The Upanishads — ancient India's enduring gift to humanity. Steeped in meditative insight, they are some of the oldest surviving texts that seek to explain the world by way of direct experience.
To my mind, it is the final few chapters that are the most fruitful. These are the Vedas, which translates literally to “knowledge.” Some of these date as far back as the sixth century. This was before that carpenter from Nazareth discovered Buddhism and went out into the desert. These theo-philosophical texts take as their fundamental base the irreducible primacy of consciousness. In fact, they go even further and assert the fundamental ground of reality is itself consciousness.
However, for our purposes, we need not go that far… yet. But we can honor the undeniably evident statement about the primacy of consciousness. The existential fact that we live consciousness. Further, it is impossible to conceive of anything standing apart from consciousness. This curious fact is so irreducible that although consciousness still evades a concrete definition, it is always presupposed in any attempt to define it. A unified field of cognitive perception whirling with thought, pushed by Will. It is the “what” that wrote this and the “what” that is reading it… hopefully.
Consciousness can be synonymous with being. We could even go so far as to borrow the definition of “being” attempted by Heidegger in his Being and Time. Consistently evading objectification, in Heidegger's definition, this peculiar somewhat receives an exquisite elucidation if we replace the word “being” with “consciousness.” Although, paradoxically, the "object" remains undefined. He writes, “We do not know what 'Being' means. But already when we ask, 'What is "being"?', we stand in an understanding of the 'is', without being able to determine conceptually what that 'is' means.”
Although qualitatively different, consciousness and being are seen here as interchangeable. It also gives to us a strong intuition of the somewhat we seek to explain and curiously, are. Consciousness and being are not separate entities; they are but two ontological aspects of one and the same movement.
To return to the primacy of consciousness, it wasn’t until about 100 years ago that Western philosophy would reignite this torch and birth a novel realm of philosophy — phenomenology. A philosophical method aimed at directly lived experience and the study of what appears before consciousness, the phenomenon. They take the irreducible primacy of conscious awareness to be their primary cornerstone. One can sum up the phenomenological tradition by a simple phrase uttered by its founding father Edmund Husserl when he wrote: “To the things themselves!”
Phenomenologists assert that we cannot get behind consciousness and objectify it in any sort of way that might allow us to study it scientifically. Rather, we should adopt the view that consciousness is that which is doing science as it is the necessary precondition for all knowing. Nevertheless, armed with these insights a new discipline is on the horizon. Its sights set on the nexus between consciousness and the organ known to have something to do with its production, the brain.
Neurophenomenology is this budding science of the mind. It is making the attempt to bridge the gap between subjectivity and objectivity. By placing meditators in MRI's and asking them to describe their experiences, neuroscientists are trying to correlate their subjective accounts with objective changes measured in brain wave patterns. This branch of science is just in its infancy, and although the results are looking promising I do not believe it will solve the hard problem of consciousness. Philosopher of mind David Chalmers notes: “We have no consciousness meter.” We have no idea how to go about understanding sentience other than observing behavior. We can only extrapolate from our own experience and postulate what it “might be like” to “be a bat.”
Alas, we’ve gone far afield! Let’s return to the Upanishads and analyze one in particular — the Mandukya Upanishad. In the Mandukya Upanishad we are treated to the first description of “states” of consciousness and how they phonetically relate to the primordial sound of the universe — that ancient and spiritual symbol OM. Spelled phonetically; AUM. The Mundukya asserts that there are four primary modes of consciousness, each associated with the particular sound of OM.
Jagrat
The A, the sound that breaks the silence represents the waking state. Here, the subject-object duality is asserted in everyday affairs, and one’s conscious intention is directed out and into the world.
Svapna
The U, the second phenome begins to round out the syllable and represents the dreaming state. A subtle state where the subject-object duality persists yet conscious intention is directed inwards and is strictly contained within the realm of the human mind. The dream is distilled imagination, purely noetic, mental.
Susupti
The third phoneme, the M is of the most subtle nature, so subtle the sound is made with the mouth closed. It represents the state of dreamless sleep. Here, consciousness is said to be undistracted and at peace. It takes no part in the cacophony of the waking or dreaming states. It is stillness absolute.
Turiya
"The fourth" state encapsulates the previous three and is symbolized by the totality of spoken word OM. Turiya, simply called “the fourth” is said to be the substantial base, the substrate consciousness that allows and gives rise to the other three. It is said that the fourth is pure, non-dual awareness. This “deep consciousness” is the substantial substrate that allows for waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep to transpire “on top” of it.
Time is the moving image of eternity. - Plato
Of the fourth Evan Thompson writes: “It’s the constant, underlying source for these changing states, as well as a stage of meditative realization… It is sheer awareness, defined by its quality of luminosity. As a stage of meditative realization, it’s the deeper, background awareness that can witness these changing states without mistakenly identifying with them as the self.” Also, the Vedic wizard* Shankara offers us some insight: “What, then, is the Reality behind all our experiences? There is only one thing that never leaves us — the deep consciousness. This alone is the constant feature of all experience. And this consciousness is the real, absolute Self. In dreamless sleep, also, the real Self is present as a witness, while the ego-sense which we call “ourself,” our individuality, has become temporarily merged in ignorance and disappeared.”
In other words, we lose sense of our ego-self as we merge with the non-dual deep consciousness that knows no plurality. The state wherein "consciousness becomes its own object" and the subject-object dichotomy dissolves into divinity.
Pure non-dual awareness is identical to the experiencing self. The witnessing presence that is identical to and inseparable from the absolute motion of the universe, always present in the here and now. A timeless be-ing that is both a constant creating and perpetual perishing.
*Fun fact! "Ard" is a noun-forming suffix that combines to make words like drunkard. Combine it with wise and we have wise-ard or wizard. On a final note, what a wonderful gif to go with Plato's quote. 😉
Casey Mitchell is an avid reader and incurable thinker who finally thought to pick up the pen to share his thoughts on life and love and the meaning of existence. A lover of philosophy, he is consistently perplexed and amazed by the ever-unfolding universe. He is the creative pulse behind SophiasIchor.com and writes to share his curiosity and thoughts about this mystery we live.
Featured image by Shiyao Jiang.
This article (On the Fourfold Root of the Mandukya Upanishad) was originally created and published by Sophias Ichor and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Casey Mitchell and sophiasichor.com It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement.