The Mandukya Upanishad

The Mandukya is the shortest of the main Upanishads, and its twelve verses deal with a single subject: how to awaken to our intrinsic identity with Brahman, the Absolute, aided, particularly, by practices based on the syllable aum. The Upanishad begins:

The syllable aum is all this… All that is past, present and future is indeed aum. And whatever is beyond the three divisions of time is also truly aum. (Mandukya, one)

The syllable aum indicates all that exists in time and also the ultimate Reality that transcends time. It encompasses both without contradicting either; this is the root of its efficacy as a focus for contemplation. It ‘is all this’ because its three elements contain the seeds of all speech, and here ‘speech’ is used in its fullest sense to mean all that can be known as names and forms, which is the entire phenomenal world. The transcendent is found in the silence from which the syllable appears and into which it resolves. By meditation on aum one can see the world in its right perspective and affirm one’s true identity as the consciousness in which all experience appears. This theme is to be expanded in the Upanishad, as we will see below.

Such an awakening to Self-knowledge is not a special or unusual state of mind, but a return to normality and well-being. Our innermost Self, concealed by an imaginary delusion, frees itself from this state of not-knowing, and recovers its innate knowledge that ‘I am Brahman’. This is expressed in a special way in the second verse of the Upanishad:

All this is surely Brahman [the supreme, Absolute]. This Atman [Self] is Brahman. The Self has four quarters. (Mandukya, two)

Here we find the statement ‘This Atman is Brahman’. This is one of the four mahavakyas, the ‘great utterances’, which indicate the identity of human consciousness with the universal. This has to be understood by discriminating between reality and appearance in human beings and the universe. The ‘four quarters’ referred to in this verse are three aspects of the phenomenal world, plus the fourth, the transcendent, as will be explained later.

How do we know that such a knowledge exists, and that at present we are held back from realising it? Initially we know through the testimony of the illumined sages, who have themselves negated the illusory error at the heart of experience and gained clarity of understanding and inner vision. It is this depth of insight that authorises the sages to proclaim the highest truth fearlessly, and these testimonies form the basis of the upanishadic teachings.

The Mandukya Upanishad has a unique feature. Wherever it is published or studied, it is nearly always paired with a longer work known as the Karikas of Gaudapada, which, in pithy verses (karikas), draws out the practical and philosophical implications of the Upanishad. Gaudapada was a forthright exponent of advaita (non-duality) whose presentation accords with ajata-vada—the doctrine that the phenomenal universe never was ‘born’ in the Absolute, which is ever perfect and immutable. Thus ‘there is no duality whatsoever’, and never was or shall be.

Gaudapada’s Karikas, embedded in the Mandukya Upanishad, are the oldest known formulation of the pure non-duality of Shankara’s school.

Established in non-duality, this teacher gives no weight to theories of Creation or to philosophical debates aimed at winning arguments. For Gaudapada, intellectual quarrels about the origin and purpose of the universe are a waste of time and energy, while what really matters is realisation of the Absolute as non-duality. The world itself is therefore not the outcome of a real transformation of anything, but a web of passing appearances, distinguished only by their transiency and brief association with a particular name and form. This mystery cannot be explained, and so it is referred to as maya, that which makes possible the unreal appearance of duality where in fact there is even now only the non-dual.

Gaudapada and Shankara help us to understand the origins of suffering and ignorance. If the sun shines too brightly and there is no shade available, we will not be able to see clearly. Similarly, the statements that point to the highest truth as the only real existence, can confuse the understanding. Therefore we find that the direct and uncompromising statements of non-duality are often augmented or followed by teachings based on a more familiar view of self, namely as a mind and body acting and experiencing in the world of multiplicity. For example, here is a verse from the Karikas:

When the individual soul, asleep under a beginningless, hypnotic illusion, finally awakens, it awakens to a knowledge of the unborn, sleepless, dreamless non-dual reality. (Karika1:16)

This is a verse of awakening. It draws our attention to the transcendent and immaculate nature of the reality to which we are being awakened. The verse also glances back, so to say, to our empirical experience, when we were led on by the ‘hypnotic illusion’ (maya).

The reference to sleep and dream relates to the symbolism of aum as given in the Mandukya Upanishad.

The first quarter is the waking state with consciousness of external things… the second is the dream state, where consciousness is internal… the third is deep sleep where all is undifferentiated and abounds in bliss… [Mandukya, four to six]

This analysis describes human experience as passing through three distinct states each day: waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep. These are linked to aum by the three letters that form the audible parts of the word. Hence ‘A’ represents the waking state, the leading sound of active life and of the response to sense data. ‘A’ is the mouth-opener and in this sense it accompanies all vocal activity. It also stands for involvement and submersion in the world of sense objects.

