The Four States — Turiya
The Teaching
OM — this whole world is that syllable! What has become, what is becoming, what will become — verily, all of this is OM. And what is beyond these three states of the world — that too is OM.
All this is Brahman. This Self is Brahman. This very Self has four quarters.
The fourth is Turiya — not inward-knowing, not outward-knowing, not both-knowing, not a mass of knowing, not knowing, not unknowing. It is unseen, incommunicable, incomprehensible, uninferable, unthinkable, indescribable. Essentially the nature of the Self alone, in which all phenomena cease. Unchanging, peaceful, benign. This is the Self. This should be known.
Commentary
The Mandukya describes four states: waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and Turiya, the pure witnessing awareness that underlies all three. Turiya is not a state to be achieved but the ever-present ground in which all states arise and pass.
The apophatic language of Turiya, ‘not knowing, not unknowing, incomprehensible, indescribable’, is identical to the language of the mystics across traditions. The Kabbalistic Ein Sof: without end, without attributes, beyond all description. Plotinus’ One: beyond being, beyond knowing.
The psychedelic experience Alan Watts described, putting 10,000 watts through a razor and the mind stays blown, is a glimpse of Turiya forced rather than cultivated. The traditions offer the sustained path toward what the experience reveals momentarily.
Themes
Connections 9
Arose apart
No known transmission between Hinduism and Judaism while these teachings took shape.
Unsure
Plotinus hoped to learn Indian philosophy (Porphyry, Life 3). Indian influence on him is argued.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Hinduism and Christianity while these teachings took shape. Christians lived in Kerala from early centuries, but exchange of ideas begins only with the Jesuits: Akbar’s court debates (from 1580), Roberto de Nobili writing on Hindu doctrine in Tamil (from 1606), then Wilkins’s English Gita (1785), the Upanishads in Latin (1801–02) and Vivekananda (1893). All long after either’s formative teachings.
Travelled
Hinduism reached Buddhism by 500 BCE. The same Indian world. The Buddha taught among Brahmanical and ascetic schools, and the two argued and borrowed for centuries.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Hinduism and Taoism while these teachings took shape.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Hermeticism and Hinduism while these teachings took shape.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Hinduism and Christianity while these teachings took shape. Christians lived in Kerala from early centuries, but exchange of ideas begins only with the Jesuits: Akbar’s court debates (from 1580), Roberto de Nobili writing on Hindu doctrine in Tamil (from 1606), then Wilkins’s English Gita (1785), the Upanishads in Latin (1801–02) and Vivekananda (1893). All long after either’s formative teachings.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Hinduism and Christianity while these teachings took shape. Christians lived in Kerala from early centuries, but exchange of ideas begins only with the Jesuits: Akbar’s court debates (from 1580), Roberto de Nobili writing on Hindu doctrine in Tamil (from 1606), then Wilkins’s English Gita (1785), the Upanishads in Latin (1801–02) and Vivekananda (1893). All long after either’s formative teachings.