Swapna is the

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

word for the

dream A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, althou ...

state. Swapna in Hindu philosophy is a state of

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

when a person (or being) is dreaming in sleep. In this state, he or she cannot perceive the external universe with the senses. This state may contain the conscious activities of memory or imagination. It is typically compared with the states of wakeful consciousness (''

jagrat In Hindu philosophy, ''turiya'' (Sanskrit: तुरीय, meaning "the fourth") or chaturiya, chaturtha, is pure consciousness. Turiya is the background that underlies and pervades the three common states of consciousness. The three common sta ...

''), deep sleep in which no cognition occurs (''sushupti''), and the fourth state known as ''

turiya In Hindu philosophy, ''turiya'' (Sanskrit: तुरीय, meaning "the fourth") or chaturiya, chaturtha, is pure consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the la ...

''.Patrick Olivelle, The Early Upanishads Annotated, p. 23. "The cavity of the heart is the seat of the vital powers and the self and plays a central role in the explanations of the three states of awareness—waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep— as well as of death. In sleep, the cognitive powers distributed throughout the body during the waking hours are gathered together in the cavity of the heart. The space of this cavity is homologized with cosmic space (see CU 3.12.7-9), and in the dream state the person travels about this space seeing and enjoying the same type of things that he experienced while awake. During deep and dreamless sleep, the self slips out of that cardiac space and enters the veins going from the heart to the peri- cardium; there it remains oblivious to everything (see BU 2.1; 4.3-4)." These four states of consciousness are described in the Chandogya Upanishad and recur commonly in the literature of

yoga Yoga (; sa, योग, lit=yoke' or 'union ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consci ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swapna-Marga Hindu philosophical concepts

See also

References