Turiya (Pure-Consciousness)

Many spiritual traditions say that enlightenment reveals the world as an illusion and lets you see true reality. But what does that really mean?

The Mandukya Upanishad describes four states of human experience: waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and a fourth called Turiya.

The Four States

The first three—waking, dreaming, and deep sleep—are familiar to us. Turiya, often called “pure consciousness,” is said to be the only true reality.

“Pure consciousness” doesn’t mean something holy, good, or morally superior. Here, “pure” simply means “objectless,” as in consciousness without any content. Pure consciousness is the capacity to experience anything at all. It is like the screen on which the movie is projected—without the screen, there is no movie, but the screen itself doesn’t need a movie. In the same way, pure consciousness projects a waker, sleeper, deep-sleeper, and even other states; by itself, it doesn’t need any state. Every state has a world of names, forms, and functions – all of which are projections of pure consciousnesses.

Dependent vs Independent Reality

The waking, dreaming, and deep sleep (and other) states all depend on pure consciousness. Pure consciousness powers both the world we experience (the “known”) and the sense of self (the “knower”) in every state.

Yet, it remains untouched by any experience, just as a mirror is unaffected by the images it reflects.

In other words, pure consciousness can exist independently, but the waker, dreamer, and deep sleeper depend on it. The worlds and selves we experience in each state are “dependent realities”—they need pure consciousness to appear.

Pure consciousness itself is the “independent reality.”

Why Does This Matter?

Understanding this can be deeply freeing. Most of our lives are lived from the frame of reference of the knower in the waking state.

Shifting our frame of reference to the dreamer in the dream state is a Freudian nightmare. Shifting it to the deep-sleep state is probably a better idea, but it doesn’t yield much benefit for the other two.

However, if we shift our frame of reference to Turiya, suffering in the waking (and dare I say even the dreaming) state significantly disappears.

The more we live from the awareness of Turiya, the less we are troubled by life’s ups and downs.

If we carefully observe, the body-mind system creates both the world (known) and the sense of self (knower) in all three states, “using” pure consciousness as the foundation.

A more accurate way of saying this would be:

The nature of Turiya (pure consciousness) is to show up as the waker, sleeper, deep sleeper, and sometimes even as mystical states, fomenting the knower and known in each of these states. By itself pure consciousness requires none of these states, yet its nature is to appear as one of these states.

Shifting one’s frame of reference to Turiya and recognizing its nature allows life to flow easily, without resistance. Karma can play out and eventually exhaust itself, leaving you free.

Isn’t that liberating?