The Mandukya Upanishad -4. Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, December 10, 2021. 7:00.PM
The Mandukya Upanishad -4.

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So, the nineteen mouths of the waking condition are psychologically projected by the mind in the dreaming state also, and there also we have all these experiences, every blessed thing, as we have in the waking state. 


The Mandukya Upanishad is a study of these states. It is said that if one properly understands the Mandukya Upanishad and its implications, one need not read any other Upanishad afterwards. 


Mandukyam ekam eva alam mumukshunam vimuktaye – For the sake of the liberation of the soul, one Upanishad is sufficient, the Mandukya Upanishad, provided it is understood properly in its deep connotations. 


We should not just read it only to understand of the lower meaning of it. The suggestion given by the Mandukya Upanishad is to take one's consciousness deeper and deeper into the very root of one's personality – from external sensations, from body etc. to what one really is in one's deepest essence.


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There is a third state, called sleep, where not only are we not aware of the body, but even the psychological functions are not there. 


The mind does not think, the intellect does not decide, and we do not even know that we exist. Our existence itself is abolished, as it were; a nothing. It is a nothing of which we are not even aware that it is a nothing. To be aware that it is a nothing is something, but even to be not aware that it is a nothing – that is pure nothing, unadulterated. 


But, what is happening there? Are we dead? No; very much alive. 


Who told us that we are alive in sleep when we call it nothing and our awareness is totally obliterated by something? 


We are totally oblivious of all things happening there. When we did not even know that we are existing, how do we come to the conclusion that we were alive at that time? 


Nobody told us. We ourselves conclude, "I am the same person now that I was before I slept yesterday. Therefore I conclude that I must have been existing in sleep. Today I am not another person – I am the same person that I was yesterday. Therefore I must have existed in sleep." 


But how do we know that we are the same person? We may be another person; every day we can change and become somebody else. This does not happen. A continuity of consciousness is maintained between yesterday's experience and today's experience. Is this not interesting and surprising? 


We are very certain, cocksure that we are the same person today that we were yesterday, and our consciousness is continuing even through the sleep condition, making us feel we are existing today in the same way as we existed yesterday. 


That is to say, we did exist in the state of deep sleep. The proof of it is only our conviction that we are the same person today as we were yesterday. We have a memory of having slept.


To be continued ....




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