The Hindu Understanding of Spirit

The spiritual is the immaterial or non-physical aspect of humans. Take a moment to think about how unusual that definition is. Spirit is defined as what it’s not. Not physical, not material.

But telling us what it isn’t, doesn’t tell us what it is.

Spirit also means the essence of something, the animating or vital principle within living beings. Everyone knows from direct experience what that means. The person on the inside looking out. If you’re hearing this, you know who I’m talking about.

So far, so good. The difficulties start when we try explaining that direct experience in terms of something else, something beyond that experience. We can’t stop at our self-sufficient knowledge that I exist.

We need to know what we should do about it.

Defining Spirit

In Hindu thought, spirit is well defined. In Sanskrit it’s the famous sat-chit-ananda. In English that means eternal-conscious-bliss. An elegantly simple definition.

Spirit is consciousness, consciousness exists eternally, and its inherent nature is blissful.

The Hindu turns the materialist way of thinking inside out. Spirit isn’t not-matter, matter is not-spirit. Spirit is the positive reality. Spirit is the absolute, the undeniable, the irreducible foundation of existence.

Consciousness is known directly and without any doubt. To doubt the existence of consciousness requires consciousness to already exist to do the doubting. In philosophy this is called a self-evident truth, it’s denial is contradictory.

By contrast, matter is the negative reality, the absence of spirit. We can understand this in the same way we understand darkness is only the absence of light, or a hole is the absence of the substance which surrounds it.

They’re real, they’re things in themselves, but their existence is relative, fully dependent on the existence of their positive counterpart. What they are, can only be understood in relation to something else.

Matter is not-eternal, it’s temporary. Everything material will someday cease to exist. Matter is not-conscious. It isn’t animated and moving in response to inner forces, its movement is determined by the outer forces which act on it. Matter is not-bliss, in the material world suffering is unavoidable.

This Hindu understanding of reality is the opposite of the materialist. The materialist thinks matter is the foundational substance of reality and consciousness emerges from the physical brain. They think consciousness depends on matter for its existence. Which means when the brain stops working, the consciousness ceases to exist.

By contrast the Hindu thinks matter depends on consciousness for its existence. Matter is an idea within consciousness, a way of perceiving reality. Which means that when the body dies, the conscious self lives on. Hindus believe the self reincarnates and takes another physical body.

Our relationship to the world

Everyone experiences the existence of their conscious self directly. Its existence is undeniable. We all agree that it is, but the disagreements start when we try to say what it is.

Saying what it is means explaining our relationship to the larger reality of which we are a part. And our answer to that question has important practical consequences in our lives.

Unlike in the West, in India philosophy and religion merge. Philosophy is about understanding the nature of reality. Hindu’s accept that the purpose of doing philosophy is because knowledge about reality has a profound effect on our personal destiny. It tells us the meaning of our lives in the broadest or ultimate sense.

We can understand spirituality in the broadest sense to be our attempt to answer questions of meaning, value and purpose in our lives. It’s a broad concept with room for many different perspectives. It’s a universal human experience to search for answers to these questions about our place in the world and our connection to something larger than ourselves.