Turiya: The Fourth State of Consciousness That Changes Everything

Beautiful soul, let me introduce you to the most important word in the entire Vedantic vocabulary that almost nobody talks about: **Turiya**. In Sanskrit, Turiya simply means "the Fourth." It's the fourth state of consciousness - beyond waking (Jagrat), dreaming (Svapna), and deep sleep (Sushupti). But here's what makes Turiya so radical, so powerful, so at its core different from everything else you've ever been taught about consciousness: it's not actually a state at all. A state is something that comes and goes. You enter it, you leave it. Waking comes and goes - you fall asleep. Dreaming comes and goes - you wake up or sink deeper. Even the most spectacular meditation experience comes and goes - the bliss arises, peaks, and fades. But Turiya doesn't come or go. It doesn't arise or subside. It doesn't begin at the start of meditation and end when the timer chimes. It's the unchanging ground in which all states appear and disappear - like a movie screen that remains untouched by the fires, floods, love scenes, and horror movies projected upon it. You've never left Turiya. Not once. Not for a single millisecond. You've only been distracted by the content playing on its surface. ## Why the Other Three States Are Not Enough Let me walk you through why the first three states - as magnificent, complex, and necessary as they are - each fall short as the final word on what you are: **Waking consciousness** gives you access to the external world through the senses. You can interact, communicate, build, and create. You can read this article, drink your coffee, have a conversation. But waking consciousness is also the state of maximum identification with the ego, the body, and the story of "me." In waking, you're convinced that the world you perceive is the absolute truth. You forget that this is just one mode of experience among many - and that the "reality" you see is filtered through the nine categories of karma, colored by every impression you've ever accumulated. You're not seeing reality. You're seeing your karma wearing reality as a costume. **Dream consciousness** reveals something stunning about the nature of awareness: consciousness can create entire worlds without any sensory input whatsoever. In dreams, you experience territorys you've never visited, people who don't exist, events that never happened - with full emotional engagement, physical sensation, and psychological impact. Your brain is receiving zero external data, and yet experience continues with staggering richness. This proves, beyond any philosophical doubt, that consciousness is self-luminous. It generates its own light. It doesn't need the world to produce experience. But dreams are unstable. They shift constantly. They're driven by desire, fear, and unresolved karmic impressions. And when you wake, the entire dream world evaporates - proving it was never as solid or real as it seemed while you were in it. Sound familiar? The Vedantic sages would tell you that waking life shares the same quality - it just takes longer to wake up from it.

Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now remains one of the most important spiritual books of our time. *(paid link)*

**Deep sleep** is perhaps the most fascinating state for serious seekers, and the one almost everyone rushes through without understanding. In deep sleep, the ego dissolves completely. There are no objects, no subjects, no thoughts, no emotions, no "me," no "world." There is only a vast, undifferentiated field - thick with potential, empty of content. The Mandukya Upanishad describes the deep sleep self as **Anandabhuk** - the enjoyer of bliss. Even in the apparent void, there is bliss. You know this because when you wake from deep, dreamless sleep, you feel refreshed, restored, peaceful. Something positive was happening even though nobody was there to witness it. But Prajna has a devastating limitation: ignorance. The deep sleep state is blissful, yes - but it's wrapped in **Avidya**. You don't know you're blissful. You don't know you're conscious. You're merged with the ground of being, but without self-knowledge. It's like a room full of treasure with all the lights off. Everything is there - but you can't see any of it. ## Turiya: The Light in Every Room Turiya is the light that shines in all three rooms - simultaneously, continuously, without interruption. Years ago, in the quiet of an ashram after sitting through Amma’s darshan, I felt something shift deep in my nervous system. It wasn’t a rush of emotion or a surge of joy. It was a stillness beneath the noise—an awareness that watched without blinking. My breath slowed without effort. The usual mental chatter didn’t just pause, it collapsed. That’s when I first glimpsed Turiya—not as a state to reach, but a background to all experience. In waking, Turiya is the awareness that witnesses your thoughts, sensations, and experiences without being identified with any of them. It's the silent presence behind your eyes that notices you're thinking - and that noticing is NOT another thought. In dreaming, Turiya is the awareness that can recognize "I am dreaming" - the lucid presence behind the dream's content that knows the dream is a dream even while it's unfolding. In deep sleep, Turiya is the awareness that persists even when all content dissolves - the silent "I" that survives the temporary death of the ego every single night and lives to report the absence in the morning. Shankara describes Turiya with the phrase **Neti, neti** - "not this, not this." Turiya cannot be described by any positive quality, attribute, or characteristic, because all qualities belong to the three states. It's not bright or dark. Not blissful or painful. Not full or empty. Not here or there. Turiya is what remains when you negate everything that can be negated - and what remains is not nothing. It's everything. It's the fullness that holds all states, all experiences, all worlds, and is touched by none of them.

