The four quarters of Aum are not to be known as vehicles but the four tenors themselves.
As if the sound of A is the actual waking state; U, the actual dreaming state; M, the actual deep sleep state.
And most notably, the real silence following and swallowing Aum is the witness consciousness, Turiya.
Aum is beginningless and that silence, timeless. Aum is an infinity of sounds appearing in the soundless.
Aum is God. That silence is Parabrahman. The one who knows Aum this way is the real sage.
Praṇavo - Oṁkāra
hyaparaṁ - indeed
Brahma – lower Brahman
praṇavaś-ca - and Oṁkāra
paraḥ - the higher (Brahman)
smṛtaḥ - is known;
apūrvo - without any cause preceding It
’nantaro - without inside
’bāhyo - without outside
’naparaḥ - without effect
praṇavo – Oṁkāra
’vyayah - without decay
26. Aum is verily the lower Brahman and it is also declared to be supreme Brahman. Praṇava is without any cause preceding it, without subsequent manifestation, without anything inside and outside, unrelated to any effect and changeless.
~Gaudapada (tr-Chinmayananda)
Commentary
Besides Gauḍapāda, Vasiṣṭha and others, the orthodox or the old school of advaitins in Vedānta, there is a modern school which allows for the perceived world a relative Reality. They call the multiple phenomenal world as the lower Brahman, which is the supreme Reality seemingly manifested through properties, actions, qualites and so on. The lower Brahman provides the idol for the worship of the upāsakas in Vedānta; the lower Brahman became saguṇa Brahman in later language of Vedānta. The old school of Vedānta mainly started and led by Gauḍapāda and Vasiṣṭha, does not accept the lower Brahman and insists on saying that the manifestation has never taken place.
On the contrary, the modern school of Vedānta founded by Śaṅkara and his followers, does permit a relative Reality for the manifested world. This is not because Śaṅkara believed that the pluralistic world is, in any sense real. In practice these two schools are not propounding mutually competing theories, but, in fact, they play a complementary role to each other. Śaṅkara’s attempt is to guide the sādhaka in and through the manifested realities to the unmanifest and the eternal Truth.
~Chinmayananda
Lower Brahman—That is, the Brahman which is looked upon as the cause of the universe. The dull and mediocre intellect should meditate upon Aum as described in the first line of Karika. The second line describes the soundless aspect of Aum or the Turiya Atman which can be understood only by one possessing the keenest intellect.
~Nikhilananda
From the 25th kārikā, he replaced the word Oṅkāra by the word praṇava. This word is not used in the Upaniṣad. Praṇava is a synonym for Oṅkāra that is used in the other Upaniṣads. The meaning of praṇava is perfect name, ideal name, or suitable name. For Brahman or God the ideal name is Oṅkāra. That is why Oṅkāra is called praṇava. God is one and OM is one syllable.
The Oṅkāra represents saguṇa Brahman. The silent part represents the nirguṇa Brahman. Nirguṇa Brahman is without a cause and an effect, without any second thing internally or externally, and without degeneration or declension. Oṅkāra can be used for saguṇa or nirguṇa dhyānam.
~Paramarthananda
There are three states of everyday consciousness. There are many states of altered consciousness but they're not everyday. Such states of altered consciousness are more like holy days.
Beneath these three states is the ground. This ground is called the fourth from the point of view of the everyday. From the point of view of the Holy Mandukya, that ground is I.
If God is reflected consciouness, Maya is its mirror. Pure consciousness is not a mirror. Witness consciousness is like a movie screen. A mirror is appearing on that silver screen. How marvelous!
The Mandukya Upanishad consists of two parts: an inquiry into Atman (culminating in the magnificent 7th mantra) and an inquiry into Aum, into which the two are merging in its glorious 12th and last mantra.
And this 12th mantra is ending such a revelation with the Sanskrit, atmanatmanam: the Self merging into the Self. Like the water of the waves merging into the water of the sea, there is nothing but the Self.
It’s like the tenors and the mediums of Aum falling into the silence of Turiya. If deep sleep is the relative silence of the absence of duality, Turiya is the causeless silence of the presence of nonduality.
Chinmayananda's romanization word-by-word:
amātraś-caturtho-‘vyavahāryaḥ prapañcopaśamaḥ śivo-‘dvaita evam-oṅkāra ātmaiva saṁviśaty-ātmanātmānaṁ ya evaṁ veda.
