April 16, 2014: Sushuptasthanah prajno makarastritiya matra: Makara is the third Matra of Om, and it is comparable with Prajna, the third state, causal, of the Atman. Miterapiterva: It is the measure of all things, and it is the dissolver of all things. When we chant Om, Akara and Ukara merge in Makara, as all the impressions of waking and dream merge in Prajna, deep sleep, the causal state. Just as you end the chant with Makara, you end all experience in deep sleep; and as you can repeat the chant subsequent to the closure of the recitation by Makara, waking life commences once again as an offshoot of the deep sleep state, which is the cause of waking. Deep sleep can be called the cause of waking in one sense, the effect of it in another sense. The waking is due to the agitation of the unfulfilled impressions lying buried in the deep sleep state. In this sense we may say that waking is an effect of the state of deep sleep. Deep sleep is the cause, and all experiences in waking and dream are its effects. As Isvara is the cause of all things, the deep sleep state seems to be the cause of our waking and dreaming, in one sense, namely, that we wake up from sleep on account of unfulfilled desires. If all our desires are fulfilled, we would not be waking up from sleep, at all. Why should we wake up? What is the purpose? There is something unfulfilled, unexecuted, and therefore we wake up. The Prarabdha-Karma agitates, urges us into activity, wakes us up into the world of objects. Thus, in one sense, Prajna (sleep) is the cause of experience through Visva (waking) and Taijasa (dreaming). But, in another sense, Prajna may be regarded as the effect, because Prajna is nothing but that state of consciousness where all the impressions, unfulfilled, unmanifested, lie latent, and these impressions are nothing but the consequences of perception and experience in the waking state. In that sense, the condition of deep sleep is an effect of waking. Makara is of that nature in Om. We may say that the chant commences with Makara or closes with Makara, as in the series of chants of Om. Just as we can have a series of chants or recitations of Pranava, we have a series of wakings and sleepings, and wakings and sleepings. The sleep state measures (Miteh) all things in the sense that the waking and dreaming experiences are determined by the impressions that are there as Sanchita-Karma in the Anandamaya-Kosha (causal state), manifesting itself in the sleep state. The Sanchita-Karmas are those group of unfulfilled Samskaras and Vasanas which are there in the state of deep sleep, Prajna, and which sprout forth shoots in the form of experiences in waking and dream. In this sense we measure our experiences in terms of tendencies present in the deep sleep state. The dream and the waking experiences are measured by the potencies already present in the state of sleep, as unfulfilled Vasarras and Samskaras.

                                                                                                                ---Excerpts from Mandukya Upanishad