THREE STATES

Jiva, a living substance of a living being, experiences multitudes of thoughts, events, activities, discernment, and so many others, consciously and non-consciously. During its life cycle, it may experience inward or outward movements. The inward propulsion is to realise its own nature, hitherto covered by sensual thoughts and desires. The outward movement is to appropriate the sensual desires, an outcome of the thought-making factory of the mind. Anything that is sentient, conscious, and cognitive is considered to be life. It takes on different forms at different phases of experiential development—thinking, feeding, reproducing, and multiplying—when energy is used. Samsāra, the state that comes after birth and death, is life. It has a birth, growth, degradation, and death trajectory. Some experiences are realised, adopted, acclimatised, moulded, and incorporated during the life flow processes, and others are remembered fully, half-heartedly, partially, and discarded to the required extent. All experiences of Jiva, latent or manifest, are in direct co-relationship with its attachment and detachment from the sense perceptions of the objects. It is also inversely related to the extent of its outward movement to realise the objects or its inward movement to realise its own self. In a phenomenal world, the Jiva is forgetful of the inner nature of its own self and is propelled to move outwardly to relish the fruits of its desires, good or bad. This propensity causes its own downfall in the world of Samsāra, built with birth, death, sickness, disease, and old age.

1. Outline

The Jiva, forgetful of its nature, is drawn into the world of objects mired in a state of evanescence and illusion. It is forgetful of its root cause of being an inspiration of ātman (the inner spirit or self), the part of the Supreme Self. As such, Jiva is part of the Supreme Self, or Consciousness, but it appears to undergo such states of consciousness. Jiva, instead of moving inward to become conscious of his own self, moves outward to relish the fruits of objects. This outward movement is the root of all mystified covering of Jiva by arrogating all mystified sense-perceived realities. The crucible of mystification is the location of “I” in the world of objects of like-dislike, birth-death, health-sickness, beautiful-ugly, security-insecurity, and so on. According to the sage philosopher Swami Krishnanda, reality is tremendously influenced by the Jiva's perception of objects. Perception, inference, and the other ways of valid knowledge, as well as wrong knowledge, doubt, sleep, memory, and the forms of error such as ignorance, egoism, likes, dislikes, and the fear of death, together with an intense love for life, are the principal psychological associations of the Jiva. Though the Jiva appears as a subject of knowledge in this world, it is not really the metaphysical subject, for its existence is not wholly independent of the appearance of objects; nay, its own body is part of the appearance.

The three stares of bodies are the layers of unconsciousness that envelop the Light of the glorious Self, declares the sage philosopher Swami Krishnananda in his commentaries on Swami Sivananda's Moksha Gita. He further says that the causal body is the immediate and the subtlest and hence the most powerful of the layers of ignorance. It is a state of forgetting the Self. There is the darkness and blindness in the soul, and the soul is left in a state of unknowing of its absolute nature. The second sheath is an amplified version of the first, the subtle body, in which there is distraction in addition to the causal sheath's ignorance, a presentation of lies on top of the forgetting of Reality. The third is the most extreme materialisation of the imaginative awareness, in which it is thickened to flesh and bone and completely cut off from the rest of life. The individual hypnotises itself through vivid imagination into believing that this distinct body is its essential nature, causing awful feelings of separation from Truth. Life on Earth is nothing but a drama about the misery of human egos.

Each state is a stage of consciousness to uncover the veil of ignorance in the process of realisation of own self. Swami Sivananda says there are different kinds of consciousness: physical consciousness, astral consciousness, mental consciousness, supra-mental consciousness, lower Prakamya or Prajna consciousness, cosmic consciousness, superconsciousness, subconsciousness, unconsciousness, dream consciousness, supra-cosmic consciousness, dual or double consciousness, multiple consciousness, higher Prakamya, Virat consciousness, Hiranyagarbha consciousness, Divine consciousness, or Purushottama consciousness, and lastly, the Highest Nirguna Para Brahman consciousness, or Absolute consciousness per se.

2. Types

Gaudapādācārya, in his Mandukya-karika, investigates the nature of consciousness and identifies three states: wakefulness, dreaming, and deep sleep, which it pervades.

The Jiva experiences, in relation to the attachment or detachment to the objects, three states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. In the waking state, jiva is limited to what the sage philosopher Swami Krishnananda calls the psycho-physical state. The concept of reality, accordingly, is arrived at to appropriate the psycho-physical structure.

The universality of experience in the phenomenal world is the primary characteristic of the wakeful state. This precise state is thought to be the source of all human perception, ideation, reasoning, and anticipation about the outside world.

