexity then, as it
appears inherent with evolution? After reading the above passages closely, there is no problem
maintaining difference in cognitive modes and consciousness, as the terminology of vijñāna and
caitanya suggests. What manifests, then, are intentional cognitive modes, relying on embodied
states. And if we were to read the Taittirīya hierarchy of food (anna), life (prāṇa), mind (manas),
cognition (vijñāna), and joy (ānanda) as gradually emerging (abhivyakta) properties from the ur-
material state of puruṣa, we do not see any contradiction in maintaining soft materialism, as long
as accepting materiality does not demand rejection of consciousness. So the Upaniṣadic passage
does not find it problematic to say that our mind and subjectivity arise from these very elemental
entities and return to those very elements. But this metaphor needs to be understood in the way
they reflect life, based on seasons. Just like the grass grow old, dies, and returns after the rain, so
does life keep coming, and our intentional modes of consciousness manifest, and so does our
subjectivity.

Embodied experience in Tantric philosophy and praxis

I am re-tracing the footsteps of Tantric philosopher Maheśvarānanda because his text

Mahārthamañjarī (MM), composed around the 13th Century. This chapter focusses on the body,
mostly the imagined body, which is the body generated through the processes of imagination; and
the ways fantasized imagery interacts in transforming somatosensory responses. At this nexus, I
find the esoteric world comfortably communicating with cognitive science and phenomenology.
My contention here is that remapping the conceptual parameters in framing tantric philosophy in
a new light allows us to bring the body in to discourse. And this body is not the gendered body,
not the body confined within the epidermis, but the placeholder of subjectivity, the bodily subject.
In this account, I find relevance in establishing communication between Maheśvarānanda and the
phenomenologists.
Before entering into the topic, I need to clarify some categories. By body image, I mean
the beliefs regarding one’s own body. On the other hand, body schema are sensory-motor
capacities that regulate somatosensory functions. Body schema provide an organized model of
ourselves, allowing us to use tools to function in our given environment. For the purposes of this
discussion, this understanding suffices, that both body schema and body image are subject to
change but are not biological processes: they are rather our cognitive and sensory negotiations of
ourselves with the surroundings. For both mapping our movements in space and localizing
stimulation in our body, we are constantly using the schema, even though alterations to the schema
remain an unconscious process. It is a mental framework, a way of organizing knowledge, a map
for us to evaluate the situation and develop a response. Following Piaget, schemata is 'a cohesive,
repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and
governed by a core meaning.' Following George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, I introduce ‘image
schema’ as a category for the structure of our cognitive process that helps us establish patterns of
understanding and reasoning.
Consciousness, for Maheśvarānanda, functions in degree and not in kind. In his paradigm,
every entity has the potential to express its embodied nature of consciousness. This thesis
contradicts the schema theory, as the premise for the latter is that even the schema, not just the
body, fall under the category that lacks consciousness. For Maheśvarānanda, there is some form
of language even in the atomic structure, or in today’s language, the genetic structure, as his
monistic philosophy rests on the assumption that there is no dichotomy between the corporeal and
the mental. Jerry Fodor, in the Language of Thought Hypothesis, for instance, maintains that we
have a distinctive mental language with which we organize our thoughts and even the basis of
thinking. The proponents of this theory have identified propositional attitudes in belief, hope,
desire etc., and maintain that there is something represented in each and every propositional
attitude. This mental representation is a basis for behavioral attitudes that include verbal exchange.
Like sentences, token mental representations have syntactic and semantic structure. In other words,
these representations are complex symbols that in themselves demand semantic analysis.
