The Mandukya Upanishad

In that old lineage of the rishis there is a scene where no story unfolds, no simile is offered, no anecdote is told. The seeker sits, the breath has stilled, and the guru points only toward a single sound, ॐ. Swami Krishnananda, a teacher of Vedanta in the lineage of Sri Shivananda, says that this Upanishad gives no parable, tells no tale, and draws no comparison. It sets down the bare facts of the human being and of the supreme truth.

The very opening is a solemn declaration, ॐ इत्येतदक्षरमिदं सर्वम् (this syllable ॐ is all of this). All that has passed, all that is, and all that is yet to come stands as a commentary on this one truth. According to Swami ji, when you chant ॐ you do not manufacture it. You simply bring your own note into tune with a vibration that was already sounding there.

This is what carries the name Mandukya Upanishad, the hidden knowledge (the secret teaching) that dawned on the rishi called Manduka. Come down from the Atharva Veda, this Upanishad is the smallest of the small, only twelve mantras (statements), yet Swami Krishnananda calls it enough on its own for a mumukshu (one who longs for liberation), माण्डूक्यमेकमेवालं मुमुक्षूणां विमुक्तये, and says that once its real meaning lands, there is no need to go reading as far as the Chandogya or the Brihadaranyaka.

Its whole design is woven on a single thread, the three matras of ॐ, अ, उ, and म, and the silence beyond them, and the four states of consciousness, waking, dream, deep sleep, and turiya (the fourth, the supreme state). According to Swami ji, the atman is the abhidheya (that which is named) and ॐ is the abhidhana (that which names), so the root question is this: passing through these matras of sound, how do you come to know that fourth, unspoken thing, the knowing of which is liberation entire?

ॐ is all this

Swami Krishnananda sits before his students with the Mandukya Upanishad open (the hidden knowledge that came down from the rishi Manduka, whose name it bears). Right at the start he tells them that this Upanishad does not move the way the other Upanishads do. It tells no story, offers no similes, draws no comparisons. It sets out, plainly, the bare facts of the real make of the human being and of existence. In only twelve mantras it has bound the whole of Upanishadic knowledge into a single fist. This is why the tradition says a mumukshu (one who longs for liberation) needs the Mandukya alone, and whoever grasps its real meaning has no need to comb through the Chandogya or the Brihadaranyaka.

The very first line is a solemn declaration, ॐ is the akshara (that which never decays, the imperishable), and this is everything. All that has passed, all that is now, all that will come stands as a commentary on this one truth, and repeating the tradition’s phrase, Swami ji says, सर्वम् ॐकार एव (all is ॐ alone). Whatever the eye can see, whatever the mind can grasp, whatever inference or scripture can know, whatever can be gathered into a single word within creation, all of it is ॐ.

Here Swami Krishnananda breaks an illusion. As he sees it, the real form of ॐ is not bound to any chant or utterance, to any word or sound, though it is a sound too. ॐ is an existence that stands in itself, by its own right, which he calls vastu-tantra (that which rests on its own strength, leaning on nothing else), and he keeps it apart from purusha-tantra (that which exists only because someone holds it so). In his words, we do not create ॐ by chanting; we only wake a sympathetic vibration of our own alongside the vibration that already resounds through the cosmos by its own authority. ॐ is a universal vibration, the first pulse of sound that rose at the beginning of creation, and none of our making.

Then he opens the formula of name and form. Every thing in the world has a name (the word that calls it) and a form (the shape that name points toward). Mountain, river, fire, Rama, Krishna, these are all particular names, tied to particular forms. Swami ji says God has no particular form; his form is universal, and so he cannot be called by the limited speech of one land, one woman, one man. He needs a universal name, a speech that holds true for the whole cosmos. No local tongue is such a thing. One speech alone dawned upon the rishis, ॐ, that is, the pranava (the root sound in which all speech is held). When we say a, b, c, a single piece of the throat trembles; when we say ॐ, the entire voice-instrument shakes, as if every language, every word were returning into that one root sound.

Now Swami Krishnananda takes us to the depth that is the life of this section. The nature of ॐ is twofold. On one side it is temporal, bound within past, present, and future, the whole of creation built from these three letters, अ, उ, म. On the other side it is eternal. The Upanishad goes on to say that what lies even beyond time is ॐ as well, since the universal holds no time. Swami ji calls this amatra (without measure, the unmeasurable) and the chaturtha-bhava (that fourth nature which lies past the distinctions of अ, उ, म). This silent form of ॐ reaches no ear. It is not a voice, nor merely a vibration. It is pure existence, called sachchidananda-svarupa (the form of sat, chit, and ananda, that is, being, knowing, and supreme joy). With the image of river and sea he explains: the river is the temporal form, with its own name and shape; the sea is the eternal form, where all rivers become one and no separate name or shape is left.

