THE TRANSCENDENT PRESENCE of ATMAN
(The fourth state Consciousness, the Ātman, the Absolute, Brahman)
The Māndūkya Upaniṣhad Verse 7
Commentary by Swami Krishnananda
7. Nāntah-prajñam, na bahih prajñam, no’bhayatah-prajñam, na
prajnañāghanam, na prajñam, na-aprajñam; adriṣhtam-avyavahārayam-agrahyam-alakshanam-
acintyam-avyapadeśyam-ekātmapratyayasāram, prapancopaśamam, śāntam,
śivam-advaitam, caturtham manyante, sa ātmā sa vijñeyah.
7. That is known as the fourth quarter: neither
inward-turned nor outward-turned consciousness, nor the two together; not an
indifferentiated mass of consciousness; neither knowing, nor unknowing;
invisible, ineffable, intangible, devoid of characteristics, inconceivable,
indefinable, its sole essence being the consciousness of its own Self; the
coming to rest of all relative existence; utterly quiet; peaceful; blissful:
without a second: this is the Ātman, the Self; this is to be realised.
COMMENTARY
We have made an analysis
of the three relativistic phases of the Ātman, both in its individual and
cosmic aspects. But, Reality, as such, is neither individual nor cosmic. To say
that it is cosmic is also to limit it to a certain extent, to bring it to the
level of what we call creation. The Supreme Brahman, the Absolute, is not a
cause, and not also an effect. It has no effects, and, therefore, it is no
cause. We cannot call The Supreme Being as even a cause of things, especially
when we consider that everything is identical with It. The Māndūkya Upaniṣhad describes not merely the gross, subtle and causal
conditions of the manifested consciousness, but also Consciousness, as such.
There is something called Reality in itself, independent of relation. Even
īsvaratva is a description by means of a relation to the universe. We call God
sarveśvara, sarvajña and sarvaśaktiman, because we relate Him to the creation.
God is omnipresent, pervading everywhere, which means that we recognise Him in
terms of space. He knows ‘all’ things, means that there are things which He
knows; and He has power over all things, means that He can exercise power over
something which is external to Him. All definitions, even the best ones, such
as Creatorship, Preservership and Destroyership of the universe; omnipresence,
omniscience and omnipotence, are relative. They are tatastha-lakṣhanas of God, accidental definitions; - not
svarūpa-lakṣhana, the essential nature
of Reality. What was God before creation? That would be His svarūpalakṣhana or essential characteristic. God, in His own essence,
is something more than a Creator, Preserver or Destroyer, more than a cause of
things, more than even an Overlord, All-knowing and All-powerful. What is that
essential essence which is by its own right, and abides in its own Greatness,
in its own Majesty? What is that Light which cannot be beheld by others, the
Light which shines, but shines not upon anything? That is the state of Pure
Consciousness, which is neither causal, nor subtle, nor gross. It is neither
outside nor inside. It has no external nor internal. That grand Reality is
described in the seventh mantra of the Māndūkya Upaniṣhad. This Absolute is known as the turīya, or the
fourth state of Consciousness, transcending all relational manifestations, -
causal, subtle and gross. While the waking consciousness is external and the
dream consciousness is internal, this Consciousness is neither external nor
internal, because it is not either waking or dreaming. It is neither internally
conscious nor externally conscious, nāntah-prajñam, na bahih-prajñām - not
internal consciousness like dream, nor external consciousness like waking. One
may think that it is a consciousness simultaneously of both the states. No; It
is something different from a simultaneity of consciousness. It is not
external, not internal, not a simultaneity of both, either; -
no-’bhayatah-prajñām. It is not also a mass of consciousness like a homogeneous
heap of water in the ocean, - na prajñāna-ghanam. It is not quantitative in its
essence. Quantity is spatial, mathematical and Consciousness is not such.
