Puranic Encyclopaedia: A Comprehensive Dictionary with Special Reference to the Epic and Puranic Literature c7.1159

c7.1159

JĀGRAT. According to the vision of Ṛṣis or sages, every living being has four states. They are Jāgrat (waking state), Svapna (dream), Suṣupti (profound sleep) and Turīya (the fourth state of the soul, i.e. oneness with Brahman in different degrees). The hermits and sages have said about the four states of soul as given below:— 1) Jāgrat. In this state the individual soul is awake. The five organs of senses, the five organs of activity and the four inner organs of the living being will be active, when the soul is awake. In this state he enjoys the outer world through the five senses. That is, he sees with the eyes, hears with the ears, tastes with tongue, smells with the nose and feels with the skin. Every man thinks that his understanding through the senses is real. It is the individual soul which is responsible for this understanding. But it is difficult to say whether these perceptions through the senses are real or unreal. A hermit says as follows:—“An individual soul travels from Jāgrat to Svapna and from Svapna to Jāgrat as a fish which goes from one shore to the other without touching anything. For an individual soul the state of jāgrat is only one of the four states. So we cannot give the verdict that the state of Jāgrat alone is real and all the rest are unreal.” The individual soul which is in the state of Jāgrat enjoys the outer world and so it is ‘bahiḥ-prajña’ (external—knowing). In this state the individual soul enjoys the external world with the seven organs and the nineteen faces. The seven organs are, the two eyes, head, soul, urinal bladder and the legs. The nineteen faces are the five senses, the five organs of activity, the five life-breaths and the four inner organs of mind, intellect, egoism and will. The individual soul in the state of Jāgrat enjoys the external world with these organs and faces. The soul in this state is called ‘Vaiśvānara’. This state is experienced by all the human beings of the world and so it is called Vaiśvānaras¹ (Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Māṇḍūkyopaniṣad).