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VIVEKACŪDAMAŅI
391
If, while in the waking state, a person examines the nature of the caitanya in dreamless sleep and separates the ajñāna from the ātman, then his antahkarana-vrtti characterised by jñāna is destructive of ajñāna. His mind becomes void of prapanca (nişprapañca) and of the form of Brahman (Brahmākāra). That condition is the state of jñāna; then the pure state of infinite Brahman is attained by the mind. That this is the conclusion is the purport of śruti,
Between the dreamless sleep and samādhi states there is similarity in that the vikṣepa sakti, the power of projecting the phenomenal world is absent in both. They differ in the point that there is āvaraņa or concealment of Reality in dreamless sleep while it is absent in samādhi. Hence it is said by Śri Appayya Dīksita (in his Ātmārpaņa Stotra), 'nidrā samādhisthitih': "My sleep is the state of samādhi (as I am then unconscious of the world).” This is intended to show that if a waking person thinks long about the blissful mental condition in the state of dreamless sleep, that itself leads him to a state of samādhi.
So, when it is said in the sloka: ekātmake pare tattve bhedavārtā katham bhavet: "When the supreme Truth is one only, how can there be any talk of difference?", it means there is no difference at all; how then can one speak of difference? For there is no form of change to justify difference. The śruti says: "yadāhyevaişa etasminnadyśye anātmye'nirukte' nilayane'bhayam pratişthām vindate atha so'bhayam gato bhavati (Taitt.). "When one attains the state of samādhi making for fearlessness in this (Brahman) which is imperceivable, unembodied, unqualified and unsupported (by anything else), then he attains fearlessness: "yatra nānyat paśyati nānyat śrņoti nānyat vijānāti sa bhūmā (Chănd.): "Where one does not see another, does not hear another, does not know another, that is the infinite."
If difference is real it must be seen in dreamless sleep. If it
ued that the affirmation in respect to dreamless sleep: 'I did not know anything' indicates the reality of ajñāna in that condition, we reply that it is completely burnt away in the state of samadhi. Therefore there is no reality to ajñāna or its products as they are totally destroyed. Also by the reasoning: ādāvante'pi yannästi vartamāne'pi tattathā: "That which is not in the beginning and at the end, is also so in the intervening present," the phenomenal world of difference is not, was not and will not ever be, i.e., it is of the nature of mithyā. Thus being mithyā, which is the counter-part of negation in all the three periods of time (traikālikanişedha-pratiyogitvam) is established.
