Conscious experience is the essence of reality.
Reality is that which is undeniable, and consciousness is exactly that. The very denial of consciousness presupposes its existence.
Vedanta philosophy begins and ends with consciousness. According to Vedanta, consciousness encompasses four states or dimensions. Each dimension represents a deeper and more profound experience of reality.
It’s important to keep in mind this isn’t a description of psychological states. Vedanta isn’t analysing the contents of consciousness, or the various experiences we may have.
This is an ontological analysis. Ontology is the study of existence in the broadest and most general sense. It’s concerned with universal categories of things that exist, rather than particular instances of those universal categories.
Consider a familiar example: the knowledge of physics. The physical is a broad universal category, and within that category we have a variety of particular instances of physical stuff. Chairs, stars, clouds, all these things come under the category of physical.
Physics isn’t concerned with the particular instances of matter, but with the laws that govern the physical substance in the broadest sense.
The analysis of physics can be thought of as a vertical analysis, taking us from the macro level objects of our senses, down to the deeper levels of reality and the nebulous quantum fields that underlie all physical things.
This is a vertical hierarchy, with each level taking us down to more fundamental levels of reality.
We can also think of the layers as tracing a logical or existential priority. The existence of macro-objects depends on the prior existence of the subatomic level, which in turn depends on the prior existence of quantum level phenomena.
This is the same kind of analysis that Vedanta is concerned with. But while physics only deals with the physical world, Vedanta isn’t a naturalist philosophy, it’s the philosophy of idealism.
For the idealist, consciousness is the substance of reality. Matter is only an idea, a state of consciousness. Matter is a classification we create to understand the world, not an independently existing reality.
So this Vedic analysis of consciousness is about the substance of reality itself, not merely our own conscious states. It’s not about the contents of consciousness, it traces a logical hierarchy to find the most fundamental states of reality.
The first state — waking consciousness
The first state of consciousness is waking consciousness. This is the corporeal world of our senses. All the senses are active in the waking state. Both the external sense organs (hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell) and the internal functions of memory, intellect, and sense of self, are active in the waking state.
We might be inclined to think of waking consciousness as the most complete state, because in this state, we have the most awareness of the world around us. But Vedanta says this is the most superficial state, because its existence depends on other prior conditions. It’s these prior conditions that reveal the deeper levels of conscious reality.
The second state — dreaming
The second dimension is the dreaming state. In this state, the external sense organs are inactive. We don’t hear, see, or smell when dreaming.
The internal senses of memory, intellect, and sense of self (ego) are active, but they don’t have the restraints of waking consciousness. There is free movement of the imagination, which gives the dream state a wider scope than the waking state.
For the Vedantist, the dream state demonstrates the possibility of perception without sensation, because this is what dreams are. There is a world of thoughts and ideas that are free of external constraints.
The dream state also demonstrates that internal perception is logically prior to external consciousness. The external world appears real only because it’s given meaning by our ideas and thoughts. Our internal judgement filters a jumbled assortment of sensations into knowledge of the world.
The dream state shows us that thought is more fundamental than the senses.
The third state — deep sleep
The third dimension is dreamless, deep sleep. In this state, all the senses are inactive. Not only are the external senses inactive, so is the internal mental system. There is an absence of thought.
This level of consciousness can first be theorised to exist by analysing the nature of thought itself. Thoughts are judgements. What unifies a judgement of various concepts?
The concepts that compose our thought take various patterns, which are then unified into a certain order. This suggests a background to thought itself.
We can approach it from another angle. Wherever there is a thought, there is a thinker. Where there is knowledge, there is also a knower. Where there is an object, there is also a subject. They are two aspects of one reality. But that reality can’t be a thought itself, instead, it’s the reality which underlies them both.
Now we’ve arrived at the same conclusion of a third and deeper level of consciousness through two paths of logic. But for the Vedantist, these results need to be confirmed by experience.
This can be confirmed by our experience that some nights we sleep very soundly, without dreaming. In dreams, we have perception without sensation, thoughts without corporeal things. In dreamless sleep, we have an experience without any content, knowledge without thought.
The question naturally arises, why would we call deep sleep an experience or a type of knowledge? Shouldn’t we say that deep sleep is the absence of experience or knowledge?
