The buzz of an alarm. A yawn. The eyelids gently open.
The mind reaching back for the world it just shook awake from - a dream that felt so vivid, so real. And yet, upon waking, an illusion.
In an instant you know - without doubt, without effort - that you were never inside it. Something in you was watching the entire time. Untouched. Unchanged.
And the Awake You goes about its day in the “Real World”.
But the Bhagavad Gita stops you right there - What if the You in the “Real World” is just as fictional as the You in the Dream? If the dream was the Field - is the waking you the Knower? Or is there something deeper still?
Part 1 mapped the Field. Part 2 is about finding the One who was never asleep.
PURUSHA’S DANCE WITH PRAKRITI
The Gita names the two realities at the heart of all existence.
Prakriti: matter, nature, the entire Field in motion. Everything that moves, changes, is born and dies. The three Gunas: Sattva (Attachment to Knowledge), Rajas (Attachment to Desire), Tamas (Attachment to Ignorance) - Prakriti’s operating modes - the qualities that colour every thought, every reaction, every season of a life.
Purusha (The Key Player of this Post): pure consciousness. The Knower. Unchanging, unborn, undying. Not located in any particular body yet present in every one. Not a product of the Field but the awareness in which the Field appears.
Their Relationship: Prakriti is the cause of all activity. Every movement in the Field - every desire, every fear, every collision - originates in Prakriti moving through its Gunas. Purusha does not act. It witnesses and holds.
But - and this is the crux - the way Purusha HOLDS with what it WITNESSES is what produces the quality of experience. Pleasure or pain arises when the Knower forgets it is witnessing and begins to believe it is the one being acted upon.
The suffering is not in the Field. The suffering is in the misidentification.
Prakriti produces the storm. Purusha, when it remembers itself, is the sky.
THE FIVE ROLES OF PURUSHA
The Bhagavad Gita provides Five clear roles of the Purusha to help the Knower remain steady in the waves of duality - Pleasure, Pain, Desire, Hatred.
The Witness: The one who sees without being altered by what it sees. The anger moves through the Field. The Witness observes it without becoming it.
The Permitter: The one in whose presence the Field feels free to move. Prakriti operates in the light of Purusha’s awareness. The Field needs the Knower the way a stage needs light - without it, nothing is visible, nothing happens.
The Supporter: the pillar of all experience. The Knower does not carry the Field. It holds the space in which the Field exists. The way the sky holds the weather without becoming it.
The Enjoyer: the Knower is fully present to experience. The difference is that it enjoys without being consumed. It watches the dream with complete attention - and wakes unchanged.
The Supreme Self: the recognition that the individual Knower is not separate from the universal. The Purusha is the Knower. The Knower realises the Self.
These five roles together describe something fully alive, fully present, fully engaged - and simultaneously untouched. Awareness over Attachment.
THE JOURNEY TO THE FOURTH STATE: TURIYA
The ancient teachers mapped consciousness into four states.
Waking: the world in full motion. The Field running at its loudest. The Collision producing its inevitable output.
Dreaming: the Field generating its own interior world. The Ego still present, still narrating, still inside the story.
Deep sleep: the Field at rest. The Vasanas temporarily quiet. The noise gone. But the Knower not yet recognised - only experienced as absence.
Turiya: And beyond these three is Turiya - The fourth. When the Knower raises its awareness above the Illusion of the three, the Knower attains Self-Realisation.
Most of us move through all three states identified with the Field. The Knower is the one who begins to notice - in the middle of waking life, in the texture of a dream, even in the stillness of deep sleep I am not this. Something in me is watching.
Turiya is not an achievement. It is a recognition. The Knower was always there - present through every dream, every waking moment, every season of the Field. The path of Chapter 13 is simply the gradual removal of everything that was obscuring it.
THE GOAL - REMOVAL OF ATTACHMENT FROM THE FIELD
The goal of the Knower is Self Realisation. Oneness with the Brahman.
Brahman is beginningless and endless. Desire is not. Every desire has a start and an end - fulfilment or disappointment, both leaving a groove. The Knower keeps forgetting itself because the cycle keeps generating noise.
The goal is not suppression. It is the recognition that the peace, the fullness - is meant to be Experienced, not Seeked.
The Path back if the one you already know: Act, Learn, Meditate, Surrender
A PORTRAIT OF THE KNOWER - THE TWENTY QUALITIES
The Bhagavad Gita does not leave the Knower as an abstract recognition. He describes what it looks like when someone is genuinely living from it.
Taken together these twenty qualities are not the qualities of someone who has escaped the dream, but Someone who knows they are dreaming - and moves through it with open eyes.
Arjuna is still on Kurukshetra. The bow is still in his hand. But something has shifted in the one holding it. The Field has not changed. The Knower has remembered itself.
Where do you find yourself today — in the Field or as the Knower?
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REFERENCES:
A Parthasarathy, Bhagavad Gita
Eknath Easwaran, The Bhagavad Gita
Stephen Mitchell, Bhagavad Gita
Sri Hari Yoga, THE DOCTRINE OF THE THREE BODIES
Swami Krishnananda, THE MANDUKYA UPDANISHAD, AN EXPOSITION
Aks Reflections, INTRODUCTION TO THE BHAGAVAD GITA: A TIMELESS BLUEPRINT FOR A MEANINGFUL LIFE
Aks Reflections, PICK UP THE BOW: BUILDING YOUR INNER SELF (LESSONS FROM CHAPTERS 1 & 2)
Aks Reflections, THE QUIET TRIUMPH OF THE NEXT STEP (LESSONS FROM CHAPTER 3)
Aks Reflections, BEYOND THE MAT: FOUR TYPES OF YOGA
Aks Reflections, EXHAUSTION OR EVOLUTION: WHAT’S YOUR DAY BRINGING TO YOUR MIND (LESSONS FROM CHAPTERS 4-6)
Aks Reflections, JOURNEYING FROM KNOWLEDGE TO WISDOM (Lessons from Chapter 7)
Aks Reflections, THE CANVAS AND THE PAINT (Lessons from Chapter 8)
Aks Reflections, The Royal Secret (Learnings from Chapter 9)
Aks Reflections, A THOUSAND SUNS - THE TURNING POINT OF THE BHAGAVAD GITA (Exploration and the Cosmic Vision from Chapters 10 and 11)
Aks Reflections, THE WAY OF LOVE: DEVOTION TOWARDS THE SELF - BHAGAVAD GITA CHAPTER 12 PART 1
Aks Reflections, A PORTRAIT OF DEVOTION - BHAGAVAD GITA CHAPTER 12 PART 2
Aks Reflections, A MAP OF EVERYTHING YOU ARE NOT - BHAGAVAD GITA CHAPTER 13, PART 1
I have come to see that my understanding of these ancient teachings has deepened slowly over time. For a long while, I struggled against my own nature—trying to fix, solve, and control the field of life, as if it were a problem that needed resolution.
But gradually, something shifted. I began to sense the true meaning of these teachings—the field is not a problem to be solved. It is to be accepted, experienced, and understood. And that understanding unfolds only as the knowledge of the Self deepens through study, practice, and surrender.
Over time, the path has become simpler. Not easier, but simpler. Less about fighting, and more about accepting the field as it is—while remembering that I am not limited to the field itself, but am the space in which the field appears and disappears. The awareness in which the states of waking, dream, and sleep arise and pass.
Thank you for explaining this so beautifully—it helped me see this with greater clarity.
“I am not this. Something in me is watching.”
🙏