The Four Levels of Existence

We often hear the advice, “Learn from your experience.” It sounds simple enough, but what exactly is an experience? How does an experience become a lesson? Why do some experiences remain with us for years while others disappear almost immediately? And should our past experiences guide every step we take into the future?

Yoga gives us an interesting way of looking at these questions.

In the Indian spiritual tradition, human experience is understood through different functions of the inner instrument, known as the Antahkarana. Four of its principal aspects are described as Manas, Buddhi, Chitta and Ahamkara. They are not four separate objects existing somewhere inside us. They are different functions through which consciousness operates and through which we experience ourselves and the world.

Understanding these four functions can help us understand why we think, decide, remember, react, identify ourselves and ultimately question who we really are.

The Sanskrit word Anubhava, often translated as experience or direct experience, is related to the idea of personally knowing or experiencing something rather than merely knowing it intellectually. In Yoga and Vedanta, this distinction is important. There is a great difference between knowing something because somebody has told us about it and actually experiencing it for ourselves.

Let us look at these four aspects of our inner experience.

Manas: The Mind

Manas is often translated simply as the mind, but in the traditional understanding it has a more specific function. It is closely connected with sensory perception, thought, comparison and the continuous movement of impressions coming from within and outside us.

Manas receives information and responds to it. We see something, hear something, remember something, like something, dislike something and immediately the mind begins to move.

In this sense, Manas is like an interface between ourselves and the world around us.

Every moment we are receiving impressions from people, places, sounds, sights, sensations and our own thoughts and emotions. The mind moves among these impressions, constantly creating associations and responses.

This is why the mind is often compared to an ocean. There are waves constantly appearing on its surface. One thought leads to another, one sensation produces another reaction, and one memory can suddenly bring an entirely different thought into consciousness.

This raises an important question for anyone interested in Yoga: can the mind actually be managed?

The modern expression “mind management” can sometimes give the impression that the mind is an object that we can simply control through willpower. Traditional Yoga presents a more subtle understanding.

We do not necessarily have to fight with every movement of the mind. Through Yoga we learn to observe the mind, understand its patterns, redirect its attention and gradually develop mastery over our responses.

Mantra is one of the traditional methods used for this purpose. Rather than becoming trapped in the endless movement of ordinary thought, the practitioner gives the mind a specific focus. Practices such as pranayama, pratyahara, meditation and Yoga Nidra similarly help to change our relationship with mental activity.

The goal is not to wage war against the mind.

It is to understand it.

Buddhi: The Intellect and Discrimination

Buddhi is the faculty of understanding, judgement and discrimination. While Manas receives impressions and generates possibilities, Buddhi has the capacity to examine them and make a decision.

This is where Viveka, or discrimination, becomes important.

Imagine that you are standing at the edge of a cliff. Your mind can produce all kinds of thoughts. You might imagine jumping, flying, walking away, sitting down or simply enjoying the view. Buddhi is the faculty that can recognise what is appropriate and what is not.

Of course, this is a simple example, but it illustrates the distinction.

In ordinary life, we are frequently caught between what we feel like doing and what we understand to be appropriate. Manas may say, “I want this.” Buddhi can ask, “Is this actually good for me?”

This faculty of discrimination becomes increasingly important on the spiritual path.

The scriptures of Yoga and Vedanta repeatedly emphasise Viveka, because without discrimination it is difficult to distinguish between what is temporary and what is lasting, between impulse and understanding, and between the movements of the personality and deeper awareness.

When Buddhi becomes clear, it does not merely become clever. Intelligence and wisdom are not exactly the same thing. A person can be highly intelligent and still make poor decisions. Buddhi in its more refined expression is connected with clarity, discrimination and wisdom.

This is one reason Yoga is not simply about controlling the body. The practices gradually work upon the whole personality, including the faculties through which we understand and interpret our experience.

Chitta: Memory, Impressions and the Depths of the Mind

Chitta is one of the most interesting and easily misunderstood concepts in Yoga.

It is often translated as memory, but this is only part of the picture. In the broader yogic understanding, Chitta refers to the deeper field of mental impressions in which memories, tendencies and Samskaras are retained.

Our experiences do not simply disappear after they happen.

Something remains.

A repeated thought becomes a tendency. A strong emotional experience can leave an impression. Repeated actions can establish habits. These impressions influence how we perceive new situations and how we respond to them.

This helps explain why two people can experience the same situation and respond in completely different ways.

The external event may be the same, but their inner impressions are not.

Chitta therefore has an important influence on both Manas and Buddhi. A person may intellectually understand that a particular habit is unhelpful and yet continue repeating it because deeper impressions are influencing behaviour.

This is where Yoga becomes a process of more than intellectual learning.

Through practices such as meditation, mantra, Yoga Nidra and other forms of Sadhana, we gradually become more aware of the impressions that influence our thoughts and behaviour.

In the traditional understanding of Yoga, Chitta is also associated with the accumulation of Samskaras and, in certain traditions, impressions carried across lifetimes. This is a deeper metaphysical teaching and should not be confused simply with ordinary psychological memory.

