Jagrat - The Waking State
- Daniel McKenzie
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
The waking state feels like the measure of reality itself. We awaken each morning to the same rooms, the same gravity, the same faces and histories that seem to affirm the world’s solidity. But Vedanta asks us to reconsider: what is the difference between being awake and believing we are awake?
In jagrat (jāgrat), consciousness expresses itself through the body and senses, generating a field of experience that appears “external.” Yet the Mandukya Upanishad reminds us that this state is only one of three recurring projections. It is no more absolute than the dream that precedes it or the deep sleep that follows it. What changes from dream to waking is merely the texture of projection, not its essence.
Swami Paramarthananda calls this realization “a disturbing message but the truth”: just as the dreamer mistakes the dream for reality until awakening, the waker mistakes the waking world for absolute reality until knowledge dawns. From the standpoint of consciousness, both dream and waking arise, persist, and dissolve in the same way. When knowledge “dawns,” it is not another state but a change in status: the waking world, once taken as real, is now known as mithya — a dependent appearance .
Thus, Vedanta’s question is not whether the world exists, but what the world’s order of reality is. The enlightened one continues to live and transact in jagrat, but inwardly knows it as no more real than last night’s dream. The true awakening, therefore, is not from sleep to waking, but from jagrat to jnana — from empirical to absolute awareness.
Root & Meaning
Sanskrit: jāgrat (जाग्रत्)
Root: √jāgṛ — “to be awake, to watch, to remain alert.”
Literal meaning: “Wakefulness; the condition of being aware through the senses.”
Scriptural References
Mandukya Upanishad 3:
Jagarita-sthano bahish-prajnah… sthula-bhuk vaishvanarah prathamah padah.
→ “The first quarter is Vaishvanara, outwardly conscious, experiencing gross objects in the waking state.”
Kaivalya Upanishad 12–14:
“When consciousness is deluded by Maya, it identifies with a human body in the waking state and acts to fulfill its desires… the same consciousness dreams and sleeps because of its association with karma.”
Traditional View
In the waking state, consciousness identifies with the gross body (sthula sharira), using nineteen instruments — the five senses, five organs of action, five vital energies, and four internal faculties (manas, buddhi, citta, ahankara). Through these “mouths,” Vaishvanara, the macrocosmic waker, experiences the world of form and function.
The waking universe (jagrat prapancha) is sustained by Ishvara's maya-shakti just as the dream is sustained by the jiva’s nidra-shakti . Each is a projection within consciousness, neither self-existent nor independent.
Vedantic Analysis
Relativity of Reality:
Gaudapada’s Karika shows that all criteria—utility, externality, continuity, clarity—fail to establish the waking world as more real than the dream. Both are real only within their own domains and absent in the other.
Projector–Supporter–Experiencer (PSE):
The same Self projects, supports, and experiences both waking and dream. In jagrat, this occurs through maya-shakti; in svapna, through nidra-shakti. The witnessing consciousness (sakshi) is the substratum of both.
Microcosm and Macrocosm:
The individual waker (Vishva) corresponds to the cosmic waker (Virat). What the jiva experiences locally, Ishvara manifests universally.
Avastha-Traya-Viveka:
The “I” is never truly the waker, dreamer, or sleeper. These are passing associations. Knowledge (aham asanga asmi — “I am unattached”) reveals the Turiya, which is free of all three.
Common Misunderstandings
“The waking state is more real than the dream.”
Both are mithya, differing only in stability and shared continuity.
“Vedanta denies the waking world.”
No — it denies independent existence. Waking is respected for its experienceability, transactability, and utility (ETU), yet known as dependent.
“Awakening is a new state.”
Knowledge does not add another state; it reveals that the witness was never a participant in any state.
Vedantic Resolution
When knowledge dissolves identification with the waker, jagrat is seen as Ishvara’s dream — ordered, lawful, yet insubstantial. The sage continues to act, but knows that the actor, actions, and results are mere superimpositions upon consciousness.
Then, by falsifying the dreamer, you falsified the entire act of dreaming and the dream itself; everything that was done in the dream and the results born out of those actions… In the wake of the knowledge of the waker, the dreamer is resolved. In other words, the waker swallows the dreamer, along with the dream world, the dream actions, and the dream results. — Swami Dayananda (Bhagavad Gita Home Study Course, volume 4)
