Journal of the Interdisciplinary Crossroads

Vol. 1, No. 3 (December, 2004), pp. 551–560

ISSN 0972-9801

Turiya: The Fourth State of Consciousness and the

STEP Model of Self-Consciousness
Vinod D. Deshmukh
Neurologist, St. Augustine, Florida USA

ABSTRACT
Turiya, the fourth state of consciousness as described in Mandukya
Upanishad, is an extraordinarily inspired state of calm, alert and
intuitive consciousness with self-integration. It can be understood
within the framework of modern Neuroscience. The author proposes
that Turiya is a unique conscious state of Non-Rapid Eye Movement
Wakefulness (NREM-W) characterized by a) an optimal attentiveness
with freedom from daydreaming and intrusive thoughts, b) behavioral
quiescence with no internal speech or rapid eye movements, c)
heightened perceptual clarity from moment to moment with cognitive
excellence and d) an enhanced sense of well-being, serenity,
compassion, and creativity. Many exceptionally gifted people
throughout human history seem to have verified the truth of such a
state. Just as we stand on the shoulders of past intellectual giants to
understand and discover the new in science, so also we may be guided
by the genius and experience of the ancient seers and philosophers to
understand and discover the new in the neuroscience of self-
consciousness.

Historical Background
Turiya, the fourth conscious state was described in an ancient Sanskrit
text called Mandukya Upanishad. The Upanishads are short insightful
texts in verse form, which were preserved by the ancient philosophers
in India, by passing them from generation to generation, in an oral
tradition before the advent of written language. Most scholars date the
written form of Upanishads back to 3,500 to 4,000 years. One hundred
and eight such Upanishads, including thirteen essential ones, have been
translated in English (Hume 1877/1968; Radhakrishnan 1978/1994;
Deussen 1966; Goodall 1996; Mahadevan 1975). Oral recitation of these
meaningful Sanskrit verses still continues amongst Sanskrit scholars all
over the world. It is a living philosophy practiced by many in their daily
life.
At a recent symposium on consciousness, held in honor of Herbert H.
Jasper, MD, PhD, a pioneer neurophysiologist from the Montreal

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 552 Vinod D. Deshmukh
Neurological Institute, a panel of renowned neuroscientists made
outstanding presentations on the complex subject of human
consciousness (Jasper et al. 1998). Barbara E. Jones, PhD of McGill
University, reviewed the current understanding of the neural basis of
consciousness across the sleep-wake cycle (Jones 1998). In her
introduction and conclusion, she acknowledged that the currently
established three states of consciousness, namely dreamless sleep, dream
and wake states had been described about 4000 years ago in an ancient
Sanskrit text, called Upanishad (Nikhilanand 1963). This referenced
Upanishad is Mandukya Upanishad (Bhanu 1913). In this article, I wish
to elaborate on this profoundly insightful, ancient source of information
on human conscious experience.
The Mandukya Upanishad has twelve verses. It clearly describes four
states of human consciousness, namely a) Sushupti, the dreamless sleep
state with Prajna as the experiencing self, b) Swapna, the dream sleep
state with Taijasa as the experiencing self, c) Jagrat, the wakeful state
with Vaishvanara as the experiencing self, and d) Turiya, the fourth
conscious state of super wakefulness, which is an extraordinarily
awakened, self-integrated state. The primal being or essential awareness
in such a state is called Atman the essential self.
The Sanskrit word Turiya literally means the fourth, or the fourth
aspect (Apte 1970). The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and
Religion defines Turiya as a super conscious state of illumination, called
the fourth because it transcends the three familiar states of deep sleep,
dream and wakefulness (Fischer-Schreiber et al. 1989). This state of
essential consciousness is beyond thought, causality and identification
with the body. It is pure unified consciousness, of indescribable serenity
and of the nature of Atman, the essential being. The title page of
Mandukya Upanishad, printed in Mumbai India in 1913, is shown in
Figure 1.
This book contains twelve original Sanskrit verses of Mandukya
Upanishad, followed by a commentary or Karika by Gaudapada, who
was a Sanskrit scholar and a pioneer of a non-dualistic philosophy called
Advaita Vedanta. Shankaracharya, who was a brilliant eighth century
Sanskrit scholar, philosopher and a poet of India (788–820), has
translated and commented on the Mandukya Upanishad as well as on
Gaudapada’s Karika. The Mandukya Upanishad, after describing the
three commonly known states of human consciousness, goes on to
describing Turiya the fourth conscious state in the seventh and the
twelfth verses [Figure 2].
Eastern Interpretation
S. Radhakrishnan, who was a modern scholar of Upanishads,
translated the seventh and the twelfth verses as follows: “(Turiya is) not
that which cognizes the internal (objects), not that which cognizes the

