ॐ श्रीगुरुभ्यो नमः।
The Self by svarUpa is sat, chit and Ananda. These are not three attributes as they appear to be in their translations, at least the former two, as existence, consciousness and bliss. All three words have a specific connotation each, and they point to the same vastu, entity. The three are used to take away their loaded meanings. All this is detailed by Bhagavan Bhashyakara under the Taittiriya mantra: satyam j~nAnam anantaM brahma. However, I would like to offer an additional perspective in the following analysis, which came up while teaching Vicharasagara the 2nd time. Its been several months since, but I hope to be able to give a certain angle to this.
Out of sat, chit and Ananda that are the svarUpa dharma (for a lack of a better word), sat is considered as sAmAnya while chit and Ananda are said to be visheSha, based on the fact that all jIvas know that the exist. They don't hunt for their existence, but they want it to continue by wanting to live on and on. However, they hanker after Ananda, they search for happiness. They don't know that they are the very Ananda they are looking for! Where does chit fit into all this? Vicharasagara too calls this as visheSha, but if one takes another look at it, one would agree that all know that they are conscious entities. No one needs to point it out to them, just like they know they exist and no one need point that out to them. This would put chit right alongside of sat as sAmAnya dharma, not visheSha like Ananda. Ananda is the make or break of all pursuits and hence the culmination into mokSha. One can also take sAmAnya to mean easy to understand with little or no inquiry in this context.
Having established that Ananda is the only visheSha, lets see what is known when more or less clearly or at least understood so. Now we all know that the advitiyatva of all this is definitely visheSha, that is not the focus here. That we do not know due to avidyA causing an AvaraNa, veiling one's own svarUpa. [If one understands that this is svarUpalakShaNa of AtmA, one would know that all sattA is AtmasattA, all that is chaitanya is Atmachaitanya and any Ananda is nothing but AtmAnanda.] The focus area here is that avasthAtrayaparIkShA also has the following interesting differences in manifestation of sat, chit or Ananda:
In waking: sat and chit are manifest, Ananda is veiled.
In dream: sat and chit are manifest, Ananda is veiled.
In deep sleep: sat and chit are veiled, Ananda is manifest!
All three never manifest together in any of these three states. If all three were to manifest simultaneously, we wouldn't struggle across lives to break out of saMsAra. The deep sleep is one that gives a glimpse into our AnandasvarUpa where we are happy even without any object, neither a waking one, nor a dream one. The recollection of sleeping happily and not knowing anything (else) shows that the sat-chit aspects are veiled while Ananda is manifest. The Ananda is not objectified, just like our being existent and conscious is not objectified. There is a massive misunderstanding when one says one is happy that somehow this is positively objectified happiness. It is not. If one recalls priya, moda and pramoda gradations of happiness as discussed in most Vedanta texts, they tell us that the craving for any object takes us away from svarUpAnanda and that object being obtained, the craving goes away and the svarUpAnanda manifests be it via the same vRtti or better still as Vicharasagara says via another AnandavRtti. Again, AnandavRtti also doesn't mean that svarUpAnanda is an object of that vRtti.
The anubhava word is misunderstood very badly due to the saMskAra of the English word experience, where an object is almost included. anubhava is actually the svarUpa of Atma itself, being interchangeable with j~nAna. Incidentally today, I came across this in Bhagavan Chitsvarupacharya's TIkA on Naishkarmyasiddhi where he glosses over the word svAtmAnubhava as svaH cha asau AtmA cha svAtmA and then, svAtmA cha asau anubhavaH cha svAtmAnubhavaH. Oneself is AtmA and that itself is anubhava. So, one cannot have an experience of AtmA as an object, ever! That is to say one cannot know AtmA as an object, ever. And this also means that one cannot have anubhava of Ananda as an object, ever.
When everything else ceases to be, what remains is you, the Self, which is Ananda. There is no positive experience of Ananda. In deep sleep though, there being no object, but avidyA being there, what reflects in avidyA is Ananda, which was always there in waking and dream too, but it was suppressed by the waking and dream object-noise. To manifest Ananda in waking and dream, we necessarily need the desire for the object to vanish, which remove the AvaraNa on Ananda in that moment, when the vikShepa vanishes with the desire. In contrast, to manifest Ananda in deep sleep, we don't need anything since there is desire for the object at that time, nor is there any object.
Those who have difficulty in landing on this Ananda as svarUpa of oneself using suShupti as an example, almost always need samAdhyanubhava, where sat, chit and Ananda all three manifest together. Of course, even this can't establish advitIyatva of AtmA, which only Shruti can bring in. There is a third way of using tarka, pure tarka which is as follows. All the analysis as pointed out by any Vedanta text in the context of how viShayAnanda takes place holds good. In short, if the viShaya had Ananda, everyone would like the same viShaya and even one who finds happiness in that object would find it all the time. Neither is the case, but there is definite happiness felt in that object. It should have come from somewhere. pArisheShAt, it belongs to the only one remaining, the subject that objectifies, meaning AtmA, one's very own Self. Ergo, AtmA is AnandasvarUpa.
gurupAdukAbhyAm
