It starts off by saying that
“All ‘this’ is OM which is indestructible. It always existed, it is what exists now and it is also the one that would exist in the future. That is because it is beyond time. It is not just this perceptible world, but even whatever is beyond our domain of perception”.
It uses the symbol OM to denote this entity which it later says is beyond description.
In the very next sentence, it says that this OM is nothing but the Atma or the Brahma talked about throughout the Upanishads as we have also discussed earlier.
It goes on to say that this Atma can be in 4 states. Here the Upanishad is only talking about states that are intelligent and sentient. It leaves off inert world which is also Atma.
What are these 4 states?
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There is a state called Jaagrita in which the Atma is awake to the external world. It interacts with the external world through its senses. It enjoys the world using the senses. Its attention is directed outward. Each one of us are in this state when we are awake.
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There is a state called Swapna in which the Atma does not interact with the external world. But it interacts with entities in the dream world as if they are real entities. It does everything what it would have done when it is awake, except that its attention is directed inward towards the mentally created world. That is what we do when we sleep and start dreaming.
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There is a state called Susupti in which the Atma neither interacts with the external world nor with the internal dream world. That means it is neither awake nor dreaming. It is in deep sleep. When it is in that state, it looks as if its attention is frozen. But it is not that nothing is happening. Actually, when it comes out of that state, it experiences bliss since there was totally lack of hindrances which are common in both wakeful and dreaming states. This state is a gateway to other two states. That means from deep sleep state you can either revert back to wakeful state or once again enter into dream state and visa versa. This is the state we find ourselves when we are in deep sleep.
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Now there is a fourth state called Turiya. That is THE normal state of the Atma. In this state, the Atma is neither awake, nor dreaming, nor even in deep sleep. This fourth state is beyond all the three described earlier.
The prior described three states are something we understand. What does it mean when we say that the Turiya is beyond all the three?
The Upanishad explains this ‘beyond’ state using the same ‘definition by negation’ approach that Upanishads normally use to define the Atma. That is because, the Atma in this state is beyond words, beyond senses, beyond mentation. It is indescribable.
What is the use of knowing such an entity?
The Upanishad says that once you understand this fourth state, you will ‘know’ the reality of the world. That would give you eternal and inexhaustible bliss. That is the reason why one should attempt to know this fourth state.
Now if you closely observe these cryptic statements of this short Upanishad, there seems to be some inherent contradiction. On one hand this Upanishad is saying that there is nothing else in this world except the Atma. On the other hand, it is talking about 4 states this very same Atma can be in. Three of these states are describable but the fourth one is not. But the Upanishad also asserts in the very beginning that this Atma is beyond time. That means that this Atma can be in all these 4 states at the same time!
How is that possible?
Advaitis like Sankara explain this apparent contradiction by inventing the concept of Maya or illusion. They say that the first mentioned three states are part of the illusion and are not real. Only the fourth mentioned state is real. So, effectively there is only one state namely the fourth state or Turiya in which the Atma always abides. The existence of rest of the three states is an illusion – they appear to be there but they don’t exist in reality.
But there is no mention of such a concept of illusion anywhere in this Upanishad or for that matter in any of the Upanishads! Can we explain this seeming contradiction without taking recourse to additional concepts like illusion that find no place in the Upanishads? I will try my own way of explaining it out which I believe is in conformance with the sentences in all the Upanishads and most importantly the story in the Chandogya Upanishad that we talked about earlier.
Before I get into that, let me digress a bit and look at some very interesting reasoning and analogy often given by modern Advaita teachers. These analogies come very close, but fail to explain without raising further contradictions. Please do join me in the next episode for this very interesting explanation which is often claimed to be the Advaiti’s answer to this paradox.
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