The essence of Consciousness

Walking the dogs this week, I was listening to a discourse by Swami Sarvapriyananda. He was explaining a profound line from Adi Shankaracharya:

“In wakening, dreaming, and deep sleep — there is one consciousness.”

At first, it sounds simple. But as he unpacked it, something stirred within me. We live through different states each day — wakening, dreaming, and deep sleep — each so distinct in experience.

- In wakening, we navigate the outer world: people, work, emotions, conversations.

- In dreaming, our mind becomes the creator — spinning stories, fantasies, fears — often vivid, strange, and deeply personal.

- In deep sleep, there are no thoughts, no dreams, not even the awareness of “I am sleeping.” It's a void of experience — and yet somehow, we know it happened.

And yet, through all of this, one thing remains constant: the witnessing consciousness. It is not bound by sleep or activity. It doesn’t disappear when the mind goes quiet. It is always there — not doing, just being.

As I listened, some questions surfaced in me:

- Why do we dream? What purpose does it serve — a release, a processing, a rehearsal?

- Why don’t we dream in deep sleep? What changes in the mind’s activity when we fully let go?

- Why do our dreams always include us? Why do we never dream as someone else, or as no one at all?

- Who is the “I” in the dream — is it the same “I” as in waking?

- It made me wonder — if the characters, emotions, and scenes in a dream can feel so real, yet dissolve the moment we wake up, what does that say about the wakening state?

- Could this too be a kind of dream — one with rules and logic, yes, but still impermanent and subjective?

Shankaracharya's teaching suggests something deeper: that you are not the wakening self, nor the dreamer, nor the sleeper — but the one that is aware of all three.

- Not the thought, but the space in which thoughts arise.

- Not the dream, but the one watching the dream.

- Not even the sleep, but the stillness that remains untouched by activity or its absence.

It’s hard to grasp, but strangely — behind all the roles, worries, and wandering minds, there is something steady, silent, and free.

Maybe that’s what real rest is — not just sleep, but returning to that unchanging awareness, the ground beneath all our experiences.