Essence of Vedanta - Part 4

Three States of Consciousness

Dear All,

In the previous post, we witnessed 2 states of King Janaka.

One state is when he is in the royal court, discussing various administrative matters with his council of ministers and also when he is in private chamber in the company of his beloved wife.

2nd state is when he finds himself in the forest, tired and hungry, with few offering him food, with the tiger chasing them all and taking the food all to itself. 

Let us get deeper into these states on what vedanta says and explains about these states.

1. Waking state

Imagine you are walking down the streets, reaching a temple, standing in the sanctum sanctorum, praying to the Lord with your eyes closed and then returning home and then thinking about the experience you derived in the whole process. 

In this scene, your body is active, your mind is active and your intellect, your thinking process is active.

Thus, Waking state is the state when one is aware of what is going on around oneself. 

Such awareness is possible by the senses gathering the information and then transmitting them to the brain, where actual cognition happens.

Thus, King Janaka, when he is conducting a meeting with his ministers or when he is having his sumptuous dinner with his wife, is aware of the surrounding and the senses are gathering the information of what is happening around him and then transmitting the information to his intellect which then changes the information gathered by senses to experience of the intellect.

2. Dream state

So what is the difference between waking state and a dream? Well, they are actually both the same in that you perceive sound, touch, colour, taste and smells.

Even in your dream you see the beautiful green hills, you feel the cool breeze and taste the sweetness of a freshly made laddu! So the perception of objects is common to both waking and dream states. So, again, what is the difference? 

It’s all about what instrument (indriya) you use to perceive the object. In waking state you use your physical instruments (ears, eyes, tongue, etc). 

But in a dream, you do not use these same instruments to perceive objects. 

You are able to see a red flower in your dream, in spite of physical eyes being closed! 

You can hear the sound of the waves crashing onto the beach, but your physical ears are lying in a room with complete silence! 

So clearly, we do not use Jnana Indriyas (instruments of knowledge) to experience a dream.

Then how do we experience an entire world in a dream? Where does it come from? 

Where does it exist? It exists in your mind (antahkarana – part of your subtle body). The dream world is created from memories (vasana / samskara) of experiences you had when you were awake. 

In waking state, your mind has a function continuously recording all experiences you have. These are then stored in your memory (chitta) within the mind (antahkarana). This process mostly happens automatically, subconsciously so you won’t even realize it.

A dream is just the mental playback of experiences in the past you had had whilst you were in waking state. When does this playback occur? 

Only when you have withdrawn from your identification with the Gross Body (i.e. you have fallen asleep), and now only identify with the subtle body (i.e. your mind/memories).

Hence, dream state is that state in which you identify with your subtle body (mind) and experience a mental world born of your memories (vasanas) from previous waking state experiences. 

In the waking state, body is not active but mind and intellect are active, as it is clear in the above explanation.

All that King Janaka experienced in the forest are dreams, where his indriyas / gross body is at rest but his subtle body - his mind and intellect are active.

Love.