The middle ‘U’ signifies the world of thought cut off from the activity of the senses, and which is at its most complete when we are dreaming. Here there is awareness of the inner world, but no receptivity via the senses, which cannot participate at this level.

The third and seemingly final stage of experience is symbolised by the ‘M’, suggestive of closure and satisfaction. In terms of our daily cycle, it refers to the deeper phase of sleep without dream.

Thus the phenomenal world that we experience is comprised of three elements: one is the objects perceived by our senses; another is the operations of the mind that arranges the sense data and integrates them with memory to produce the coherent image of the world we experience; the third is the awareness of what the mind thus presents. All three elements of the phenomenal world are encompassed in the three parts of a-u-m. A Karika verse says:

The first experiences external things, the second cognises internal things, the third is formed of massed intelligence. (Karika 1.1)

So far there is nothing obviously enlightening in this account of aum. But contemplation of this doctrine can bring about an inner transformation and guide our mind to a higher standpoint. Reflection on the totality of experience fosters a sense of detachment, and this itself is a step towards inner freedom. Pondering the notion of the three states automatically relieves us from being completely identified with those states. To reflect on the likeness of the dream state to the waking state is to deepen one’s capacity to view life objectively.

There is a subtle but valuable point to be noted in the teaching so far. The third element in our experience of the world—the ‘m’ in a-u-m—has been identified as the consciousness that remains in dreamless sleep from which the dreaming and waking states arise, that is, as the intelligence in which objects and concepts appear. As such, this principle is the source and controller of the world that we experience while awake. The Upanishad says:

This one is the Lord of all, the knower of all, the inner controller. This is the source of all, in which all beings originate and finally disappear. (Mandukya, six)

Here the unmanifest source of the manifest world is being included in the totality of conditioned forms, all that can be perceived and conceived. Even this ‘creator of creation’ has limitations which are transcended in the ‘fourth’ principle revealed by the Upanishad called turiya (meaning ‘fourth’) whose nature is eternal limitless consciousness and which abides even now as blissful peace and freedom.

The fourth is that which is not conscious of the internal world or the external world, nor both, neither compounded nor simple, nor unconscious, unperceived, non-relational, indescribable…

This fourth is identified as atman, the true and only self, and is not different from Brahman, the Absolute. It is that in us which is conscious of all the changes that occur in the three states. Yet turiya transcends all relativity and change. It is the only real principle, so to call it a ‘witness’ is a provisional teaching, an aid on the path to our realisation that:

…turiya is not related to anything, incomprehensible by the mind… essentially of the nature of consciousness, the Self alone, negation of all phenomena, all bliss and the non-dual. (Mandukya, seven)

The teachings thus reach through and beyond our individuality to embrace the macrocosm, which includes the phenomenal world and all humankind. Ultimately there is only one indivisible being, all-in-all and transcending the universe. For purposes of contemplation and as a means of widening our understanding, we may conceive of the consciousness that underlies our waking state, and the conscious power that impels all, as forming a single continuum. Similarly, the way that our dream state and the interior life of thought, invisible and subtle, appear in our consciousness, can be contemplated as analogous to the appearance of the phenomenal world in universal consciousness. Subtler still is the consciousness associated with dreamless sleep, which is regarded as the substratum of waking and dream, and being more inward, as the ‘cause’ of the material and mental.

What is absolutely permanent, free and real is not to be found in these three levels of mental and phenomenal experience, but in the ‘fourth’ principle, called turiya, which is one with Brahman and is our true nature. The student of non-duality is advised not to seek to erase the world, but to appreciate that its real being is turiya, and that true knowledge is transcendent in essence, though apparently diverse in manifestation.

Atman, the self-luminous, through the power of its own maya, imagines in itself and by itself (all the objects, whether they are parts of the mind, or seem to be external to our body.) Atman, the real self, alone is the cogniser of the objects. This is the judgement of knowers of Truth. (Karika, 2:12)

This teaching is of fundamental importance for our practice, because it is discrimination between the one and only subject or cogniser, and the ever-changing objects, that will lead to the recognition that the seeker was never really bound. In the unillumined condition, we perceive phenomena as independently real, and the conscious substratum as at best abstract and distant. This has been called ‘the superimposition of nescience’ and is rooted in the workings of our mind and brain, not in Reality.

