Remaining untouched by all states of consciousness || Acharya Prashant, on Raman Maharishi (2015)

Question: Sir, there is one statement here, ‘Sushupti does exists in your waking state’. Normally, in deep sleep, we don’t know we are there.

Acharya Prashant: When Maharishi is saying that Sushupti exists in your waking state also, he is using Sushupti to refer to Turiya. Classically, Sushupti is just another state of consciousness, so you have Jagrati (waking state), Swapna (dreaming state) and Sushupti (deep sleep). Maharishi is defining Sushupti as the state in which the ego identification is totally lost, that state really is not Sushupti, that is Turiya. In Sushupti, as is the word commonly and classically used, in Sushupti, there does remain a seed like remnant identification with the person, the body.

So, it is said that when you are in the waking state, you are identified with the world; in the dream state, you are identified with the dream; and in Sushupti you are still identified with some kind of primitive, basic, primordial darkness. But, it is not as if that you have gone beyond identification. That is the reason why a person in Sushupti will wake up if you call his name many times. Had he gone beyond identification, how would he have woken up? In this particular context Maharishi is using Sushupti to represent Turiya, you can read Sushupti as Turiya here.