From this opens the statement toward which the whole Upanishad moves, all this is Brahman (that supreme, endless existence), and this atman seated within (your own true form) is that very Brahman. And that one atman has four padas (four steps, four levels), which this Upanishad opens one by one in what follows. According to Swami Krishnananda, this is why true contemplation of ॐ is no rote repetition. It is a straight road for turning the individual soul into God, for returning one’s limited identity, tied to others, back into that boundless existence that stands by its own right.

The gist: ॐ is the name of all existence. Swami Krishnananda says we do not make it; we only match our note to a vibration that has always resounded by its own right. All time, passed, flowing, and yet to come, is held within it, and what lies beyond time is this too. All this is Brahman, and the Brahman that spreads outside is your own atman seated within.

The first pada: waking, where consciousness looks outward

Swami Krishnananda (the Vedanta teacher delivering these discourses on the Mandukya Upanishad) begins his inquiry into the four states of the atman right here, and he raises it from a very practical place. What we call life is really the time of being awake. The eye opens, and before it stand the world, the body, other people. God does not appear to us, Brahman does not appear, the pranava (the syllable ॐ) does not appear. What is seen is what is real for us. Swami ji says this is why the Upanishad, too, sets its first step exactly where our feet already rest, the gross world laid out before the senses. The name of this state is the jagrat-avastha (the waking condition), and it is the atman’s first pada (a quarter, the first foot).

The first mark of this consciousness is bahihprajna (knowing that faces outward). Swami ji is plain about it: we cannot see even inside our own stomach, let alone inside the mind. We are turned outward, our whole chase is after things outside ourselves. We stay sunk in concern for others while our own self goes unattended. This is the strange design of waking consciousness: it fixes on every other thing and never on itself. And what does this consciousness consume? The gross. The Upanishad calls it sthula-bhuk (the eater of the gross), meaning it takes in and digests whatever is solid and outer.

Now the Upanishad weighs this same waking state on two scales, one the vast outer cosmos, one our own small body. Swami Krishnananda says this is more than a study of oneself; it is also the meeting of the individual and the universe. Between the individual soul and God there lies no gulf that cannot be bridged. To show this meeting the mantra gives two words, saptanga (having seven limbs) and ekonavimshati-mukha (having nineteen mouths). The seven limbs point toward samashti (the collective form of the whole world), the nineteen mouths toward vyashti (the separate form of each single soul), that is, toward one being at a time.

For the seven limbs Swami ji sets out that famous description from the Mundaka Upanishad in which the entire cosmos becomes the body of a single Purusha. The bright worlds of the sky are his head, the sun and moon his two eyes, the directions his ears, the Vedas his speech, all the winds his prana (breath), the whole universe his heart, and the earth his feet. This is the Viraat, this is the Purusha of the Purusha Sukta, this is the form Arjuna saw in the eleventh chapter of the Gita, and this is the Viraat whose glimpse Yashoda caught in the mouth of the child Krishna. He is called Vaishvanara, since vishva (the whole world) and nara (the human being) together make Vaishvanara. Swami ji also recalls Meera’s line that in this world there is only one Purusha. All the rest are shadows of that one.

Now come to the small end, our own body. Here Swami ji counts out the nineteen mouths, and a mouth means a doorway through which we take the world in. Five organs of knowledge (the means of knowing, that is, ear, skin, eye, tongue, nose), five organs of action (the means of doing, that is, speech, hands, feet, and the two lower organs), five pranas (prana, apana, vyana, udana, samana, the five life-winds that flow through the body), and the fourfold antahkarana (the inner instrument, that is, the mind that thinks, the intellect that decides, the ego that says I and mine, and the chitta that stores memory). Five and five and five and four, these are the nineteen mouths. Through these nineteen small windows the soul swallows the outer world, and through them the world too enters into it. This is the vyashti form of Vaishvanara, called Vishva (waking consciousness housed in a single body), while that same consciousness housed in the whole cosmos is called Viraat or Vaishvanara.

