If everything is the Self, are animals and plants enlightened too? Vedanta explains the difference between awareness pervading all and awareness reflecting through living beings — why animals embody innocence, plants express life, and humans alone can recognize the Self.

Laya and Pralaya describe the two dissolutions of Vedanta: laya, the withdrawal of the individual mind into the causal seed, and pralaya, the reabsorption of the entire cosmos into Maya. Both reveal that creation is not new but cyclic — the unmanifest becoming manifest again, within the eternal awareness of Brahman.

Sushupti (Deep Sleep) — the state in which all mental activity dissolves and individuality vanishes into the causal body. Awareness remains, but unrecognized due to tamas. Blissful, universal, and ignorant, suṣupti mirrors cosmic dissolution (pralaya) and reveals both the peace and the limitation of unknowing.

Svapna — the dream state in which mind projects a private world (pratibhasika satya). Gauḍapada and mainstream Advaita use svapna to reveal that waking too borrows reality; only the Self (turiya) is changelessly real.

Jagrat (waking state) — the field of outward awareness in which consciousness identifies with the body and perceives the gross world. In Vedanta, jagrat is mithya — a lawful projection within consciousness, no more real than dream, illumined by the same changeless witness.

There are two ways to renounce the world: one through shared restraint, the other through inner understanding. The Amish embody collective renunciation — a moral withdrawal from the noise of modernity — while the sannyasi represents inner renunciation, seeing the world itself as maya. Both point toward the same peace found not by addition, but by relinquishment.