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 Turiya and the STEP model of self-consciousness 553

Figure 1. The title page of the book, “Mandukya Upanishad” published in

Mumbai in 1913.

Figure 2. The seventh and twelfth verses from Mandukya Upanishad and the
twelfth verse from Gaudapada’s Karika (commentary) in Sanskrit.

external (objects), not that which cognizes both of them, not a mass of
cognition, not cognitive, not non-cognitive. (It is) unseen, incapable of
being spoken of, ungraspable, without any distinctive marks,

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 554 Vinod D. Deshmukh
unthinkable, unnamable, the essence of knowledge of the one self, that
into which the world is resolved, the peaceful, the benign, the non-dual,
such, they think, is the fourth quarter. He is the self; He is to be
known… The syllable Aum is the very self. He who knows it thus enters
the (essential) self with his (own) self.” (Radhakrishnan: op cit.).
In differentiating the third state of dreamless sleep from the fully
awakened fourth state of Turiya, Gaudapada comments, “in the
dreamless sleep, Prajna, the experiencing self is neither aware of
himself nor of others. He neither knows the truth nor the untruth. He is
truly not cognizant of anything. But in the state of Turiya the essential
self is always aware of all that is present in reality.”
The unique conscious experience of Turiya has been well described in
Direct Self-Realization, Aparoksnaubhuti by Shankaracharya. This
experience is translated as follows: “I am equanimous, quiescent and by
nature a blissful conscious being. I am change-free, without any specific
form, free from disease and decay. I am not limited by any activity or
attribute. I am ever free and eternal. I am not limited by this body,
which only has an apparent existence.” (Vimuktananda 1966).
Patanjali in his Yoga sutras precisely expresses the reality of the state
of Turiya: “The essential self reveals itself when mental activity such as
thought, emotion and egocentric activity subsides. At all other times,
one identifies oneself with the ongoing mental activity. When the mind
stays undirected and assumes its own original unmodified state, the
essential self experiences itself.” (Deshmukh 1988; Taimani 1961).
Western Interpretation
James H. Austin MD, a neurologist has accomplished a difficult task of
understanding and expressing various states of consciousness from the
Zen literature in the light of modern Neuroscience and compiled them
in his landmark book, Zen and the Brain (Austin 1998). He describes six
advanced conscious states (IV–IX), which are beyond the commonly
recognized states of (I) Slow-Wave/dreamless sleep, (II)
Desynchronized/dream sleep and (III) wakefulness. “Conscious state
(IV) is a level reached during concentration and receptive meditative
modes. The conscious state (V) is a state of heightened emotionalized
awareness without sensate loss. The conscious state (VI-A) is a state of
absorption without sensate loss i.e. external absorption and conscious
state (VI-B) is a state of absorption with sensate loss i.e. internal
absorption. The advanced extraordinary conscious states are: (VII) a
state of insight-wisdom, Kensho, or Satori, (VIII) a state of ultimate
being, beyond expression and (IX) the stage of ongoing enlightened
traits.” The last three advanced states have many features in common
with the conscious state of Turiya.
In order to achieve extraordinary conscious mental state like Turiya,
some of the meditative techniques are being studied in the field of