Then Swami Krishnananda comes to the fine distinction that is the heart of this whole pada. Outward, both God and the soul gaze, both are bahihprajna, yet their manner differs. The consciousness of the Viraat is only aham asmi (I am); before it there is no second at all. The whole world is its own ‘I,’ and so there is no attachment, no aversion, no pain, no desire. The soul, though, says, I am here and the world is outside me as well. This ‘outside’ it wants, measures, and tries to turn into an instrument of its own pleasure. Swami ji’s blunt point is this: the difference between the soul and God is desire alone. Let desire fall away and the soul is God; let desire attach and God becomes the soul. And desire itself is our weakness. The more we want, the weaker we grow, since the strength of the Viraat lies in its nirichchha (the total absence of desire). Swami ji offers one sweet glimpse: this ‘I am’ condition of the Viraat is a little like the moment when, just as you wake from deep sleep, before the stir of the world rises, only a tender sense of your own being remains.

The gist: what we take as ordinary and call ‘the outer, everyday world’ is itself the atman’s first foot. The soul swallowing the world through nineteen windows and the Viraat spread across seven limbs are both gazing outward. Their one difference is desire. The moment wanting stops, that same soul quietly merges into the vast ‘I am’ of Vaishvanara.

The second and third padas: dream and deep sleep

Waking is done with; now the Mandukya Upanishad takes us within. The first pada was Vaishvanara, the world of eyes open to the outside. The next mantra points toward the state whose courtyard is dream, svapna-sthana (whose dwelling is the dream). At the level of the individual this consciousness is called Taijasa (made of light, the subtle luminous seer), and at the level of the whole cosmos Hiranyagarbha (the subtle, collective mind of creation). This is the very consciousness that flowed outward in waking, now turned within, become antahprajna (knowing that faces inward).

Swami Krishnananda raises a telling point. We say the dream is false and waking is true, but who is it that makes this comparison? According to Swami ji, one who is always awake cannot deliver this verdict, and neither can one who is always dreaming. Only the one who has news of both states at once can compare them, like an impartial judge who belongs to no single side. This means our real form is held neither fully in waking nor in dream. We are that third one, the witness (the watching observer) of both. Swami ji likens it to seating a commission of inquiry, where the truth can be reached only by staying impartial.

Then he gives a sharp example, one spoken by some old thinker. Suppose a king becomes a beggar in his dream twelve hours every day, and a beggar becomes a king in his dream twelve hours every day. Now tell me, who is the real king and who the real beggar? Swami Krishnananda says that whichever state you are in seems true for that hour. In a dream you laugh, you weep, you truly leap up at the sight of a dream-snake, you wake drenched in sweat at the sight of a dream-tiger. If that pain was false, why the leap? He adds the parable of the rope and the snake as well. In the dark a rope looks like a snake, and in that moment the snake was there for us, which is why we trembled. Only when light comes do we learn it was a rope. Such is this waking world: it lasts as long as it is seen, and when the light of knowledge comes, the rope of Brahman appears in its place.

From this same analysis Swami ji opens the relation between the human being and God. The bond the dreamer has with the waking self is the very bond the human being has with God. As the dream world is a making of the waking mind, so this waking world is a making of God. And as waking from a dream costs us nothing and instead leaves us fuller, so in the realization of God nothing is lost and our being only grows. Swami Krishnananda reminds us that in dream the mind fashions its own senses, seeing though the eyes are shut, hearing though the ears are closed. The mind itself becomes two, the seer as well, and the seen world as well.

He counts out the causes of dream as well, and here he goes past the West. Freud, Adler, and Jung called dreams a play of buried desires and complexes, which is half true. But according to Swami ji, dreams also come from the fruit of old karma, from the pull of a loved one’s deep thought sitting far away (as when a mother remembers you from a distance), and from the grace of the guru. He says that sometimes a blow which prarabdha meant to be borne in waking, the guru lets pass off within a dream through shaktipata (the descent of the guru’s consciousness), and God’s own grace descends in dream too. The reason is that in waking the ego throws up obstacles, while in sleep and dream that ego settles somewhat, and so the higher powers find room there to work.

Now the third pada, deep sleep, sushupti (the thick sleep without dreams). Swami ji explains that the mind, worn out, collapses and folds into its own lap. Here there is no wish, no dream. All understanding, all impressions and latent desires become one, ekibhuta (merged into a single mass), and consciousness becomes a dense clot, prajnanaghana (the thick substance of pure knowing). What is experienced in this state is joy alone, and this is Prajna (the conscious form of this deep state). Swami ji stresses that this sinking into joy happens unknowingly, without awareness, and on this one veil the whole game is stuck.

