The Sushupti Avastha is the third form of the human consciousness. The common translation found in most of the articles on the web is Deep Sleep. Metaphorically in some context, you can call it a deep sleep but literally, the meaning is something else. It is the dormant stage of human consciousness. In modern scientific terms, we call it the subconscious mind.

Joseph Murphy in his book The power of your subconscious mind explains very well about the mind that is inactive. However, this book is for self-motivation purposes. The main aim of Scientific Monk is to provide better inference on ancient philosophic principles so that we can create a handshake between science and spirituality. Inferentially, in the modern context where the metaphors are lesser considered, we must take the literal meanings to explain the stuff. In this case, as we discussed, the literal translation of Sushupti is Dormant.

In the previous article, we showed the example of our breath. We don’t need to consciously breathe always. It is automatic. Identifying the objects through eyes too comes directly when the right time comes or our consciousness feels it as necessary.  Think of a situation where you have all sorts of memories coming into the mind, mixed-up thoughts and emotions, etc. What would happen?

It is obvious that you would get a headache. It means something is odd right? How does our mind know how to react and how not to react?

It is all because we have a stage of human consciousness called Sushupti.

The Yogis are taught the mysteries of the breath first. It is all because when you try to feel the breath and its motion, you are trying to understand the part of the subconscious process that is responsible for your life. Later on, Yogis focus on all their hormone and try to bring the control in the conscious stage.

Control of emotions and other factors associated with it is all about controlling the subconscious mind.

Can we bring the subconscious mind consciously?

This might be a good question, to begin with, but again if we think of another stage of human consciousness, i.e., Swapna avastha we need to go deeper. If we say Sushupti Avashta can be brought in the conscious mind, another question will certainly come in the future can the dream or the Swapna Avastha can also come in the conscious mind?

Here is an answer to this.

The fourth stage of human consciousness comprehends all other three stages. It is called Turiya Avastha. In this stage all other three stages get united and you get control over your conscious stages. But how? Think.

Click here to read on the final stage of Human Consciousness as per Hindu Philosophy.