Understanding consciousness and its four levels – Jagruti Svapna Sushupti and Turya

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Hare Krishna Thank all of you for coming here today evening and I will speak today on the topic of Expanding Our Consciousness Should I come ahead? Am I audible behind? It's audible, okay. So I'll speak on the topic of Expanding Our Consciousness of perceiving higher levels of reality and I'll start with a small experience In my childhood I was fascinated by astronomy so I had my own telescope and just like recently there was this eclipse people were fascinated wanting to see the eclipse so like that I used to love to see constellations and stars so one time I was looking up into the sky and as I was looking up into the sky suddenly some thought came in my mind and for the next 5 minutes I just lost in the thoughts and I started looking and I saw the star formation has changed so then it struck me that the stars out there are very interesting but the thoughts in here can also be equally if not more interesting of course the thoughts in here can be not just interesting they can also be distracting but either way the point is there is something extraordinary happening in here in my own consciousness and as I was eager to study the stars out there I felt what happens in my consciousness that is also something interesting, something worth studying now our consciousness is the fundamental basis by which we acquire any knowledge so right now say you are hearing me speak, so in this are you looking at me and observing me, in this there are 3 things involved, there are you the subject of consciousness there is I who am the object of consciousness and linking us is the stream of consciousness, so our consciousness is the basic faculty, the basic resource by which we come to know of everything that we know all scientific progress is predicated it rests on the fact that we are conscious beings just last year I was I had gone to Cambridge University I was invited there to speak on science and spirituality and on the way I passed by the place where Newton is said to have seen the fruit falling or maybe felt the fruit falling, many of these stories are often embellished but either way what happens fruits have been falling for thousands of years but in this case he observed and based on observation he thought so our consciousness is the basic tool by which we acquire any kind of knowledge and yet consciousness itself is a great mystery on the 125th anniversary of the science magazine it made a list of 125 questions for which science does not have satisfactory answers as of now and the second most perplexing question was where does consciousness come from the first question was where did the universe come from second was where does consciousness come from now why is this a perplexing question because we all know right now see you are observing observe things going to the eyes, from the eyes they go through the optic nerve, from there they go to the brain and then what happens after that say for example if a parrot flies by over here if the parrot flies by so we see the parrot flying by but actually there are four distinct stimuli that are there there is the shape of the parrot there is the colour of the parrot there is the motion of the parrot and there is the sound of the parrot now these four, motion, colour shape and sound are processed by different areas of the brain and there is no one area in the brain which integrates all this there is no one area which is connected with all other areas which will integrate and even if there were some way all these stimuli got integrated ultimately what is happening in the brain it's ultimately just the electrochemical signals that are pulsating in the brain, there are brain cells called neurons which connect with each other at their end points which are called androids their contact is called synapses but the point is ultimately just electrochemical signals flowing through the brain and the same electrochemical signals can flow through the electricity wire in our in our computer, in our television in our phones and there, there is no consciousness so it is not just the flow of the electrochemical chemicals electrochemical signals that causes consciousness consciousness is something else the same science magazine there is a prominent scientist John Larver, he wrote a article called is your brain really necessary it provoked a title, now what prompted this title was that he found many cases of hydronencephaly hydronencephaly is a phenomenon where there are children who have fluid in the brain cavity the brain cavity we have cerebrospinal fluid and that is around the grey and white matter of the brain but these children have this fluid not around the brain but instead of the brain so if you put in a ray of light from here, it will just go out there is no brain inside so some children have less than 25% some children have less than 10%, some children have even less than 5% of the brain and he was from the University of Sheffield and in that same university there was a mathematician who graduated with honors a post graduate degree and he had an IQ of over 140 and he had no brain less than 2% brain, how is this possible without brain how could anyone function and it's not just one or two there are significant number of cases of this that have been documented and William James is considered the father of psychology, one of the founding fathers of psychology and he said that if there is a theory that all crows are black to falsify this theory we don't have to prove that all crows are white even