Amātraś: the partless;
Caturtho: fourth (turīya);
Vyavahāryaḥ: beyond empirical transactions;
Prapañcopaśamaḥ: free from universe;
Śivo-‘dvaita: auspicious non-dual;
Evam-oṅkāra: thus Oṅkāra;
Ātmaiva: Self alone;
Saṁviśaty: enters, merges;
Ātmanātmānaṁ: through (his own) self into (his own supreme) Self;
Ya evaṁ veda: that thus who knows.
Translations:
That which has no parts, the soundless, the cessation of all phenomena, all blissful and non-dual Aum, is the fourth, and verily it is the same as the Ᾱtman. He, who knows this, merges his self in the supreme Self, the individual in the total.
~Chinmayananda
The Fourth (Turiya) is without parts and without relationship; It is the cessation of phenomena; It is all good and non-dual. This Aum is verily Atman. He who knows this merges his self in Atman—yea, he who knows this.
~Nikhilananda
Turīya is the Silence, which is beyond transactions, free from the world, auspicious, and non-dual. Thus Oṅkāra is the very ātmā. One who knows thus enters the ātmā by himself.
~Paramarthananda
The Self is the Silence beyond transactions, free from the world, auspicious and non-dual. Thus Omkara is the very Self. One who knows this enters the Self by the Self.
~Swartz
That which has no part the partless Om; becomes but the Fourth, Turiya, merely the absolute Self; which is beyond empirical relations, because of the disappearance of names and nameables, that are but forms of speech and mind; the culmination of phenomenal existence; the auspicious; and non-dual. thus; Om, as possessed of the three letters and as applied by it man with the above knowledge, verily identical with the Self possessed of three quarters. he who knows thus; enters; into his own Self; through his own self. The knower of Brahman, who has realized the highest Truth, has entered into the Self by burning away the third state of latency; and hence he is not born again, since Turiya has no latency (of creation).
~Shankara (tr-Gambhirananda)
Commentaries:
When we talk about the equation of silence and Turīyaṃ, the word silence has a special connotation. It is not the conventional silence. Silence here has a special meaning. The conventional silence, absence of sound, should not be taken as Turīyaṃ.
This should not be equated to Turīyaṃ for two reasons. The first reason is that the conventional silence is taken to mean a mere absence of sound or noise and thus it is a negative entity. Absence is not a positive entity. If this negative description is applied to Turīyaṃ, one will end up with the Buddhist śūnyavāda teaching that the ultimate truth is emptiness.
The second reason is that the conventional silence is experienced only when the sound has disappeared. In the arrival of sound, conventional silence goes away and vice-versa. Conventional silence is a relative entity subject to arrival and departure. Comparison with conventional silence will make Turīyaṃ a relative entity.
Thus amātrā, Silence should not be taken as the relative silence. When you experience silence externally, it is the absence of sound and when thoughts and disturbances are absent in the mind, you experience internal silence, blankness. When you experience internal silence and there is internal blankness, is there only blankness?
Other than that blankness, there is something else, because of which you are aware of the blankness. If the silence is experienced and known by me, it means that there is a knowing consciousness principle that pervades the silence.
~Paramarthananda
In this way the mind “merges into” witness consciousness. If reality is non-dual, the “merger” is like the merger of water into water, not the merger of salt into water, meaning liberation is the removal of ignorance of one’s identity, not the gaining of a new identity or the dissolution of an existent identity. A jiva cannot “dissolve” into consciousness, because it is not real in the first place and there is no experiential access to consciousness, insofar as it is non-dual. It cannot exist as something else, because the existence it enjoys is existence itself.
~Swartz
Just as in the previous mantras we have been given promises of the benefits which the meditator would gain through such meditations on Aum, here also the Guru informs the disciple that on meditating regularly upon the silent aspect of Aum, the individual self, meaning the egoistic idea of separativeness in us, gets merged into the divine experience of the all-soul, the eternal and the immortal.
~Chinmayananda
Those who know Brahman, those who realise the Highest Reality merge into Self, because in their case the notion of the cause which corresponds to the third quarter (of Atman) is destroyed (burnt). They are not born again, because Turlya is not a cause. For, the illusory snake which has merged in the rope on the discrimination of the snake from the rope, does not reappear as before, to those who know the distinction between them, by any effort of the mind (due to the previous impressions).
