Summary: 

---

Mandukya Upanishad – Verse 5:
Deep Sleep Consciousness

यत्र सुप्तः न कञ्चन कामम् कामयते । न कञ्चन स्वप्नम् पश्यति । तत् सुषुप्तम् । सुषुप्त-स्थानः एकी-भूतः प्रज्ञान-घनः एव आनन्द-मयः हि आनन्द-भुक् चेतो-मुखः प्राज्ञः तृतीयः पादः ॥५॥
yatra suptaḥ na kañcana kāmam kāmayate | na kañcana svapnam paśyati | tat suṣuptam | suṣupta-sthānaḥ ekī-bhūtaḥ prajñāna-ghanaḥ eva ānanda-mayaḥ hi ānanda-bhuk ceto-mukhaḥ prājñaḥ tṛtīyaḥ pādaḥ ||5||

That is the state of deep sleep wherein the sleeper does not entertain any desire for any object of desire and does not see any dream. The third quarter is Prājña, whose sphere is deep sleep, in whom all experiences become undifferentiated, who is, verily, a mass of consciousness [individual cognitions are resolved], who is full of ananda, is an experiencer of ananda and who is the gate leading to the experience [of dreaming and waking].

I am Prājña (deep sleeper) – when totally identified with Causal Body

In deep sleep, the physical body and subtle body are no longer available as objects of experience. Thus there is no awareness of the external world, no dream, no active desire, no thought, and no sense of individuality.

The person (personality, way of being) remains in an unmanifest causal condition where all experiences are undifferentiated and all personal tendencies remain in seed form.

This causal condition is not consciously known as an object, but its presence is inferred in several ways:

1. 1. Morning personality originates from seed state (causal): If you could be awake to deep sleep, you would only notice total absence of temperaments, tendencies, desires, fears, motivations, etc. You would say “I do not know anything. I cannot find anything. There is nothing here”. And yet upon waking, there’s a subject with desires, familiar orientations, fears, personality. The fact that waking follows deep sleep, shows the personality was in unmanifest seed state (called the Causal Body). Additionally, each waking, the same personality comes out, showing your Causal Body is different from another’s.
   2. Thoughts/reactions aren't random – thus must come from somewhere unique: Even in waking and dream, our thoughts and reactions do not arise randomly; they have a common pattern. A person is attracted to some things, avoids others, fears certain situations, and naturally repeats familiar emotional patterns. These patterns often appear before deliberate reasoning begins. This shows that behind the active mind there is a subtler storehouse of unmanifest tendencies (which in West is called unconscious mind, and in Vedanta is called the Causal Body). When manifest – they appear as thoughts, desires, fears, and personality; when unmanifest, they remain as the causal body.
   3. Innate patterns of thinking: You come with innate talents upon birth. EG: A child who has never been near water is inexplicably terrified of the ocean – no trauma, no bad experience in this life to explain it. Or someone who feels an unexplainable natural authority and confidence from a young age despite growing up in a household that never modeled that. These aren't learned – they arrived with the person. That's the causal body expressing itself. You can't trace it to any memory in this lifetime because it didn't originate in this lifetime.

Furthermore, deep sleep’s absence of duality experience, or nirvikalpa samadhi, isn’t true non-duality. Because true non-duality isn’t confined to any state; it’s that which is true in all states.

Causal Body is filled with Punya/papam:

When you act in alignment with dharma, it leaves an impression of confidence and self-worth in the causal body.

When you act against dharma, it leaves impressions of guilt, fear, and self-doubt — even if you can't trace them to a specific event.

These impressions form your sense of self, and that self-image expresses outward as personality.

A person carrying puṇya-born impressions moves through life with openness, naturally attracting the right people and opportunities. A person carrying pāpa-born impressions radiates doubt and life reflects that back.

You attract according to how you see yourself — and how you see yourself is shaped by what's accumulated in the causal body. Therefore unseen results (punya/papa) that fructifies at level of personality as sukha/duhkha – when environment is suitable.