if one crow is white that's enough to challenge the theory that all crows are black so similarly if there is even one person who has consciousness that does not that is present even when the brain is not present that raises the question where is consciousness coming from so consciousness itself is categorically different from matter Thomas Huxley was a very ardent evolutionist he is considered the bulldog he is a scientist he was considered the bulldog of Darwin very aggressively propagated evolution and yet he also recognized the difference between consciousness and matter and he said that the idea that certain secretion of certain chemicals in the brain the sparking of certain electrochemical signals that it leads to consciousness is no less miraculous than the tale of Aladdin moving a lamp and suddenly a jinn appears there is actually no correlation, just electrochemical signals are flowing in the brain but consciousness is something entirely different so today through science we know so much of the world around us but yet we know very little of the tool with which we know the world we know the world through our consciousness but what consciousness is is not so well Dean Radin is a researcher and he has said that about the only thing that we know about consciousness is that it has got something to do with the brain and not something to do with the food but beyond that there is very little that is actually known about what consciousness is, where it comes from and yet consciousness is the basis by which we know everything so even if we start with empirical the first reality that we know is the reality of our consciousness even if I say that consciousness doesn't exist some people who are fanatical materialists we often talk about fanatical religionists but there are fanatical materialists also who say matter is the only thing that exists now they say there is no such thing as consciousness but actually even to say that there is no consciousness there has to be consciousness the denial of consciousness requires consciousness so consciousness is the fundamental reality we could do a thought exercise now if we close our eyes you can try this close your eyes and then depending on whatever you heard earlier, whatever you thought on your inner screen you will see something maybe you will see your favorite car your favorite friend, some relative whatever, you may see various objects now earlier when the eyes are open you are seeing the world outside when we close the eyes, we see something on the inner screen now if you try to move backwards and try to see who is the seer of that inner screen you are seeing the inner screen we see something on the inner screen but try to move backwards and look at who is the seer of the inner screen we can't do that because to see the seer of the inner screen we need the seer so the point which I am making is you can open your eyes now that actually we see the world externally in the mind's eye we see something internally but we don't see the seer Saint Augustine 1500 years ago he said that what we are looking for is what we are looking with when we look for consciousness we look with consciousness what we are looking for is what we are looking with and that's why consciousness actually remains an illusion it's a mystery and this consciousness is something which is practically the essence of who we are now somebody may say now what is this consciousness I am not interested in this I don't bother about this I just want to live in the world I want to do something practical in the world I don't want to get into this philosophy stuff but consciousness is not just a matter of abstract philosophy because our consciousness determines our happiness or our lack of happiness we may be sitting in an air conditioned room but say if somebody has insulted us and we are thinking of revenge fantasies I will get back at that person I will do this, I will do that our body is comfortable in an air conditioned room but because my consciousness is caught in revenge fantasies I am not comfortable I am actually miserable so our consciousness determines our happiness or our lack of happiness when we purchase a new house we want to decorate the house very nicely we want to have the contents of our house to be good, so that when we look people come and look, it's pleasing to see yes, the contents of our house, they determine our happiness or lack of happiness to some extent but much more than that is the content of our consciousness our consciousness determines whether we are happy or not whether we are peaceful or not everything in our life is based on the foundational reality of our consciousness, all our emotions, all our experiences and this consciousness which is very difficult to explain at the material level materialistically and yet it is very difficult almost impossible to deny its reality it's a foundational reality so what is this? the ancient yoga texts like the Bhagavad Gita, they describe that this consciousness indicates another category of reality that there is material reality and there is spiritual reality so the consciousness is a feature of spiritual reality the source of consciousness the Bhagavad Gita says is a spiritual particle the soul in the 33rd verse and 34th verse, two examples are given to explain how consciousness relates with the body yatha prakashyat yega krtsnam lokam imamravihit krtsnam prakashyati bharata the sun is far away but the sun illuminates the earth like that the consciousness is separate from the body but the consciousness illuminates the body so just as the bulb it gives out light the sun gives