Combining this theory with schema theory, we can argue that there is a passive process
involved in framing and reframing the schema which are not unconscious, albeit not actively
conscious. This modification allows us to engage graphic visualization processes that aim to
interact in human cognitive and behavioral attitudes with the intent to bring about change, not
merely altering the subject’s beliefs or his subjective assessment, but also his corporeality. Body,
in this account, is an extended mind, just as the mind is an extension of the body. This gives a
greater fluidity for the interaction between body and mind, and gives subjects greater freedom in
formulating each individual’s response to stimuli. One of the fundamental premises of tantric
practice is that our bodily experience is elastic and alterable: the way we experience certain things
or events is determined in our engagement with the environment or in negotiation with our
saṃskāras, the habit patterns guided by our past actions. By means of deconstructing and
reconstructing these patterns, we can reprogram our habit tendencies as well as our cognitive
assessment of the environment. This reprogramming relies heavily on the bodily schema, and the
subject’s projection of body image aims toward altering the schema for the desired response.
Body image and body schema can be cognitively engineered, resulting in the breakdown
of distinction between the body and what constitutes the mind. Tantric models of what the west
has called the body-mind problem, emphasize a mutual and reciprocal creation of body-mind
articulation and structure. Yogic practices, particularly visualization focused on altering sensory
and motor functions, demonstrate a process wherein the subject can alter his own bodily self. This
makes the breach between the body and the flesh, as Merleau-Ponty would have it, possible. Just
as the lived body is not identical with the flesh, the visualized body is not the lived body, although
it does transform the subject’s bodily awareness, paving the path for altering somatosensory
experiences. Although tantric visualization practices are focused on esoteric and liberating
experiences, there is no reason this transformation cannot function as a way to generate assertive
roles for subjects who feel trapped within their own epidermis.
For Maheśvarānanda, visualization practices are for altering the subject’s body image and
body schema, thus effecting their transformation. Grounded on his Śākta philosophy nourished by
the developments in Trika, Spanda, and other Kashmiri monistic traditions, Maheśvarānanda’s
project of transforming embodied experience while encapsulating the totality within the lived body
is oriented towards cultivating mystical experiences. These mechanisms have the potential to
address the plasticity of bodily schema and body image, allowing subjects to address their own
somatic experiences. Maheśvarānanda’s project is itself therapeutic, given that he views subjects
as trapped within their own subjective horizons, localizing their experiences as confined within
the body, giving the subjects a sense of entrapment. For him, visualizations, particularly those
focused on altered bodily forms and multiple body-imagery, alter the subject’s identification with
the body, renegotiate the horizon of consciousness bound within the body, and amplify bodily
consciousness to incorporate the totality to eventually transform the subject’s assessment about
himself and his being in the world. His proposal, if translated into today’s language, is that tantric
practice can facilitate a twofold transformation, i) an overall subversion of the existing body
schema and body image, which also include self-image and self-schema, and ii) the imposition of
a new map to reconfigure bodily response with an intent to redirect somatic interactions and
cognitive processes to accommodate a new projected body image and body schema. This process,
vividly portrayed in his visualization practices, rests on remapping the reality and altering both the
somatic and cognitive self-experiences.
When this thesis is applied to the tantric philosophy of embodiment, particularly the image
body, it becomes clear that Tantras recognize the basic bodily mapping of reality, and practitioners
use this premise to advance the argument that we can reprogram our bodily awareness and map
our environment with this new body schema, thereby enhancing our ability to experience freedom
and bliss.
Maheśvarānanda does not say his is a project of reconfiguring reality. However, his is a
project that stems from the understanding that the given bodily consciousness is extremely narrow
and needs to be altered in order to acquire a liberating experience. The deconstruction of the bodily
consciousness is not a thesis for him, as this rather is the premise that underlies the transformation
of the bodily sense to enclose the totality, to find one’s self-presence in the reality extended beyond
one’s corporeality. Clearly he uses certain concepts as deconstructive in the sense that they interact
with the existing schema and nullify their foundation, and as a consequence, he explores the
possibility of liberating from the existing framework and replace it with a new structure, with an
intent to cultivate a new body image that envelops all that exists, and a self-image in which there
is no inside or outside between the self and the other. I analyse this plasticity of the body and the
self, as portrayed by Maheśvarānanda.
