Meditation According to the Upanishads: 2. Swami Krishnananda

 

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Saturday 24, October 2026. 18:00
Article
Scriptures
Meditation According to the Upanishads: 2.
Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on January 14th, 1973)

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Thus, entering into a study of the states of consciousness, the Mandukya Upanishad gives us a beautiful exposition of at least three of the strata of consciousness, which we generally call the waking, the dream and the sleep states of consciousness, the condition through which our essential being passes in respect of its object. There are really no states for consciousness; it is eternal, yet it appears to have states when it sets itself in opposition to an object. The three states mentioned here are really three states of the conflict of consciousness with its object. If consciousness were not set in opposition to its object, there would be no states at all. But there are objects of consciousness, and it is these objects that create a series of states. The difference in the states of consciousness is due to the difference in the kind of object that is presented to consciousness in the different states. When the objects change in their relationships and intensity, consciousness also seems to change.

Waking consciousness, the condition in which we are at present, is that state of consciousness where it is in relation to physical objects. The confrontation of consciousness in the waking condition is with physical things, the physical universe. We are struggling to find a proper relationship of our consciousness with the world outside. The activities of life, all the enterprises of whatever kind in which we may engage ourselves in the waking condition, are a struggle of consciousness to recognise a balance between itself and the object. This is waking life. We are busy throughout the day in various professions and fields merely to bring about a balance of our consciousness with the outside world, in which we do not succeed. Whatever be our effort at trying to bring about this equilibrium between ourselves and the world, we remain a failure. Nobody has established a balance between himself and the world, but yet this is the aim behind the activities of the world.

When the mind is tired of this effort at striking a balance between itself and the world outside, it withdraws itself due to sheer fatigue and the inability of the bodily condition to maintain this period of tension for a long time. Then we fall back into an internal struggle similar to our struggle with the external world. This is called dream. The condition of dream is that in which consciousness is in a state of tension similar to the tension in waking, except that the objects in dream are psychic while in waking they are physical.

In dream the struggle continues, but with imagined objects. There is very little difference between the waking and the dreaming conditions as far as the efforts and struggle of consciousness are concerned, and the experience of pain and pleasure are concerned. Irrespective of the fact that there is a difference between physical and psychic objects as they appear in waking and dream, as far as the experiencer himself is concerned, there is very little difference. The sorrows and joys of our waking life can come to us also in dream, and consciousness may not find itself in a different situation than the one in waking.

But the purpose of consciousness is to cease, to put an end to, all tension with objects. In this effort it has not succeeded in the waking condition, and it is not going to succeed in the dreaming condition either. Merely because we only contemplate objects in the mind instead of actually confronting them physically, it does not mean that the mind has ceased from its effort. What gives pain, inconvenience and discomfort is struggle of every kind.

In sleep, consciousness falls back into a condition of inactivity where, though it is not in a state of harmony with its objects, at least it is unconscious of the disharmony that is there. See the difference between samadhi and sleep. While in samadhi we have a consciousness of harmony, in sleep there is an unconsciousness of disharmony. Quite different and opposite they are, though they look alike. The difference is as between the joy of a wise man and the joy of a fool. Both are happy people. An idiot is happy and a genius is also happy, but the difference is very obvious. The negative condition into which we enter in sleep is a defeatist position of consciousness where it has struggled but failed in its attempt.

Hence, the Upanishad tells us all these three states are phenomenal. They are states to be traversed through, transcended, and the real nature of consciousness cannot be recognised or seen either in waking, dream or sleep. Sleep is, actually speaking, the mischief maker. The real ringleader we will find in the deep sleep state. The potentiality for suffering is there in a covered form even in the state of deep sleep, like a tree existing in a seed, and it will sprout up into activity, into the actual experience of pain and pleasure, when we enter the dream and the waking conditions.

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.

Virat, or Vaishvanara, is the cosmic physical consciousness, of which the vishva, or the individual waking condition, is regarded as a part, a segment or a section. Similarly, consciousness in the dreaming condition, known as taijasa, is said to have a cosmic counterpart, known as Hiranyagarbha. The individual causal condition we call sleep has a cosmic counterpart, known as Ishvara. Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat are the names given to the universal counterpart of the individual states of consciousness—sleep, dream and waking, known as prajna, taijasa and visva, respectively. But the distinction is made that while the individual conditions are powerless and ignorant, the cosmic conditions are omnipotent and omniscient.

We may wonder how, though the parts are ignorant, the total becomes omniscient. The total is not merely a total of ignorances. When the total is reached, the characteristics of the particulars change automatically because the particulars, or the individuals, are isolated from one another on account of the existence of tamas and rajas; and inasmuch as tamas and rajas cannot be said to exist in totalities, they are completely removed, lifted up in the cosmic condition where shuddha pradhana shakti is said to predominate. Therefore, Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat are regarded as omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, as opposed to the individual conditions of location in a particular place, which are ignorance and unhappiness.

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