Chitta

The storing, recalling function of the antahkarana — the repository of memory and accumulated impressions.

Overview

Chitta is the layer of the inner instrument that holds experience. Memories — including, Vedanta claims, memories from earlier lives — are stored here, though ordinarily only a narrow band of them is retrievable at any given time. The stored impressions are samskaras; chitta is where they sit.

Chitta is one of the four components of the antahkarana and part of the subtle body. Because samskaras transfer with the subtle body at death, it is through chitta that continuity across lives is preserved — most of it latent, a small fraction expressed as tendencies and proclivities in any given incarnation.

Related concepts

• antahkarana — the whole inner apparatus
• manas, buddhi, ahamkara — the other three functions
• samskara — what chitta stores
• sukshma-sharira — the broader body that carries chitta forward

In the Gita

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

Lecture evidence

• Ep. 4 [09:20]: Swami names manas, buddhi, chitta, ahamkara as the four functions of the inner instrument; chitta is memory.
• Ep. 4 [19:26]: Most samskaras in chitta are not available for recall; proof of their presence is occasional vivid recovery, as in Penfield’s experiments.