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Ancient Indian texts reveal the liberating power of metaphysics
by Jessica Frazier
Indian metaphysics presented a philosophical route to a higher level of existence beyond limits of space and time
Some of the world’s earliest writings suggest an unexpected goal for ambitious minds. Nearly 3,000 years ago, the ancient Indian authors of certain Upanishads (‘special teachings’) exhorted readers to find a fabled knowledge. When one knows that which is ‘woven upon the Whole – he becomes the Whole’. He ‘thinks of what has not been thought of before, and perceives what has not been perceived before’. Thus, comprehending the widest reaches, he is able to ‘conquer the whole universe’.
To modern ears, these promises sound like esoteric mysticism, and it is true that the Sanskrit writings that have reached us from India in the 1st millennium BCE were full of rituals to harness the universe, hymns to ‘the whole’, and praises of the divine as ‘all of this’. The cosmos was an object of wonder that fascinated Indian thinkers.
But one group of thinkers took a uniquely rational approach, focusing on knowledge of the whole and how it affects us psychologically. Far from being supernatural, this knowledge came from rigorous extrapolation to universal features of the cosmos using rational generalisation based on patterns in the visible world. In short, philosophy – metaphysical truths based on inference – was the key to humanity’s highest possibility and its greatest happiness.
Why this high opinion of metaphysics – surely one of civilisation’s most impractical pursuits?
Early Indians had pleaded with the gods for rain and cattle, sons and warriors, health and wealth; we still have their words in the Vedas, some of the world’s oldest texts. Theirs were precisely the prayers we would expect of any early community struggling to survive. But by around 600 BCE, the ability to perform rituals was no longer enough to win favour at the royal courts of the Gangetic Plain. Atheists, gnostics and sceptics were increasingly vocal in the kingdoms further east. Experts in the old Vedic ritual boasted skills in linguistics, geometry, anatomy, astronomy and poetry, and they had been observing the forces of nature for centuries – but to what end? How could they earn their keep in the new climate?
The answer lay in the public’s growing worry about existential problems. Mortal life seemed little more than a flame struck over the open ocean at night; our minds shine but a brief, faint spotlight on the immensity of the world before sputtering into darkness again.
As their frustration grew, India’s ancient inhabitants became obsessed with a new goal: changing our minds so as to alter the very nature of life and improve it from the bottom up. Mental disciplines became all the rage: outsider ascetics developed an arduous new concentration meant to purify the mind into a single, undistracted stream of consciousness… and yoga was born. A young prince named Siddhartha Gautama gave up his inheritance and taught a way to deconstruct the ego and its desires, becoming the Buddha.
Even the world of ideas is mostly a mystery: most of life’s potential experiences, stories and ideas pass us by. Ancient Indians were just getting a glimpse of this as they discovered new ways of thinking along the trade routes west to Persia and Greece, or northeast over the Himalayas into China. Perhaps this hunger to know what we will never see with our own eyes is what drives the modern fascination with period dramas and science fiction. Our vast imaginations pull in the opposite direction from our small, frail bodies.
This creates a tension at the heart of humanity. Mostly, we bury our minds in urgent tasks and expend our excess energy in entertainment. Craving more, we create ever-new stories, envisioning experiences we might have had. But could not all perspectives be gathered into an overarching truth? And could we not realign ourselves with the global not the local, the eternal things not the mortal ones? These ancient Indian authors encouraged us to lead life on a larger scale.
Breaking out of our mortal cage was a passion for many philosophers of the ‘axial age’ (c800-200 BCE). They lived in an era of expanded travel and crosscultural encounter, and had just begun to realise how wide a world was really out there. Places like Athens and Alexandria, and the Silk Road cities of India and China, were idea-markets peddling possible ways to transform oneself. Techniques for becoming immortal were in high demand. On the slopes of the Himalayas, Taoist alchemists offered to transmute mortal men into divine beings, while in the temples of Alexandria followers of Isis hoped her mysteries would help them cheat death – at least for a while. If immortality was popular, magic was a close competitor: who would not want to fly with the gods, like the mysterious Késins of ancient India and the Bodhisattvas of Tibet? Or control minds (a useful skill, mastered by Tantric wizards of South and Southeast Asia), or simply make handsome young men fall in love with you – like the wise and witty Socrates?
Other techniques were less spectacular, but more psychologically astute. Both the Buddhists and the Stoics could teach you to curb your instincts and meet life with exquisite equanimity, untouched by the vicissitudes of tragedy or joy. Or if those options didn’t appeal, one could become a god, slip through the door of the sun, or snuff oneself out of existence – a particularly extravagant form of existential suicide favoured by certain Buddhists. These and many more ‘technologies of the self’, as the philosopher-historian Michel Foucault put it in 1982, offered a panacea for life’s fundamental smallness.
