But to come back to my subject. Man has not only four estates, but has four avasthas, conditions, states. They are, from the Vedic times: the waking state, the dream state, and the deep sleep state, and the final or Turiya, where even the trace of the ego may not exist, while it is dormant in the third state. You remember the famous beginning of the Mandukya Upanishad: Aum iti etad aksharam idam sarvam. Aum, this syllable indeed is all this. Sarvam hi etad brahma, ayam atma brahma, so yam atma catuspat. All this is verily Brahman. This self is Brahman. This same self has four quarters. And it goes on to say, the first symbolized by ‘A’ is the person in the waking state, who cognizes external objects, who has seven limbs and nineteen apertures, and who enjoys gross material objects. (You see we never forget numbers.) The second one symbolized by ‘U’ is the person in the dream state, he who cognizes internal objects, who also has seven limbs, nineteen mouths, etc., etc. But then we come to the deep sleep state, the third position, indicative of the ‘M’ sound. In this state we just have prajnanaghana, mass of consciousness. However we still have here, a discreet, resting ego as it were. Finally, when we come to Turiya, the fourth state, with the long unending bindu, the ultimate ‘M’ sounding vibration, there where Shiva and Parvathi unite, becoming a ‘creative resonance’. There is neither an internal nor an external object, but is just pure consciousness—it is adrishtatma, unseen, unconnected with the world, avyavaharam, etc. It is just shantam, Shiva, advaitam—peace, auspiciousness, non-duality. Sa atma, sa vijnaniva. He is the self. He is to be known. It then is the source, Light and source, of Abhinavagupta’s pratyavimarsha, becoming conscious of one’s beingness. It is consciousness which rests in its own self, being, the ever existent eternal ‘I’.

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‘Le jour commence,’ says Valéry,7 in his famous journal, ‘le jour commence par une lumière plus obscure que toute nuit . . . Un homme (he continues) qui s’éveille est, me semble it-il, al’etat de purete due moi.’ Then at another place, he says: ‘Je suis a l’analogue de ce qui est. Je suis encore, O delice, que quelque chose égale a l’ensemble de feu, de soie, d’ardoise, de vapeur et de musique brute simultanée. Je suis un effect de la lumière.’ And again: ‘Comme je sens a cette heure (Aube): la profondeur de l’apparence (je ne sais l’exprimer) et ceci qui est poesie.’8 And for ever Valery asks himself: Qui suis-je? Qui suis-je? Who am I? O my presence with a face, seeing without seeing anything or any one. ‘La conscience semble un mirroir D’eau. Consciousness seems a mirror of water.’ Thus the moi pur. the pure ‘I’.