In the first chapter of his Karika, Gaudapada reduces the Mandukya’s three states of reflected consciousness into two: sleeping and dreaming. All three states are asleep, and waking is dreaming too. In the beginning of his next Prakarana on unreality, he quickly explains the logic of such a conflation.
First, and most obvious, he lists the reasons why dreams aren’t real, for the sake of pure argument. From the point of view of our waking state in this space-time continuum, there’s not enough of either in the body-mind for elephants and trips around the world. Also sruti says so.
Next, Gaudapada blows our collective minds. Because things are experienced in the waking state as things are experienced in a dream state, the act of experience is not a confirmation of some waking objective reality, as most assume, but proof that the waking state is just another state of dreaming.
Just as the dream world is in and of the mind, the waking world is in and of consciousness. Impermanence too. Just as the individual in the dream is dependent on the body-mind for its existence, the individual mind is dependent on consciousness for its reality. Consciousness is independent existence.
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