Mandukya_Upanishad

do not see Omkāra, Praṇava, the Creator, Preserver,Destroyer. All the things which we hear are not seen by us,and we cannot accept sermons based on invisibles unless asatisfactory explanation is offered first in regard to thevisible. ‘Can you tell me what this is before me? Then I canaccept what you say in regard to that which is above me.’This immediacy of consciousness, this sensory fact which ispresented to us in our day-to-day experience iscomprehended within what may be called the waking life orjāgrat-avastha. All our life is confined to the wakingexperience, and we are not concerned so much with ourexperiences in dream and sleep as with those in the wakingstate. To us jīvas, mortals, individuals, humans, whatever ispresented in the waking state is real, and to us life meansjust waking life. Our business is with facts presented in thewaking consciousness. So we shall begin, first of all, with anunderstanding of the way in which we begin to know theworld as it appears to us in the waking life.The waking consciousness is the first foot of the Ātman,as it were, the first aspect or phase of experience that we arestudying and investigating. The waking consciousness isjāgaritasthānah, that consciousness which has its abode inthe wakeful condition of the individual. And what is itsspecial feature? Bahihprājñaah: It is conscious only of whatis outside, not conscious of what is inside. We cannot evensee what is in our own stomachs. How can we see what is inour minds? We are extroverts, aware of only what isexternal to our bodies, concerned with things which areexternal to the bodies, and busy with those objects whichare other than our own bodies. We deal with things, but all50