But in the ancient Indian Upanishads, we see one of history’s first distinctly philosophical attempts to solve the problem of human finitude. Vedanta’s metaphysical speculations worked as a kind of therapy, because they tried to position human life in fruitful relation to the whole of things. As individuals, our days are dogged by suffering, frustrated desire and death, and all we love is lost in the end. But just as Ecclesiastes observed ‘generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever’, so the Indian philosophers tried to realign themselves with reality itself. What if life didn’t have to be so small? What if we could expand the small flame of consciousness into a bonfire, and that fire into a sun with rays that reach across the universe and down to its foundations?
The oldest prayers of Hindu culture included questions of a uniquely philosophical nature. One poem from around 800 BCE lamented: ‘What thing I am, I know not clearly,’ and another demanded to know:
Why were we born? By what do we live? On what are we established? Governed by what… do we live…?
The rise of systematic philosophy offered a solution. Those who used induction (the process of generalising new information and abstract principles from the visible world) and deduction (discovering unseen truths hidden within our existing knowledge) came to be seen as rishis or seers, with a unique power to look into the heart of reality. The Mundaka Upanishad tells us that the mind is an arrow able to send thought deep into the imperishable nature of reality – ‘Strike it!’ the author says.
But this was not mysticism per se: they believed that reasoned speculation on the fabric of the world has the power to change our lives. So instead of calling for the gods, one Vedic seer asked:
What was the forest, what was that wood from which heaven and earth were formed? Let the wise seek with their intelligence that place in which all beings are carried.
The wise did just that. One story tells of how the learned man Uddalaka Aruni advised his son to look behind the ‘names and forms’ of the empirical world, ignoring the misleading ‘word handles’ we give individual things. If we can identify the features they all share, then we start to see the underlying fabrics and forces that span time and space. This power to speculate eventually earned a name: the Samkhya Karaka, a philosophical text composed c350 CE, called it anumana or ‘inference’. Learning to see the world with anumana meant always seeing the unchanging substrate of reality behind its changing identities, and noticing the way that our own existence is taking ever new forms, even as we experience it. The Samkhya Karaka’s particularly daring ‘Satkarya’ theory of causation taught that all things, past and present, always exist in a subtle potential form as a power of the material that constitutes it. The present moment is just a spotlight that shines on one small corner at a time – but metaphysics reveals all of reality in its richness.
More than that, it was believed that whatever fills our minds – large ideas or small – that is what we are. This meant that philosophy was also a way of curating one’s own mind. So one Upanishad assures us that: ‘Whatever world a man ponders with his mind … that very world he wins.’ When we understand the whole world, it becomes part of us, so that we are no longer isolated.
Heroes enjoying this exalted state turn up from time to time in Indian literature. The tale of the liberated sage Shuka is told in the Mahabharata. Born enlightened, once he has completed his education, he flies through the cosmos exploring the reaches of time and space. He might put one in mind of those European Renaissance antiheroes of knowledge: Faust and Prospero. But, unlike them, Shuka is unimpeded by the assumption that too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. The idea of a mind stretched to the widest reaches of reality may also remind philosophers of Baruch Spinoza’s concept of an ‘intellectual love’ of the cosmos, unique to sentient beings, in which the universe itself achieves a kind of completion.
In India, the idea of a world-spanning mind was forged in the fire of competition from some of the world’s most radical sceptics, early Buddhists. Their no-self doctrine said that we are here today and gone tomorrow; in fact, we are not even really here today – we are just a cluster of changing elements. But the Hindu schools disagreed, pointing to the mind’s extraordinary capacity to outreach the spatiotemporal bubble in which each person resides. I might live in 2022 in Oxford, but I can share the experiences of persons in Thailand or the US, and imagine different lives I might have lived. With the help of scientists and philosophers, I understand levels of the cosmos that lie beyond the senses, and can access realities, values or ideas that cannot be destroyed with any mere physical body.
In the modern world, we are liable to forget all this. Bodies are real and minds are insubstantial. Ideas seem trivial – barely there. But if, as physics tells us, reality is made as much of waves, patterns and clusters, energy, emergent systems and movement, as of blank blocks of matter, then there is no reason to see ideas as ‘less real’ than physical things. The basic stuff of reality generates atoms, cells, life systems. From these come consciousness, sensations, perceptions, analyses and responses. And from these emerge emotions, concepts, projects, goals, ideals, stories and meaning in all that the word implies. The ‘higher’ levels of reality are not less real – they are just emergent.
