The Letter U — Dream and Excellence

Verse 10 establishes the second correspondence in the Oṃ-mapping: Taijasa (the dreaming self) corresponds to U, the second phoneme of the syllable. The two principles that justify this correspondence are utkarṣa (exaltation, elevation, superiority) and ubhayatva (being in the middle, being between, being common to both). These principles characterise something precise about both U and Taijasa: they are elevated beyond the first stage and they occupy the intermediate position between the first and the third.

Utkarṣa means being raised up, superior, elevated. U is "above" A in the phonological sequence — it is the second step, built upon the foundation of A, and in Sanskrit phonological understanding it has a quality of being "higher" or more refined than A. Taijasa, the dreaming self, is similarly elevated beyond Viśva: it is not dispersed into the gross world through the senses but turned inward, generating its own luminous world. The dreaming state is "higher" in the sense of being more interior, more self-sufficient, more clearly the self's own creation rather than the self's engagement with an apparently external world. The elevation of U and Taijasa is thus not moral or spiritual elevation but structural elevation — they occupy the intermediate position between the most dispersed and the most unified states.

Ubhayatva means "twoness" or "being common to both." U is the phoneme that arises from A and leads to M — it is the middle element, the one that is in between the first and the third, that has something of both. Taijasa similarly stands between Viśva (most dispersed, gross-world-engaged) and Prājña (most unified, objectless): the dreaming self is more collected than the waking self (not engaged with external objects) but more differentiated than the deep-sleep self (still generating and engaging with subtle objects). U is the sound that connects A to M; Taijasa is the consciousness that connects waking to deep sleep.

The practical benefit of the U-Taijasa correspondence, as stated in verse 10, is that "one's knowledge becomes equal" — that the meditator develops an evenness or equanimity of knowledge across waking and dreaming experience. This is a more subtle benefit than verse 9's "achieving all desires," and it reflects the more subtle nature of the dreaming state itself. The dream, as Taijasa's domain, is the arena in which the waking consciousness's residues and impressions are reconfigured. A student who has recognised the dreaming consciousness as the expression of U — as the elevated, interior, luminous mode of Brahman-consciousness — no longer treats the dreaming state as simply an anomalous interruption of waking or as irrelevant to the spiritual path. Instead, the dreaming state is recognised as another facet of the same investigation: the same consciousness that engages with the gross world in waking generates its own world in dreaming, and both are expressions of Brahman-consciousness.

This "equalising of knowledge" means recognising that the investigation of consciousness does not stop when waking ends and dreaming begins; the investigation continues across all states, because consciousness — the subject of the investigation — continues across all states. The student who has understood verse 10's U-Taijasa correspondence has taken a significant step toward the all-state awareness that the tradition calls sahaja samādhi: the natural, effortless recognition of turīya that persists across all states of consciousness, not as a special meditative achievement but as the always-already-present ground of all experience.

In Sanskrit phonology, U occupies a specific intermediate position in the vowel series. It is produced with the lips rounded and the tongue raised at the back of the mouth — a configuration that is "in between" the open A (lips open, tongue neutral) and the closed M (lips together). This intermediate quality is reflected in the Māṇḍūkya's assignment of U to the dreaming state: just as U is between A and M in the phonological sequence, dreaming is between waking and deep sleep in the experiential sequence. The dreaming state arises from waking (it uses the saṃskāras — memory-impressions — of waking experience as its material) and leads to deep sleep (when the dream dissolves, deep sleep follows). It is truly intermediate — between the most outward and the most inward modes of consciousness.

This intermediate quality of U also has a contemplative application. In the practice of meditating on Oṃ with awareness of its four parts, the sound of U is the moment of transition — the moment when A's openness begins to close, when the most dispersed mode begins to gather, when the waking world's expansiveness begins to contract toward the interior of the dreaming. Attending to this transition — the quality of U as the movement from dispersion toward collection — is attending to the moment when the investigation turns inward, from the gross objects of waking toward the subtle world of the self's own creation. This inward turn is one of the most important movements in the entire meditative path, and U's intermediate position in the syllable makes it a sonic map of that turn.

The principle of ubhayatva — being common to both, being in the middle — has a deeper philosophical dimension that connects verse 10 to the Māṇḍūkya's overall argument about turīya. If U is common to both A and M, and if Taijasa is common to both Viśva and Prājña, then this intermediate state is the state in which the continuity of consciousness across states is most visible. In waking, one is absorbed in the external world; in deep sleep, one is absorbed in undivided rest. The dream, by contrast, is the state in which one can notice both the internal generation of experience and the residues of waking experience — the state in which the mind's creative activity is most visible, and therefore the state in which it is easiest to ask the question: what is the awareness in which both the waking residues and the dreaming creations appear? That awareness — present in the middle state, common to both extremes — is the beginning of the recognition of turīya.