According to Vedanta, the ratio of punya/papa in the Causal Body, determines your next birth, as it follows principles of order. For example, it would be a disorderly system if Causal Body is filled with papam, yet person is born to parents who are mentally stable, honest, religious, hard working, and giving.

Causal Body is full of ananda:

Causal Body is the place of the ānandamaya, filled with ānanda, experiential happiness – because in deep sleep your mind, senses and desires are resolved into an undifferentiated potential form; therefore there is no possibility of repulsion, lust, craving, resentment, delusion, jealousy, or fear.

This happiness in deep sleep is not produced by gaining something new. It's arising because that which disturbs you is absent – the mind isn't resisting, comparing, remembering, worrying, or projecting. Since the subject-object division is not functioning, there is no “other” to attract or threaten you.

Causal Body is Not Away

Don’t think causal is some inactive location far away. Where there’s causal, that’s where subtle-body and physical body is. EG: You cut a branch, and it regrows same tree type/personality (such as bitter leaves), same fruits. This is because of the roots (causal body) you don’t see.

The Causal Body Upon Death

Upon death, the physical brain remains behind as inert matter. But the subtle body and causal body – with all their unseen puṇya and pāpa – remain in exactly the same state they were in while occupying the physical body.

Why are you here, wearing this particular body? Because you have been carrying your causal body since beginningless time. It is said that Vedic astrology can offer some insight into the nature of one's causal body – a reading, as it were, of what you have been carrying.

NEXT VERSE: So far, we spoke about the individual Causal Body. Now let's discuss the total (samaṣṭi) casual-body – called Ishvara…

Mandukya Upanishad – Verse 6:
The Causal Consciousness

षः सर्व-ईश्वरः । एषः सर्व-ज्ञः । एषः अन्तर्यामी । एषः योनिः सर्वस्य । प्रभव-अप्ययौ हि भूतानाम् ॥६॥
ṣaḥ sarva-īśvaraḥ | eṣaḥ sarva-jñaḥ | eṣaḥ antaryāmī | eṣaḥ yoniḥ sarvasya | prabhava-apyayau hi bhūtānām ||6||

This one is the Lord of all. This one is the Knower of all. This one is the inner Controller [governs all by its intelligence]. This one is the Source of all; this very one is certainly from whom all beings have come and where they go back.

Talk all about how Ishvara is connecting and making it all work together.

Intro

Earlier we saw that the entire world comes from OM – from all-knowledge, here called Ishvara.

It is this all-knowledge that creates the principle of the causal body, the subtle body, and the physical body. These are not independent creations; they are total knowledge of everything the past-present-future, appearing as three orders of manifestation.

The individual causal body, consisting of unmanifest potential, is experienced in deep sleep. It is only a fraction of the total causal potential, and therefore has the nature of ignorance. From the total causal body arises everything, including the Upaniṣads, which reveal the total reality. From your individual causal body arises only a particular personality, with limited impressions and tendencies.

How to see that everything arises from the samasti causal body called Ishvara?  

The Appearance of Many Realities

Initially it seems as though each object has its own reality. For example, leaf is real, trunk is real, one thought is real, etc. But many realities emerge when you look into any object. When you take any reality that makes up the reality of a tree, that reality goes, as it's made up of further realities.

However Mandukya Upanishad says, “All that is here is OM”, so there can't be two realities. Thus you need a means of knowledge that makes you see deeper into reality.

One Reality Behind All Appearances

Example of pot-clay is given in Chandogya Upanishad. The weight of the pot is the weight of the clay. The pot has no weight, as it belongs to the clay. Before the pot was born, clay was there. Can't dismiss pot as non-existent (as it holds water and is functional), nor claim pot is absolutely existent (independently existent).

Pot has an in-between reality, anirvacaniyam. All that is there is clay, in a particular form, which we call “pot”.

Similarly, can't say clay is pot; while you can say pot is clay. Can't say shirt is fabric, but can say fabric is shirt.

