THE STATE OF DEEP SLEEP OR CONDITION OF PRĀJÑA

WHEN the being who is asleep experiences no desire and is not the subject of any dream, his state is that of deep sleep [sushuptasthāna] : he [that is to say Ātmā itself in this condition] who in this state has become one [without any distinction or differentiation],^[1] who has identified himself with a synthetic whole [unique and without particular determination] of integral Knowledge [Prajñāna-ghana],^[2] who is filled [by inmost penetration and assimilation] with Beatitude [ānandamaya], actually enjoying that Beatitude [Ananda, as his own realm] and whose mouth [the instrument of knowledge] is [exclusively] total Consciousness [Chit] itself [without intermediary or particularization of any sort], that one is called _Prajña_ (He who knows above and beyond any special condition): this is the third condition.^[3]

As will at once be apparent, the vehicle of _Ātmā_ in this state is the _kārana-sharīra_, since this is _ānandamaya-kosha_: and although it is spoken of analogically as a vehicle or an envelope, it is not really something distinct from _Ātmā_ itself, since here we are beyond the sphere of distinction. Beatitude is made up of all the possibilities of _Ātmā_; it is, one might say, the sum itself of these possibilities, and if _Ātmā_, as _Prājña_, enjoys this Beatitude as its rightful kingdom, that is because it is really nothing else than the plenitude of its being, as we have already pointed out. This is essentially a formless and supra-individual state; it cannot therefore have anything to do with a 'psychic' or 'psychological' state, as certain orientalists have supposed. The psychic properly speaking is in fact the subtle state; and in making this assimilation we take the word 'psychic' in its primitive sense, as used by the ancients, without concerning ourselves with the various far more specialized meanings which have been attached to it in later times, whereby it cannot be made to apply even to the whole of the subtle state. As for modern Western psychology, it deals only with a quite restricted portion of the human individuality, where the mental faculty is in direct relationship with the corporeal modality, and, given the methods it employs, it is incapable of going any further. In any case, the very objective which it sets before itself and which is exclusively the study of mental phenomena, limits it strictly to the realm of the individuality, so that the state which we are now discussing necessarily eludes its investigations. Indeed, it might even be said that that state is doubly inaccessible to it, in the first place because it lies beyond the mental sphere or the sphere of discursive and differentiated thought, and in the second place because it lies equally beyond all phenomena of any kind, that is to say beyond all formal manifestation.

This state of indifferentiation, in which all knowledge, including that of the other states, is synthetically centralized in the essential and fundamental unity of the being, is the unmanifested and ‘non-developed’ (_avyakta_) state, principle and cause (_kārana_) of all manifestation and the source from which manifestation is developed in the multiplicity of its different states and more particularly, as concerns the human being, in its subtle and gross states. This unmanifested state, conceived as root of the manifested (_vyakta_), which is only its effect (_kārya_), is identified in this respect with _Mūla-Prakriti_, ‘Primordial Nature': but in reality, it is _Purusha_ as well as _Prakriti_, containing them both in its own indifferentiation, for it is cause in the complete sense of the word, that is to say both at one and the same time 'efficient cause' and 'material cause', to use the ordinary terminology, to which however we much prefer the expressions ‘essential cause' and 'substantial cause', since these two complementary aspects of causality do in fact relate respectively to ‘essence' and to 'substance' in the sense we have previously given to those words. If _Ātmā_, in this third state, is thus beyond the distinction of _Purusha_ and _Prakriti_, or of the two poles of manifestation, that is simply because it is no longer situated within conditioned existence, but actually at the level of pure Being; nevertheless, Purusha and Prakriti, which are themselves still unmanifested, should be included within it and this is even in a sense true, as we shall see later on, of the formless states of manifestation as well, which it has already been necessary to attach to the Universal, since they are really supra-individual states of the being; moreover, it has to be remembered that all manifested states are contained, synthetically and in principle, within unmanifested Being.

In this state the different objects of manifestation, including those of individual manifestation, external as well as internal, are not destroyed, but subsist in principial mode, being unified by the very fact that they are no longer conceived under the secondary or contingent aspect of distinction; of necessity they find themselves among the possibilities of the ‘Self' and the latter remains conscious in itself of all these possibilities, as 'non-distinctively' beheld in integral Knowledge, from the very fact of being conscious of its own permanence in the ‘eternal present'.^[4]

Were it otherwise and were the objects of manifestation not thus to subsist principially (a supposition impossible in itself, however, because these objects would then be but a pure nothing, which could not exist at all, not even in illusory mode) there could be no return from the state of deep sleep to the states of dreaming and waking, since all formal manifestation would be irremediably destroyed for the being once it had entered deep sleep; but such a return is on the contrary always possible and does in fact take place, at least for the being who is not actually ‘delivered', that is to say definitely freed from the conditions of individual existence.

