section 15. PHASES OF THE SELF.--The highest existence is thus Thought without thinking, the state in which the soul has no consciousness of any external object, or indeed of any object at all, strictly speaking, for it is itself in conscious identity with the sum of all being or Universal Idea; "whilst he seeth not a thing, yet doth he see, though he see not the thing erstwhile to be seen. He that hath sight loseth not his sight, for it is imperishable. But there is naught beside

him, naught apart from him, that he may see" (B.A. IV. iii. 23).

The only analogy that experience furnishes for this supposed condition of soul is that of dreamless sleep; and it was inferred that in such sleep the soul is actually in this transcendent state.

Besides this, the earlier Upanishads recognise two other states of the soul, waking and dreaming. When awake the soul puts forth out of itself a world of sense and organs of sense and empirical thought, and renders itself the subject of the experiences conjured up by them. In dreaming sleep the sense-organs swoon away and are absorbed into the manas, the organ forming the centre of empirical cognition and will ( section 18), which thus has now the vision of the world as it is reflected from the waking state; at the same time the "life-breaths," pranas, are active as in waking.

The later Upanishads assume yet another phase, which they call the "Fourth" (turiya, chaturtha). In this the soul, transcending dreamless sleep, is absolutely wakeful in its union with the universal subject of thought, and exercises in perfect stillness an infinite real consciousness of all in the Self which is different in kind from the "unconscious consciousness" ascribed to dreamless sleep.

The waking, dreaming, and dreamless phases are respectively termed Vais'vanara ("common to all mankind"), Taijasa ("luminous," for in