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 Turiya and the STEP model of self-consciousness 555
mental health. Roger N. Walsh defines the term “Meditation” as “a
family of practices that train attention in order to heighten awareness
and bring mental processes under voluntary control. Their ultimate aim
is the development of the deepest insight into the nature of mental
processes, consciousness, identity and reality, and the development of
optimal states of psychological well-being and consciousness.” (Walsh
2001). Dr. Walsh describes these optimal conscious states as “without
exclusive identification, (in which) the me/not-me dichotomy is
transcended and the individual thus perceives himself or herself as both
no thing and every thing. Such people experience themselves both as
pure awareness or no thing and also as the entire universe or every thing.
Defenses drop away, because when experiencing oneself as no thing
there is nothing to defend; when experiencing oneself as every thing
there is nothing to defend against. This experience of unconditioned or
pure awareness is apparently very blissful. It is described in the Hindu
tradition as “sat-chit-anand”: blissful conscious being.” In the Hindu-
Buddhist literature, the “awareness of no thing” is called Sunyata, which
means an emptiness or awareness with no specific content. The
“awareness of every thing” is called Poornata, which means total
awareness of the present reality. In Sunyata the attitude is of letting go
of everything that one is experiencing consciously, while in Poornata
the attitude is that of embracing all that one is experiencing consciously
at the present moment. Both of these attitudes have been beautifully
combined in a Zen saying, “To study the self is to forget the self. To
forget the self is to be enlightened by all things.” (Bucksbazen 1977).
A team of psychiatrists and psychologists have recently used
mindfulness meditation as a stress reduction intervention in the
treatment of anxiety disorders (Miller et al. 1995). They define
mindfulness meditation as “the effort to intentionally pay attention,
nonjudgementally, to the present moment experience and sustain this
attention over time. The aim is to cultivate a stable and nonreactive
present moment awareness.” There is a remarkable similarity between
mindfulness and Freud’s characterization of the ideal mind state of the
psychoanalyst during psychotherapy (Epstein 1988). Freud ([1912] 1955)
described the latter as one of “evenly suspended attention”. He defined
it operationally as to “suspend … judgment and give … impartial
attention to everything there is to observe.” This is very similar to
Turiya, the ideal state of calm, composed and all-perceptive awareness.
Two concepts from the Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology fields,
namely, “global vs. focal attentiveness” (Mapstone et al. 2001) and
“spotlight vs. floodlight attentiveness” (Barrett et al. 2001) are useful for
understanding the advanced states of consciousness. In such global or
floodlight mode of attention, not only the external reality but also the
internal mental events become perceptible as contents of the total
attentional field. It may be a beginning, which can lead to advanced
mental state like Turiya.

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 556 Vinod D. Deshmukh
Csikszentmihalyi in his book, “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal
Experience,” describes attention as “psychic energy, without it no work
can be done, and in doing work it is dissipated. We create ourselves by
how we invest this energy. Memories, thoughts, and feelings are all
shaped by how we use it. And it is an energy under our control, to do
with as we please; hence, attention is our most important tool in the
task of improving the quality of experience.” He also remarks about the
circular causality between attention and self: “the self directs attention
and the attention determines the self. In fact both these statements are
true: consciousness is not a strictly linear system, but one in which
circular causality obtains. Attention shapes the self, and is in turn
shaped by it.” (Csikszentmihalyi 1990: 33–4).
Some of the recent reviews in Neuroscience point to the Prefrontal
Cortex as an important region in the neural network, significant in
mediating attention, self-awareness and self-organization of behavior,
cognition and conscious mental states. Knight and colleagues conclude,
“Prefrontal cortex provides both inhibitory and excitatory input to
distributed neural circuits required to support performance in diverse
tasks… Prefrontal cortex is able to sculpt behavior through parallel
inhibitory and excitatory regulation of neural activity in distributed
neural networks.” (Knight et al. 1999). Miller and Cohen (2001) propose:
“The Prefrontal cortex has long been suspected to play an important role
in cognitive control and ability to orchestrate thought and action in
accordance with internal goals… Here, we propose that cognitive
control stems from the active maintenance of patterns of activity in the
prefrontal cortex that represent goals and the means to achieve them.”
Bunge and colleagues report that the “Prefrontal region is involved in
keeping information in and out of mind… Goal-directed behavior
depends on keeping relevant information in mind (working memory)
and irrelevant information out of mind (behavioral inhibition or
interference resolution). Prefrontal cortex is essential for working
memory and for interference resolution.” (Bunge et al. 2001).26 In
reviewing brain imaging of attentional networks, Fernandez-Duque and
Posner (2001) divide the attentional network into three subdivisions: a)
Vigilance network involved in achieving and maintaining the alert state,
b) Orienting network involved in orienting to sensory stimuli,
particularly to locations in visual space, and c) Executive network
orchestrating voluntary actions.
Author’s Hypothesis
Mandukya Upanishad describes a fourth state of consciousness called,
Turiya, after defining the three well known states of consciousness
namely, dreamless sleep, dream sleep and wakefulness. The fourth
conscious state is a state of self-integration and liberation, which cannot
be objectified or spoken of and into which the world and the self-
experience are resolved. It is. Therefore, it is nondual, serene and the

