The 3 States alas Advaita Vedanta
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The 3 States alas Advaita Vedanta
According to Mandukya, the three states of Waking, Dreaming and Deep Sleep are nothing but the worlds we experience because of the projection or withdrawal of the three bodies mentioned above. When we are in the Sleep State, we are in the Causal Body, which is formless. When we come to the dream state, the Causal Body has projected the Subtle Body, and when we come to the waking state, the Causal Body has also projected the Gross Body. We can understand the details through the following diagrams.
Based on the three states, one can now understand the phenomenal characteristic of the sleeper, dreamer and waker through the following diagram. The term “vasanas” means memory. Through the stored vasanas, the Causal Body projects the other two bodies. This diagram helps appreciate that one and the same consciousness appears as the different universes of the sleeper, dreamer and waker depending on the bodies being projected.
Analysis of the Three States
Having understood the above concepts we can go into how the Mandukya Upanishad analyses them to reveal Turiya/Brahman/Non-Dual Reality. The Upanishad asks one to appreciate the following by analysing the three states.
All three states appear and disappear to a common Seer/Witness/Experiencer. In one’s life, one intuitively assumes that one is the same waker, dreamer and sleeper even though the worlds of the sleeper, dreamer and waker are entirely different. What makes one assume that the same “I” persisted through the three states, even though one’s ego-identity kept changing from being a waker to someone else as a dreamer (One may have become a child in one’s dreams but is an adult as a waker) to no-one as a sleeper? When one wakes up from dream or sleep how does one have a memory of the dreamer and the sleeper? Memory is always about an experience. If there was no experiencer in the sleep state like we have in the dream and waking state, then who experienced the sleep state, which appears as a memory (I slept well) in the waking state?
Can the waking state, dream state or sleep state be real because all three states keep changing and the reality within one state, cancels the reality within another state? In the waking and dream states there is a phenomenal world of forms but in sleep state the entire phenomenal world including one’s mind and body are wiped out? Can the phenomenal world which includes one’s mind and body be real if it is absent in one of the three states?
The first point establishes the fact that the real “I” is not whom we are assuming ourselves to be – “The Waker”. This is because it is absent in two of the three states. Reality can never cease to exist. When I get up, I don’t feel that I am a different being from the one who slept and the one who dreamt. My sense of being is continuous. Neither the waker, dreamer or sleeper can be the one responsible for my continuous sense of being. It has to be something that is existent in all three states. What is it? It is Awareness/Consciousness/Witness/Turiya which is NOT the individual experiencer present in the waking and dream state and which is lost in the sleep state. Awareness/Consciousness/Witness/Turiya is the Ultimate Experiencer which persists even in the sleep state. This is our real “I”/Self. The second point establishes that the phenomenal world of objects, including our body-mind, we experience in the waking and dream states cannot be real because they are absent in the sleep state. Combining the two we can say in negative terms – “I am NOT the Body-Mind” or in positive terms, I can say – “I am Self/Awareness/Witness/Brahman/Atman/Turiya/Non-Dual Knowledge” which is beyond the three states of waking, sleeping and dreaming.
The final point one needs to appreciate is that the ultimate reality being formless, non-dual and beyond space and time (because it is Witness to the projection of space-time and the phenomenal world of forms in the waking and dream states and their dissolution in the sleep state) it cannot ever be said to be born. Thus, Ultimate Reality in Advaita is called Aja or unborn or birthless. All entities of relative existence possess six characteristics, such as birth, duration, growth, change, decay and death. Brahman/Self/Witness/Awareness is free from them.
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