The Chitta Suffusion Hypothesis

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How Awareness Becomes Bound or Liberated

The Four Layers of the Mind

The ancient psychology of consciousness from the taittiriya upanishad describes four layers operating together to form the mind. Of these, three are equivalent to the modern classification. The fourth layer remains unknown to modern science. 

Layer	Function	Modern Analogue
manas	Receives sensory input, holds memories, and produces inner chatter.	Working mind / sensory-affective buffer - data store
buddhi	Discerns, evaluates, plans, and projects into the future.	Executive intellect / modelling system - central processor
ahaṃkāra	Tags experience with "I" and colours it with emotion.	Affective salience & identity network - the ego
chitta	The substratum of awareness that records deep impressions (samskāra).	Subtle awareness / baseline consciousness - no modern equivalent

The chitta is not another thought processing part of the brain but the silent background over which thoughts are constructed. The chitta is a steady state while thoughts and emotions flit over the surface. Ideally, we would want the chitta to remain luminous and still - an observer untouched by the turbulence above it. But the reality turns out otherwise.

How Suffusion Happens

Each time the manas and buddhi replay experiences, the ahamkara attaches emotion and identity to them. These emotional-cognitive loops etch patterns into the chitta. The more charged the experience is, the deeper the impression left on the chitta. Over time, the chitta ceases to be transparent; it becomes suffused, filled with the residues of thought and emotion. It starts to believe that the thoughts and emotions are part of its self.

This suffused chitta functions like water clouded by dye - it reflects what is observed, distorted by what has been accumulated in manas, processed by buddhi and coloured by ahamkara. The chitta loses the clarity of its original nature and effectively becomes a mirror of the mind that has developed in the physical brain. This is why, even after death, the memories and personality of the person that was left behind persists in the soul (also called the astral body).

Meditation begins the purification process, separating the contamination from the water, which can then become clear again.

Meditation as Decoupling

Meditation is not about stopping the thought process. Stopping the thought process is akin to stopping the heart. Thinking is a physical activity that can only stop when the brain stops functioning. Some gurus have explained the process as stilling the mind while others have suggested seeking the silent spaces between thoughts.

John Wheeler, in his video You Were Never Born and You'll Never Die, suggested visualising the true Self as the sky and the thoughts and emotions being generated in the brain as clouds floating by in the sky. The true Self is permanent and unchanging and that is what we should focus upon to attain the stillness needed. Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, in his Miracle Mind App, suggested listening to or chanting the mantra "I am not the body, I am not the mind" while focusing on one's breathing. These and other methods are mechanisms to enable the chitta to identify itself and decouple from the rest of the mind.

During meditation, by observing the play of thoughts and emotions, one can become aware of the Self that is doing the observation. That awareness weakens the intense coupling that has been established over a lifetime. With continued practice, the awareness will grow and strengthen until it is able to manifest distinctly even when not meditating. By that stage, the seeker would have attained the ability to engage with the life around him without becoming emotionally or intellectually entangled.

This is when the impressions gathered from the world of maya will no longer penetrate the calm within. As the chitta learns to rest in its own silence, it can attain the ability to look inwards and read the embedded script that is guiding us from within. That inward seeking can bring the person to the enlightened state of a Raja Yogi.

What Happens at Death

For most people, the chitta is heavily suffused with the stored impressions of thoughts and emotions. These impressions continue to echo even after the physical body has been left behind, thereby producing an after-image of the mind and denying the chitta the ability to realise its true nature. The astral body then stumbles about, trying to connect with the material realm that it can no longer touch. For some, this state of confusion continues and they remain as ghosts, stuck to the material realm and struggling to connect with it. Some ghosts do connect partially and cause poltergeist effects that can become frightening or even dangerous.

Most cultures have post death rituals which are often elaborate mechanisms to communicate with the departed ones in order to help them with the process of moving along. The familiarity of the rituals could help to ease the confusion. Expectations about the afterlife would influence what is experienced on the other side. We carry out these rituals blindly because we can only guess what would actually happen in the afterlife. There are people who claim expertise in these matters. Believing them or not is a personal choice.

Beyond the initial confusion, that echo of the physical life carried by the chitta may also account for the persistence of identity fragments beyond death, and even the appearance of "past-life" memories that may find expression in a new physical anchor. Ordinarily, the karma is only attached to the physical body and influences the cause-consequence matrix within which the sequence of body manifestations occurs. But a chitta suffused with mental and emotional memories of the previous life remains entangled in the karma of that body and carries that karma from one body to the next.

However, if the chitta knows itself and is clear about the karmic lessons it is meant to be learning, the departure from the body is nothing more than a simple withdrawal of attention, The awareness is neither bewildered nor confused. Having left the body, it only takes on another lifetime in the flesh if there are attachments to the physical experience remaining that need to be flushed out. If there are no attachments remaining, it is free from the karmic cycle.

Liberation, is therefore not a reward for a life of piety but a state of emancipation attained by disentangling the awareness from the residual memories of the physical life.

Implications for the Seeker

If this hypothesis is true, every act of mindfulness matters far beyond the present life. Each moment of conscious stillness clarifies the chitta, while every thoughtless reaction to an external stimulus clouds it. Meditation, self-inquiry, forgiveness, and love are therefore not merely moral niceties but technologies of consciousness - the means by which the awareness can become distinct enough to know itself.

Liberation is simply the moment when the chitta realises experientially that it was never truly bound to the flesh. The path to liberation and Self Realisation lies within, not without.