Turiyateeta

Verse 0

अथ तुरीयातीतावधूतानां कोऽयं मार्गस्तेषां का स्थितिरिति पितामहो भगवन्तं पितरमादिनारायणं परिसमेत्योवाच। तमाह भगवन्नारायणो योऽयमवधूतमार्गस्थो लोके दुर्लभतरो न तु बाहुल्यो यद्येको भवति स एव नित्यपूतः स एव...

Then Pitāmaha, the Grandfather, approached the Blessed Lord, the Father, Ādi-Nārāyaṇa, and asked: “What is the path of those avadhūtas who have gone beyond the Fourth (turīya)—the turīyātīta—and what is their state?” The Blessed Nārāyaṇa replied: “He who abides in the avadhūta-path is exceedingly rare in the world, not one among many. If such a one exists, he alone is ever-purified; he alone is the embodied form of dispassion (vairāgya); he alone is the very shape of knowledge; he alone is the Veda-Puruṣa—so the knowers hold. That great person whose mind rests in Me alone—I too rest in him alone. “At first, in due sequence, he becomes a kuṭīcaka; attaining the state of bahūdaka, the bahūdaka assumes the state of haṃsa; the haṃsa becomes a paramahaṃsa. Then, by inquiry into his own nature and by knowing the entire expanse of phenomena, he consigns to the waters the staff, the water-pot, the waist-cord, the loincloth and covering, and all prescribed rites; becoming sky-clad, he abandons even the possession of discolored, worn bark-garments and skins. Thereafter, acting as though without mantras, he gives up shaving, oiling, bathing, the vertical sect-mark, and the like; he also withdraws from worldly and Vedic observances. Everywhere he is free from merit and demerit, abandoning even knowledge and ignorance; conquering cold and heat, pleasure and pain, honor and dishonor; burning up—together with the three latent tendencies—praise and blame, pride, envy, hypocrisy, arrogance, hatred, desire, anger, greed, delusion, joy, resentment, malice, self-protection and the like; seeing his own body as if a corpse. “Effortlessly and without fixed rule he makes gain and loss equal; sustaining life by the ‘cow’s mode’ (accepting what comes), without greed for what is obtained; reducing to ashes the display of learning and scholarship; concealing his true nature; not asserting seniority or non-seniority; establishing nonduality as supreme excellence and as all-selfhood; concluding that apart from Me there is no other whatsoever; gathering into himself the ‘wealth’ of divine secrets and the like. Not agitated by sorrow, not elated by happiness; desireless amid attachments; everywhere without clinging to auspicious and inauspicious; with the senses stilled; not recalling the power of former stages of life, conduct, learning, and dharma; having abandoned varṇa-and-āśrama conduct; always equal in day and night, without sleep; always wandering; with only the body remaining; with a water-pot fit for water or land; always not mad, yet wandering alone like a child, a madman, or a goblin; intent on non-conversation; taking refuge in the supportless through meditation on his own nature; forgetting everything in accordance with establishment in the Self; devoted to nondual abidance in the guise of a turīyātīta avadhūta—he relinquishes the body as of the nature of Praṇava (Oṁ). He is the avadhūta; he becomes one who has accomplished what is to be accomplished—thus is the Upaniṣad.”