out light the soul radiates out consciousness and when the soul radiates out consciousness that's how we are able to perceive so now how does the soul radiate out consciousness how are we able to perceive and why does it all matter because ultimately our consciousness determines our happiness or lack of happiness so to explain this the Gita explains that currently our existence is three dimensional that the body mind and soul or as you can see in this diagram there is a gross body which is what we call as the body then there is a mind which is also called as the subtle body and then there is the soul so the soul subtle body and gross body that is our three level existence so when earlier I said we close our eyes and when we look at the screen inner screen that is what we are seeing in the mind but then beyond that is the seer so presently the consciousness of the soul so it comes out from the soul through the mind to the body and to the outer world so this is consciousness rooted through gross material body to the world that is the present state is called as Jagruti which means the wakeful state so in the wakeful state the consciousness comes out to the physical body and from there outwards this is the normal state in which we function now we may or may not believe that there is something called as soul but if we think that I am simply the body this is the idea that can be challenged just by a simple daily experience the daily experience is the experience of sleeping now when we sleep at that time our body is not experiencing anything our body is lying in bed and yet when we dream we experience many things we may experience ourselves being chased by a tiger we may experience ourselves dancing with a romantic partner we may experience ourselves flying to a tourist destination or whatever now actually we experience all this if we experience ourselves being chased by a tiger and then we wake up we find we are sweating sometimes children have nightmares and the parents wake them up everything is alright for the child whose experience was there the experience led to some physical symptoms also coming up so the point is that when we experience something in a dream we do experience it the experience is real and yet the question is who is experiencing it the body is inactive if I if we were our bodies and the bodies were the experiencers of things in the sleeping the body is not experiencing anything and yet we are experiencing something that means the experiencer is something different from the body the experiencer is something which is distinct from the body and of course when that experiencer experiences something it also has a physical effect like when I am fearful, I am running in my dream, it may cause my heart to palpitate also so that is the effect of that experience at a physical level coming up but the experience itself did not happen at the level of the body the body was not running away from a tiger so what this means is the simple experience of dreaming if we analyze about it a little bit we can understand that the experiencer is different from the body so when we are awake, that experiencer experiences through the body and when we are asleep, that experiencer experiences independent of the body through some other medium so just by analyzing the phenomenon of dreaming we can understand that the experiencer is different from the body there is a prominent saint and scholar in our tradition, Baldev Vidyabhushan so he analyzes the phenomenon of dreams elaborately and he says that even in our dreams in some dreams we are observers, things are happening and we are observing, in some dreams we are participants something is happening to us and responding but even in our dreams everything doesn't happen according to our will normally we say oh it was a dream come true but actually if we look at our dreams even in our dreams, everything doesn't happen according to our will we want to go somewhere and then maybe our car gets lost or something like that many things happen either we are observers or we are participants but we are not the absolute controllers either way we are experiencers so just as in the outer world we do some things we observe some things but we are not the controllers in the physical world same way in the dream world also the experiencer we observe we participate but we are not the ultimate controllers so what is happening at the dream level is when we dream, the soul's consciousness comes out to the level of the subtle body to the level of the mind but it does not come out to the level of the gross body and that state consciousness rooted till the subtle material level that is called as the Swapna state Swapna means dream so in dream state the consciousness comes out till the level of the mind subtle body is the same as the mind but it does not come further out in the waking state it comes out through the mind to the body to the outer world now this is a diagrammatic description of what is given in the Mundakopanishad going further so this is the Swapna state there are also times when we don't experience any dreams we are dreamlessly now before I go to that let's consider one more point that with scientific research say scientists can find out when we are dreaming there are various ways there is REM when we dream there is a rapid eye movement so that is one indication that we are dreaming similarly scientists can even put probes in our brain and then they can find out which areas of the brain are activated and maybe if they find out that okay the area of the brain related with fear is activated or related with horror or joy is activated