In this sense, the dreaming state is philosophically special not because it is more "real" than waking or more "spiritual" than deep sleep but because it is the middle state in which the mind's constructive activity is visible without the full weight of the external world's apparent independence pressing down on the investigation. The dreamer who notices that the dream is a dream — who recognises the constructed quality of dream experience even within the dream — has taken a step toward the recognition of turīya that the Māṇḍūkya is pointing toward. And U's quality of ubhayatva — being common to both extremes — is the sonic map of this intermediate recognition.

The U-Taijasa correspondence of verse 10 supports a specific contemplative practice: the investigation of the dreaming state as a continuation of the waking investigation of consciousness. Rather than treating the transition from waking to sleep as the interruption of the spiritual path, the student who has understood verse 10 treats it as the continuation of the investigation in a different mode. The intention set before sleep — "may I recognise the awareness that underlies dreaming as I recognise the awareness that underlies waking" — is itself a form of the Oṃ-mapping practice: it is the bringing of the U-Taijasa recognition into the practice of sleep and dream.

More specifically, the student can work with the quality of U as a contemplation during the winding-down of the day. As waking engagement with the external world begins to lessen — as the senses are withdrawn, the body relaxes, the mind moves from external to internal — this is the movement from A to U in the day's experiential Oṃ. Noticing this movement consciously, bringing the recognition of Taijasa into the transition from waking to dreaming, is the contemplative application of verse 10. The student who can do this — who can attend to the turn inward as an encounter with the U of the day's Oṃ — has brought the Māṇḍūkya's investigation into the most intimate dimensions of daily life, and has taken a significant step toward the all-state awareness that the text's final verses point toward.

The practical benefit of verse 10 — that one's knowledge "becomes equal" or "is elevated" — is rendered in different ways by different translators, reflecting the ambiguity of the Sanskrit utkarṣate jñānam. Some translations render it as "one's knowledge is elevated" (reflecting the utkarṣa principle of elevation); others render it as "one's knowledge is equalised" (in the sense that waking and dreaming are understood as equally the expressions of Brahman-consciousness). Both readings are philosophically valid, and together they describe a significant development in the student's understanding: the recognition that knowledge is not limited to the waking state's engagement with gross objects but extends to the dreaming state's engagement with subtle objects — and that both forms of knowledge are equally the expressions of the one consciousness. This equalisation or elevation of knowledge is not a special spiritual achievement but a natural consequence of understanding the U-Taijasa correspondence: once one has recognised the dreaming self as Brahman-consciousness in its interior, self-luminous, intermediate mode, the investigation of consciousness necessarily extends beyond the waking state into the full range of one's experience. And with this extension, the path to the all-state recognition of turīya becomes visible.

The U-Taijasa correspondence of verse 10 connects to the rich tradition of dream interpretation and dream philosophy in the Upanishads. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (4.3.9–14) provides the most sustained account of the dreaming state in the Upanishadic corpus, describing the dreaming self as a "shining god" who moves freely through the worlds it creates, unencumbered by the gross body's limitations. This language — the self in dream as a god who creates and moves freely — is precisely what Taijasa's name (the luminous one) encodes: the dreaming self is the self in its most creatively free mode, unencumbered by the gross world's apparent independence. The Chāndogya Upaniṣad (8.10.1) similarly praises the dreaming state as one in which the self moves freely, "shining in the greatest splendour." These Upanishadic accounts of the dreaming self as luminous and free provide the background against which verse 10's U-Taijasa correspondence is fully intelligible: U, as the elevated and interior phoneme, is the sonic expression of the dreaming self's luminous interiority.

For the student who is familiar with these Upanishadic texts, verse 10 thus activates a rich network of associations: the dream as the self's most self-luminous mode, the dream as the arena where the creative power (śakti) of consciousness is most visible, the dream as the intermediate state where the movement from the outward-turned waking to the inward-resting deep sleep is most clearly traceable. The U of the Oṃ is the sonic condensation of all these associations — the phoneme that carries the Taijasa's luminous interiority in its compressed, always-available form.

With verse 10's establishment of the U-Taijasa correspondence, the contemplative arc of the Oṃ meditation becomes clear. A (verse 9) is the opening — the wide engagement with the gross world, the dispersion of consciousness into its most outward mode. U (verse 10) is the turn — the beginning of the return, the elevation from the most dispersed toward the more collected, the movement from external objects to internal generation. M (verse 11) will be the completion — the final gathering of consciousness into its most undivided, objectless mode, the deep-sleep rest before the silence. And the silence (verse 12) is the recognition — the awareness in which A, U, and M arose and subsided, the turīya that was always already present as their ground.

