Shankara on the Intellect

A. J. Alston:

Our experiences force us to conclude that an unchanging, self-luminous principle must exist within the individual as the Witness of his passing states of experience.

Further it is the presence of this light which unifies and organizes the psychic and physical functions and enables perception and other cognitive acts to take place.

The mind and senses are composed of the material elements, and there must exist some self-luminous light perceiving them if there is to be experience at all.

The intellect is the chief instrument of this self-luminous principle in the case of the waking experience of an ordinary unenlightened man.

The intellect is the special and most intimate instrument of the Self in empirical knowledge. The intellect is lit by the light of the Self, and objects are lit by the intellect through the medium of the senses, and require to be so lit in order to be perceived at all.

The light of the Self within is reflected in the intellect, and this reflected light is passed on, by contact (samparka), to the lower mind, senses and the body.

People identify themselves with this or that aspect of the psycho-physical organism, depending on how far their powers of discrimination have developed and rescued them from crude self-identification with the body.

As long as there is failure to discriminate the Self from the intellect, the Self appears ‘like’ the appearances that come before it. But in truth it is pure light and does not really act or move.

~Alston, 'Shankara on the Soul' pp. 56-7