Verse 32 — The Three States and the Witness (Turiya)

The intellect, being under the sway of the three gunas, has three states of experience — waking, dream, and deep sleep. Since the experiences of these states contradict one another, they are by nature illusory, and do not exist in the eternal, supreme, non-dual, ever-auspicious Brahman. [Verse 32]

Verse 31 showed how the Self only appears to take on the bodies' qualities. Verse 32 applies this to the mind's most basic rhythm — the three states — and reveals the unchanging witness behind them.

Two kinds of false identification

First, a useful distinction the text draws out. We misidentify in two layers:

A telling point: "man" and "woman" apply only to the gross body. The subtle and causal bodies have no gender at all — and the Self certainly does not.

The three states of the mind

The intellect (buddhi) is made of three gunas — sattva, rajas, tamas — so it naturally passes through three states:

flowchart LR
    J[Jagrat<br/>waking] <--> S[Svapna<br/>dream]
    S <--> D[Sushupti<br/>deep sleep]
    D <--> J

Why the states are "illusory"

Here is the key logic. The three states contradict each other and are mutually exclusive — when you're awake, there's no dream; in dreamless sleep, there's neither. Anything that comes and goes, and cancels the others, cannot be your essential nature.

Contrast: heat is intrinsic to fire (never absent); but a state is incidental to you (always leaving). So the states belong to the mind — not to you.

Turiya — the fourth that is not a fourth

What runs unbroken through waking, dream, and deep sleep? You — as pure awareness. This ever-present consciousness is called Turiya.

Key idea. Turiya literally means "the fourth," but it is not a fourth state alongside the others, and not some special trance. It is the consciousness that is equally present in all three states — pure Existence (Sat) itself. The three states appear and vanish in it, like characters on a screen who never scratch the screen, or clouds that never stain the sky.

The three gunas belong to the mind; the three states belong to the mind. Consciousness has neither. As the verse closes:

• Nitya — eternal consciousness
• Param — absolute consciousness
• Brahman — infinite consciousness
• Kevala — non-dual, undivided
• Shiva — ever-auspicious

"I am the pure, ever-free consciousness in which the three states rise and set without touching me."

Verse 33 confronts the practical tragedy: why, knowing none of this touches us, do we still suffer? Because we take the passing role to be the real "I."