This arc — dispersion, turn, completion, recognition — is not just the arc of a single recitation of Oṃ but the arc of the entire day, the arc of the entire contemplative path, and the arc of the entire Māṇḍūkya itself. The twelve verses of the text trace the same arc from a different starting point: verses 1–3 (the opening/dispersion — establishing the framework and describing the waking state), verses 4–6 (the turn — dream and deep sleep, progressively more interior), verse 7 (the completion — the full description of turīya after the three states have been explored), and verses 8–12 (the recognition — the Oṃ mapping that integrates the investigation into direct practice). By verse 10, the student has understood two of the three phoneme-state correspondences, and the cumulative logic of the arc is becoming clear: the investigation is converging on the silence that verse 12 will identify as turīya and Brahman.

One of the most practically significant aspects of the U-Taijasa correspondence is what it reveals about the nature of creative activity. Taijasa — the dreaming self — is the consciousness in its creative mode, generating an entire world from within. This creative activity is not limited to the dream state in the narrow sense; it is the activity of the mind whenever it imagines, hypothesises, plans, visualises, or creates. The artist imagining a painting before putting brush to canvas, the scientist hypothesising an explanation before testing it, the architect envisioning a building before drawing it — all of these are activities of Taijasa, the dreaming self's creative power operating in the waking state. Verse 10's recognition of Taijasa as the expression of U thus extends the meditative practice of the U-Taijasa correspondence into all creative activity: the artist who recognises their imagination as the expression of U — as the luminous, interior, generative mode of Brahman-consciousness — is practising the Oṃ meditation in the act of creation. This is not a romantic mystification of the creative process; it is the precise application of the Māṇḍūkya's structural insight to one of the most important and most characteristic human activities.

Gauḍapāda's Āgama-prakaraṇa treats the U-Taijasa correspondence as the middle step of the progressive Oṃ meditation, developing the account of how A gives rise to U and U gives rise to M in a way that parallels the account of how the waking state gives rise to the dreaming state and the dreaming state gives rise to the deep-sleep state. His commentary notes that the student who has understood the A-Viśva correspondence and is now working with the U-Taijasa correspondence has made a significant shift in the investigation: they are no longer focused solely on the gross world of waking experience but have turned their investigation inward, toward the subtler, more luminous mode of the self's expression. This inward turn — from A to U, from Viśva to Taijasa, from the gross to the subtle — is itself a form of the recognition that the Māṇḍūkya is facilitating. And Śaṅkara's bhāṣya on verse 10 confirms this reading, noting that the "equalisation of knowledge" that the verse promises is not just an intellectual development but a genuine expansion of the student's contemplative horizon: from the investigation of the waking state to the investigation of all states, which is the investigation of the consciousness that is present in all states — turīya.

Verse 10 establishes the second phoneme-state correspondence — U=Taijasa — and deepens the Oṃ-mapping investigation by introducing the principles of elevation (utkarṣa) and intermediacy (ubhayatva). Its practical benefit is the extension of the investigation from the waking state into the dreaming state, and the development of the "equalised knowledge" that recognises all states as equally the expressions of Brahman-consciousness. With two of the three phoneme-state correspondences established, the student is ready for verse 11's M-Prājña correspondence — the final gathering of consciousness into its most undivided, objectless mode, and the last step before the silence of turīya that verse 12 identifies as Brahman and the self.

A contemplative observation that illuminates verse 10: in the act of sounding U, there is a quality of interiority that is absent from A. A is the most open phoneme — sounding A requires opening outward, expanding the acoustic space of the mouth. U is more interior — sounding U requires a slight closing, a rounding, a gathering. This phonological interiority is the sonic analogue of Taijasa's inward turn: the dreaming self is the self that has "closed" its engagement with the external world through the senses and is now attending to its own interior creations. Meditating on U with awareness of this quality — the quality of interior gathering, of the outward expansion of A beginning to close into the inward focus of U — is meditating on the transition from waking to dreaming in its most concentrated sonic form. And noticing this transition in the act of sounding the syllable is noticing the same transition that occurs each night as waking gives way to dreaming: the gradual closing of outward engagement and the opening of inner luminosity.

This phonological contemplation is not the Māṇḍūkya's own explicit instruction, but it is a natural extension of the principle verse 10 establishes, and it gives the U meditation a concrete, bodily, sensory dimension that purely conceptual understanding does not provide. The student who has sounded U many times with this awareness — noticing the quality of interior gathering that the phoneme embodies — has developed a direct, embodied knowledge of what Taijasa is: not an abstract philosophical category but a living quality of consciousness that is available in the act of sounding a vowel. And from this direct, embodied knowledge, the investigation of consciousness through the Oṃ meditation becomes much more than an intellectual exercise.

