Tag Archives: subtle body

The Ignorance that Isn’t – 4/8

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Part 3/8

7.  Self is The Knower of All Experiences:

Any feelings, like joys or sorrows, that we experience are not what we are. They are experienced by us. Everything is known by that one no-thing thing which is the Knower (Knowingness). It is we who experience even birth and death. After all, death does not experience its death, nor does birth experience its birth. Whatever experiences the birth and death cannot Itself be born. Nor can it die. Once we are able to clearly discriminate and understand this truth, we will stop identifying ourselves with the wrong entities like the body. Knowing clearly who we are, and abiding as that Knowledge is liberation from ignorance. Liberation is not something that we attain in some heavenly abode, a remote Vaikunta or Kailasha. Nor it is to be attained sometime in the future. It is right here and right now.

There is no separate self within us waiting to be liberated. Liberation is our very nature. Joys and sorrows are not our nature. That which comes (Agama) and goes (apAya) is not what we are. That which we perceive is not us. We perceive a thing only if it is different from us. What is inherent to us, what we are, namely the Self, cannot be perceived, nor is It something we can add on to nor can be gotten rid of. We are It, space-like, all-pervasive, formless, and blemishless. Continue reading →

The Ignorance that Isn’t – 3/8

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Part 2/8

5.  Discriminating the Self (Atma) from the not-Self (anAtma):

That which cannot perceive, but can become an object of perception is anAtma (not-Self). For example, our body is inert. It has no sense of “I am.” It cannot perceive anything. But our consciousness can perceive the body. Just as we perceive body and mind, we also perceive joys and sorrow, likes and dislikes.  The polar pairs of opposites like joy and sorrow, are also a result of our ignorance. Consciousness Itself is untouched by them.

Consciousness alone is Atma. Everything else in the world is insentient. Not only inanimate objects such as chairs and tables, but also our bodies, life-force, and senses are insentient. Movement does not imply sentience. Wind moves, but wind is insentient. The air around us, the light that travels through space, and the five fundamental elements are insentient. Only Awareness that can feel “I AM” is sentient. Every object is known to our Awareness, but no object is aware of its own being-ness. A tiny spark of Awareness that is aware of all the objects is within every one of us. It is the Inner-Self (pratyagAtma). Continue reading →

The Ignorance that Isn’t – 2/8

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Part 1/8

4.  Ignorance is Indeterminate:

Ignorance is like a gossamer sheath that covers up and conceals our true Knowledge. An analogy may help. Think of a muslin cloth in which a few pieces of asafetida are kept wrapped in. The smell of asafetida lingers on the cloth even after the asafetida is consumed and the cloth is washed. Like the persisting smell on the cloth, impressions from the past experiences get stored in the causal body. Just like the smell of the asafetida that cannot be gotten rid of easily, the clinging impressions on the causal body too are difficult to be eliminated.  These lingering traces of the effects of past actions are called the vAsanA-s. They get expressed as the desires in the mind, and also as the individual’s likes and dislikes, proclivities, etc.

The Yoga system of Patanjali says that the causal body must be controlled so that the machinations of the vAsanA-s could be neutralized.  Shankara advises us that the causal body must be completely annihilated because suppression and control give scope for violent return of the vAsanA-s. He says that it must be completely melted away leaving no trace of the vAsanA-s so that desires do not sprout up in the mind. This process of dissolving the causal body is called pravilApana. Continue reading →

The Ignorance that Isn’t – 1/8

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1.  Introduction:

We are all familiar with our gross physical body. It is available to our direct perception and it gives us our ID. Vedanta tells us that we are blessed with two more bodies — the subtle body comprising life-force, the mind and the intellect, and a totally imperceptible third body, subtler than the subtle body. It is called the causal body, the source of the other two bodies. Advaita Vedanta avers, as we all know, that what we truly are is Pure Consciousness. Consciousness is our nature. It is the very Self that knows “I AM.” It is not that the Self possesses Consciousness. Self is Consciousness. We are actually none of these bodies.

But for some unknown and indeterminate reason, the Self, instead of being the Subject, the Knower or the Seer, got contaminated. We superimposed the Self with the known and the seen, the objects.  We shifted our ID from being the Self to being a body – mostly as the gross physical body, and sometimes as the subtle body. That is a great fall for the Self – from Self to not-Self because the bodies are insentient (anAtma). The strong association we experience with the three bodies stands as a proof of the apparent fall. The severity of the fall could have been far less had we considered the bodies to be “mine” instead of taking them to be “me,” identifying ourselves with them as “I am my body.” Continue reading →

Q.405 Persistent Vegetative State

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Q: Recently, a relation suffered cardiac failure and was declared as  ‘dead’ by one of the doctors in the local hospital. 30 minutes later, a doctor at a bigger hospital used a defibrillator to restart his heart. Unfortunately, for this span of 30 minutes, his brain was not receiving oxygen and conseqently 50 % of it was damaged leaving him in a ‘Persistent Vegetative State’. He has been in this condition for the past 2 years.

Currently I am studying various Upanishads along with Advaita Vedanta philosophy and I would seek your help on the following questions:

1) According to Advaita Vedanta and Upanishads, the soul departs on the death of a person. So in my relative’s case, does that mean that the ‘Soul’ had departed and came back again or did it never depart from his body ?

2) Does Vedanta recognize a person in a ‘persistent vegetative state’ as ‘alive’ ? How would Vedanata describe this state in terms of the usual 4 states (awake, dream, dreamless sleep and turIya)?

3) Does the soul leaves the body because the heart stops functioning or does the heart cease functioning because the soul has departed from the body ?

A (Dennis): Sorry to hear about your relative’s situation. It is understandably distressing.

Advaita is a progressive teaching. I.e. the scriptures or a teacher will provide one explanation for a new seeker and a different one for an advanced student. Ultimately, as you must realize, there are ‘not two things’. Therefore, the final understanding must be that there are no persons, no world, no mind etc; there is only brahman and ‘you’ are That.

The most useful way of answering your question depends upon an understanding of the concept of chidAbhAsa, the ‘reflection’ of Consciousness in the mind. I wrote an article about this which you can read at https://www.advaita-vision.org/chidabhasa/. There is also a follow-up blog, which does not seem to be available any longer. I will post both of these at AV in March (when the copyright expires). There is also an extended discussion on the subject between myself and Peter Bonnici at https://www.advaita-vision.org/discussion-on-chidabhasa/. Continue reading →