Nisargadatta Maharaj's I Am That is one of the most direct and powerful pointers to truth ever recorded. *(paid link)* This guy was a cigarette seller in Bombay who cut through spiritual bullshit like a hot knife through butter. No flowery language. No mystical performances. Just straight talk about what you really are beneath all the mental noise and identity games we play with ourselves. When he says "You are not what you think you are," he's not being philosophical ~ he's pointing to something you can verify right now, in this moment, if you're willing to stop thinking for five damn seconds.

And here's the part that should knock you off your meditation cushion: you don't have to CREATE Turiya. You don't have to REACH it. You don't have to earn it, deserve it, or buy a ticket to it. You're already in it. Right now. Reading these words. The awareness that is processing these letters, absorbing these ideas, feeling whatever you're feeling about what I'm saying - that awareness IS Turiya. It was Turiya when you were dreaming last night. It was Turiya when you were in deep sleep. It was Turiya when you were seven years old. And it will be Turiya when the body returns to dust. ## Turiyatita: Beyond the Fourth For those of you operating on the upper floors of the dimensional architecture I map in The Electric Rose - floors 108 and above - there's something even beyond Turiya. The tradition calls it **Turiyatita** - beyond the Fourth. If Turiya is the witness of all three states, Turiyatita is the dissolution of witnessing itself. It's the collapse of even the subtlest subject-object duality - the last whisper of "I am aware" dissolving into seamless, undivided wholeness where there is no longer anyone watching anything. There is only This. Whatever This is. Without a "this" or a "that" to divide it. This is what happens on the highest floors. The "navigator" self that we maintain throughout most of the spiritual journey - that subtle sense of "I am the one doing this work, I am the one climbing these floors, I am the one getting closer to liberation" - even that dissolves. What remains is not emptiness in the nihilistic sense. It's a fullness so complete that it overflows into everything - but with no one left to claim it as their accomplishment. Kashmir Shaivism describes this as the ultimate recognition (**Pratyabhijna**): consciousness recognizing that it was never anything other than itself. No journey was needed. No climbing. No floors. The entire architecture - even the beautiful dimensional skyscraper I teach - was consciousness playing at having an architecture. And the recognition of this is simultaneously the end of the game and the beginning of a freedom so complete that even the word "freedom" can't contain it. ## Practical Doorways to Turiya In my practice, I've sat with countless people tangled in grief and anger, watching their bodies carry stories they can’t speak aloud. One woman’s chest heaved, her ribs stretching and folding like waves crashing on a rocky shore. As she trembled, releasing held tension, something shifted in her eyes—an opening beyond pain or relief. That silent, ungraspable presence, the space behind the breath, was Turiya. It doesn't come and go. It simply is, the ground beneath the storm.

There is something about a sandalwood mala that carries the energy of thousands of years of devotion. *(paid link)* You pick up these beads and feel it immediately ~ the weight of countless fingers that have worked through mantras, breathed prayers into the wood grain, worn smooth the edges with desperate seeking and quiet surrender. Seriously. It's not just some spiritual marketing bullshit. The sandalwood itself holds memory, absorbs intention like a sponge soaking up decades of "Om Namah Shivaya" whispered in dark temples and morning light streaming through bedroom windows. Think about that.