so they can get some idea but if a scientific researcher wants to know what I was dreaming no amount of scientific probes will tell that they will have to wake up the person and ask what were you dreaming so consciousness has a first person reality to it which is not available to any external probes by external probes I can get some idea of what the experience is just like sometimes we may see somebody laughing and then we may ask what was the joke by laughing by that person's laughter we can understand this person is happy they must have heard something humorous but by that laughter we can't infer what the joke was that is something which we have to ask them so like that by certain brain states we may infer what is the nature of the dream the person had was it a pleasant dream, unpleasant dream but what the content of the dream was that is a first person experience which is not available to any probes so again this also indicates the point that consciousness is an irreducible reality which is beyond any material explanation the brain is associated with consciousness but consciousness is something different Dr. Wilter Penfield is a prominent Canadian neurosurgeon he is called the father of neurosurgeon after 40 years of research which he did with the brain he wrote a book called The Mystery of the Mind and in that book he says the brain is like a computer but it is programmed by something outside the source of consciousness is extra cerebral it is beyond the brain so in Swapna the consciousness comes out to the level of the mind and although nothing is happening at the level of the body we are experiencing a lot. Why are we experiencing? because it is the consciousness that is experiencing and whatever it is experiencing wherever the mind is going the consciousness experiences that and a third level of consciousness is what is called as Sushupti above consciousness not rooted anywhere it is just resting in itself it does not come out even to the level of the subtle body we are just in a deep dreamless state there is just existence there is not much experience associated with existence this is the state of Sushupti and this is often a state which some spiritual seekers aspire for.

Some people they find that the experiences at the external material level they promise a lot of pleasure but at the end the pleasure they give is very little and then they give a lot of distress so they feel there is not much happiness here. I just want to go within withdraw my consciousness inwards and then I will find some peace. This is a reasonable idea.

At the same time it is not going to the cause it is at the symptom level say I have some arthritis or some disease in my body because of which as soon as I move my hand I feel some pain as soon as I move my leg I feel pain now when if every movement of my body causes me pain then I just desire I just don't want to move if only I could avoid moving I would be peaceful yes first of all it is very difficult to avoid moving but even if I could avoid moving entirely even if I became free from pain after that after that what would I want to do? I want to move I want to do something, isn't it? So if my aim becomes simply to avoid motion because there is pain then I am mistakenly assuming that the cause of the pain is motion but the cause of the pain is not actually motion the cause of the pain is the disease present in the body and if I want to be free from pain stopping motion is not the solution it is curing the disease so similarly there are some spiritualists or some people in the spiritual path they feel that you know whatever we are conscious of we get attached to things and the attachment causes distress so we just want to become detached just go inwards become disconnected from the whole world they want to actually end consciousness they want to have a state of complete thoughtlessness now actually to want to be thoughtless is also to have a thought isn't it? to want to be thoughtless, that's also a thought so there is a fundamental difference between the between external objects and the moment of consciousness suppose recently a company whose phones were exploding say fine this phone is about to explode I don't want to touch it, I will put it aside I can do that a physical object I can say I will not touch it but if I decide it by consciousness I will not think of this when I say I won't think of this in that I am thinking about it if an alcoholic says I will not think about alcohol when we are not thinking about alcohol we are thinking about alcohol so in a sense we can never be completely unconscious or rather we can't be not conscious of something by thinking I will not think of that how can we if I don't want to be conscious of something the way is by becoming conscious of something else sometimes a person is sitting in a room and somebody else is talking but then the person just gets lost and says I lost you what did you say? so what has happened is that they were, if you say if some person is very boring we don't want to spend time with them say I will not hear what this person is saying but then if that person is speaking we can't say I will not hear, I have to think about something else so our consciousness if it has a positive channel if it goes somewhere else then it is no longer caught in whatever is annoying or distressing so similarly there is a higher direction for our consciousness and that is the soul's consciousness is rooted to the spiritual realm that is called the state of turiya or samadhi so in this state of consciousness the soul experiences the spiritual reality now thinkers, visionaries