Hence, it cannot be called a mass of consciousness, also, because when you
think of mass, you think of a heap, a body, indistinguishable, though. Not so
is Consciousness, - na prajñāna-ghanam. It is not featureless Consciousness
without any awareness, na prajñām. You may think that it is awareness without
an object before it. It is not even that, because the object is contained in
that Consciousness. It is not Consciousness bereft of objects. It is
Consciousness into which the objects have been absorbed. So, it cannot be
regarded as a featureless transparency of an ethereal consciousness. It is not
also absence of consciousness, -
na-aprajñām. It is not a state of inert perfection which the schools of thought
like the nyāya and the vaiśeshika describe. It is not unconsciousness; it is
not absence of consciousness; it is not bare consciousness; it is not a mass of
consciousness; it is not external consciousness; it is not internal
consciousness; it is not both-ways consciousness. What is this? Such is God in
His essence, the Absolute in its True Being. Adriṣhtam: Invisible is it. One cannot see it. Whatever be
the effort of the eyes, the eyes cannot visualise it. Avyavāharayam: One cannot
have any kind of dealings with it. You cannot touch it; you cannot grasp it;
you cannot talk to it; you cannot see it; you cannot hear it. No kind of
business can be established with it. You cannot have a relationship with it. It
is unrelated; non-relational is it. It repels all relation. It is neither
friendly nor inimical. Such is the mystery of the Being of all beings.
Agrāhyam: It is not graspable by the power of the senses. You cannot catch it
with the hands, smell it with the nose, taste it with the tongue, hear it with
the ears, see it with the eyes. No such thing is possible. Alakṣhanam: And, therefore, indefinable is it. You cannot
describe it. No definition of it is possible, because what is definition but an
association of qualities which you have seen, heard, etc.? But here is
something which you have not seen, which you have not heard of; how can you
have a characterisation of it? There is, thus, no definition of this Being of
beings. No one can say anything about it. Acintyam: It is unthinkable by the
mind. You cannot form a thought of this Being. You cannot, therefore, meditate
upon it in the usual manner. You cannot think it, because to think would be to
bring the object to the realm of space and time, to externalise it. It is not
an object, and it is not in space and time, and, so, it is not thinkable.
Avyapadeśyam: Indescribable, ineffable is it. You cannot speak its glory with
your tongue. No scripture can describe it; no saint can explain it. Not even
the wisdom of the sages put together can be adequate to its greatness. It is
beyond all the wisdom of the sages, and it is peerless, incomparable. This
character of the Being of this Reality is due to the fact that it cannot be
referred to by anyone else. This world is a network of references. One thing is
referred to the other for the purpose of definition, understanding and dealing.
The whole world of business is a realm of references made to ‘others’. Here,
however, no such reference is possible. It is a silence of all activity, both
of the body and of the mind. Ekātmapratyayasāram: Here, we have a wonderful
characterisation of the Ātman. The Ātman can be defined only as the Ātman. You
cannot define it by any other form or concept. It is said that the battle
between Rāma and Rāvana was incomparable. To what can you compare the battle between
Rāma and Rāvana? You can say that something is vast like the ocean, endless
like the sky, bright like the sun, sweet like sugar. But, like what was the
battle between Rāma and Rāvana? It was like the battle between Rāma and Rāvana!
This was all that the poet could say. “Space is like space, ocean is like
ocean, and the Rāma-Rāvana-battle was like the Rāma-Rāvana-battle.” So, also,
is the Ātman. The Ātman is like the Ātman. You cannot say that the Ātman is
like this, or that, because it is incomparable, and any comparison attempted
would be a reference made to something that has come out afterwards as an
effect. That would be a travesty of affairs, indeed. Therefore, it can be
designated only as ekātmapratyayasāram, the Essence of the consciousness of Selfhood
and Oneness. It is, if at all, definable by three interesting terms, - ekatva
(Oneness), ātmatva (Selfhood) and sāratva (Essentiality). It is the essence of
all things, and it is One, and it is the Self. It is the Self, and, therefore,
it can only be One. It is the Self, and, therefore, it is the Esscnce. The Self
is that which knows itself, not by a means but by its own existence. It is
Existence knowing itself without any external proof. Perception, inference,
verbal testimony, comparison, etc. do not apply here in the case of the
knowledge of the Ātman. It cannot be inferred by logic, induction or deduction,
and it cannot he perceived, it cannot be compared, it cannot be described by
words. It is the Self, which means that it is not beheld by someone else. The
Self is beheld by itself alone. Here, Self and Existence mean one and the same
thing. Existence is Self; Existence is the Ātman. The Self is
non-objectifiable, non-alienable from its own essence. The knowledge of the
Ātman is intuition, which is a non-relational apprehension of Reality,
independent of the operation of the senses and the mind, where existence
becomes identical with knowledge, and knowledge is one with the known. Here the
object of knowledge is the same as knowledge and intuition. When the object
stands outside knowledge, it is called perception. This is the difference
between intuition and sensory cognition or information. Where the object stands
in an immediacy of relation with knowledge, it is intuition. One cannot say
whether it is the object that knows itself or the knowledge that knows itself.
