Does consciousness necessitate the existence of personality?
As well as a form. Can there be consciousness without form? Can we say that the formless cannot have consciousness? And can that be an argument used to counter impersonalism or that how can something impersonal be conscious? Yeah.
Actually, usually when we talk about consciousness, that is the object of consciousness that means that is the thing which is being perceived that is the subject of consciousness. The person who is perceiving. So for example, you are looking at me.
So you are the subject of consciousness. I am the object of consciousness. And linking the two of us is the stream of consciousness.
So impersonalism holds that both the subject and the object are ultimately illusions. The reality is only the stream of consciousness. So they say that actually that's what stream of consciousness is Brahman.
Now, the stream of consciousness is Brahman that could be said to be true at one level. But the whole concept of consciousness does not have much meaning without any perceiver or perception. Consciousness means consciousness of something.
So, and there is no point in self-consciousness. You cannot even say that Brahman is conscious of itself. Because even for self-consciousness, for example now, if I think okay, I am leaning back on the chair and sitting.
It is not a very good way to sit. Maybe I should sit better. Whenever I am thinking like this, at that time, I am at least mentally dividing myself into two.
Isn't it? I am thinking, okay, how will I look when I am sitting like this? Or what will be the effect on my body parts of sitting like this? Maybe I should not sit like this. So at least at a self-reflexive level, I am separating myself as a subject and the object. So without that kind of separation, at least at the level of intelligence, separation between subject and object, there cannot be any conscious, any conscious experience.
So stream of consciousness existing itself is in that sense not very coherent. It is consciousness which has nothing to be conscious about and no one to be conscious of, whatever you may say. As a Brahman, alone in the Supreme Reality is an incomplete understanding of the Absolute Truth.
Yes, there can be stream of consciousness, but the stream of consciousness has to be connected to the subject and the object. Can the formless have consciousness? Yes, the Brahman does have consciousness. Brahman does not have form, you could say.
Brahman does have consciousness. Brahman is Chinmal. It is conscious.
But it is not the complete reality. It is a partial reality. It is one aspect of the Absolute Truth.
And the the formless aspect is a feature of the Absolute Truth who also has form. As our Acharya has explained, Brahman is the effulgence of Bhagwan. So that means that conscious energy which is pervading as Brahman, that is also coming from Bhagwan.
And so in that sense we can say that consciousness may exist without form, but then consciousness has nothing to be conscious of and no one to be conscious without a subject and object. And that whole understanding of consciousness subject and object requires a person manifestation. A person manifestation with his energies.
So he is conscious of himself. He is conscious of his energies. And he reciprocates and allows his energies.
That is the complete understanding of the full Chinmay spiritual world.