On this height of happiness Swami Krishnananda pauses and speaks. Let an emperor go a week without sleep and he will say, let me sleep, take back your empire. Even the gift of the whole world cannot give the happiness that comes, alone, with no companion, with no property, in deep sleep. There you feed on joy alone, you swallow and live on joy alone, and though you gain nothing you return refreshed. Swami ji asks, where did this strength, this joy come from? It is not of this world; it is of some other source. And the mouth that tastes it is neither sense nor mind. Consciousness itself is the mouth there, chetomukha (whose mouth is consciousness); chit itself tastes the joy. Our real form is this aloneness, this kevalata (utter solitude, being purely alone), and not the sum of a crowd and the senses. Swami ji’s core line is this: if awareness could join this sleep, that itself would be samadhi, this itself realization of the Self, this itself moksha. This Prajna is the cause of both worlds, the causal state, and waking and dream are its effects. At the level of the whole cosmos the counterpart of this Prajna is God. The happiness of deep sleep carries us daily to the door of the supreme, and we fail to recognize it.

The gist: the thick happiness of deep sleep that you taste every day without asking rises from your own bare being, from nothing outside. The only difference is that awareness is not there. To sit awake within that same happiness, to know that same fullness without sleeping, this is samadhi and this is your true form.

The fourth pada: turiya, which dwells in no place

So far the Mandukya Upanishad has shown us three states of the atman. Waking (consciousness that knows the outer world), dream (consciousness that fashions the inner world), and deep sleep (where neither outer nor inner remains, only a dense, dark sort of happiness). These were joined to the three matras of ॐ, अ-उ-म्. The seventh mantra stands at the turn where all three are left behind. Here the Upanishad points toward that fourth, which is called turiya (literally “the fourth”).

Swami Krishnananda, a thinker in the lineage of Sri Shivananda ji and the one whose commentary we are reading here, first makes one large thing clear. He says that real existence is neither personal nor universal. Even calling God all-ruling, all-knowing, and all-powerful is a definition made by way of a relation. When we say he is everywhere, we have tied him to place (space). When we say he knows all, we have assumed that something “other” is left over to be known. According to Swami ji these are all tatastha-lakshana (marks from around it, an outer identity), and not svarupa-lakshana (the mark of its own true form). Turiya is that true form. What God was in himself before creation, that alone.

For this reason the seventh mantra grasps it in the language of “no, no.” Not the inner consciousness (नान्तःप्रज्ञम्, no dream-like inner awareness), not the outer consciousness (न बहिःप्रज्ञम्, no waking-like outer awareness), not both at once (नोभयतःप्रज्ञम्). Swami ji stresses that it is not any dense heap of consciousness either (न प्रज्ञानघनम्), because a heap takes up space and is measured, and consciousness is not measured. It is not some blank void without any knowing (न प्रज्ञम्), and it is not the absence of consciousness (नाप्रज्ञम्). His fine point is that this is not consciousness emptied of objects; this is the consciousness into which all objects have dissolved and been absorbed. To call it a bare, transparent emptiness would therefore be wrong.

Then the mantra counts out its marks, and Swami ji opens each. अदृष्ट (however hard the eye strains, it cannot see it). अव्यवहार्य (no dealing, no transaction is possible with it, no touching, no grasping, no speaking). अग्राह्य (beyond the grip of the senses). अलक्षण (and so it has no definition, since a definition is a sum of seen and heard qualities, and here there is nothing to see or hear). अचिन्त्य (the mind cannot even think it, for the moment we think it we set it out in space and time, outside). अव्यपदेश्य (it cannot be spoken; no scripture, no saint, the knowledge of all the rishis together falls short of describing it). Swami ji says this whole world is a net of things referred to one another, each explained by leaning on some “other.” Here no “other” is left at all, and so it is the falling silent of all this stir, of both body and mind.

Now the Upanishad gives a beautiful handhold, एकात्मप्रत्ययसारम् (the essence of the awareness of the one Self). Swami ji explains it with an example from the Ramayana. The poet was asked, what was the war of Rama and Ravana like? He says, the sky is like the sky, the sea like the sea, and the war of Rama and Ravana was only like the war of Rama and Ravana, and no comparison with anything else can be made. The atman is like this too. The atman is only like the atman. Swami ji gives it three meanings, ekatva (oneness), atmatva (selfhood, being oneself), and saratva (being the essence of all). The atman is that which knows itself, leaning on no proof, by its being alone. Here the knower and the known become one, as two seas meeting become one. This he calls the direct experience beyond the senses and reasoning (inner knowing).