Sometimes we experience this aspect of ourselves without being able to explain it intellectually.

We may enter a particular place and feel immediately comfortable or uncomfortable. We may meet somebody for the first time and experience an inexplicable sense of familiarity. We may find ourselves strongly attracted to something without understanding why.

Not every such feeling should automatically be attributed to past lives or Samskaras. But these experiences can remind us that the human personality is more complex than conscious thought alone.

Ahamkara: The Sense of I

The fourth aspect is Ahamkara.

The Sanskrit word is formed from aham, meaning “I”, and the suffix kara, referring to the making or forming of something. Ahamkara can therefore be understood as the function through which the sense of “I” is formed and maintained.

Ahamkara allows us to experience individuality.

I am this person. This is my body. This is my name. These are my possessions. These are my opinions. This is my family. This is my experience.

There is nothing inherently wrong with having an individual identity. We need a functioning personality to live in the world. The difficulty arises when we mistake this limited identity for the whole of who we are.

This is an important distinction.

Ahamkara is not the Atman or the individual soul itself. In classical Yoga and Vedanta, the sense of individuality belongs to the realm of the personality and the inner instrument. The Atman is of a different order altogether.

The spiritual journey is therefore not simply about destroying individuality. It is about understanding the nature of the “I” with which we identify.

As long as I see myself as completely separate from everything else, my experience is organised around that sense of separation.

When Ahamkara becomes less dominant, the boundaries created by identification can begin to soften.

This is why many spiritual traditions place such importance on self enquiry, meditation, devotion and surrender. They invite us to investigate the question: Who am I?

Four Functions, One Experience

Our ordinary experience is not produced by one of these faculties working independently.

They constantly interact.

An experience enters through the senses and is received by Manas. Buddhi interprets and discriminates. Chitta contributes previous impressions and memories. Ahamkara relates the experience to the sense of “I”.

The whole process happens so quickly that we normally experience it simply as “me experiencing something”.

Yoga encourages us to slow this process down through awareness.

As awareness deepens, we begin to notice that thoughts are not the whole of the mind, memories are not the whole of our identity, emotions are not necessarily instructions, and the sense of “I” itself can be observed.

This is an important turning point in spiritual practice.

If I can observe my thoughts, then I am not simply the thoughts.

If I can observe my emotions, then I am not merely my emotions.

If I can observe the changing sense of identity, then there must be something deeper from which that identity is being observed.

This movement from identification towards observation is central to many forms of Yoga and meditation.

Yoga and the Different Faculties of the Personality

The different paths of Yoga can also be understood as providing different approaches to working with the human personality.

Karma Yoga works deeply with action, attitude and identification with the results of action. Through selfless action and the cultivation of the right attitude, we begin to reduce the tendency to make every action about personal gain or recognition.

Bhakti Yoga works strongly with emotion, devotion and feeling. Rather than allowing emotional energy to remain scattered among countless objects of desire, Bhakti gives it a higher direction through devotion, prayer, mantra and surrender.

Jnana Yoga emphasises discrimination, enquiry, contemplation and the search for knowledge of the Self. It works particularly with the faculty of Buddhi and the question of identity, leading the seeker beyond intellectual knowledge towards direct understanding.

Raja Yoga deals with the systematic exploration of the mind and consciousness. Concentration, meditation and the refinement of awareness gradually reveal the movements of the mind and the deeper states of consciousness.

Hatha Yoga has a particularly important place in this process. Traditionally, Hatha Yoga was not developed as a system of physical exercise alone. Its practices prepare the body, breath, nervous system and mind for deeper states of Yoga. In the classical understanding, Hatha Yoga is closely connected with the preparation for Raja Yoga.

These paths should not necessarily be understood as separate compartments. A sincere practitioner will often discover that action, devotion, enquiry, meditation, pranayama and Hatha Yoga support one another.

Learning From Experience

We began with the question of whether we should learn from our past experiences.

The answer is yes, but with an important qualification.

Our past can be a teacher, but it should not become a prison.

An experience becomes useful when we understand it. If we repeatedly carry the emotional weight of an old experience into every new situation, the past begins to determine the present.

Yoga asks us to learn from experience without becoming imprisoned by it.

We can look at what happened, understand our reactions, recognise the impressions that remain, and then move forward with greater awareness.

This is very different from living in constant fear of making a mistake.

The spiritual journey does not demand that we never make mistakes. It asks us to become conscious of what we are doing.

Every experience can become an opportunity for awareness.

Perhaps this is the deeper meaning of experience in Yoga. It is not simply something that happened to us. It is something through which we can come to understand ourselves.

As our understanding of Manas, Buddhi, Chitta and Ahamkara becomes clearer, we begin to see that our experience is not as simple as it first appears. We are constantly interpreting, remembering, identifying and responding.

Yoga gives us the tools to observe this process.

And as observation becomes deeper, the quality of our experience begins to change.

The past can then remain where it belongs: as something from which we have learned, rather than something that determines where we are going.