Analysis Into Any Form Will Reveal Two Things You Haven't Seen Before:

1) Forms within Forms

Can't find the bark, since bark is cellulose.

Can't find the cellulose, since cellulose is made up of atoms.

Can't find the atoms, since made up of protons, electrons and neutrons.

Can't find the protons and neutrons, since they are quarks (the last identifiable ‘things' before you’re working with probabilities).

Can't find probabilities, since probabilities have no shape, colour, surface – you can't hold it or point to it as a “thing”. Think of it like a dice in mid-air before it lands: while it's spinning, it isn't any single number – it's the tendency toward all six numbers at once. That tendency is real in the sense that it governs what happens next, yet you can't photograph it or weigh it. It's more like a verb than a noun – something happening, rather than something happened.

At the most fundamental level, what we call “matter” is just this: a happening that hasn't yet settled into a definite form until something interacts with it.

Conclusion: At every step, what seemed like the real thing turns out to be a name given to a particular arrangement of something deeper. The bark was always the cellulose. The cellulose was always the molecules. Each layer is mithya.

2) No effect is separate from its material cause

No effect (mithya) can be independent of its material cause (satyam). While the material cause (Satyam) is independent of the effect.

EG: Shirt is cotton, while cotton is not shirt. Cotton is atoms, while atoms are not cotton. Atoms are free of shirt, cotton, yarn, etc – thus they're able to put themselves together in infinite combinations.

The physical/subtle universe is the name for all effects that are not separate from the material Cause.

What is the Material Cause Into Which Everything Reduces?

What is the final material that is not itself borrowed from something else? That which is the final satyam, which never resolves into anything further, because it is not made of anything other than itself.

It organizes itself into a sentient subject (body-mind capable of responding to environment), infinite objects that constitute the environment (physical universe), and the laws that facilitate interaction between the subject-object and object-object.

It is knowledge, which in Mandukya Upanishad is called OM (which means “cause of the universe”).

Knowledge is the one principle you can not negate, because it is observed at every level of assemblage to hold it together.

You can't find a tangible form at any mithya level, because the moment you look into it, it’s not that, but something smaller. But at every level you can recognize intelligence by mere fact of that mithya level being put and held together – and having a beneficial purpose for something else.

Experiment showing creation can't be devoid of knowledge, or a random creation by chance: Suppose you're given 120 types of atoms (potassium, carbon, nitrogen, helium, etc). Now create water out of it. You'd start with H³⁴⁵O¹, H³⁴⁷O³²… that would take infinite number of years to figure out H²O. Thus nothing can be a mere accident.

Material That Makes Up The Universe is also Knowledge:

Ishvara itself is not only the intelligence that puts everything together, but the material also, which is nothing but Intelligence also.

Examples of Intelligence in things:

1. 1. Vast capacity of cell's nucleus: The infinite capacity of a cell's nucleus means it can store all the instructions needed to build and run an entire organism in a tiny space. Despite being microscopic, it holds about 2 meters of DNA. It can also change which genes are turned on or off in response to the environment.
   2. Photosynthesis, where sun's heat energy is converted to chemical energy by plants, involves a highly accurate putting together of atoms: CO² + H²O + Glucose (C⁶O⁶H¹²) + O². That makes up “photosynthesis”.
   3. Cage Fungus: The cage fungus (mushroom) gives off a strong rotten smell to trick flies into thinking it’s dead meat. The flies land and eat the slimy coating for food, picking up or swallowing the fungus’s tiny spores without knowing it. When the flies fly away, they drop those spores in new places. So, the flies get a meal, and the fungus gets to spread and grow – a sneaky win-win.

The Implications that Ishvara (God) is Both Maker and Material

Since Ishvara is both the intelligent cause and the material cause, the material can never be away from the maker – just as clay (cause) can never be away from the pot (effect). Thus Ishvara is everywhere as everything. There is no place where Ishvara is not, because every form is Ishvara's material appearing as that form.