The psycho-physical structure, according to the sage philosopher Swami Krishnananda, consists of nineteen elements that form the subtle body within. The senses of hearing, touch, vision, taste, smell, and smell; the vocal and prehensile; the locomotive, generative, and excretory organs; the five vital breaths, known as the central energy Prāna, the descending energy Apana, the circulating energy Vyāna, the upward energy Udāna, and the equalising energy Samana; the four provinces of the psychological organ, the mind, the intellect, the ego, and the subconscious; these collectively constitute the building blocks, so to speak, of individual experiences. Here, the Jiva enjoys the gross objects. Through the instruments of physical light and consciousness, the mind and senses are able to perceive all types of external objects in this condition. One perceives both his physical body and the outside world when consciousness is directed towards them through the sense organs and thinking. The awareness in the awake state suggests that the outside world is tangible, solid, and governed by laws and regulations. The physical objects that make up waking awareness are its defining characteristic. For the Jiva, the nineteen principles become the means both of enjoyment and suffering in the world of samsāra (birth and death).

When compared to the waking state, the objects of dreaming consciousness are more subtle. Here is Taijasa (endowed with light), the level of existence that the Jiva experiences and, according to Swami Sivananda, enjoys the subtle objects.

Dreaming is a situation in which the sense organs outside the body stop working. The terms "I" or "mine" are not cognized in relation to the gross physical body. Dreams are projected by the mind based on perceptions of objects when awake. Dreams are characterised by internal perceptions, or the awareness of internal objects. In this state, one feels a subtle world and subtle body within oneself but loses awareness of the outside world and his own physical body as consciousness withdraws from it and illuminates only the mind. In a dream, the mind constructs different objects based on the impressions that its waking experiences have left on it. Kāma (passion), avidyā (ignorance), and karma (activity) are the forces that allow the mind to replicate the entirety of its waking life. The mind is both the perceiver and the perceived in the dream world. This condition, Swami Sivananda says, is the Prajna (pure consciousness) whose sphere is deep sleep, in whom all experiences have become one, who is verily a mass of consciousness, who is full of bliss, who enjoys bliss, and who is the way leading to the knowledge (of the two other states).

 Despite being a normal, unremarkable, and inevitable state, deep sleep has a message for us that goes beyond our finiteness regarding its necessity and possibility. It is not permanent, just like in the other two states. A person does not experience any objects, either internal or external, gross or subtle, when they are in the deep sleep state, in contrast to the wakeful and dream stages. The hallmarks of this stage are the absence of "I," or the ego, and the prevalence of peace and tranquility. There is only consciousness. What's important is that consciousness reveals objects if they are present, and when there are no objects to be revealed, consciousness remains alone. In this way, it is different from other states, even though Jiva is part of the same empirical life.

Although it is a part of life, it is so because there is nothing other than Consciousness. Even yet, there was consciousness, even though there were no associated objects or phenomena at that moment. Recollections to the effect that "I was not conscious of anything then" would not be feasible if consciousness had likewise not existed at that time. What's important is that consciousness reveals objects if they are present, and when there are no objects to be revealed, consciousness remains alone.

3. Scriptures 

The Mandukyopanishad, according to Swami Sivananda, enunciates clearly and precisely the fullness of everything encapsulated in “OM.” He says that everything that is included in "OM" is expressed fully and perfectly in the Mandukyopanishad. He claims that, as a result, all that is genuinely past, present, and future is Om. It is really Om, Brahmān, and this Ātman, the Supreme Self, is Brahmān, that which is beyond the tripartite understanding of time. Deep sleep, dreaming, awakening, and Turiya are the four halves of this Ātman. Turiya is all happiness, non-dual, transcendental, and devoid of phenomenal existence. It is indeed Omkara.

Mandukyopanishad enumerates four states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and the state of ekatma (being one with self, the oneness of self). Om (A + U + M +) encompasses past, present, and future, and that transcends time. Ramana Maharshi also expressly states that "one with that supreme reality, there is neither the mind nor its three states, and, therefore, neither introversion nor extroversion. His is the ever-waking state, because he is awake to the eternal self; his is the ever-dreaming state, because to him the world is no better than a repeatedly presented dream phenomenon; his is the ever-sleeping state, because he is at all times without the ‘body-am-I’ consciousness.”

4. Remarks

One could compare the waking state to a large city, the dream state to the city's fort's walls or ramparts, the deep sleep to the city's central palace, and the Jiva to the king who is enthroned there.

After leaving his palace, the king wanders the city, peruses different items, and then goes back to his palace. There could be changes to the Jiva. Since it diminishes during profound sleep, it cannot be referred to as "witness-consciousness." Since it is transcended in the Ātman, it is not real. Moreover, it is nothing more than the Buddhi's (intellectual) mirror of Chaitanya (pure consciousness). The true observer of all three stages, including the cyclical nature of Jivahood, is the Ātman. We refer to this witness state as the Turiya, or the fourth state of consciousness.

-Asutosh Satpathy