The Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad (माण्डूक्योपनिषद्) is the shortest of the principal Upanishads — just twelve verses — and arguably the most dense per syllable. Affiliated with the Atharvaveda, it takes as its single object of meditation the syllable AUM, identifying its three phonetic parts with three states of consciousness and pointing beyond them to a fourth state, turīya, that is brahman itself. Despite its brevity it became, through Gaudapada's Kārikā and Shankara's commentary on that kārikā, the foundational text of the Advaita Vedanta tradition.
The Opening Mahāvākya
ओमित्येतदक्षरमिदं सर्वम् । तस्योपव्याख्यानम् भूतं भवद्भविष्यदिति सर्वमोङ्कार एव ।
om ity etad akṣaram idaṃ sarvam
tasyopavyākhyānam bhūtaṃ bhavad bhaviṣyad iti sarvam oṃkāra eva
"OM — this syllable is all this. Its further explanation: whatever is past, present, or future is all simply OM. And whatever else is beyond the three times — that too is only OM."
The first verse asserts an identity, not merely a symbolism. OM is not a symbol of the cosmos; the cosmos is OM. The single syllable is the totality.
The Famous Tat Tvam Asi Echo
The second verse follows immediately:
सर्वं ह्येतद्ब्रह्म । अयमात्मा ब्रह्म ।
sarvaṃ hy etad brahma. ayam ātmā brahma.
"All this, truly, is brahman. This self is brahman."
This is one of the four great mahāvākyas of Vedanta — ayam ātmā brahma — assigned by tradition to the Atharvaveda. The Upanishad makes the identity of self and absolute, individual and universal, without preliminary argument: the self is brahman. The rest of the text unfolds how this is to be understood and realized.
The Four Quarters of the Self
The second verse continues by stating that the self has four pādas (quarters or feet). The Upanishad then takes each quarter in turn:
1. Vaishvanara — The Waking State
The first quarter is vaiśvānara, the self in the waking state. It is conscious of the outer world, has seven limbs and nineteen mouths (the sense and motor organs and the inner instrument), and experiences the gross objects. This is the universal everyday consciousness.
2. Taijasa — The Dream State
The second quarter is taijasa, the self in dream. The senses have withdrawn but the mind continues to create — a luminous inward world of subtle impressions. Knowledge of objects is now of mental, not physical, kind.
3. Prajna — The State of Deep Sleep
The third quarter is prājña, the self in dreamless deep sleep. Even the mind has gathered itself into the ātman. There is no experience of object or subject; only an undifferentiated bliss. The Upanishad calls prajna "a mass of consciousness, made of bliss, the lord of all, the knower of all, the inner controller."
4. — The Fourth
The decisive verse ( 7):
नान्तःप्रज्ञं न बहिःप्रज्ञं नोभयतःप्रज्ञं न प्रज्ञानघनं न प्रज्ञं नाप्रज्ञम् । अदृष्टमव्यवहार्यमग्राह्यमलक्षणमचिन्त्यमव्यपदेश्यमेकात्मप्रत्ययसारं प्रपञ्चोपशमं शान्तं शिवमद्वैतं चतुर्थं मन्यन्ते स आत्मा स विज्ञेयः ॥
"Not knowing the inner, not knowing the outer, not knowing both, not a mass of knowing, not knowing and not not-knowing — invisible, unrelated, ungraspable, indefinable, unthinkable, indescribable — the essence of which is the conviction of one Self alone, the cessation of the phenomenal, tranquil, auspicious, non-dual — this is held to be the fourth. That is the self. That is to be known."
Turīya (तुरीय, "the fourth") is described entirely by negation — except for the climactic positive epithet advaita, "non-dual." This fourth is not another state alongside the other three; it is the substrate that is present in all of them, the witness that does not change while waking, dream, and deep sleep arise and dissolve.
The Four Mātrās of
The Upanishad now maps the four onto the structure of OM itself. The syllable analyzed as a-u-m has three measures, plus a fourth — the silence after the m has died away:
- A corresponds to vaiśvānara, the waking.
- U corresponds to taijasa, the dream.
- M corresponds to prājña, the deep sleep.
- The silent fourth (amātra, "without measure") corresponds to turīya.
The meditator who knows OM in this fourfold way merges into the self at the end of the chant; with the dying away of m into silence, the meditator dies into brahman.
Gaudapada and the Vedanta Tradition
The by itself is twelve verses. Around it the early Vedantin Gauḍapāda (c. 6th century CE) composed the Māṇḍūkya Kārikā, 215 verses of philosophical commentary in four books, the third of which (Vaitathya Prakaraṇa) is among the most rigorous early statements of non-duality and the unreality of phenomenal multiplicity. Śaṅkara then commented on Gaudapada's Karika as on the Upanishad itself, making this short text and its commentary one of the foundational stones of Advaita Vedanta. Tradition records the saying that if a seeker could study only one Upanishad, the — read with the Karika — would suffice for liberation.