The Mandukya Upanishads - 5.3. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Friday, November 06, 2020. 09:30. AM.

Section - 5.Consciousness and Sleep - 3.

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Futile it is to run after the shadows of the world of objects. Foolishly you go to the things of the world which only tire your senses and drive you back to sleep, giving you nothing, giving you false promises, tantalising you, making you look foolish. This is the world; and yet, again and again, do you go to the world, forgetting what you saw in the state of sleep. We forget the sleep experience. This is the malady of all our waking toils. If you could remember what you had in sleep, you will never come back to this waking world of multiplicity. If consciousness were there in sleep, you would not like to return to this waking world. But you remain unconscious. So, you arc driven back by an impulse of work, once again, to the waking world. Consciousness of sleep is equal to Samadhi. If sleep is to be coupled with consciousness, it becomes Atma-Sakshatkara, the realisation of the Atman. This is what they call Supcrconsciousness. This is Nirvana, Moksha, Kevalata – Liberation. This is your real nature. This is why you are full of Ananda in sleep. You go to the blessedness of eternity and infinity in sleep, but you are not aware of it.

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Anandamayo anandabhuk cetomukhah: What is the instrument through which you enjoy this Ananda? Not the senses, not the mind. While there were nineteen mouths for you in the waking and dreaming states, there are no such mouths in deep sleep. Here, the mouth is not the mind or the senses, but consciousness alone is the mouth – Cetvmukhah. Consciousness enjoys bliss. Who enjoys bliss? Consciousness alone, is the answer. It is 'Chit' that experiences 'Ananda', not the Indriyas or the Manas, the senses or the mind. In deep sleep there is only Ananda experienced by Chit. You experience Satchidananda, here, Consciousness-Being, as such. But something else happens there, a very intriguing factor starts working, which covers the consciousness, and makes you come back to the waking life with the same foolishness with which you entered the state of sleep.

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This is Prajna, the consciousness which is in its own pristine nature, knowing everything and not being associated with anything external. This is the transcendent state in relation to waking and dreaming, the cause of all experiences in waking and dreaming, the Karana-Avastha, in relation to which waking and dreaming are effects, Karya-Avastha. In correspondence with this Prajna, or the causal condition of Anandamayatva of the Jiva, there is a Universal Causal Condition, known as Isvara. While the waking consciousness, individually, is called Visva, it is called Taijasa in dream, and Prajna in the deep sleep state. Correspondingly, from the cosmic level, we have Virat in waking, Hiranyagarbha in dreaming, and Isvara in deep sleep. While we, ordinarily, hold that the impressions of waking create dream and an adjournment of all the activities of these impressions is sleep, thus deducing dream from waking and sleep from both, in the cosmic level we cannot make such deductions, because a reverse process takes place there which seems to be a prior condition to the individual state. Isvara being the cause of Hiranyagarbha, and Hiranyagarbha being the cause of Virat. The relationship between the individual and the cosmic, between Visva and Virat, Taijasa and Hiranyagarbha, Prajna and Isvara is one of organic integrality, and a realisation of this organic connection of being will land the Jiva in Isvaratva and make it at once omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent.

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End.

Next-Section 6: The God of the Universe

To be continued ....

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