Svapna () is the

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

word for a

dream A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensation (psychology), sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around ...

. In

Hindu philosophy Hindu philosophy or Vedic philosophy is the set of philosophical systems that developed in tandem with the first Hinduism, Hindu religious traditions during the Iron Age in India, iron and Classical India, classical ages of India. In Indian ...

, svapna is a state of

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, an ...

when a person is dreaming or is asleep. In this state, he or she cannot perceive the external universe with the senses. This state may contain the conscious activities of memory or imagination. It is typically compared with the states of wakeful consciousness ('' jagarata''), deep sleep in which no cognition occurs (''sushupti''), and the fourth state known as ''

turiya In Hindu philosophy, ''turiya'' (Sanskrit: तुरीय, meaning "the fourth"), also referred to as chaturiya or chaturtha, is the true self (''atman'') beyond the three common states of consciousness (waking, dreaming, and dreamless deep slee ...

''.Patrick Olivelle, The Early Upanishads Annotated, p. 23. "The cavity of the heart is the seat of the vital powers and the self and plays a central role in the explanations of the three states of awareness—waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep— as well as of death. In sleep, the cognitive powers distributed throughout the body during the waking hours are gathered together in the cavity of the heart. The space of this cavity is homologized with cosmic space (see CU 3.12.7-9), and in the dream state the person travels about this space seeing and enjoying the same type of things that he experienced while awake. During deep and dreamless sleep, the self slips out of that cardiac space and enters the veins going from the heart to the peri- cardium; there it remains oblivious to everything (see BU 2.1; 4.3-4)." These four states of consciousness are described in the

Chandogya Upanishad The ''Chandogya Upanishad'' (Sanskrit: , IAST: ''Chāndogyopaniṣad'') is a Sanskrit text embedded in the Chandogya Brahmana of the Sama Veda of Hinduism.Patrick Olivelle (2014), ''The Early Upanishads'', Oxford University Press; , pp. 166-1 ...

and recur commonly in the literature of

yoga Yoga (UK: , US: ; 'yoga' ; ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines that originated with its own philosophy in ancient India, aimed at controlling body and mind to attain various salvation goals, as pra ...

References

{{Reflist Hindu philosophical concepts Sanskrit words and phrases

See also

References