Avastha thraya means ‘Three states’. These are :
1. Jaagrat - wakeful state – of a person who is awake. In this state, you are aware of your identity as your body and mind. The triad is complete – i.e., You, Body, Mind.
2. Swapna - dream state – of a person who is dreaming. In this state, you are not aware of your body. The mind along with the tendencies of your personality are active. The triad is reduced to ‘two’. You, Mind.
3. Sushupti - deep sleep – In this state, you are aware neither of your mind nor your body. And yet you exist. Your mind is ignorant of that state. Your body knows it not. And yet ‘you’ exist. This state of your ordinary experience of pure existence beyond the body and mind identities, is called Sushupti. This state of pure being is invigorating, enlivening and is common to all irrespective of gender, physical form, creed etc.,.
Even though we go through these three states routinely, we rarely recognise the existence of these three states. We rarely recognise that there is something that we experience almost daily by way of the state of Sushupti that points out that at the level of our pure identity, we are one. No one can honestly add an adjective to the state of deep sleep that will carry any kind of divisive social or religious identity. This state of deep sleep in which no identity or division arises is Sushupti.
If someone says that he dreamt about something, we do not question him. He can say what he wants about his dream. But we know that this story is of no momentous importance. His story can almost be treated as a personal opinion which really doesn’t affect anybody. It carries no influence apart from that on the dreamer. The others are removed from his dream even though they might have appeared in it. In the dream state, the bio-energy of the dreamer uses the mental impressions available in the brain of the subject and projects it on his mental space. It creates the illusion of space. Within the dream, the dimension of space exists and a temporary sequence may be created. But when the same subject dreams again the next day, the dream doesn’t continue from where he left off the previous day. A new space and new characters are created. There is no continuity in time. The dream state therefore only has a spatial dimension and is shorn of the temporal dimension. This is the Swapna State.
In the wakeful state, everyone comes with an identity, an opinion, beliefs and time-tagged memories. When an event occurs in our Jaagrat life, we react, we comment, we recall history and we judge. In addition to the spatial dimension, the dimension of Time weighs heavily in the Jaagrat state. These new variables which are made personal through identification, are factors that affect the life of a person deeply. More often than not, people disagree about opinions in the Jaagrat state. In the Swapna state, these differences start becoming immaterial. In the Sushupti state there is a point of indisputable agreement.
These states therefore state the relationship of mind-constructs to your identity.
1. In the Jaagrat state, you think all that you think is you and you own your reality. This is the egoic state of identity. It is like you own the car and you are driving the vehicle on manual drive – you are in apparent control. The Jaagrat state is ruled by the egoic identity and is mind driven.
2. In the Swapna state, you are in doubt about your ownership of mental constructs. The egoic identity exists but it is fragile. Your ownership of the vehicle is in doubt and it is as if the vehicle going somewhere by itself using automatic drive – you exist but you have no control. The Swapna state is ruled loosely by personal inclinations and impressions and is also mind driven.
3. In the Sushupti state, you lose your individual identity. Neither is there any car nor do you have to go anywhere! The Sushupti state is neither ruled nor driven. You just are!
When one realises that all that is happening in his world is a result of his own mental constructs, he realises that the 'Jaagrat world – the world of the so-called awake’ is actually ‘Swapna – the dream world created by individual minds' - that which have been dreamt as a result on one clutching at mental constructs as a possession and with a strong identity. The dream state exists to tell us that such a thing is possible.
When one begins to release this hold over this egoic identity and the 'personal thought space', then he transitions through a phase when he doubts both truth as well as falsehood. It is like the mind is committing suicide. This is the transition state which confuses you and is akin to the dream state of ordinary experience. People going through this phase may have thoughts of death and may end up experiencing the phenomenon of mental death in some form or the other.
When one rises into the realm of the universal organising principle, he has no personal thought. Everyone's thought becomes transparent to him. His own personal mind is always sleeping. His mind is in Sushupti and he is in his own restful space - beyond the three states of flux - beyond the avastha of these three states. This state of pure being is called the Turiya, or the ‘fourth’ state. It is a steady state – not a state of flux. It is the permanent and timeless universal consciousness from whose endless energy, the three personal states of Jaagrat, Swapna and Sushupti derive their existence.
When such a person sees another sleeping, he knows that this person doesn't know he is in Sushupti. He is just in darkness. If you switch on the light he will wake up.
Turiya is the equivalent of this state of complete detachment of the individual mind but accompanied by the shining forth of the universal organising principle through the active karanas. It accepts all three states but does not identify with any of them.
In fact this is the only true universal and timeless state. The other three states are personal and transient.
