What is intellect-consciousness and why is it different from intellect itself?
Upvote:3
Consciousness ('vinnana') is not thinking. Consciousness is experiencing or knowing.
Dependent on intellect & ideas, intellect-consciousness arises. The meeting of the three is contact. With contact as a requisite condition, there is feeling. What one feels, one perceives (labels in the mind). What one perceives, one thinks about. What one thinks about, one objectifies.
MN 18
The term 'intellect-consciousness' is merely a name for a certain type of consciousness (knowing), similar to when describing different types of paint as 'red paint', 'blue paint', 'house paint', 'wall paint', 'outdoor paint', etc. Intellect-consciousness' refers to a consciousness that arises to experience the intellect & its products.
The 'intellect' (called 'mano') is not 'the power of knowing'. 'Mano' refers to the power of intelligence, reason, thinking & decision making, such as described in verse 1 of the Dhammapada:
Manopubbaṅgamā dhammā manoseṭṭhā manomayā. Manasā ce paduṭṭhena bhāsati vā karoti vā Tato naṃ dukkhamanveti cakkaṃ'va vahato padaṃ.
Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.
As described, above, 'mano' (translated as 'intellect') is that which thinks & acts rather than is that which knows & experiences.
It helps understanding to view 'consciousness' as a 'mirror' and to view 'intellect & ideas' as objects reflected in that mirror.
Upvote:5
This is just bad translation. "Consciousness" is the common word for vijnana. A better translation of vijnana is "(subjective) experience". Meaning, you see something => you recognize it => you make sense of it => you experience it.
"Intellect" is how they usually translate manas or mind.
So "Intellect-consciousness" or mano-vijnana, is therefore the subjective experience of what's going on one's own mind. It's when you "see" what you're thinking about etc. I think it's called re-representation in modern cognitive science.
It does not require a higher mind or anything like that. Based on my meditation experience, it works as a cycle. Normally the input from sense organs goes to memory to find matching associations, this is how recognition happens, the basis of vijnana. With manovijnana, instead of the sensory organs, our attention grabs data from short term memory, finds matches in long term memory, puts that back in short term memory - voila, manovijnana.
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