THE  THREE  STATES

QUESTION : When not in Meditation or Samadhi , when one is living a worldly life,

is it the same TURYAVASTHA ?

To answer this question, let us begin with our "experiences"

and the "states" of our mind.

Our experiences are either .....

(i)  physical, i.e. touch, smell, taste, etc.

(ii) emotional i.e. love, hate, happy, sad, anger, jealosy,etc

(iii) intellectual, i.e. imagination, creativity, etc

Our mind is behind our every experience, whether physical, emotioal, or intellectual. These experiences occur in our mind's three states.

These STATES are:

(a) Waking State

(b) Dream State

(c) Deep Sleep State

In आध्यात्मिक terms, at any time, we are in one of these three states.

To experience a thing, our senses and our organs of action interact.

Our senses are,e.g hear, vision, feel, taste, smell.

These senses work through our organs of perception.

These organs of perception are ears, eyes, skin, tongue, and nose.

These are our sense organs. They help us perceive things.

Our organs of action are tongue, hands, legs, excretory and procreation organs.

Waking state: जाग्र्दवस्था,  is when sense objects are perceived through

sense organs. e.g. hearing the thunder (i.e. sound, a sense object)

with our ears (sense organ).

We experience the world in the waking state through our body.

The objects we experience are outside our body.

(To keep it simple, we will discuss the subject of body in another discussion).

In the waking state, we have a feeling of doership, and we are enjoyer of

the results. e.g. a goldsmith (doer) making a gold necklace (the result) and feeling good about it (i.e. enjoying the result).

This doership  creates our Karmas.

The waking world appears to be solid and real.

Note, I am saying, it appears to be real, I did not say, it is real.

This is subject of another discussion.

Because the waking world appears to be solid and real, therefore,

it is easy for us to identify ourselves with it.... because our present concept of real is what we can physically touch, feel, enjoy,etc.

Dream State: स्वप्नावस्था, is when we experience the world based on what we saw or experienced in the waking state, e.g. if I enjoy जलेबी, I may see or feel the taste of जलेबी in my dream. Our dreams are impressions of our waking state, i.e.. we can feel the emotions of love, hate, anger, jealosy in our dream state as well.

Our waking world is created by objects, our sense organs,etc. and the experiences of our these senses create impressions on our mind.

These experiences can be intense and they can form deep impressions.

These impressions are like etching on a gramophone record, we can play it back. Similarly, our impressions play back in our dreams. The deeper the impression, the more intense is our dream.

These impressions, in turn, thus create our dream world. The dream world is created, kept alive, and then ended by our mind. Even the persons, including the dreamer, in the dream are created by our mind. This dreamer in my dream can be very different from what I look like in my waking state. Intellect does not play any role in our dream.

There is no doership in the dream, and therefore, no karmas are created

in the dream. There is enjoyership in the dream.

In our waking world, we make choices. We make no choices in our dream world.

During the dream, everything seems logical, even though on waking up we may see it as totally illogical. In the dream state, our Atman does not identify itself with our physical body. By identify, we mean, the connection.

Deep Sleep State: सुषुप्त्यवस्था: Sometime after sleep we get up,

feel really good, and say," Oh, I really slept good. I did not know anything." This is the deep sleep state. here we experience no thoughts,

emotions (except happiness), see no objects. We just feel satisfied or happy. Our atman identifies with this happiness, which is its true nature.

In deep sleep, since we do not know anything, there is neither the doer,

nor the enjoyer, therefore, no karmas are created in the deep sleep.

Again, since we then do not know anything, there is no concept of time,

or space. Since we do not know any one in the deep sleep, there is no

"other", i.e. there is no duality.

Our true nature is the happiness (or Bliss) within us.

In the waking and dream states, we are looking for happiness in the

outside world of objects and emotions. We look at the outside world as real.

In the deep sleep, we do not know the outside world, but as yet, we do not know our inner self either. we only know 'happiness' from the good sleep.

Each of us has different waking experiences, each of us has different dreams, but the deep sleep state of each of us is the same.

Now coming to Turya. Turya is not an अवस्था or a state. It is called the Fourth.

According to Mudukya Upanisad, "It is the background on which dream

and wake arises and disappears. Turiya is just another term to describe

pure awareness. It is also called the Nirvikalpa."

Imagine a movie screen. We see movie on it, we get involved with the story, we feel emotions of pain and happiness, or any other emotion, triggered by the story, as if what is happening is real. The story changes as we watch another movie on the same screen, but the screen does not change. The screen is totally ubaffected by the story and the emotions displayed on it.

What we see in our waking and dream states is like a movie, a story being played, triggering the various emotions in us. We feel it is real ( because as yet, we do not know what is real). Our daily events change, our emotions change, but the screen ... the backdrop ... does not change. The backdrop is just "awareness".

When we remove the story, the movie, then only the backdrop is left,

only the screen is left. When we shun the notion of waking or the

dream states as real, what is left is only pure awareness. Therefore, if and when we have shed the waking and the dream states, we are just about to enter the Nirvikalpa Samadhi.

Therefore, Turya is said to be just before this samadhi, and then we, kind of, leap into this Samadhi.