Every verse in the Atma Bodha by Sri Adi Sankaracharya gives one beautiful example to describe the indescribable. You can describe the physical body, you can describe the breath by smoothness or choking etc. You can describe feelings like pleasantness, joy, sorrow, anger, hatred, tears. You can describe ideas and choices between this and that. You can describe even ignorance by saying, “that state of I don’t know what!” You can never describe ‘I’ with any example.
Yet the master poet paints many little pictures with his words and verses. This ‘I’ can be compared to the vast, wide and blue sky which sometimes turns golden, orange, yellow, grey, black or even purple. Whatever colour it may seem to have, it is very much there, yet not there. Hrishikesha is the word used to express consciousness or the Atman. There are the five senses of perception and five senses of action which do the functions of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, talking, grasping, walking, evacuating and reproducing. The master of all these 10 senses is consciousness or Hrishikesha.
This Hrishikesha is spread out everywhere like the sky. However, it is also expressing through the various equipment of people such as body, breath, senses, mind and intellect. These limiting adjuncts or upadhis are different in each individual. The physical body is a limiting adjunct which is different from the breath and the energy system.
This is different from the mind which has various desires in the form of thoughts and feelings. This is different from the intellect which is the choosing and deciding equipment. One human or animal body is different from another. One individual’s energy level and breathing pattern is different from another. A person’s mind and intellect too is not the same as another’s. Even though the consciousness that expresses as life through these limiting adjuncts is the same, it seems to be different from person to person.
When these differences cease, the consciousness remains as just one thing that expresses through all beings. The life in the tree, plant and grass, the life in the animal, bird, reptile, amphibian and insect, the life in the human with all his differences of gender, race, caste, creed, nationality and colour is just the same life. There is absolutely no difference. When we stop identifying with these differences and see the unity of consciousness, that is when the discrepancies cease in our understanding.