Antahkarana

The “inner instrument” — the fourfold psychological apparatus of manas, buddhi, chitta, and ahamkara. A part of the subtle body.

Overview

Where modern psychology tends to say “mind” for everything cognitive, Vedanta works with a finer-grained map. The antahkarana is the single inner apparatus — Swami Sarvapriyananda calls it the inner instrument — but it has four distinguishable functions:

• manas — the doubting, deliberating function: weighing, querying, feeling pulled
• buddhi — the deciding, discriminating function: resolving the question, forming conviction
• chitta — the storing, recalling function: memory and the accumulated impressions
• ahamkara — the “I-maker”: the function that takes any of the above and says this is mine, I am this

Together these four are counted among the nineteen components of the subtle body. They are not the self — they are part of anatman — but they are the layer through which the atman‘s consciousness ordinarily shows up in the world. When the ahamkara mistakes its own contents for the atman, ajnana is in force.

Related concepts

• sukshma-sharira — the larger apparatus containing antahkarana
• anatman — the category antahkarana belongs to
• atman — the consciousness that lights up antahkarana’s operations
• viveka — the buddhi’s highest function, discriminating atman from anatman

In the Gita

• 02-13-15 — the apparatus that travels with the embodied one

Lecture evidence

• Ep. 4 [09:20]: The four functions of the inner instrument — manas, buddhi, chitta, ahamkara — are part of the subtle body; together with senses and pranas they make nineteen components.