The difference between their characters vanishes as when two oceans join
together. The knowing subject and the object of its knowledge come together in
a single coalescence of Being. This is ātmatva - Selfhood. Salila eko drashtā,
says Yājnavalkya in the Brihadāranayaka Upaniṣhad. The Ātman is like an oceanic flood without a
surface or a limit. The Ātman is the sole Seer, Knower, Beholder, Experiencer,
without a counterpart objective to it. It knows itself, not ‘others’, for the
‘others’ are also a part of itself. Hence, knowledge of the Ātman is the
knowledge of the whole of existence. It is not knowledge of this Ātman, that
Ātman, this Self, that self, this person, that person. It is the knowledge of
The Ātman, which can only be One. The Ātman is single, - ekātmapratyayasāram.
The One Ātman is called the paramātman as distinguished from the
multitudinousness of the so-called ātmans, called jīvātmans. It is paramātman,
because it is the Supreme Self. Brahmeti paramātmeti bhagavāniti śabdyat, says
the Śrimad- Bhāgavata. From the absolute, universal and personal standpoints,
it is called Brahman, paramātman and bhagavān. In itself it is Brahman, the
Absolute; and as the Supreme Creator, Preserver, Destroyer, it is the
paramātman; as the Beloved of devotees, it is Bhagavān. It is all this; -
dvaita, viśishtādvaita and advaita points of view come together here in this
Ātman, and the conclusions of the schools of thought merge into the single truth
of a blend of various standpoints. Quarrels cease, arguments come to a stop,
philosophies are hushed, silence prevails. This Ātman is Silence, said a great
Master. When a devotee came, and asked the guru, ‘Tell me the Ātman’, the guru
kept quiet. When the disciple queried again, ‘Master, tell me the Ātman’, the
guru kept quiet, again. A third time the question was raised, and the guru kept
quiet, once more. When for the fourth time the disciple put the same question,
‘Tell me the Ātman’; the guru said, ‘I am telling you, you are not hearing;
because Silence is the Ātman’. In that Great Silence, all the turmoil of the
cosmos is calmed. All the clamour of the senses, all the noise of the universe
is contained and absorbed in this Silence. The Silence here is better than all
the sounds that one makes, and it explains things better than all the speeches
that one utters. This Silence is a fuller explanation than all the logical
arguments of the philosophers. This Silence of all silences connotes Reality in
a more comprehensive manner, than anything else, because when we express it in
words, we come down from its level to a lower grade, and begin to think of it
as an external object. The Kena Upaniṣhad
warns us when it says, “It is not known to those who know it; it is known to
those who do not know it”. If you think you know it, you do not know it, and
when you know it, you do not think, but you simply are. You have become That,
and you are That; and that is real knowledge. Knowledge is not expression, but
Being. It is not becoming or a process. It is called sattā-sāmānya, in the
language of the Yoga Vāsiṣhtha,
the General Existence of all things, as distinguished from the particular
existences of bodies, minds and individuals. It is the Transcendent Being,
which cannot be called either as this or that. It is neither sat (existence)
nor asat (non-existence) in the ordinary sense of the term. It is not sat or
existence in the sense of some object being there. It is not asat or
non-existence, also. We say that something is, because we see it; we can think
of it; we can hear it; we can catch it with our hands. And, Reality is not such
a type of existence. But, thereby, you cannot say that it is non-existence. It
is beyond sat (existence) and asat (non-existence). Anādimat param brahma na
sat tan na-asad ucyate, says the Bhagavad Gītā. This Brahman, the Origin of all
things is non-temporal eternity. Na asad āsīt no sad āsīt, says the Rig Veda.
