Transcriptions
Dev Priyānanda Svāmī Bhagavān
Video Link: YouTube
So, let’s begin. Namaste. So yesterday we talked about the cakras and the different states of consciousness associated with them. So today I would like to link that understanding with the catur-darśanam, the four views of reality of the world and the Self.
So remember, yesterday we started talking about the lower three cakras as the animal. This is the part of us that’s like our pet animal, and the sex cakra, the energy storage cakra and the movement cakra are the three cakras that are part of this.
Now this consciousness, this consciousness which is similar to an animal consciousness, is what we know as jagrat. Jagrat means, oh, there are so many things, many things, and they’re real. And I am real, “I” meaning the empirical self—the ego, the self as body.
So in this state of consciousness we find almost the whole population, really 95 to 98 or 9% of everybody, thinks, “I am the body.” The body is real. And see, this is the disease that the Buddha talked about, where we see the transient, the impermanent, as permanent.
Because to be real, absolutely real, means no beginning, no end. But the body has a beginning and an end. Yet for the sake of convenience and for peace of mind and so on, we take the body as real. You see? And so we endow it with the quality that it doesn’t really have, and because of that we are disappointed when it fails us, and we suffer.
So because of this suffering, we start to search for a way out: “There must be something better than this.” And so this is the realm of karma-yoga. Karma-yoga means following the scriptural rules and regulations to increase the collection of pious karma, śubha-karma—what we might call good karma, or karma that results in enjoyment in the future.
So charity, helping others, like being a caregiver, being a teacher, being a parent, you know, all these things—being a good person basically, is what gives us good karma in the future. And specifically doing religious rituals aimed at satisfaction of God, according to the rules and regulations of the scriptures. This is karma-yoga.
Now, the next cakra, of course, is the heart cakra. And the heart cakra has all kinds of desires for happiness, for peace, for so many things. But really, all these desires can be boiled down to a certain taste. And we went over that briefly yesterday. The five basic tastes, or rasas: neutrality, servitorship, friendship, parenthood, and conjugal love. So we want to enjoy life by tasting one of these five tastes and the subsidiary tastes that are in harmony with it.
This is the way that people try to enjoy life. So this consciousness is basically dream consciousness. This is svapna, the state of consciousness when we dream. We not only dream at night when we’re asleep. We also dream during the day when we’re awake. These states of consciousness can coexist. They’re not exclusive. But one of them is always going to be the focus or the center of gravity of the consciousness.
So in the heart, the consciousness is centered on dreams and desires, the beautiful dreams of happiness and what we would really want as our enjoyment in life. So this yoga is the bhakti-yoga. And of course, bhakti means love of God. So when the yoga process through collection of puñya, or pious karma, reaches a stage of maturity, this love of God automatically blooms in the heart.
And we find a form of God, a particular mood or pastime of God that attracts us. And this doesn’t have to be exactly the same as the scriptures, although for many people it is, probably the majority of people. But still, this is really something very personal, is something very unique to each and every one of us.
The kind of service that we would love to do for God eternally, and really the service that only we can do, it’s very highly individual, very unique to each person. So this taste, this is the basis of bhakti-yoga. And when this taste develops up to what’s called prema, which means ecstatic love, one gets all kinds of ecstatic symptoms, feelings of energy moving in the body, pulaka, like goosebumps or horripalation on the skin.
Like when you’re cold, you get goosebumps; but this is when you’re not cold—it’s because of ecstatic love: crying, laughing, singing, dancing, sometimes falling and rolling on the ground. I mean, it can get really intense. So when this bhakti stage matures, then the next stage is meditation.
How is that? Because the mind becomes concentrated on a single object, which is the particular form of God that we love. This automatically leads to meditation. And in meditation we are focused on the ajñā-cakra, the forehead cakra. Meditation means looking through the mind and trying to clear the mind of all unnecessary thoughts, which is really all thoughts.
And so this stage of consciousness is called suṣupti. Suṣupti means that there are no thoughts in the mind. There is no object to consciousness. Consciousness is purely subjective.
That means awareness of awareness, awareness of one’s being, without any object, without any duality. So this is the vivartha-vāda, the knowledge that the world is simply an appearance, an illusion. And so what we try to do is to remove all these unnecessary thoughts from the mind through meditation or rāja-yoga. The whole teaching of the Buddha is basically about this. So this is the stage where one tries to achieve silence and emptiness.
And when this stage is mature, one realizes the crown cakra. The crown cakra is pure consciousness, pure awareness. And the material mind, the material body, the material world don’t exist in that stage. And this is called turīya. Turīya simply means the fourth, because there is no way to describe it actually. This is where words and symbols fail.
So this is the essence, the quintessence, the ultimate stage of consciousness. And when this is attained, this is Self-realization. And this is called mukti. And one who attains it is called mukta, or jīvanmukta: one who is liberated while still living. This is the stage that we aim for.
This is the ultimate state of yoga. Yoga means joining the individual soul to the Supersoul; the individual limited being to the unlimited being of God. So this is the aim of yoga.
These are the four states of consciousness. And you can see from the diagram, these are the cakras associated with them. Even though the focus of consciousness is on one or another of these four stages at any particular time, that doesn’t mean that the other states go away.
As I mentioned before, waking and dreaming can exist at the same time. So waking, dreaming, meditation, and Self-realization can all exist at the same time. Indeed, in the state of turīya. Turīya is the actual origin of our consciousness. The pure awareness.
So when we shift from one state of consciousness to another, like from waking to dreaming, or from dreaming to deep sleep, or the reverse, coming out of sleep, we briefly pass through turīya on the way. You know, it’s like a house that has several rooms off of one main room. And to go from one room to another, you have to go through the main room. Or the corridor; the hallway.
So this is what consciousness is like, and turīya is the main room. Turiya is the real consciousness. So you have to go through this state to get from one to the other, of waking, sleeping, dreaming. So we all experience turīya every day.
Actually, we all experience it all the time. But because we don’t understand or recognize it, then we don’t cognize it. We don’t say, “Oh yeah, this is turīya.” But actually, without turīya, none of the other states have any meaning.
So turīya is the ground state of consciousness: pure awareness, without an object except itself, because you are aware that you are aware. Rāmaṇa Mahārṣi used to ask people who came to him to say, “Please, give me enlightenment, give me Self-realization.” He used to say, “Well, do you exist?”
And of course, that’s the start of a conversation. And it usually goes something like this, “Oh, of course I exist, see, here’s my body.”
“No, that’s not you.” Because the body is impermanent, it’s temporary, it comes and goes. That can’t be you, because you’re eternal, you’re a soul, you’re a spirit. So what’s more than that?
And eventually the conversation comes to the point, “Oh, I exist because I am aware.”
“Well, how do you know that you’re aware? You must be aware of awareness. You must be conscious of consciousness, isn’t it?” That’s turīya. That consciousness is turīya.
So when we reach that stage, this is full of ecstatic bliss. Because one realizes one’s immortality, one’s unlimited nature. The body is limited because it’s temporary, but consciousness is unlimited.
It never begins or ends. Sometimes it has objects, sometimes it doesn’t. That’s all right. You’re still aware, and you’re aware that you’re aware. So this is the symptom of Brahman. This is the symptom of the soul. We know that we are because we are aware that we are aware, and this is the ultimate goal of yoga.
ĀŪṀ Tat Sat ĀŪṀ Śakti ĀŪṀ