Beyond the Māṇḍūkya's specific framework, the phoneme U has significant associations in various Indian sacred sound traditions that enrich verse 10's meditation. In the Vedic tradition, the three Vedas — Ṛgveda, Sāmaveda, and Yajurveda — are sometimes associated with the three phonemes of Oṃ, with U corresponding to the Sāmaveda. The Sāmaveda is the Veda of song — its hymns are not merely recited but sung in elaborate melodic patterns. The association of U with the Sāmaveda thus connects the dreaming self's luminous interiority with the tradition of sacred music: both involve an inward creative act, both involve the generation of beauty from within rather than the reception of information from without. The dreaming self that generates its own world is like the Sāmaveda singer who generates the melody from the words of the Ṛgveda — both are Taijasa, the luminous one, the self in its creative mode.

This association deepens the practical application of verse 10: the student who engages in devotional singing (bhajana, kīrtana), whose practice involves the creative generation of sacred sound from within, is engaging with Taijasa — is, in the Māṇḍūkya's understanding, practising the U-meditation. And by understanding this practice through the lens of verse 10's U-Taijasa correspondence, they can bring the full weight of the philosophical investigation to bear on the practical devotional practice: the voice that sings is Taijasa expressing U; the song is the dreaming self's creation; and the awareness in which both the singing and the silence occur is turīya, always already present, always already the ground of the practice.

For the modern student approaching verse 10 without the traditional background in Sanskrit phonology or Vedic practice, the most direct entry point is the quality of the interior turn that U embodies. The experience of creative imagination — of generating a new possibility from within, of seeing something that doesn't yet exist in the external world — is Taijasa. The experience of remembering vividly — of re-entering a past experience through the mind's own luminous reconstruction — is Taijasa. The experience of dreaming — of being fully absorbed in a world entirely generated by consciousness — is Taijasa. All of these are encounters with U, with the second phoneme of the primordial syllable, with the dreaming self in its countless waking-life expressions. Verse 10's invitation is to recognise these encounters as encounters with Brahman-consciousness in its elevated, interior mode — not exotic spiritual experiences but the ordinary activities of imagination, memory, and dream, now seen in the light of the Māṇḍūkya's philosophical framework. And that recognition — the recognition that the imagination is Taijasa, that Taijasa is U, that U is Brahman — is the specific contribution of verse 10 to the student's path.

At verse 10, the student has traversed two-thirds of the Oṃ-mapping investigation. A has been recognised as the sonic form of the waking consciousness — the primordial, pervading, most-dispersed expression of Brahman. U has been recognised as the sonic form of the dreaming consciousness — the elevated, interior, intermediate expression of Brahman. The syllable is more than half-sounded; the investigation is more than half-complete. The remaining correspondences — M=Prājña (verse 11) and silence=turīya (verse 12) — will bring the arc to its completion. But by verse 10, the structural logic of the investigation is clear enough that the student who has worked carefully through verses 9 and 10 can already sense where verse 12 is heading: the silence of Oṃ, already present as the ground of both A and U, is turīya — the awareness that was present before A, throughout A and U, and that will remain after M has dissolved. The investigation is converging; the recognition is approaching. Verse 10's U meditation has prepared the student to receive verse 11's M meditation, and through M, to arrive at the silence that verse 12 will recognise as Brahman and the self.

Verse 10's lasting gift to the student is the recognition that the turn inward — from the external world to the interior of consciousness — is not a retreat from life but the second step of the primordial syllable. When the meditator sounds U, they are sounding the turn inward; when the day's activities give way to evening reflection, they are moving from A to U; when the waking imagination activates in creative work, it is Taijasa expressing U through the waking body-mind. The turn inward is not an escape from the waking world but the natural movement of the syllable as it progresses from its most dispersed (A) toward its most unified (M) and finally to its ground (silence). Recognising this — recognising the U in every inward turn — is recognising that Brahman is not only in the external world (as A/Viśva) but in the interior of consciousness (as U/Taijasa), and that the path from external engagement to internal recognition is not a path away from Brahman but a path deeper into Brahman's own expression. This is verse 10's contribution to the investigation, and it is a contribution that enriches every dimension of the spiritual life.

Verse 10's practical benefit — that knowledge is elevated or equalised — points toward a subtle but important development in the student's contemplative understanding. Before working with the U-Taijasa correspondence, many students treat the waking state as the "real" arena of inquiry and the dreaming state as philosophically secondary. After working with verse 10, the investigation has expanded to include both: waking and dreaming are both modes of the same consciousness, both expressions of Brahman in its different modes. This expansion of the investigative field is itself a form of liberation — liberation from the limitation of treating only the waking state as philosophically significant. When knowledge becomes equal across states, the path to the all-state recognition of turīya is open. That path, now fully visible, leads through M (verse 11) to the silence of verse 12, where the journey that began with the first word of the Māṇḍūkya arrives at its destination — not at a new place, but at the recognition of where the investigation was always already conducted: in the turīya that was present from the very first moment of inquiry.