What was there in the beginning? Not existence, not non-existence. Definitions
are given by persons, and all persons who give a definition of Reality came
afterwards as an effect. Who is to define that which was prior even to the
cause of all things, antecedent even to the condition of īsvara? Who can
describe it, and what can you say about it except only characterising it,
tentatively, as ekātmapratyayasāram? How do you grasp this Ātman? By knowing it
that ‘It Is’, - asti-iti-eva-upalabdhnvyah, as the Kaṭha Upaniṣhad
puts it. Know it as ‘That which is’, said Saint Augustine. What is the Reality
of all realities? That which Is, the General Existence, sattā-sāmānya,
ekatmapratyayasaram. This is Brahman. Prapancopaśamam: Here all samsāra, all
this tumult of creation, subsides, like waves sinking into the ocean, as dream
is withdrawn into waking consciousness. The universe, in all its conditions, -
gross, subtle and causal, - ceases here. In this state, there is neither the
virāt, nor hiraṇyagarbha, nor īsvara;
because, there is no creation. This is the Ātman where there is neither waking,
nor dreaming, nor sleep. Thus, it is called prapancopaśamam. It is not a
condition; it is beyond all conditions. It is not a state of affairs. We do not
know what it is. It is a mystery. Wonder of all wonders is this: Wonderful is
that disciple who can comprehend it from the wonderful teacher who can teach
this wonderful Being. Āścaryavat paśyati, vadati, ṣrinoti, says the Kaṭha Upaniṣhad.
What a glorious Being is it! The prapanca, this vast cosmos, ceases there, and
That alone is, shining as the glorious Sun of all suns. It is śāntam: Peaceful
is that state. No worries, no anxieties, no pains, no sufferings, no births and
deaths, no agonies of any kind can be there. It is not the peace born of the
absence of sound or the absence of contact with things. It is the peace which
is positive in its nature. We say we are peaceful when nobody talks to us, none
disturbs us, and we have everything that we want. This is not the peace of the
Ātman, because our concept of peace in the world is purely negative and, again,
relational. The Ātman is non-relational peace that cannot be put an end to by
the passage of time. Our peace on earth has a beginning and an end. Today we
are peaceful, tomorrow we are not. We cannot afford to be always peaceful. But
the peace of the Ātman is eternal, and most blessed is that state. It is śivam:
It is the only thing that can be called really auspicious, designated by the
most blessed terms, ‘Om’ and ‘Atha’. Praṇava is its designation, in its Self-comprehensiveness.
Advaitam: Non-dual is that state. We cannot even call it as the One. It is
‘Not-two’; - that is all; because, to say that it is one, would be to denote it
by a numerical figure. It is not one, because there is nothing other than it.
We can only say, ‘it is not-two’; - advaita. The Upaniṣhad, after having said that it is eka (One), now says
that it is advaita (Non-dual). We should not call it as one, or eka,
because ‘one’ has a relation to ‘two’,
‘three’, ‘four’, etc. It is non-relational; therefore, we should not describe
it even as one. It is ‘not-this, not-this’; - ‘neti, neti’. It is not this, and
not that; not anything that we can think, or understand. Caturtham manyante, sa
ātmā: This is the fourth state of Consciousness, which is called the Ātman. It
is called the fourth, not numerically, but in comparison with the three
relative states of waking, dream and sleep. When you go to this fourth state,
you do not feel that you are in a ‘fourth state’. You are, then, in the only
possible state. It is the transcendence of the three, not in a fourth, but in a
numberless, figureless, quantityless, immeasurable Being. This is the Ātman.