Body, for Maheśvarānanda, is suffused with unsurmountable power. The reason why
subjects are not capable of accessing this power is because of saṃskāras, the habit patterns that
control our access to the potential of the body. In other words, if we were to reprogram the schema
by means of altering our body image, we could tap into the forces that constitute the body.
Freedom, for Maheśvarānanda, has an inherent embodied character. Maheśvarānanda proclaims:

If [you] observe, there is so much power in the body of an insect with the size of a
sesame seed. How much power would there be of someone with the totality as his
body, with him having a self-regulated body. To whatever extent is there the
 expansion of the Lord in his mode of expressing the world, the same extension is
there in the embryonic stage when the world is absorbed within.

Maheśvarānanda has identified three distinctive bodies in the above passage. The first is
the insect body, the body as a metaphor for triviality. The second is the cosmic body, the totality
as the body. And the third is the embryonic body. Insect body is a metaphor that also describes the
embryonic body, identical with the body experienced by human subjects. His central argument
here is that whether or not the latent energies are expressed, or whether the world is felt outside of
the body or encapsulated within, this does not change the fact that bodily experience is elastic and
retains even in its most embryonic form the capacity to express itself as the totality. The body-
image that Maheśvarānanda advocates is the all-encompassing cosmic body. By establishing
identity in a hierarchical order where the individual subject equals the supreme divinity, individual
body equals the totality, and the psychosomatic energies equal the totality of the physical forces,
Maheśvarānanda explores the possibility of a total awakening, arguing for the surge of awareness
wherein bodily sense encapsulates the totality.
By repeatedly identifying that the world is the body-image of the subject, which is the
central premise of bhāvanā or visualization in his philosophy, Maheśvarānanda aims to alter the
subject’s self-evaluation, including the body schema, in order to transform his convictions
regarding his own body. The body, in this altered paradigm, is the divine abode, deva-gṛha, with
the energies expressed in the body being equated with the cosmic forces. He cites the following
passage from the Parātrīśikā to further his argument:

Just as the great tree [is] within the seed of a banyan in the form of latency, this
world comprised of both sentient and non-sentient entities is within the heart as if
the seed.

The heart, in the above metaphor, stands both for the corporeal as well as psychological
center: just as the body is an expression of the heart, so also is the world the expression of
consciousness. This is the metaphoric embryonic body that the yogin finds himself within as he
begins his practice, and the course of visualization evolves with him finding the totality as his own
expression or expansion (prasara). Further noteworthy is the terminology for discovering oneself
identical with the cosmos, as Maheśvarānanda identifies this as prasara, derived of pra+ √sṛñ +
ac, with the prefix confirming progression, giving a positive sense to finding materiality. This,
therefore, is not an emancipation from matter, as the way the subjective experience is given is
already bereft of matter; it is already expunged from the objective realm. On the contrary, this is
the rediscovery of the self in its expressions of both subject and object. This is the autopoesis or
self-generation that explains the concept. The metaphor he uses in the commentary for describing
this embryonic phase is śikhaṇḍyaṇda or a peacock-egg. Just as myriads of colors are latent in the
yolk, albeit not expressed or visible in any form, the peacocks could not display colors that did not
already exist as potential in the egg.
Maheśvarānanda describes the unsurmountable power underlying the body with an
example of an insect body that is endowed with both autonomous cognitive (parisphuraṇa) and
behavioral powers (pari-bhramaṇa). The first, sphuraṇa, explains the expansive expression of the
self or consciousness, while the second relates to bodily fluidity. Human bodily awareness is yet
another corporeality, although with greater freedom of self-expression and corporeal mobility than
lower life forms. Grounding his thesis on the Śiva Sūtra (III.30), ‘the entire world is the
constellation of his inherent powers’ (svaśaktipracayo’sya viśvam), Maheśvarānanda argues that
all that is manifest in the totality as an expression of the cosmic powers is an inherent potency of
the subject expressed as if outside.
