Commentary on the Panchadasi: 3. Swami Krishnananda

 

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Thursday 22, May 2025, 12:00.
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Commentary on the Panchadasi:3. Swami Krishnananda.
Chapter 1: Tattva Viveka – Discrimination of Reality
Mantras: 1-5
Post-3.

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Mantram: 3.

Sabda sparsa dayo vedya vaici tryaj jagare prthak, tato vibhakta tat samvit aika rupyanna bhidyate (3). 

Sabda sparsa—there are five objects of cognition or perception: sound, touch, form or colour, taste and smell. The eyes cannot hear and the ears cannot see, but there is someone who sees and hears at the same time. We can sometimes see, hear, touch, smell and taste at the same time, though the five functions differ from one another. One sense organ cannot perform the function of another sense organ. The ear cannot even know that there is such a thing called the eye, etc. How does it become possible for someone to know that there are five kinds of perception?

That 'someone' is none of these perceptions. The one who knows that one perception is different from another is none of these. It is not the eye, it is not the ear, it is not any of these senses that proclaims, “I know, I see, I hear” and so on. This consciousness which is essential for the perception of the unity that is behind the variety of sense functions has to be different from the sense functions. Vibhakta is 'different from'; vichitra is 'variety'. In the waking condition, jagare, the variety of perception of objects is made possible on account of the variegated functions of the sense organs. We know this very well. It does not require much of an explanation. Thus, it does not require much time for us to appreciate that the knower of the difference of these functions cannot be any one of these functions. That knower is awareness, pure and simple—consciousness, samvid. On account of the transcendence and the unitary character of consciousness above the diversity of the senses, consciousness has to be established as existing, transcending, ranging above the sense functions in the waking condition. In the next verse we will realise that this is the state of affairs in dream also—tatha svapne.

Mantram-4.

Tatha svapne'tra vedyam tu na sthiram jagare sthiram, tad behdo'tastayoh samvid ekarupa na bhidyate (4). 

The difference between waking and dreaming is that waking looks like a longer experience, and dream is often considered to be shorter in comparison with waking. But that is a different matter. In the same way as we have diversity of perception in waking, there is diversity of perception in dream also. In dream we also have mountains and rivers and people, and all kinds of things. How do we know them? We have got dream eyes, dream ears, dream taste, dream touch, and so on. The mind in dream manufactures a new set of senses which are not the waking senses, and these sense organs specially created by the mind in the dreaming condition become the sources of the diversity of perception of dream objects. Even here, in order to know that there is a variety and a diversity of objects in dream, there has to be consciousness. That consciousness in dream is different, once again, as in the case of waking, from the variety that we saw in dream.

Also, the same person wakes and the same person dreams. On the one hand, consciousness is different from the variety of objects and the sensations thereof; and on the other hand, consciousness is different from waking and dreaming. It is not involved either in waking or in dreaming because it knows the difference between waking and dreaming. We know that we dreamt; we know that we are awake. Who are 'we' who make this statement that waking is different from dreaming? So consciousness does two things at the same time. It distinguishes between objects, and transcends the objects by standing above them. Secondly, it distinguishes between the states of consciousness (waking, dream and sleep), and stands above them as turiya—that is, the fourth state of consciousness.

The difference between waking and dream is only a question of shorter or longer duration, though in dream we can also have long durations of experience. But in comparison with waking, we find that we slept for a few minutes and had a long dream; and a few minutes are very short in comparison with the hours of waking. So apart from the fact of the difference in duration between waking and dream, the consciousness operating behind the senses of perception in waking and dream is identical.

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Continued

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