What is interesting is where this leaves humans, we curious confections of matter-constrained consciousness. We can do something extraordinary: our mental parts can climb out of the window of the body, and up into the higher levels of reality. There we have access to an unconstrained realm of ideas, meanings and values (as Plato agreed). But even more than that, each of us is an undepleting fount of higher realities for as long as we live. Thus, becoming the world means living from the perspective of reality and knowingly contributing to it in all we do. In the phrase of the existentialist Martin Heidegger, we become the ‘Shepherds of Being’.
This is not a goal that promises pleasure or an escape from death. The Indians and the Greeks both believed in reincarnation, so for them humans didn’t need a greater quantity of life. What we really crave is elevation to a higher quality of existence. ‘Becoming the world’ is a kind of immortality that every philosopher, every astrophysicist, and every daydreamer shares in some measure. Not unlike Plato’s path into the timeless world of pure concepts, the ancient Indian discovery of metaphysics charted a way for aspiring minds to spring the lock of space and time – and fly free.
Jessica Frazier is a lecturer in theology and a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. She is the founding and managing editor of Oxford’s Journal of Hindu Studies. Her books include the edited collection Categorisation in Indian Philosophy: Thinking Inside the Box (2014) and Hindu Worldviews: Theories of Self, Ritual and Reality (2017).
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Your daydreams know something you don’t. Look closely
by Vardah Bharuchi, psychological associate
Noticing the patterns in mind-wandering can reveal important needs that have yet to be addressed in real life
Alone in her bedroom, Nida closes her eyes and crosses into another world. Music blares through her headphones as she begins pacing back and forth, slowing and quickening her movements to the changing rhythms of an invisible scene unfolding in her mind. She pictures friends and cousins dancing around her. Fairy lights begin to glow, casting shadows across the lawn outside her home. She mouths the words to imagined conversations with wedding guests: family, loved ones, celebrities. Here, in this sweeter-than-reality dream, she is a glowing bride surrounded by lights and laughter.
A substantial portion of our waking lives – perhaps as much as 50 per cent – is spent in mind-wandering. According to a paper by the researchers Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert at Harvard University, people ‘are thinking about what is not happening almost as often as they are thinking about what is.’ We may find ourselves confronted with images that seem to arise spontaneously; we may envision possible futures, or become consumed by ruminations about the past; or we might, like Nida, deliberately conjure delicious worlds in which we are more successful and more loved.
For most people, daydreaming is not a problem. In fact, it can improve our lives in many ways. Mind-wandering appears to be closely related to creativity: daydreaming, then, might allow us to stumble onto buried emotions or new ideas, and writers and artists have long found breakthroughs in daydreams. Imagined futures can also allow people to test possibilities without immediate risk, and imagined perspectives can support moral reasoning and social understanding, allowing us to explore ways of being kind or resilient. A Harvard study on mice from 2023 suggests that daydreaming might even shape the brain itself by contributing to neuroplasticity.
Problems arise when mind-wandering undermines focus on critical tasks, or when imagination becomes the only reliable site of fulfilment. There are many studies that have shown how drifting thoughts can negatively affect attention, mood, memory and academic performance. It turns out there is a cost to thinking about what is not happening. In some cases – when mind-wandering begins to impair daily functioning – it can become pathological, requiring professional help.
Yet even when daydreaming becomes maladaptive, its content and intensity can be powerful guides pointing us towards the places where our attention and care are required. Daydreams may return, again and again, to particular themes: relationships, recognition, threats, regrets, desires, fears. Are they trying to tell us something? And, if they are, how can we learn to pay attention to the messages rising from our unconscious?
The idea that daydreams might be communicating something important becomes especially relevant in cases of extreme mind-wandering. I have encountered such cases in my role as a child psychologist at the hospital where I work in Karachi, Pakistan. These daydreams interest me because the fantasies offer comfort or temporarily relieve emotional distress. The content and intensity of these troubling daydreams may reveal something important to the dreamer.
Immersive forms of daydreaming can involve extended, vivid inner narratives. These fantasies are often emotionally rich, recurring and accompanied by bodily movement or sensory imagery – the warmth of an imagined sun or the feeling of being in a crowd. At the far end of this spectrum lies what the clinical psychologist Eli Somer termed maladaptive daydreaming (MD): a pattern of excessive, compulsive fantasy that can interfere with daily work, study, relationships or self-care. People with MD frequently describe elaborate inner lives that feel more compelling than everyday reality, as in the case of Nida and her vision of becoming a bride. MD has not yet been formally recognised in diagnostic manuals, such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and its boundaries remain contested. Research suggests overlaps with ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and dissociative symptoms.
