The Experience of Turiya 

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When you abide as turiya, you now become the screen of awareness (intensified presence) that illuminates the very movement of duality.  You become delocalized from the character moving in duality and become one with the screen of awareness that illuminates it.  Though the illuminator and the illumination is not separate because you instinctively know they are both one and the same while you are IT.  When turiya is in unbroken motion, there are no feelings, sensations, likes/dislikes, attachments/aversions towards anything.  All attributes and experiences that are experienced by the body-mind are now non-existent.  You simply observe AS the completely STILL and SILENT witness.  When you witness AS the witness, you know that this witnessing aspect is not dependent upon the eyes of the body to perceive.  It is a distinct principle, yet it makes up the body-mind much like space makes up an object.  You witness duality in motion but do not feel like you are INSIDE duality.  You feel as if you are what projects and makes up the appearance of duality since there is just you (one) when the self-experience shines forth.  It will feel like you are aware of a running projection and that the projection is also YOU. You witness the body-mind operate on its own while knowing you are the formless nature behind its existence.  For this to occur, turiya must remain continuous.  This means if it's continuous, it doesn't get broken into linear thoughts that can only be perceived by a mind.  This also means that all the knowledge I've explained above, is knowledge that is known ALL-AT-ONCE.  It is also knowledge that remains ALL-AT-ONCE.  If this knowledge becomes broken, then it is lost and you become localized again within body-mind and now perceive yourself to be IN duality perceiving a linear stream of thoughts.  To remain as turiya, you must keep plunging into it with effort while in deep savikalpa samadhi.  There will be pulsations felt in your third eye and crown while meditative effort is underway to first get it in motion.  This is a sign that turiya is becoming dissociated or disentangled from the body-mind apparatus. This will also feel as if everything you perceive is flickering.  All chakras will pulsate until the pulsation becomes continuous and disappears while the experience of turiya takes over.  

 

The witnessing principle of turiya becomes fully isolated from body-mind personality.  The only way to remain as turiya is to self-surrender.  This means any slight effort or volition to make turiya continue or disappear (due to vasanas that pull you away from it), will make the self-experience vanish.  This is because effort requires the Ego/doer.  If you put in effort, you become the doer and hence turiya is lost.  Turiya is not a doer.  It is simply a presence that witnesses since there is an appearance to witness. To remain in turiya means to give up doership and the sense of ego or doing.  Only once this is given up and self-surrender unfolds in every way possible, can this turiya motion be held and continue its pure witnessing grounded in its own source (which should be distinguished from the witnessing that humans experience when awareness appears to be immersed inside the body-mind).  Self-effort is required to plunge in turiya over and over again until it's a phenomena that occurs naturally on its own without any effort or will.   If turiya is in motion naturally, effortlessly and *permanently*, it is known as Jivanmukti (if redeemed while embodying the appearance of the physical form).  Jivanmukti is liberated while living, though, it can also be equated to pure effortless turiya without the potentiality to attend to body-mind personality. Turiya is also known as Nirguna Brahman but with it's witnessing function intact.  It is also known as the pure sattvic mind.  When turiya or the sattvic mind is held indefinitely, it will soon dissolve in its own source without witnessing its referential states (physical, subtle, causal bodies). In other words, turiya is only called turiya because consciousness underlies the bodies/koshas and can be called a witnessing function since there is an appearance to observe.  But when it stays as is without being entangled inside the body/mind,  the appearance eventually subsides and turiya rests as its own source.  And so, we cannot say that it is witnessing anything.  This is referred to as manonasa (the sattvic mind dies). This simply means the witnessing aspect of Brahman vanishes.  There is no longer knowing you are THAT while you remain as THAT (i.e. turiya).  There is no longer the comprehension that you are THAT, yet you remain as THAT. This happens when you get lost in your own knowledge of being Brahman. This is the highest state, also known as Videhmukti or Turiyatita.  You now rest as permanent, eternal, and unknowable consciousness (nirguna). 

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The experience of Turiya is profound in the sense that it is only experienced when you abide as pure presence.  This presence becomes intensified when you start detaching yourself from the body and mind.  When you rest as this presence, it is pure clarity, meaning there is nothing to feel since you are not identified with a mind that feels. You will intuitively know that you are timeless and dimensionless because of this. You will also know that you always existed in this dimensionless center and there was only YOU this entire time.  And because you know you are timeless and dimensionless; you will have pure conviction that you are the truth of it all and that there is nothing else that you depend on for your own pure eternal self for you are the very ground of existence.  You ARE existence. 

 

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