While that might initially seem right, it results in a contradiction. How can we have the knowledge that we have no experience?
We might be tempted to say we know from memory, when we awaken we remember “I slept well.” But the existence of memory requires an awareness. We can’t remember something if we aren’t first aware of it.
This is a subtle point which is difficult to grasp, but recently I came across an article which uses the example of the state of anaesthesia and compares it to deep sleep.
When we wake from deep sleep, we’re aware time has passed. But when we wake from anaesthesia there’s no awareness at all, not even the awareness that time has passed. This comparison helps us understand the Vedic argument that a persisting self exists.
In our experience of deep sleep and anaesthesia, the senses are inactive and there is no thought. We aren’t aware of the self from within the deep sleep state, but on waking from the two we know that deep sleep and anaesthesia have different properties.
In deep sleep we’re aware of time passing, but in anaesthesia we aren’t. But if the state of anaesthesia has properties which distinguish it from deep sleep, then there can’t be an absence of awareness.
If there was no awareness, how could we compare the two different experiences? To make that comparison, we must be aware of both states. There must be an experience we’re describing.
This fact of “not knowing anything” requires the presence of a consciousnesses to witness. If there was no self in the background, we couldn’t describe this experience of anaesthesia as “nothing, not even time”.
The point here isn’t that we’re conscious of self in deep sleep. The experience of deep sleep demonstrates the existence of a pure-self-consciousness. Deep sleep demonstrates there can be awareness without thought.
This shows us a dimension of reality where the knower and the known are a unity.
The self isn’t one of the successive conscious states, it’s the background to the entire flow. The existence of the self, is a precondition for those states to exist and also for their organisation and continuity.
The self is hidden by the very thoughts and perceptions which constitute the stream.
According to Vedanta, this is the third dimension of reality. This state can be known by experiencing deep sleep, but it can also be deliberately discovered by meditation.
The Fourth
The fourth state is simply called the fourth (turiya). This is the state of enlightenment.
Each of us are distinct individuals and our self consciousness is private to us. We’re isolated from each other, but also related to each other. We’re not only conscious of each other’s existence, but with various social relationships intimate communication is possible.
To explain this we need to postulate there is something distinct from us, but also common to all of us which includes us all. The same inference of an “other” is warranted when we contemplate how we know the objective world.
There are things which are given in our experience, and there are mental structures which order this experience. Which means there must be some correspondence between the inner world and the outer world, otherwise any kind of ordered and meaningful experience would be impossible.
For it to be possible to have this correspondence between individuals, and between individuals and the world, we must assume the existence of an “other” that transcends them all but at the same time includes them.
Logic leads us to assume an all-encompassing consciousness must exist, but can this be confirmed by experience?
We can first consider our everyday experience. Whenever we make any kind of statement about experience we necessarily transcend ourselves, this is a vague experience of the “other.”
And when we realise how limited and transient the world and ourselves are, this is another example of an experience of the other. We experience something greater than ourselves, something more complete, more perfect, and in comparison we’re small and flawed.
There is something within us that’s more than ourselves. It sees beyond ourselves to know we aren’t self-sufficient and neither is the world.
This transcendence is the universal consciousness within us.
It’s this “other” that is the fourth dimension of our consciousness. In Vedanta this transcending other is called “tat” (that). Many will be familiar with the famous Vedic aphorism, tat tvam asi (you are that).
This highest state of experience is called by different names and expressed in different ways: samadhi, liberation, nirvana, love of God.
In dreamless sleep the mind and thought disappear, whereas in the enlightened state they’re concentrated. In deep sleep only self-consciousness is there, but in enlightenment self-consciousness is united with the larger consciousness. The fourth state of consciousness is the fullest, most complete state of consciousness.
Consciousness is a self-luminous substance, it transcends both body and mind. Consciousness isn’t part of the ever changing process of experience, but that which illuminates and witnesses the entire process.
The first dimension is the material world, the world of the senses and our waking consciousness. The second dimension is the mental world, the world of thought but no corporeality. The third dimension is the world of pure consciousness or the individual soul. And beyond all that, enveloping and sustaining all, is the fourth dimension, the universal consciousness or God.
Prudence Louise 