Leaning on Yajnavalkya’s सलिल एको द्रष्टा (a lone seeing consciousness like shoreless water), Swami ji says, this is the Paramatman. Recalling the Srimad Bhagavatam’s ब्रह्मेति परमात्मेति भगवानिति, he tells us that one and the same truth is Brahman in itself, Paramatman as creator, and Bhagavan as the beloved form for devotees. Dvaita, Vishishtadvaita, and Advaita all come and meet here, the quarrels fall quiet, the philosophies go silent. He tells a guru-story: three times the student asked, “What is the atman?” All three times the guru stayed silent. Asked a fourth time, the guru said, “I have been telling you all along, you are not listening, because silence itself is the atman.” Then the rest of the mantra’s words come, प्रपञ्चोपशमम् (where all the stir of creation grows still, like waves sinking back into the sea), शान्तम् (a peace that rises from its own nature, not from the absence of any noise), शिवम् (the supreme good), अद्वैतम् (do not even call it “one,” since “one” keeps a relation with “two, three,” so only “advaita,” not two, नेति नेति).

At the end the mantra says, चतुर्थं मन्यन्ते, स आत्मा, स विज्ञेयः (this is held to be the fourth, that is the atman, that is to be known). Here is Swami ji’s most clear point. Turiya is no fourth by count, no fourth place you go and sit in. It is the being beyond all three, waking, dream, and sleep, a being without number, without measure. As he sees it, when you arrive there you do not feel “I am in some fourth state.” Instead it appears the only possible state there is. This is the witness of all three, the real form of ourselves and of all things, sat-chit-ananda. And to know this is the very purpose of life. Swami ji gives the example of the gopis, who wandered asking every tree, every vine for word of Krishna, and only when the ego wore out and vanished did Krishna himself appear. The atman too is not found by searching among objects. The moment the ego quiets, it uncovers itself.

The gist: turiya is no fourth story you climb up to reach; it is the witness that keeps watching all three, waking, dream, and sleep. It can be touched only by “no, no,” since every definition binds it to some “other,” and there no “other” is left at all. The day the searching ego wears out and grows quiet, that very day it uncovers itself, because it is our own true form.

अ, उ, म, and the silence after

Swami Krishnananda is at the final stage of his discourse. Where the Mandukya Upanishad set out, from ॐ, it now returns, though with a new understanding. Swami ji explains that this whole Upanishad is weaving the relation between two things, one the atman (our own real existence), the other ॐ. ॐ is the name, the atman is the named. ॐ is the pointing finger, the atman is the truth toward which the finger is raised. And as the atman has three familiar forms (waking, dream, deep sleep), so ॐ too has three pieces, the अ-sound, the उ-sound, the म-sound. Swami ji says these matras of ॐ are the feet of the atman, and the feet of the atman are these matras.

Adding the first link, Swami Krishnananda joins the अ-sound to the waking state. In waking the atman is called Vaishvanara (consciousness spread through the whole world, opened outward), and this is the अ-sound of ॐ. Hear his reasoning: as every experience begins with waking (dream is the fruit of waking’s impressions, and deep sleep is the gathering up of those unfinished imprints), so अ is the beginning of every letter. The first sound that rises the moment you open your mouth is अ, and according to Swami ji all other words are held within that अ. This is why the Upanishad says that whoever meditates on this correspondence has all his desires fulfilled and becomes foremost among all, things coming to him unasked. Swami ji calls this real power, the power that gets things done without a word.

In the second link Swami Krishnananda joins the उ-sound to Taijasa (the consciousness of dream, turned inward). He says the उ-sound is utkarsha, that is, raised up, since it comes after अ and appears as its fruit. In speech the sound उ rises from the middle of the throat, right at the midstream of voice-making. In the same way dream is the stage between waking and deep sleep, touching both. Swami ji says whoever meditates on this correspondence sees his knowledge rise above ordinary information, and he becomes a person who brings evenness and sets things in harmony. No conflict remains within him, and so in his presence outer strife too grows still. He becomes one who spreads peace without saying a word.

In the third link Swami Krishnananda joins the म-sound to sushupti (deep slumber, the causal state), where the atman is called Prajna (the seed-form knower). His understanding is very fine. When we chant ॐ, अ and उ at last sink into म, exactly as all the imprints of waking and dream are absorbed into deep sleep. The म-sound is the measure of all and the dissolution of all, since in sushupti our unfinished latent desires and impressions lie pressed down like seeds, and from there the experiences of waking and dream sprout. In this sense sleep is both cause and fruit. Swami ji says whoever meditates on this correspondence becomes the measurer of all, all-knowing, and the whole of creation is absorbed into him as rivers into the sea.