This means there is no such thing as a spiritual/material divide. We are not talking about a “spiritual” realm separate from the “material” world. We are talking about one entity that is everything.

Any insight into any reality – whether it be physics, biology, music, or psychology – is looking at Ishvara from a particular standpoint. When you study how things work in the world, you are studying how Ishvara's intelligence is functioning.

Note: Do not think only the causal dimension is Ishvara. All that is here is Ishvara. Wherever there is the individual (vyaṣṭi), that is exactly where the total (samaṣṭi) is. The individual body is not apart from the total physical universe; the individual mind is not apart from the total subtle; the individual causal is not apart from the total causal.

Ishvara's Names in Reference to Specific Laws

Since Ishvara is all-knowledge functioning as laws, different aspects of that functioning are given names:

1. Ganesha: The gap between what you want and what you can achieve is given the name Ganesha. Praying to Ganesha is praying to remove the boundaries and obstacles on your way to getting what you want. It is an acknowledgement of  Ishvara's order which governs access and limitation.
2. Lakshmi: Inner wealth – in the form of growth, nuanced thinking, and the feeling of resourcefulness rather than scarcity. Prayer to Lakshmi is the aspiration to graduate from experiencing yourself as a consumer to experiencing yourself as a contributor.
3. Saraswati: The dimension of Ishvara that governs clarity and focus of mind. Invoking Saraswati's grace is asking for a clear mind – one that can dwell on things for a sustained length of time without distraction.

The Question of Beginning: When Did It All Start?

If Ishvara in causal body (all-knowledge in potential) brings about the total physical (Virāṭ) and the total subtle (Hiraṇyagarbha) – which were already held in potential – then there is no such thing as a “first universe ever.” That is why you can never find the first of anything: not the first tree or the first seed, not the first father or the first son. Each implies the other.

The Upanishadic model is one of endless cycles of manifestation and unmanifestation. If creation were truly linear — something arising from nothing – then linearity would be observable everywhere in life, and you would be able to find the absolute beginning of anything.

How do we know there is a cycle of manifest-unmanifest? Because everything we observe right now is going through this cycle. The waking state manifests and dissolves into sleep. The seed manifests as a tree and the tree produces a seed. You cannot say that before the Big Bang there was nothing, because “nothing” cannot produce “something.” The very impossibility of finding a beginning to anything confirms the cyclical model.

Analogy How Universe (Big Bang) Arises from Potential Causal

In the beginning was sleep. But you were there. Then your mind thought of sun and sun came, together with millions of objects, including time and space. The final finished product, you call “dream-world”. Additionally, to think of sun, it means there is knowledge of sun. Same applies to anything created.

Thus you are all-mighty, omniscient in the dream; at least what the dream people call you. They call you God. Not one person in the dream is separate from you who is the material and intelligent cause of every person and object.

Each dream person's karma determines what that person goes through in your dream, because you've been dreaming the dream world for a long time.

And one person in the dream is teaching about Physical, Subtle, Causal Universe.  

What Mandūkya Has Shown So Far

We begin with Īśvara (total causal), whose nature is all-knowledge and all-power.

From it arises total subtle (Hiraṇyagarbha) and total gross (Vaiśvānara), which constitute the universe (jagat).

Meaning, that same all-knowledge appears as all physical and subtle forms, including your individual physical/subtle body.

• • When I am awake and take myself to be this body-person, I am called Viśva (waker).
  • When I am dreaming and take myself to be the dream-person, I am called Taijasa (dreamer).
  • When I am in deep sleep, with no clear body, mind, or world appearing, I am called Prājña (deep sleeper).

This means Ishvara generates three types of entities. 

So far, Māṇḍūkya is showing that the individual and the total are not separate: the waker belongs to the waking total, the dreamer belongs to the subtle total, and the individual causal belongs to the TOTAL CAUSAL.

NEXT VERSE: What is the forth quarter of Atma? It is Consciousness.

—

Recorded 6 Jan, 2026