This teaching of the three states encompasses all universal human experiences. It’s not a yogic experience. It has nothing to do with the years of practice. And you do not need to become a recluse monk. Instead, this teaching is based on every person’s shared experience and therefore is well within the grasp of understanding the importance of Advaita.
All human beings, with a few exceptions, adopted in their empirical dealings and deliberations, taking the waking state alone as the basis of their speculations.
There are many self-discovery techniques, i.e., I AM THAT, neti neti (not this, not that), and others. However, examining the three states or the practices of the three states of consciousness is the most convincing and easily understood.
The universal view of the three states, waking is predominant. We all perceive it as real; my dream is imagination, and deep sleep is an unconscious state in which I don’t know anything. This Circadian Rhythm is the natural cycle. Once again, this real world disappears to me, and my mind creates a dream world. When I wake up, that falsifies the dream, no matter how vivid. Oh, it was only a dream. I am an insomniac at times with lots of energy Suppose I could do without sleep. I would give it up weird dreams because doctors say; deep sleep is better. My daughter had a fender bender, so in my dream, I dream about a storm and wrecking my RAV4. Illusionary relations between states are called transference, and the means of illusion are the Vasnas.
So this is the waking point of view of the three states. I am awake. I had a dream. I slept, and I woke up. When I say I’m awake. I had a dream. And then, when the dream ended, I was in a deep sleep for a while. And then I woke up. This notion that. Me, Mr. X, the ego. It’s all from the waking point of view. We ascribe that I’m passing through the states, and the waking state is absolute. The other two are appendages or slight deviations until I return to my natural waking.
This point of view is natural to everybody. Everyone thinks this is the real world because we see it, touch it, and smell it. And reason tells me it’s the real world. Materialists tell me this is the real world. Everyone and everything indicates to me that it’s real. It had no reality. When the dream ended, nothing in that dream, the dream world, continued anywhere. As soon as the waking appeared, it canceled the dream. It was only a dream.
In the ordinary examination of the three states, there’s a bias in which I’m taking the waking state as the measurement to evaluate my experience of dreams and deep sleep. This unique sub-teaching of Vedanta challenges us to give up this bias. And to examine what exactly the experience is. What is my experience? Of my waking state when I’m awake. And what is my experience?
Further, the third state, instead of saying from the waking point of view, “it was a deep sleep.” I didn’t know anything. I was unconscious. And then I woke up, and the world, the real world, appeared instead of the dream. What was the experience of the deep sleep, your experience at that you were experiencing deep sleep? In other words, we need an unbiased unprejudiced view.
We should examine each experience from the point of view of the experience of the state. Of course, this is not easy to do. But it is pretty doable with little effort.
The tri-basic view or the comprehensive view of human experience examines waking dreams and deep sleep absence of experience without prejudice towards any state. And based on that examination, to conclude what is real. And what is unreal? What is a dominant and what is reality? What is changing, and what does not change? This method of examining our experience and finally realizing the truth is unique. Can non-duality be debated or passed on? I don’t think so. Most people are not ready or consider the whole idea alien, unfathomable, or nonsense; therefore are stuck in the waking state. He bases all of his data on his experiences in his waking state. And he tries to philosophize based on that information. Because his examination has not taken in the whole spectrum of human experience without any bias towards any one particular experience is examination. It is partial and incomplete and can never bring about a conviction about the ultimate reality.
This method is unique. In self-realization, there are no states. There’s no dream and no sleep. The whole purpose of this examination of the three states is to bring about self-realization, the direct experience of the True Self. To sum up from the original Book, and I quote;
“Shri Shankara opines that the subject matter of Vedanta is Brahman or the Ultimate Reality, which as the Witnessing Self of all of us, can be immediately and Intuitively experienced here and now. This Universal Self is not only distinct from the objective world but also the ego or the ‘I’ notion in all of us, and consequently from the body, the senses, and the mind, which are ‘owned’ by the ego. Therefore, it is beyond the scope of the dogmas of theology which rest on faith alone, as also beyond the surmises of speculative philosophy since it is the most indubitable fact of human experience which can be neither affirmed nor denied, neither proved nor disproved by reason or dialectics and neither to be believed nor rejected as an impossible fact.” quoted from the The Magic Jewel of Intuition(The Tri Basic Method of Cognizing the Self) By D.B. Gangolli
http://www.adhyatmaprakasha.org/