Two individuals with similar profiles may daydream in radically different ways
The seeds of such daydreaming are often sown in childhood. MD is consistently linked to early emotional adversity, and many individuals report histories of loneliness, bullying, trauma, neglect or chronic stress. A child who experiences adversity might sit in class, eyes fixed on the board while her mind drifts elsewhere; or they may lie awake at night, weaving stories that feel safer than sleep. At first, these imagined worlds offer harmless distraction. But the fantasy can quickly become something deeper: a place to find comfort and recover a sense of control.
Studies indicate that there may be shared patterns contributing to MD. Somer together with his colleague Nirit Soffer-Dudek have suggested that factors such as attentional regulation and high fantasy-proneness can increase susceptibility to immersive inner lives. Other research has proposed the possibility that there may be biological contributors, particularly among those with ‘hyperdopaminergic’ brains that experience chronically elevated dopamine activity. Yet neither shared patterns nor biological vulnerability explain why particular fantasies recur, nor why they take the forms they do. Two individuals with similar profiles may daydream in radically different ways depending on their histories and social environments. The content of their dreams matters.
The dominant clinical approach to maladaptive daydreaming has focused on symptom reduction: limiting the triggers that invite mind-wandering and learning to redirect attention when it strays. These strategies have real value, especially when functioning is severely impaired. But, applied in isolation, they risk overlooking what the daydreams could be saying.
If a person’s daydreams reliably return to scenes of love, success or safety, this suggests that something more than poor impulse-control is at stake. A young doctor may repeatedly dream of becoming the finest physician in the world, of receiving awards on a global stage. Beneath the fantasy lies a hunger for recognition from family and friends. A young boy may picture himself fighting the bullies at his school, performing spectacular feats of strength. Outside the fantasy, he feels weak and ashamed. Paying attention to the mind-wandering without addressing the underlying deprivation leaves the need intact.
So what is the alternative? The answer is straightforward to describe, but sometimes difficult to practise. Importantly, it doesn’t apply only to people with MD. Anyone who daydreams can benefit.
Ask the younger version of yourself what she needed, then allow your adult self to respond
Begin by noticing patterns: what tends to happen just before your mind wanders, and what seems to prompt it? Perhaps you have had a fight with a colleague; perhaps someone ignored your attempts to spend time together. Next, attend to the emotions and roles that shape the fantasy. Is the dream giving you a feeling that is otherwise missing from your waking life – a sense of being admired or safe? Consider also the themes at the centre of the daydream. If it turns on friendship, this may point towards a need for relational repair or expansion. If it centres on competence or visibility, it may be calling for situations in which your skills and effort are genuinely recognised. Armed with this understanding, you can begin to consider how certain unmet needs might be addressed more directly.
If your daydreams are particularly intense and you wish to explore them more deeply, writing can help. Try composing a letter to the younger version of yourself from the time when you first recall experiencing the kind of daydream you’re interested in. You can ask her what she needed, then allow your adult self to respond. The psychotherapist Susan Anderson has described how this kind of dialogue – between the inner child and the present self – can begin to mend the loneliness or longing beneath some fantasies.
I once worked with an adult who had begun daydreaming as an adolescent. She repeatedly dreamed of being popular and loved. She longed for a kind of affection and emotional attunement that was absent from her relationships with caregivers and friends. Unable to share or name this vulnerability at the time, she retreated into her imagination. The fantasies grew intense and recurring, and they persisted into adulthood. Rather than attempting to extinguish the dreams themselves, in therapy we focused on addressing the needs of her younger self. In time, the loneliness driving the fantasies began to ease. She and I did not seek to recreate the fantasy in reality. Our goal was to honour its message through small, grounded gestures, and to attend to needs and desires that had gone unacknowledged for too long.
Mind-wandering is neither straightforwardly good nor bad. It might be better understood as the mind’s way of directing our attention to core needs. Our fantasies are sometimes organised around what matters most to us, even when, or especially when, we have not yet found the words for what those things are.
Whatever kind of daydreamer you are, the key is not to banish daydreams, but to remain in dialogue with them: what is this dream asking for? What would need to change in your life for this fantasy to lose its particular hold on you? These are, in my experience, some of the most productive questions you can ask if you’re interested in understanding your daydreams.
Nida paces in her room. Her steps rise and fall with music only she can hear. But she is not merely dreaming. She is remembering something her soul longs for.
Vardah Bharuchi is a lecturer and associate clinical psychologist at Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan. She is also a psychological associate (supervised practice) at Lifespan Psychological and Neuropsychological Services in Burlington, Canada.
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