By borrowing the concept from the Spandakārikā I.1, Mahesvarānanda argues in MM 30
that the ‘manifestation’ or expression, (unmeṣa) of the self implies withdrawal or closing (nimeṣa)
of the world and vice versa. This amounts to maintaining that commonsense experience of the self
and the world relies on mutual abnegation. On the other hand, the yogic consciousness presupposes
recognizing or rediscovering oneself as the totality, dissolving the difference that underlies the
cognitive modalities of subject and object. In this re-mapping of somatic experience,
Maheśvarānanda develops a semantics to reconfigure horizon of embodiment, where the body
expands outwards from its epidermis and interacts as an open system, encapsulating the totality
within the seeker’s bodily awareness. With these new somatic schemata, a tantric subject interacts
while dwelling in the world and also experiences the world as his own body. The other in this
dialogical transaction is not located ‘out there’ where the bodily horizon reaches its physical limits.
On the contrary, the other is mirrored within oneself in this newly mapped bodily image. Further
buttressing his argument from the Triśirobhairava, “sarvatattvamayaḥ kāyaḥ” that the body is
comprised of all the elements,” Maheśvarānanda confirms: “there lies identity between the body
and the cosmos” (aṇdapiṇḍayor aikyam | Parimala in MM 34).
The expansion of bodily consciousness is one of the recurring themes of Mahārthamañjarī.
According to Maheśvarānanda, our response to the environment during bondage is controlled by
our habit patterns shaped in reaction to the world, with the world as “this,” an entity outside of the
self, bereft of consciousness. His philosophy rests on the assumption that greater empathy is
possible by means of reversing this habit pattern and he proposes the course of visualization
towards achieving this goal. His conviction is that subjects can mirror the world and vice versa,
and the self-discovery in his paradigm rests on reaffirmation of the totality as the self, and not in
expunging self-consciousness further from the body and the world. An insect, according to
Maheśvarānanda, surpasses its expression of powers in relation to its body. The body in this
depiction is recognized by means of its demonstration of power, bodily force compared with
mechanical power and the powers of the sensory faculties compared with the powers of the
luminous divinities.
We know today that a single strand of neuron or a single virus is observed to be capable of
conducting complex functions, and the amount of information squeezed within the genome is
mind-boggling. Following Maheśvarānanda’s hypothesis, every cell within our body is capable of
the same expression. He considers the body as a hub, a constellation of all the karmic
predispositions and personal volitions, and for this, he refers to the body using the Sanskrit term
kāya that derives from √ciñ, to accrete. Even in a biological sense, the body is merely a system
with each cellular structure having a certain degree of individuality. The consciousness I have of
my body is subject to change, with bodily awareness shifting in different modes. This fluidity of
bodily consciousness provides the platform for addressing Maheśarānanda’s thesis that our bodily
consciousness is not fixed and can be expanded to incorporate the totality. Visualization practices
are directed towards allowing subjects to acknowledge this bodily elasticity.
For Maheśvarānanda, the body is merely a composite. What is it composed of? The body,
accordingly, is a aggregate of previous modes of consciousness, retained in the form of saṃskāra.
The body accumulates what we undergo, both physically and psychically. There is not even a
categorical difference between these, as what is physical is merely mental. And all that is the body
is what our past modes of consciousness have experienced. Our bodily directionality implies our
being in the world, with our interactions in various corporeal and mental modes. It is not the self-
governing capacity alone that puzzles Maheśvarānanda; it is also the capacity to self-express. And
this self-expression is not an expression of bodily being in time and space, but rather this is the
self-expression of the cosmic being, being itself, the self that experiences itself in terms of the
totality. Bodily schema are what our saṃskāras form, and visualization is what forces us to re-
organize these formations. Just as the subject’s expression of being short or tall is merely mapped
in his bodily presentation, Maheśvarānanda’s self as the totality is a remapping of the subject in
light of immanence and in terms of cosmic awareness. The bodily image that the practitioner
imposes during the course of visualization is that of the cosmos as the body. For Maheśvarānanda,
this becomes the yardstick to measure self-realization.
