Meditation According to the Upanishads -5. Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday 12, October 2024, 05:50.
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Scriptures
Meditation According to the Upanishads -5. 
Swami Krishnananda.
(Spoken on January 14th, 1973)
Post-5.

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Therefore, the three states—waking, dream and sleep—are only temporal efforts at the bringing about of a cessation of disharmony between consciousness and objects, now struggling, now turning back, and then completely forgetting the trouble itself due to exhaustion. It is like a warrior going to the battlefront and fighting and, unable to conquer the enemy, returning home to rest; then, unable to even bear this suffering, he goes to sleep as if everything is all right but dreams of the battle, and wakes again only to realise the searing fact that the battle is going on and he has yet to face it. The whole of the samsara chakra, the cycle of births and deaths, the pains and joys of life, are a series, a circular movement, as it were, of the effort of consciousness to completely free itself from the clutches of objective confrontation. Hence, we are no better whether we are in waking, dream or sleep. We are equally fools in all three states.

The freedom of the soul is in the fourth state of consciousness, called turiya. This fourth state of consciousness is not really the fourth, numerically. It is the fourth in the sense that it is not any one of the three states already mentioned. It is universal consciousness and, therefore, we cannot call it the fourth. But because it is not any of these three, we categorise it as the fourth state, turiya, for our own convenience. In the waking condition we are externally conscious, in the dream condition we are internally consciousness, in the sleeping condition we are absolutely unconscious, and in turiya we are super-conscious. External consciousness, internal consciousness, unconsciousness and super-consciousness are the states through which we have to pass.

Super-consciousness, sometimes called the supramental state, turiya, is inclusive of all that is in the other three states of consciousness. Whatever was there of worth and meaning in the condition of waking, dream or sleep is also to be found in the turiya state, only freed from the tension of it. The turiya state of consciousness is the goal of life. It is described as nāntaḥ-prajñam, na bahiṣ prajñam, nobhayataḥ-prajñam, na prajnañā-ghanam, na prajñam, nāprajñam, adṛṣtam, avyavahārayam, agrāhyam, alakṣaṇam, acintyam, avyapadeśyam, ekātma-pratyaya-sāram, prapañcopaśamam, śāntam, śivam, advaitam, caturtham manyante, sa ātmā, sa vijñeyaḥ (Ma.U. 7). This is how the Mandukya describes the fourth state of consciousness. In the turiya state we are not aware of anything outside as we are now seeing so many things in front of us in the waking state, nor do we see things inside as in dream. In that condition we are not externally aware of anything, nor are we internally aware of anything, nor are we unconscious. Then what are we? We are conscious. Conscious of what? Not of external things, and not of internal things. Nobody can say what it is. Prapañcopaśamam: The world ceases to exist there. It is dissolved. Like a sugar cube is dissolved in water, the whole universe gets dissolved into it. Prapañcopaśamam, śāntam, śivam, advaitam, caturtham manyante, sa ātmā: That is our Self, that is our essential nature. Our essential nature is not a struggle with objects, with persons and things in the world, nor is our essential nature a condition of sleep and reverie. Our essential condition is the universality of consciousness.

This analysis of the three states individually experienced by every person every day is also said to have a cosmic counterpart, which is not very clearly set forth in the Mandukya Upanishad. The Upanishad deduces that there should be a cosmic counterpart of these three states experienced by individuals—namely, the waking, dream and sleep states. While we are individually body-conscious in the waking state, the cosmic counterpart, known as the Virat, is said to be universally, physically conscious. Or, to explain it in another way, there is a simultaneous consciousness of all the physical existences in the cosmos. This is said to be the cosmic counterpart of the individual, physical condition.

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