Three Ordinary States of Consciousness

Three Ordinary States of Consciousness

"Nothing has happened

And nothing will happen.

What is there, is there."

This is a tremendously significant sutra. All the scriptures can be condensed in such a sutra. If you can understand only these three lines, there is no need to understand anything else. Look at your life from your childhood up to now. What has happened? Many things appear to happen, but what has really happened? You remain the same, the consciousness remains the same, and all that happens is just superficial, like a dream. If it has not happened up to now, how is it going to happen in the future? Only the present is; past and future are dreams. Even for a single moment, if you can penetrate into reality and you can see what is, face to face, you will laugh at the whole absurdity of your efforts. What are you trying? – you are trying something impossible: you are fighting against reality. The reality is; it knows no becoming, it is being. It knows no future; it is already here. It has always been already here. You have just to see it – and once you can see it, all worry, all anxiety disappears. Then you stop trying, pulling yourself up by your shoestrings. Then you simply relax. Then there is no tension. Then rather, you start delighting, you start being blissful as you are.

Before we can understand it, a few things will be helpful.

One: ordinarily the Eastern psychology divides the human mind into three divisions. The first is deep sleep, very deep sleep when there are no more dreams: Sushupti, dreamless sleep. In this state, ninety-nine percent unconsciousness and only one percent consciousness exists. A very small fragment of consciousness exists – the whole continent is dark, just one ray. Because of that ray, in the morning you can say, “I had a very good sleep. It was absolutely silent and peaceful. There was not any dream.” Because of that one ray of consciousness, you can say this in the morning. If there were no consciousness at all, then who would remember? Then who would say that the sleep was beautiful, nourishing? Just a small ray, a very small ray exists in dreams.

That is the second stage – dreaming – a little more consciousness comes into existence. You remember in a general way that you slept well. You can even remember dreams, details of the dreams. You can remember even the colours, the story, the pattern, the motif of the dream. You can relate the whole dream. You were a little more conscious.

Then you are awake in the morning; that is the third stage: wakefulness, a little more consciousness. But the greater continent of your soul remains dark. Even while you are awake, you are not totally awake. Just deep down in your wakefulness, dreams are floating. You can watch that.

Any moment close your eyes, rest for a single minute, and you will see that dreams are floating there. So just underneath your consciousness, a great world of dreams continues, and that goes on affecting your consciousness. Dreams are powerful things. They are projections; they go on shadowing your consciousness. And deep down in your dreams you will find again a sort of sleep. That’s what happens when you fall asleep in the night. When you have fallen asleep, first dreams start. That is the second stage. Then only rarely do you go deep. Then, dreams stop and you are in deep sleep. Again you start floating towards the surface, and this goes on continuously, the whole night – up and down, up and down you move. In the whole night if you can touch the deep layer of sleep for only fifteen minutes, that will be enough rest. That’s why people who meditate don’t need much sleep, because in deep meditation they can easily move into the depth of their beings. The rest of the night is wasted in dreaming. These three states are the ordinary states.

The East says, “Unless you attain to a greater awareness, your life will never know what the reality is, what God is.” That greater awareness means becoming totally aware, not leaving a single corner of your consciousness dark, dropping all unconsciousness. What the Freudians call the unconscious disappears by and by. By methods of meditation, prayer, love, it disappears; more and more, you become conscious. One moment comes when your whole being becomes conscious, full of light, luminous. Then there is no dreaming and no sleep. Just awareness is the stuff you are made of. In that moment you will become able to know what this Baul is singing:

"Nothing has happened

And nothing will happen.

What is there, is there."

Jagadeesh Krishnan

Psychologist and International Author

+91 9841121780 / 9543187772

E - jagadeeshkri@gmail.com