What grounds both subject and object is experience (anubhava). It is in the immediate
mode of experience wherein the subjective meets the objective: what constitutes as subject and
object is determined within the very flash of consciousness. The project of visualization, then, is
to shift experience from being temporal and finite to being infinite, from being located within the
body to locating the body within experience, by liberating experience from all the frameworks.
The liberated experience, accordingly, is a consequence of freeing experience from the
chains of habit patterns or saṃskāras that condition and constrain the experiences to be the way
they are felt. Beyond what the Language of Thought and cognitive theories have proposed – that
our cognitive and verbal exchange rely on a deeper structure, our experiences per se – there is a
deep ecological domain where the body and the environment are in a fluid exchange, mutually
reshaping each other. Accordingly, in the basic sensation that reveals the world to us or the moment
in which we are exposed to the world, there already is a ‘mapping,’ a reconfiguration, or
schematization in process. By ritually articulating an alternative body image, Maheśvarānanda
explores the ways to reshape human experience and with it, both the subject and the way he
interacts in his environment.
Body, for Maheśvarānanda, is an expression of energies, with these being indistinct from
consciousness or the self. He constitutes a hierarchy on which the self ascends from its materiality
or descends towards inertia, both being the play of consciousness or the self. For him, this is the
svātantrya-śakti or the capacity of freedom, that bestows upon the individual the possibility of
self-concealment and self-illumination, with the first referring to materiality and the second to self-
recognition. In the Mahārthamañjarī (verse 30), Maheśvarānanda introduces the terminology of
the state wherein the world manifests (viśvonmeṣadaśā) with its counterpart term, “the retrieval or
closing of the world” (viśvanimeṣa). Having bodily consciousness that is circumscribed by the
epidermis, in Maheśvarānanda’s opinion, is an embryonic phase, with the subject possessing the
potential of experiencing himself as the totality.
With a holographic imagery of the body, Maheśvarānanda maintains that whatever lies in
the cosmos exists in the body, albeit in unmanifest forms. Similar to what the gestalt theories would
propose, what we actually experience is something in alignment with our predeterminations,
predispositions, and our need to see something in terms of units as wholes. The embodied self has
both its natural state with the expansion of the totality and its conditioned state with the body
finding its limits within the epidermis. The body image of Maheśvarānanda is thus not merely a
projection of new imagery but a meticulous negation of the existing and limited body image with
a thorough deconstruction of what amounts to the body prior to replacing the bodily vision, and
this sequence articulates his philosophy and mediates his ritual paradigm. Maheśvarānanda, while
doing so, separates himself from other non-dual philosophers, as the enlightened subject in his
depiction is not disembodied but rather super-embodied, wherein bodily consciousness expands to
capture the totality.
The metaphor of the peacock egg (śikhaṇḍyaṇḍa) explains this phenomenon: even while
in bondage and separated from the rest of the world, the embodied subject retains his dormant
capacities to eventually have the all-encompassing embodiment expressed. Liberation in his
depiction is one such mode of consciousness that confirms total bodily consciousness that not only
gives full access to the body at its cellular level but also to the entire cosmos as one’s own body.
Accordingly, the confinement within the epidermis is a condition and not a natural state for the
self, and awakening is not a negation of the embodied self but rather an embrace of its ultimate
expression in terms of totality.