This is our essential nature, and the essential nature of all things. We are
the Ātman, which does not wake, dream or sleep which does not restrict itself
to the outer or the inner. The Ātman is the sole Being of all beings, Existence
of all existences, ‘sat’ of all ‘sat’, ‘chit’ of all ‘chit’, ānanda of all
ānandas: - Supreme Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. Sa vijñeyah: This is to be
known. This is the purpose of life. We live here for this purpose, and we have
no other aim in life. All our activities, all our business, all our functions,
whatever they be, are conscious or unconscious attempts on our parts to realise
the Ātman, and until and unless we reach the Ātman, we cannot be happy, we
cannot be satisfied, and we cannot put an end to the cycle of birth and death.
We are perpetually both and we perpetually die to train ourselves for
attunement of our being with the Ātman. Births and deaths are processes of
training in the field of experience. We experiment with the things of the
world, with a view to visualising the Ātman in them, coming in contact with the
Ātman in the objects. We love things because we hope that the Ātman is there in
them, but we do not see it there because it is not in one place only. Why do we
love things, love persons, love objects? Because we have a hope that the Ātman
is there, and we go for it. We do not find it there, and so we go to another
object, - perhaps it is there, - like the Gopis searching for Kriṣhna in different places. Kriṣhna! Are you here, are you there? You know, where; He
is everywhere. The Gopis queried the trees, the plants, the bees and even the
inanimate things. Have you seen Kriṣhna?
Has Kriṣhna passed by this path?
Where is Kriṣhna? Can you give an
indication of Kriṣhna’s whereabouts? Madly
did the Gopis ask of everything in creation, animate and inanimate. ‘Do you
know Kriṣhna? Have you seen Him?’
In a similar manner, madly do we go after the things of the world. Is the Ātman
here? Have you seen the Ātman? Can you get the Ātman here, there, in this, in
that? It is nowhere! It is not in anything particularised, and, therefore, we
cannot get the Ātman by any amount of search in the outer world of objects. So,
all the loves of the world are futile in the end, and are bound to be
frustrated, doomed to suffer, because of this erroneous approach to Reality
made through the objects, to which Reality cannot be confined on account of
their inherent structural defect. And, in this experimentation, we die. Life is
too short. The experimentation does not end. In the next birth we do, again,
experiment with things, because the objects in creation are infinite. We make
infinite experiments, and the struggle goes on. This process is called samsāra,
transmigration; and in all the lives that we take, in all the deaths that we
pass through, the Ātman cannot be seen, just as the Gopis could not see Kriṣhna until He Himself made a Will to appear before
them. Nobody could inform the Gopis as to where Kriṣhna was. ‘I do not know: I do not know’: this is what
all the objects will tell you. What are we asking for, then? We have never seen
it. And, considering this enigmatic situation of the quest for the Ātman, the
Upaniṣhad finally said that
perhaps it can be realised only by him whom it chooses. You have to leave it to
itself. You do not know how you can see it. There seems to be no means of
knowing it. Nothing in the world can be a help to us in knowing it. Yam eva eṣha vrinute tena labhyah: Whom it chooses, he alone can
obtain it. This seems to be a solution arrived at by the sage of the Kaṭha Upaniṣhad.
We are tired of the quest. And when the Gopis were fatigued in this arduous
quest, when they became unconscious in their utter surrender to Kriṣhna, He revealed Himself. Now the time has come. The
ego has gone; effort has ceased; one cannot do anything further; then He comes.
You search, and search, and search, and you realise its futility. The ego
realises its limitations, and it ceases. When you know your limitations, you
cease from all egoistic effort, and the cessation of the ego is the revelation
of the Ātman. God comes when the ego goes. When you are nowhere, He alone is
everywhere. He takes the position of your personality. You vanish, and He comes
in, not before that. When the personalities of the Gopis vanished, Kriṣhna took possession of their hearts, and instead of
the Gopis being there; Kriṣhna
was there. The jīva expires into īsvara. This is the Ātman to be known, the
Goal for which we live in this world. This is the fourth state Consciousness,
the Ātman, the Absolute, Brahman.