seekers across the world through history and geography have had some mystical experiences some people have seen something felt something, something special something extraordinary now how many of those experiences were real how many were not real, that's not the issue here the important thing is people have had visions, people have had experiences and so for example there is there are people who have near death experiences so when a person is unconscious they are unconscious physically but they experience themselves from above they see themselves being operated below so there is the scientist Kenneth Wright he wrote a book called Mindsight and in this book he talks about near death experiences among blind people these people like Vicky Umipeg was one of his subjects she was born blind and when she had a near death experience that was the only time she saw so she saw her own face she saw the doctor, she saw the facility how was she able to see it because the capacity for seeing is present in the soul and sometimes in the normal case that capacity was blocked I have a powerpoint here this is a little dark but what is happening over here is normally this is how we normally see, this is the external object from the eye the stimula comes to the brain, from the brain it goes to the mind, subtle eye and then it comes to the soul and that's how we normally perceive so for example say if you are looking at me, I am looking at you but some other thought comes in your mind then you do not see me you see something else so the soul, the mind the subtle eye we are talking about and the physical eye, all three have to be in one line then that external object is perceived now if a person is blind that means the physical eye is damaged or the optic nerve is damaged or the optic area of the brain is damaged the physical channel by which vision occurs is damaged but the soul still has the capacity to see and during near death experiences what essentially happens is the soul and the mind temporarily get separated from the body this is what happens so we can see the brain the eye, the gross body is lying below but the soul and the mind, they have come out and so in this case the blockage to vision that was there because the person was blind that blockage is removed and then the person is able to see so researchers have found out that even blind people are able to see during near death experiences and he has written a whole book about this so K. R. Nathring and Sharon Cooper in this book Mindsight they talk about this and near death experiences say that what they saw at that time is not just reality they say that we felt it to be realer than reality it was a higher level of reality and the Bhagavad Gita explains that there is a spiritual reality so the spiritual reality is where we actually belong so if you come into this temple and you see suddenly a gold ring fallen over here where did this gold ring come from? there is no gold over here around maybe it came from the altar the deities decoration or maybe somebody had a gold ring now when we see something which is out of place we ask where did it come from? where does it belong? so like that if you look at the world around us here everything is material and matter does not have consciousness and yet we all have consciousness where does this consciousness come from? it actually comes from another level of reality that is spiritual reality and that is where we belong that is where we will find enduring happiness because spiritual reality has three characteristics it is Sat, Chit and Ananda it is eternal it is conscious and it is full of joy Sat, Chit, Ananda and that is what we are all aspiring for and the process of Bhakti Yoga is a process for spiritualizing our consciousness so in this diagram we depicted about different levels of consciousness we could also depict it in a different way say like a building so right now we are in material consciousness we are perceiving the material reality beyond that the soul has spiritual consciousness and in spiritual consciousness because the soul is naturally joyful person becomes joyful just like say right now a storm has hit Texas and it is sweeping across that part of the world so if a flood has come on the ground floor and then a person climbs to the first floor on the ground floor there is turbulence when somebody comes to the first floor there is no turbulence why? because the water has not come there so once we rise above the turbulence situation we feel secure so like that the material level of reality is an area of turbulence and if we raise our consciousness to the spiritual level then we become free from the turbulence we can be concerned without being disturbed when I am on the first floor and I see the flood going below I am concerned but I don't feel personally threatened so similarly if we raise our consciousness to the spiritual level so the material level is the ground level of reality the spiritual level is the first level of reality first floor so the process of bhakti yoga is a process for elevating our consciousness yoga itself is meant for elevating our consciousness bhakti yoga is a process of yoga so normal yoga which we focus on bodily postures that is one stage of the process of yoga by which we disconnect ourselves from material reality and bhakti yoga is a process in which we focus not so much on disconnecting ourselves from material reality we focus on connecting ourselves with spiritual reality and when we do that we start experiencing joyfulness so the mantra that we chanted at the beginning and that we will chant again now this singing of sacred