The term _Chit_, unlike its previously mentioned derivative _Chitta_, must not be understood in the restricted sense of individual and formal thought (this restrictive determination, which implies a modification by reflection, being marked in the derivative by the suffix _kta_, which is the termination of the passive participle) but in the universal sense, as the total Consciousness of the 'Self' looked at in its relationship with its unique object, which is _Ānanda_ or Beatitude.^[5] This object, while constituting in a certain sense an envelope of the 'Self' (_ānandamaya-kosha_) as we have already explained, is identical with the subject itself, which is _Sat_ or pure Being and is not really distinct from it, as indeed it could not be, once there is no longer any real distinction.^[6] Thus these three, _Sat_, _Chit_, and _Ānanda_ (generally united as _Sachchidānanda_) are but one single and identical entity, and this 'one'

is _Ātmā_, considered outside and beyond all the particular conditions which determine each of its various states of manifestation.

In this state, which is also sometimes called by the name of _samprasāda_ or ‘serenity’^[8], the intelligible Light is seized directly, that is to say by intellectual intuition, and no longer by reflection through the mental faculty (_manas_) as occurs in the individual states. We have previously applied this expression ‘intellectual intuition’ to _Buddhi_, faculty of supra-rational and supra-individual knowledge, although already manifested: in this respect therefore _Buddhi_ must in a way be included in the state of _Prājña_, which thus will comprise everything which is beyond individual existence. We have therefore to consider a new ternary group in Being constituted by _Purusha_, _Prakriti_, and _Buddhi_, that is to say by the two poles of manifestation, ‘essence’ and ‘substance’, and by the first production of _Prakriti_ under the influence of _Purusha_, this production being formless manifestation. Moreover, it must be added that this ternary group only represents what might be called the ‘outwardness’ of Being and does not therefore coincide in any way with the other principial group we have just described and which refers really to its ‘inwardness’; it would amount rather to a first particularization of Being in distinctive mode.^[9] It goes without saying of course that in speaking here of outward and inward, we are using a purely analogical language, based upon a spatial symbolism which could not apply literally to pure Being. Furthermore, the ternary group _Sachchidānanda_, which is co-extensive with Being, is transposed again, in the order of formless manifestation, into the ternary group distinguishable in _Buddhi_ of which we have already spoken: the _Matsya-Purāna_ which we then quoted declares that ‘in the Universal, _Mahat_ [or Buddhi] is _Ishvara_’; and _Prājña_ is also _Īshvara_, to Whom the _karana-sharīra_ properly belongs. It can also be said that the _Trimurti_ or ‘triple manifestation’ is only the ‘outwardness’ of _Ishvara_: in Himself the latter is independent of all manifestation, of which He is the principle, since He is Being itself: and everything that is said of _Ishvara_, as well in Himself as in relation to manifestation, can be said equally of _Prajña_, which is identified with Him. Thus, apart from the special viewpoint of manifestation and of the various conditioned states which depend upon it within that manifestation, the intellect is not different from _Ātmā_, since the latter must be considered as ‘knowing itself by itself’, for there is then no longer any reality which is really distinct from it, everything being comprised within its own possibilities; and it is in that 'Knowledge of the Self' that Beatitude strictly speaking resides.

This one [Prajña] is the Lord [Ishvara] of all [sarva, a term which here implies, in its universal extension, the aggregate of the 'three worlds', that is to say of all the states of manifestation comprised synthetically in their principle]; He is omnipresent [since all is present to Him in integral knowledge and He knows directly all effects in the principial total cause, which is in no way distinct from Him];^[10] He is the inward governor [antaryāmī who, residing at the very center of the being, regulates and controls all the faculties corresponding to the being's various states, while Himself remaining ‘actionless' in the fullness of His principial activity];^[11] He is the source [yoni, matrix or primordial root, at the same time as principle or first cause] of all [that exists under any mode whatever] ; He is the origin [prabhava, by His expansion in the indefinite multitude of His possibilities] and the end [apyaya, by His return into the unity of Himself]^[12] of the universality of beings [being Himself Universal Being]. ^[13]