EARLY MORNING PRAYER

prātah smarāmi hridi samsphura tattvam

Early in the morning I remember in the heart the effulgent Truth;

sat-chit-sukham paramahamsa-gatim turīyam

Consciousness, Knowledge, Bliss, the state of paramahamsas (Supreme Swans)

that swim through duality; that Fourth dimension

yat svapna jāgara sushuptim avaiti nityam

which ever transcends wakefulness, dreaming and profound sleep.

tad brahma nishkālam aham na ca bhūta sangha:

I Am That Absolute which is beyond time, and not a conglomeration of senses.

In the morning as I meet the dawn, I remember that my heart contains the God, the Beloved, who has not yet been defined and described. I remember that it is He who vibrates within my heart, enables me to breathe, to talk, to listen, to move. When I am thus aware, that it is He who lives and moves within me, then the three phases of consciousness, jāgrat, svapna, sushupti : wakefulness, dreaming, and profound sleep, are transcended into turīya, the fourth dimension, which is behind the wakefulness, the dream-consciousness, and the sleep-consciousness.

When I thus remember, that the underlying current behind the wakefulness, the dream, and the sleep-consciousness is He, who lives and moves within me, then that awareness gives me sat chit sukham: the flavor of the truth, the reality, and the bliss that is the nature, the basic primary nature of life. When I am always thus aware of the real nature of life, then I arrive at paramahansa-gatim turīyam. I arrive at a state of being that has been called by the wise paramahansa: a swan that swims through the waters of duality. That is why a sanyasī is called a paramahansa: one who lives in the renunciation of that austere awareness; that it is not he who lives, as separate from the universe, but that he is only an expression of the universal. The state of paramahansa is the state where a person is aware that he is not a conglomeration of sense organs and the five elements (bhūta sangha), but is the nishkāla-brahman, the supreme Brahman that is beyond time, the divinity, who has taken the dense form of a mind and a physical body.