The Five States of Awareness (Trika)
Waking, dream, deep sleep, the silent witness — and a fifth where that witness floods them all.
Building on the older Upaniṣadic study of consciousness, Kashmir Shaivism counts five states rather than four. The first three are the familiar ones everyone passes through — waking, dreaming, and deep dreamless sleep. The fourth, turīya, is the pure witnessing awareness present behind all three. But the Trika adds a fifth: turyātīta, 'beyond the fourth,' a fully awakened condition in which that pure awareness no longer stands apart from the other states but saturates them all, so that waking, dreaming, and sleeping are themselves experienced as the play of one consciousness. It marks the difference between glimpsing the witness and living wholly as it.