How do you experientially touch Turiya - not as a concept, not as philosophy, but as the lived reality of your own awareness? Here's what I've found works, after decades of practice, thousands of readings, and my own years of stumbling, falling, and finally landing: **Self-Inquiry (Atma Vichara).** Ramana Maharshi's method is the most direct path to Turiya I've ever encountered. Ask "Who am I?" and trace the feeling of "I" back to its source. Every thought, every emotion, every sensation has an "I" attached - "I think, I feel, I sense, I want, I fear." But where is that I? Follow it. Keep following it. Don't accept any answer. It will lead you past the mind, past the emotions, past the energy body, past the bliss body, into the silence that was always here before any of it started. That silence is Turiya. And it's not empty. It's more full than anything you've ever experienced. **Yoga Nidra.** This practice - "yogic sleep" - systematically guides you through the layers of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep while maintaining conscious awareness. At the deepest point, you enter a state that is neither awake nor asleep - fully conscious, fully at rest, free of all content, and yet vibrantly alive. That's Turiya's front porch. Keep practicing and you'll walk through the door without needing to knock. **The Gap Between Thoughts.** In meditation, as thoughts arise and subside, there are gaps. Moments of pure silence between one thought and the next. Most meditators don't notice these gaps because the mind immediately lunges for the next thought like a drowning person grabbing for a life raft. But if you train yourself to rest in that gap - even for a fraction of a second - you're touching Turiya directly. The gap is not empty. It's infinitely full. It's consciousness without content. And it's been there between every thought you've ever had, your entire life, patiently waiting for you to notice. **The Transition Moments.** Pay attention to the moments between states - the instant just before sleep takes you, the moment just after waking when you haven't yet remembered who you are, the threshold between dreaming and dreamlessness. These transition points are where the veils between states are thinnest. The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra - an amazing text containing 112 meditation techniques, each one a doorway to recognition - uses several of these liminal moments as direct portals to Turiya. **Mantra at Its Deepest Level.** When you chant a mantra long enough - really long enough, with total devotion and without checking your phone - there comes a point where the mantra dissolves the chanter. You're no longer saying the mantra. The mantra is saying itself. The boundary between you and the sacred sound collapses entirely. In that collapse, Turiya shines through like sunlight through a window that finally had its curtains pulled open. ## Why Turiya Is the Most Practical Teaching You'll Ever Receive I'm not writing about Turiya to be philosophically impressive, sweetheart. I'm writing about it because it's the single most practical teaching in the entire Vedantic canon for your actual freedom.

The Bhagavad Gita is not just a scripture, it is a manual for living with courage and clarity. *(paid link)*

As long as you identify with any of the three states - waking, dreaming, or deep sleep - you're subject to their limitations. In waking, you suffer because you believe your thoughts. In dreaming, you're deluded because you take illusions for reality. In deep sleep, you're unconscious because awareness is present but unrecognized. But when you recognize Turiya - when you directly experience the unchanging awareness that pervades all three states like water pervades every wave - you discover something staggering: you were never bound. The suffering happened. The delusion happened. The unconsciousness happened. But YOU - the real you, the Turiya you - were never touched. Not once. Not ever. not dissociation. not spiritual bypassing. not using philosophy to avoid your feelings. Here's the thing: it's the deepest possible healing - the recognition that at your core, at the very foundation of your being, there is a consciousness that has never been wounded, never been traumatized, never been broken, never been diminished by a single experience that has ever passed through it. The nine categories of karma are real. The work to clear them is necessary and sometimes brutal. The pain you carry is legitimate and deserves to be met with fierce, forensic tenderness. But underneath all of it - underneath every layer of the five koshas, underneath every floor of the dimensional skyscraper - there is something that has always been free. Turiya. The Fourth. You. - Paul Wagner (Krishna Kalesh) | PaulWagner.com | TheShankaraExperience.com