~Shankara (tr-Nikhilananda)
It may be contended that like a man coming back to the realm of duality having experienced deep sleep, the knower of Self who has identified himself with Turiva may also come back to the illusory universe, for Prajna and Turiya are identical having a common feature of the perception of non-duality. This contention is without ground, because Turiya is not a cause.. Hence it cannot give rise to the world of illusory experience. Unlike Prajna it is beyond all relations of cause and effect. Therefore one who has identified himself with Turiya can never see the illusion of the manifold.
~Nikhilananda commenting on above
~from Mandukya 1 of Chinmaya Sandeepany (Advayanandaji / Gurubhaktananda) p27:
Consciousness as we know it is reflected consciousness.
Nisargadatta calls reflected consciousness, I Am.
Gaudapada says reflected consciousness inhabits two states.
The Mandukya calls them waking, dreaming, and deep sleep.
Awareness is pure consciousness is the fourth. That is my Rosetta Stone.
Pure consciousness even witnesses deep sleep, can you dig?
So there's this big controversy about Gaudapada being closet Buddhist and therefore Shankara being crypto-Buddhist by association.
It's obviously an academic thing and beyond my paygrade. But I like Alston's take. Gaudapada lived when Nagarjuna was in the air.
So he used this language to advance his Advaitic teaching. Shankara, on the other hand, lived when Buddhism in India had precipitously declined.
Shankara is the father of Advaita Vedanta as we know it. That Gaudapada is his self-proclaimed godfather is good enough for me. Academic questions are so full of sound and fury.
My recent transcreation of the Mandukya Karika 1.15-18 utilized the translations of Chinmayananda, Nikhilananda, Gambhirananda, Paramarthananda, and Swartz (I'm well aware of the incongruity and light humor of this last name being associated with the aforementioned four).
Chinmayananda was required reading for this task. His translations are accompanied by devanagari, romanization, word for word definitions, and a readable English rendering. Few translations come with such a wealth of information. And his commentaries are insightful. If verbose, follow the yellow brick road.
Nikhilananda has two versions of Mandukya plus Karika. One is included in his monumental four-volume presentation of the principal Upanishads (it's in vol. 2). The second is a stand-alone version including Shankara's Bhasya. His translations are workmanlike but masterful and his commentary is often sublime.
Gambhirananda's translation is included in his accomplished work on Eight Upanishads, well-known for its exhaustive renditions of Shankara's Bhasyas. G's versions are sneaky good. For me, the joy of Shankara is in his word by word definitions. But his commentaries are foundational Advaita.
I'm somewhat new to Paramarthananda but can see the influence of Dayananda in his work. As for Dayananda, there is a four volume work published posthumously, which means, unfortunately, the editing is less than adequate. And strangely enough, there are no actual English translations.
Lastly there is the translation and commentaries by James Swartz. His lineage appears to be Chinmayananda, Dayananda, and Paramarthananda, although he's been accused of the heresy of neo-advaita by some, albeit I honestly have not seen it. But I do enjoy his American spin on things.
Obviously these translators are from three schools of contemporary Advaita Vedanta: Chinmaya, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, and Dayananda, who seceded from Chinmaya in a curious and secretive way. N's work is my single desert island stash but C is what I use when wearing my transcreator's hat.
Note: Not a book but a Youtube lecture series by Sarvapriyananda of the Vedanta Society of New York in their Archives channel consisting of 69 sound-only 'videos' of 90+ minutes each. Repetition is his teaching method, often devolving to long discussions with his students. But it's nothing if not an exhaustive analysis of the Upanishad and Karikas. 👍
Dreaming misapprehends reality. Sleeping doesn't apprehend reality at all. When these two errors disappear, Turiya is realized.
Asleep in beginningless maya, the individual awakens into birthless, sleepless, dreamless realization of the nondual.
And there’s no doubt the world would disappear if it actually existed. But duality is nothing but Maya and nondual in reality.
Concepts are to be abandoned when imagined for the sake of teaching. This talk of duality stops upon realization.
~transcreated from translations of Mandukya Karika 1.16-18 by Nikhilananda, Gambhirananda, Chinmayananda, Paramarthananda, and Swartz