One of the recurring themes in this course of visualization is that the body is an altar, that
deities are to be worshipped within one’s own heart, that one’s self-experience is identical to the
experience of the absolute subject, that the way the individual subject experiences his body is
identical with how the absolute subject experiences his embodiment within the totality. And this
is what we encounter in the course of visualization practices. For instance:

The highest divinity (parameśvara) in the form of the individual subject is the deity
presiding at the center that is differentiated as external and internal deities within the
 circles. The placeholders for the deities in the enclosures are the powers of the sensory
faculties. It is only within the body which is the major altar that their worship is possible.
A general understanding of worship as an activity that is directed outwards needs a
correction here, as in this internalized gaze, worship is nothing distinct from the acknowledgement
of the roles that the sensory faculties play in the flow of consciousness outward and their retrieval
from the external realm after having encountered the objective world. What visualization implies
then is an observation of consciousness in its dynamic mode of being engaged with the world.
Self-realization is the anticipated outcome of such a ritual. Maheśvarānanda confirms this concept
in the following statement:

First, one should worship the body as the altar. [After that,] one should seek in the center
of the heart the supreme divinity of the character of absolute luminosity that is identical to
the self. One should [thereafter] visualize the potencies in the form of the sensory faculties
encircling the [metaphoric center,] the self. Thereafter, one should fill the mind, which is
the collective form of all the inner faculties, with the libation objects which are
characterized by the expression of the objects of cognition. One should then purify these
objects (tad) with the power of mantra that is comprised of the reflexive consciousness of
the supreme divinity. This deity [or the self] encircled by divinities [or the sensory
faculties] is to be worshipped with this very kula nectar (kulāmṛta) [of experiencing bliss].

The mirror test, for whatever reason Maheśvarānanda cites, suggests his understanding of
a projected body. Mirror body is the projected body ‘out there,’ and this is not the immediately felt
body. With the totality as the body of a yogin, Maheśvarānanda argues that the bodily sense is
retained objectively, just as the elephant is able to recognize its reflection. This example as well as
the mirror metaphor invokes a much wider discussion in tantric philosophy of reflection
(pratibimba). For this paper, it suffices to say that bodily consciousness is elastic and can be
extended beyond the epidermis, just as in the case of recognizing the mirror image as one’s own
body. Yogic awakening for Maheśvarānanda is the immediate experience of oneself as the
collective, and this is dependent upon liberation from the fragmented self-image. For him, this
fragmented image is not actually fragmented but rather in its early evolutionary phase or in the
embryonic stage.
In Maheśvarānanda’s philosophy, there are two stages of mirroring. In the everyday state
of consciousness, there is a mirroring of the world, where the self is merely cognizing mirror
images. In the liberated state, both the body and the individual self appear as if the mirror image.
Here, the outside becomes the inside and the inside morphs into the outside. The totality becomes
the source, and the body, the target. How does Maheśvarānanda envision such a possibility? The
response rests on his epistemology and cosmology. He understands consciousness in terms of
energy. Sensory faculties are further extensions of this very energy and the self is the core or a
unified field of consciousness. In his epistemology, sensory faculties are the energies of the self,
and a maṇḍala with center and periphery describes his image of the self and the sensory capacities.
Even when these energies are scattered in the world, these are the very aspects of the self, the
sparks of consciousness often equated with fire (cidagni, citivahni). In passively or naturally
engaging with the world, the self is fragmented into pieces as sparks of consciousness.
For Maheśvarānanda, body-image and body-schema are flexible; we can morph our body
image into something new, and meticulous visualization can constitute the new synoptic structures
and habit patterns to alter our body schema. Is the imagery that he provides absolutely real? In his
own metaphysics, both the internal and external acts of worship as well as meticulous
visualizations are merely for the alteration of the subject’s horizon of consciousness. In this regard,
one can argue that the images that he provides are merely for rearticulating the body schema.
Visualization, in this paradigm, is merely for transforming the way we are accustomed to
experience the world. Regulated breathing or prāṇāyāma, along with the mental exercises that
constitute the corpus of his yogic practice, affirm this very notion of subjective transformation.