mantras we can conceive of a mantra like an elevator for the consciousness when we enter into an elevator automatically the elevator takes us up so like that when the mantra is being chanted and we attentively hear the mantra, we let our consciousness enter into the mantra then the consciousness rises upwards and as the consciousness rises upwards we start experiencing peace, we start experiencing joy and thus we start realizing for ourselves that there is some reality beyond the reality that I am experiencing the Bhagavad Gita says that the process of spirituality is also scientific scientific means it is verifiable by experience so if we just let our consciousness enter into the mantra and then let the mantra raise us up, we can experience a higher reality we can experience peace we can experience joy and the ultimate purpose of life is to raise our consciousness to the spiritual level wherein all our aspirations for joy, for unending happiness they will be fulfilled and that can be made accessible through the process of bhakti so by analyzing consciousness by understanding how the consciousness goes through these different states, how the consciousness can be channeled to the spiritual level each of us can experience the state of constant peace and joy that we are all looking for so I'll summarize I spoke about consciousness being the mystery it's a fundamental reality it is the means by which we know everything and yet, what consciousness is, is an unsolved mystery second among the 125 questions which science doesn't have any answers consciousness is basically the means by which all scientific knowledge is got but the means by which we get knowledge, about that we have very little knowledge and our conscious is something internal to us but it is we see things in the outer world we see things in our inner mind but the seer is somewhat deeper still what we are looking for is what we are looking with consciousness is not present in the brain because there are people who have no brain substance and still they have consciousness consciousness is not present in the brain because the brain is simply ultimately atoms and molecules and everything that happens in the brain is simply the transmission of electrochemical signals and they are present in computers, they are present in division, they are present in electrical cable, there is no consciousness there so if somebody says there is no consciousness at all the denial of consciousness also requires consciousness so consciousness is an undeniable fundamental reality and that the Bhagavad Gita explains comes from another category the soul, spiritual reality just like a bulb gives out light the soul radiates out consciousness and then how the soul radiates out consciousness at different levels I talk through this diagram normally the consciousness of the soul comes out through the mind through the body to the outer world that is the state of Jagruti a wakeful state when the soul's consciousness comes to the level of the mind that is the state of dream I have also discussed about how if we were ourselves the body and the body was the experiencer of everything in dreaming we experience but the body doesn't experience that means the experiencer is something different from the body and that experiencer is the soul so in science can tell us when somebody is dreaming but what they are dreaming that is a first person reality which we have to ask no probe can tell us that that is because the source of consciousness the experiencer of consciousness is not in the brain, is somewhere deeper so there is a dreamless state which is the Sushupti state some people conceive of liberation as just becoming thoughtless free from thought but we can even the desire to be free from even the thought of being free from thought is a thought just you may physically not touch something but mentally I cannot say I will not think of something because to not think of something is to think of that thing the way to not think of something is to have something else to think about like that we need our consciousness to be channeled somewhere else somebody who is having pain in the body and they feel the pain whenever they move their hands the pain is not because of the motion, the pain is because of the disease and to stop the pain, stopping motion is not what is required, curing the disease is required similarly stopping consciousness is not the solution curing consciousness is what is needed, curing consciousness means raising the consciousness to the spiritual level which is where we belong as spiritual beings and the process of yoga in terms of ashtan yoga that involves disconnection of consciousness from matter so that eventually it can explore spirit bhakti yoga involves directly connecting the consciousness to spirit and one way to elevate our consciousness is through the chanting of mantras so if you can see on the ground floor there is storm there is rain, floods on the first floor there is security so at the material level we may experience anxiety, insecurity, fear but if through the process of bhakti yoga through the chanting of mantras which acts like an elevator of consciousness we raise our consciousness upwards then we can experience peace and joy we can be concerned without feeling disturbed without feeling threatened and in this inner security in this channeling of our consciousness to the spiritual level is the fulfillment of all our aspirations for peace and joy. Thank you very much Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, so everyone can please stand up and we'll have our team here time Thank you so much.