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 Turiya and the STEP model of self-consciousness 557
very essence of our being. In this state, the essential being is always
aware of all that is present in reality. Such a liberated person exhibits
many characteristics like the ability for sustained attentiveness, high
level of energy, optimism, equanimity, compassion and creativity. This
unique state of consciousness can be explained in terms of modern
neuroscience.
A model of conscious mind is proposed, 28 where the working
memory, which is a function of the prefrontal cortex is at the center of
the moment-to-moment consciousness. For the execution of different
voluntary activities, Prefrontal cortex interacts with the
autobiographical memories in hippocampal network and the long-term
memories stored in various regions of the multimodal association cortex
[Figure 3].

A MODEL OF CONSCIOUS MIND

Working memory
(Current consciousness)

Focus of attention

Bits of information
(7±2 bits)

Long-term memory
Nonexperienced • Unknown (Unconscious store-house)
world

Figure 3. Model of conscious mind with working memory at its center, which is
a function of prefrontal cortex and which can hold up to 7 ± 2 bits of
M M

information (contents) at any conscious moment. Prefrontal cortex through its

thalamo-striate network interacts with the autobiographical memories in the
hippocampal-limbic-cingulate network and the subconscious storehouse of long-
term memories in the multimodal association cortex during the execution of
voluntary activity.

The current consciousness with working memory is further polarized

into conscious space and time. The current conscious space is polarized
into autobiographical self and others, resulting in the common dualistic
interactive experience. The conscious time is polarized into past, present
and future based on the current working memory and the phenomenon
of sensory-perceptual fusion, resulting in the common experience of
conscious mental time [Figure 4] (Deshmukh 1994).

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 558 Vinod D. Deshmukh

POLARIZATION OF CONSCIOUS SPACE

SELF OTHER

POLARIZATION OF CONSCIOUS TIME

PRESENT
PAST FUTURE

Figure 4. Polarization of conscious space occurs when the working memory

gets polarized into an autobiographical self and its environment, which leads to
the experiential duality. A sensory-perceptual fusion of sequential conscious
states and working memory results in a sense of mental time and continuous
selfness.

Self-consciousness during voluntary action, perception and emotion,

is understood in terms of attention and its neural mechanisms. The
executive function of the prefrontal cortex directs attentive behaviour,
which in turn defines the sense of selfness at the present moment. There
is a circular causality between the two. There are three components of
the attentional neural network. 1) Vigilance network for achieving and
maintaining an alert state, 2) Orientation network for orienting to
situational sensory stimuli and internal needs and states and 3)
Executive network for orchestrating voluntary activity.
A new model for understanding of the executive process is proposed.
It is called, Situational Transient Executive Process or the STEP model.
According to this model, self-consciousness is transient and it arises
from conscious attention and decision-making due to the executive
activity in the prefrontal cortex in a given situation. The common
experience of apparent continuous selfness results from a) the
continuous self-orientation in person, place and time and b) the
phenomenon of sensory-perceptual fusion of discrete experiences in
time and space, which is analogous to the apparent continuity

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 Turiya and the STEP model of self-consciousness 559
experienced while watching a movie. Prefrontal cortex and its
associated networks mediate attention, self-consciousness, self-
organization of behavior, cognition and the self-regulation of various
mental states. Prefrontal cortex and its network play a crucial role in the
STEP model. The STEP model is consistent with the consensus as
expressed in a recent review article on consciousness by Zeman (2001).

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