This will likely likely be pretty useful for some of the work I plan to will not only with my blog but…

scroog3 asked:

“In between the states of JAGRAT, SWAPNA, NIDRA, and TURIYA respectively – where does the conscionusness state experienced while doing meditation fit in?”

short answer: it depends on what meditation you are doing, what its natural limitations are, how intently you are doing it, etc

detailed answer: different meditations have different goals. some are just preliminary processes to help us relax and prepare for deeper inner work. however, the traditional yogic practices and the buddhist practices work as follows:

you begin your meditation in the jagrat waking state. this is where you are focusing on something such as your breath. now, when you have brought your mind under control and it no longer moves all over the place, and there is a fluid flowing of awareness to your meditation, you will begin to enter the svapna dreaming state. however if you maintain your awareness you will NOT experience this state as ordinary people do. you will instead become introverted, the outer senses will become distant and you will feel your are internalized within your mind. this is the subtle body, svapna. here the flow of your awareness in your meditation will mostly be one-pointed, although other movements in mind have not yet ceased entirely. you will feel that in this state it is less of a struggle to remain centered in your awareness. now, from this svapna dream state you also have to rise just as you rose from jagrat waking state. so when your contemplation becomes more perfect, the dream state will dissolve into the causal susupti (nidra, as you wrote) deep sleep state. here there is no external world of the outer senses NOR internal world of mind and thought. here in the causal state both objectivity and subjectivity vanish. it is experienced as complete stillness, rest, emptiness, as if there is nothing and never was anything. yet you still must rise higher, if you enter this nidra state with awareness then it is a low form of samadhi. it is not yet self-realization or profound awareness of the ground consciousness. from this nidra state you must rise to turiya by shedding that last veil. this will only occur by maintaining perfected awareness, if your awareness slips for even a moment you will not rise, you will sink back down into illusion (mind will become active again in ordinary way). when, in the causal nidra susupti state, there is a sudden flash of illumination within your own awareness, you will then experience a very profound samadhi state.

simpler explanation

in meditation you must rise through the states
from waking state to dreaming state
from dreaming state to deep sleep state
from deep sleep state to transcendental state

if you think about it you will realize simply that it HAS to happen like this, i.e., internally, an internal rising through states … where can you go from this state in waking? to reach deep samadhi states you have to go beyond waking, beyond dreaming, beyond deep sleeping, into the transcendental state of awareness.

so in your meditation when you lose awareness of this external world of the senses, you are rising. this is not the same as someone taking a nap and going to sleep. they enter the same dream state but unconsciously and they are driven by illusion, mind’s creations delude them. in meditation you enter the dream state with full awareness and you continue meditating. then from there your thought perfects itself and then you enter the causal state of deep sleep. this is not like when someone goes to sleep and enters a deeply unconscious state where they have no self-awareness whatsoever. if you enter this state with awareness you will understand how it is possible to remain perfectly aware in this state of emptiness. then from that deep sleep state you must remain aware of yourself until you realize the fullness of the transcendental consciousness, the primordial awareness.

this article here is good because the author brings buddhist terminology and tantric/advaita terminology together showing their harmonious meanings. the three state model of shaivism and advaita is very easy to understand, and turiya being synonymous with buddhist terms like alaya or primordial awareness is also easy to understand and very clarifying.

if you or anyone else would like a deeper explanation (or just clearer, i know i don’t write too well) of the states and how we must rise through them in meditation, let me know here and i’ll give you my email address.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by FreePsyche: Free Reading !!! Shifting Consciousness: Six Years with Yogis and Tibetan .. http://bit.ly/5nA0n5
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