Overview

"The cultural and spiritual legacy of India is vast as well as rich. There is nothing sectarian or regional about it. It is so universal in its appeal and so catholic in its approach that it belongs to the whole world. This legacy is derived from the Vedas. They include all schools of Indian thought except that of the Lokāyata, Buddhists and Jains. Each of them is subdivided into Samhitā (collections), Brāhmaṇa (dealing with Vedic rituals, sacrificial rites), Āraṇyaka (sacrificial rites) and Upaniṣads. Homogeneity can be found in all the Upaniṣads. They deal ith the topics of supreme reality (Brahman), individual soul (Ātman), world (jagat) and their inter - relationships. These concepts are in the form of an enchanting dialogue between a teacher and a student, father and son, mother and son and so on. In the Upaniṣads, we get an intelligible body of verified and verifiable spiritual insights mixed with a mass of myths and legends, cosmological speculation relating to the nature and origin of the universe. While the former has universal validity, and has a claim on human intelligence in all ages, the latter forewarns all such claims. All positivistic knowledge contained in any literature, including religious literature, is limited and conditioned by the level of contemporary scientific knowledge. Among the ten Upaniṣads, Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad is taken for an analysis here. In the brief compass of its twelve verses of the condensed thought, the Māṇḍūkya surveys the whole of experience through a study of the three states of waking, dream, dreamless sleep, and reveals the Ātman, the self of man, the Turīyā or the fourth, as it puts it, as pure consciousness, eternal and non-dual. It proclaims in its second verse, the infinite dimension of man in a pregnant utterance - one of the four mahāvākyas or ""great utterances"" of the Upaniṣads: Ayam ātma brahmā - this Ātman (self of man) is Brahman. The four states are analyzed here with Māṇḍūkya Kārika of Gauḍapāda. The Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad speaks of mind and consciousness in various states and as comparison, modern psychological views about mind, sleep and consciousness are broadly discussed here."

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