Now Swami Krishnananda turns toward that fourth, which the Upanishad has already described, turiya (no inner knowing, no outer, no both). As the atman has a form beyond the states, so ॐ too has a form that lies past the matras, amatra (without measure, without matra). This is no condition of sound. Swami ji says it is only the pulse of existence, holding no substance, lying beyond all three of gross, subtle, and causal. The Upanishad gives it only one name, amatra, the unmeasurable. As the atman does not come within grasp, and is unsayable and unthinkable, so this silent condition of ॐ too is past all measure of every kind.

And here comes Swami Krishnananda’s real point. This fourth, silent condition of ॐ is nothing else; it is the atman itself. Prapanchopashama (the stilling of all the world’s traffic), shiva (the supreme good), advaita (where nothing second is left). Where the utterance stops, what remains there is the atman. Swami ji says something singular: whoever comes to know this secret through deep meditation does not enter the atman by any door; he enters the atman by way of the atman alone. We do not push into the atman; the atman dissolves into the atman. We do not survive at all. We merge into the atman as if turned to vapor, and the atman goes on being the atman. This is realization of the Self, this is realization of Brahman, both in one and the same moment. Swami ji reminds us at the end that for a mumukshu (one who longs for liberation) the Mandukya alone is enough, provided it is not heard and forgotten but taken down into life.

The gist: the three matras of ॐ are our three everyday states, अ waking, उ dream, म deep sleep. But when the chant completes and settles into silence, that silence is the fourth, turiya, and that is the atman. The stopping of the utterance is no lack; it is fullness itself. We do not reach the atman by any road; we dissolve into the atman by way of the atman alone.

And at last, toward yourself

After twelve small mantras this Upanishad brings us and sets us down exactly where we had never once moved from, that is, right beside ourselves. All day we wake (jagrat), at night we dream (svapna), then in deep sleep everything sinks away (sushupti). All three conditions keep coming and going, keep erasing one another. But there is one that stays present in all three and is caught in none. That is the fourth, turiya (the fourth state), and Swami Krishnananda says this “fourth” is no fourth by count, only a pointer used against those three relative conditions; the moment you arrive there, you do not feel “I have reached some fourth place.” Instead it feels that this is the only place there is, this is your own real home. That which does not wake, does not dream, does not sleep, which turns neither outward nor inward, that is the atman, that is you.

According to Swami Krishnananda the Upanishad keeps denying this very atman with great care, adrishya (which the eye cannot see), agrahya (which the senses cannot grasp), achintya (which the mind cannot think), because thinking means setting a thing outside and looking at it, and this is the seer itself, not any object that can be seen. Even so it is no bare void or unconsciousness; it is at peace, it is shiva (supremely benevolent), it is advaita (where nothing second remains). Swami ji tells an old story: a student asked the guru again and again, “Give me an introduction to the atman,” and each time the guru stayed silent; at last he said, “I have been telling you all along, you are not listening, because silence itself is the atman.” In that silence all the noise of the world grows still, and Swami ji says this quiet speaks more clearly than a thousand arguments. The whole design of ॐ is there to raise a finger toward this, the अ-sound holds waking, the उ-sound holds dream, the म-sound holds deep sleep, and when the utterance ends and silence remains, that matra-less ॐ, that amatra (the one without measure or weight) is turiya; and so Swami ji says that into that atman we do not walk through any door, “entry into the atman is only by way of the atman.”

So this evening, when you say ॐ, pause on that small silence right after it, and feel for yourself within it. Swami Krishnananda says that all of life, all the running about, is really an attempt to find this very atman; we love things, people, and achievements because somewhere inside we keep hoping that fullness will be found there, and since it is bound to no single place, our hands stay empty. This Upanishad says, स विज्ञेयः, this is what is to be known, this is the purpose of life. And knowing here is not the adding of information; it is simply becoming what you already are. So each time the breath stills and silence descends, understand that this finger has all along been pointing toward yourself, toward no one outside.

The gist: amid the three conditions of waking, sleeping, and dreaming, that which never changes, that seer is you, turiya is you. The utterance of ॐ and the silence after it remind us daily that what you search for outside all your life is already seated within you, in the silence of every breath.

This reading draws mainly on Swami Krishnananda (Divine Life Society) and his commentary on the Mandukya Upanishad.