The States of Consciousness

Before embarking on further discussion on Dreams, lets get to know all the four states of consciousness.

I already wrote about the first two states of consciousness according to the Upanishad which are :

1. Waking state of consciousness when our organs are wide awake and interact with the external world.
2. Dreaming state of consciousness in which we view symbolic transformations of the real world.

The two other states of consciousness are:

3. The unmanifested third state of consciousness:

This is a state of deep sleep in which the mind neither is awake or is dreaming, but the mind remains drowned in perfect bliss. This is the state where the mind experiences void. Void in its truest sense. We can never think “ nothing” when we are awake or even in the second dreaming state of consciousness. Can we? At least, I cannot. Some thought or the other keeps on invading our mind. Even if we don’t want to. This third unmanifested state is when the mind attains a state of void.

4. The fourth absolute state of consciousness:

They say that fourth state transcends the three other states. If waking is the bright day, and deep sleep is the dark night, dreams are the connecting twilight : and all these are relative with respect to the Sun, which itself is the Fourth absolute state. In our life, we are the Sun itself, and the states of consciousness are relative with respect to our mind- our day, our night and twilight with respect to us . It’s the same Self , passing through different states of consciousness.

One advice from me- Enjoy the journey. Enjoy the states of consciousness - which ever you can.

The State of Consciousness - Dreams and Reality

I can’t help but share a story that I came across from the Mandukya Upanisad. It is the story of an ancient king who had a strange dream. In his dream, he saw himself as a tramp- shelter less, without food and in tattered clothes that begged from door to door. He woke up only to find himself in the luxury of the royal couch. The perturbed king called up his wise men to pose the question –“ Am I really the King, momentarily playing the role of a beggar in dream or am I really a beggar dreaming as the King in the Court?”

The rest of the story anyway turned less important once this question gripped my mind. The question of being the beggar or the king boiled down to whether the “waking consciousness” is more real than the dream world? For most of us the answer is ”Yes”. Dreams for us are just for a short while and not useful to the activities of this world.

The hermits of the time in India took this subject seriously. In the pursuit of knowledge for the same, they discovered the four states of consciousness. Among these four, two are the predominant ones –
1. Waking state of consciousness when our organs are wide awake and interact with the external world.
2. Dreaming state of consciousness in which we view symbolic transformations of the real world.

All what we see in our dreams, no matter how weird it seems has got to do something with our real lives. For the above mentioned King, his state of being a beggar, I think, might be some kind of seeking. Although he was a King, he must have been seeking for something - either love, peace or happiness. The act of begging is just symbolic.