What is necessary is to awaken from the hypnotic illusion of nescience. Non-duality is suppressed by our uncritical acceptance of duality and our unconscious conviction that the only valid experience must be based on the subject-object interplay. We identify with our body and its needs; our states of mind; our sense of ownership; the roles we play in the world. Often we are subject to some vague, ever present fears or anxieties, which add to our sense of finitude and separation, and serve to intensify the dualities of our experience.

The antidote to this discontent and fear is to train ourselves to intervene in the mental flow, sometimes to pause and replace the present picture, whether pleasing or disturbing, with the supreme ideas that disclose our connection with the realm of transcendence, ideas distilled and conveyed in aum:

One should concentrate ones’s mind on aum which is Brahman beyond fear. For one ever fixed in Brahman there can be no fear anywhere. (Karika, 1:25)

This practice includes the conscious recollection that all is passing and what passes cannot count as authentic reality. At the same time, we evoke the awareness of the ‘fourth’, turiya, not as one more state of consciousness that we pass through as we do in the case of the waking, dream and dreamless sleep experiences: it is atman itself, not other than Brahman, the Absolute. This recollection may be effected by contemplation of aum. The Upanishad ends with a repetition of the essentials for emphasis:

Aum is Turiya, partless and relationless, the limit of the negation of phenomena, all-good and non-dual. This aum is indeed Self. One who knows this merges oneself in Self, yes, one who knows this. (Mandukya, twelve)

How are we to understand that ultimately all is the non-dual absolute alone, and at the same time attend ethically to our responsibilities and do the meditations and other practices that resolve inner darkness? This difficulty is astutely recognised in one of the karika verses that follow the end of the Upanishad:

The aspirant, taking up devotional exercises, abides in the conditioned absolute, believing that all this was the birthless absolute before creation. This is a misunderstanding. (Karika, 3:1)

Is it possible to reconcile the absoluteness of the absolute and the appearance of the phenomenal world? Gaudapada indicates a solution based on the analogy of space:

Here is an illustration: Self is thought of as existing in individual souls in the same way as Space is as existing in individual pots… (Karika, 3:3)

The space within a jar may appear to be filled with various contents, as individuals are affected by joys and sorrows. Yet:

As a space within a jar is neither a transformation nor a part of space, so an individual being is never a transformation nor a part of the Supreme Self. (3:7)

The origin of individuals and objects is not to be understood as an event in space and time. The appearance of the phenomenal world does not limit the non-dual absolute. This can be realised through inner tranquillity, discrimination and trust.

With its focus on the sacred syllable analysed as a-u-m, the Mandukya Upanishad awakens us to a new appreciation of the significance of words. It is through words that we are alerted to the higher teachings, and we have seen how aum contains within itself all verbal expressions.

On the first verse of the Upanishad, Shankara comments:

…all these objects that are indicated by names are non-different from the names…

How can the name be the same as the object named? Here ‘name’ means the ‘concept’ we have of an object, and the named is that object as it is in the phenomenal world. We usually assume that the two are distinct, but on reflection we find that concepts cannot be separated from the phenomenal world, or the world from concepts. According to what we are trying to convey, we may emphasise one or the other so that at one time:

…the same thing that was presented with emphasis on the word is being indicated again with stress on the thing signified, so that the unity of the name and the nameable may be comprehended.

The equivalence of name and named, or concept and phenomena, underlies the power of contemplation on aum:

Once this identity is established, one can by a single effort eliminate both the name and the nameable to realise Brahman that is different from both. (Commentary, Mandukya, one.)

Brahman is Turiya, the ultimate reality which is the revealer of the waking, dream and dreamless sleep states, and which is the only immutable and self-evident principle in experience because it is the self in all.

All beings are ever free from bondage and pure by nature. They are ever illumined and liberated from the very beginning. Still the wise speak of the beings as capable of knowing the ultimate truth. (Karika, 4:98)

At first, our awareness of turiya will be indirect, based on an imaginative picture and not the real thing. If we persevere with our enquiry, which involves determining that the real self is other than the three states, our indirect knowledge of turiya will awaken a sense of its living presence that has its source in the self beyond multiplicity. We will realise that Brahman alone is real, and is the only substratum underlying the apparent spread of names and forms. Things are unreal, unborn, except as appearances; yet if we consider their substratum as Brahman, then every thing is as real as Brahman. This is the liberating vision that frees us from the hypnotic illusion, cancelling all fear and unrest.

B.D.