| Read Part I here | | Read Part II here |
As we saw previously, Mandukya Upanishad describes three states of consciousness i.e. Waker, Dreamer, and Deep Sleeper along with a fourth as the witness of the three. In the scheme of things the worlds we see when we are awake and in our dreams are relatively less true than the fourth that encompasses all three. The realms of the lesser truth are called Maya.
It takes a great deal of effort to make peace with the fact that - what we have understood as "The Reality" throughout our lives - can also be falsified at some point. However a couple of commonly used pointers here may be useful e.g. a lottery won in dreams can not be encashed in the waking state, the gun one owns as the waker can't be used against the tiger attacked in the dreams. You may just try to recall an event in a waking state and a dream from memory, you would hardly be able to differentiate. These are the places where the concept of grand falsity strengthens itself.
What is true then? True is the one that witnesses all three states, true is that remains to see all that happens in the realms of falsities at different levels. Places may change, situations may change even identities may change (in some mental conditions, or by the effect of psychedelics), but the witness is always permanent to see everything else that changes. Turiyam is that witness, enabler of the 1st person experiences of the change in everything else apart from itself. In the state of deep sleep also the witness is present only the experience vanishes - however, the state is important as it carries the possibility of all the experiences both in waking state and dream state, this is why it is called the seed state.
Vedanta says, very much like the individual sentient beings, if we try to conceive a meta-witness as the union of the consciousness associated with all beings in the world - that would also have these three states. As the universe disappears to a person when he/she is in deep sleep, the deep sleep of that "Meta-witness" is the state of "Pralaya", described as the state of dissolution.
When the Meta-witness dreams, the mental universe comes into being. The mental universe is the collective thought, dreams, ideas, or anything mind-born that exists in minds of all sentient beings in the universe. This meta mind is named Hiranyagarbha or Brahmhaa in the Vedas and is given the stature of the creator of the universe. It is the mind which alone is capable of creating physical and dream universe at least at the experiential level.
When the "Meta-Witness" is awake the meta-mind also acquires a meta-form, the meta-form encompasses all possible forms in the physical universe in a non-time-cross-sectional way. This one is called "Virata" in the Vedanta, at the eleventh chapter of Bhagwad-Gita, Sri Krishna shows this form to the warrior-prince Arjuna.
Vedanta is straightforward in defining God in the whole scheme of things mentioned so far. Like in our deep sleep state the possibility of the universe remains in the seed form, in the case of the "Meta Witness" too, the deep sleep state is the one that carries the seed of the whole creation. This exactly is God, in the way It is commonly understood. This is why later Puranas depicts Vishnu (the supreme lord) to be sleeping (will write the next part on puranic symbolism on this).
An obvious question pops up here, we have been talking about the fourth state (Turiyam) to be "the absolute", what about the fourth of the "Meta Witness"? A close contemplation would lead one to the understanding - Turiyam for "Meta Witness" is none other than itself, that very thing of which the different states we are discussing.
This is Brahman, the pure consciousness that even is beyond God (the way it is understood in religion). While God gets Its relevance when only there is a possibility of a universe (mental or physical) - Brahman transcends even that and remains as the pure entity to witness the creation dissolution cycles of the cosmos
To be continued ...
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