The Cosmic Striptease: Uncovering the Koshas
/“God dwells in you, as you, and you don’t have to ‘do’ anything to be God-realized or Self-realized, it is already your true and natural state. Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward, and sacrifice your mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being.”
In the yogic tradition, Self-realization consists of discovering and discarding false identifications with aspects or energies of human being (koshas) that make up the spectrum of being-consciousness-bliss underlying who we are and the nature of reality. Ranging from material to spiritual, the entire spectrum is considered to be variations of the same being-consciousness-bliss organizing itself at different vibrational frequencies or forms.
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will make an atheist of you, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
In a sense, yoga is really a cosmic strip-tease in which we strip down to our essence, tossing layers of identification that conceal who we really are until we reveal ourselves as we already all ready are and always all ways ever shall be, pure being-consciousness-bliss.
When we mistakenly identify with only particular aspects of who we are, we frequently confuse our partiality with the greater integrity that is right here, right now always available if we’re willing to loosen our grip on the parts that prevent us from embracing our inherent wholeness.
Although most of us only perceive the densest layers of ourselves, identifying with our physical selves, throughout the ages, shamans, mystics, sages, yogis, and others with extra-sensory perception have described, and even painstakingly mapped, the progressively more refined, luminous, subtle energy field surrounding and supporting the physical body.
Although there is currently no scientific evidence supporting their existence beyond this long history of reported experience, many people still believe these to be descriptions of actual energetic existence. Others see these as elaborate metaphors for concentrating attention on various aspects of awareness, more akin to metaphoric yantras. And of course, there are still others who believe that the koshas are purely esoteric nonsense. For my purpose here, I'm not advocating for any particular belief, but rather, describing the koshas, and leaving it to you to explore what you believe about these. With that in mind, here we go.
Within this subtler dimension of human being, each of us is comprised of multiple interpenetrating, elliptical fields or nested layers of energy emanating within, through, and around the physical body to create one integrated human energy field. Each field, sometimes called a "sheath," has its own energy and quality corresponding to various physical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of human experience.
The outer concentrations of the sheaths, often called the aura, act like an energetic skin, a semi-permeable protective field that filters energy. In our natural healthy state, our auras extend about four to five feet around our entire individual physical bodies. Likewise, in unhealthy states, our auras contract or congest.
“The body has its own special sacred points just as the Earth has its sacred sites and energy current according to sacred geography. We must learn this sacred geography of our own body in order to attune ourselves both to the Earth and to the greater cosmos.”
Within the innermost concentrations of the sheaths, life energy (prana) forms an intricate network of subtle channels or meridians (nadis) connecting energetic reservoirs or pressure points (marmas) along and above the surface of the skin. The nadis are like an energetic circulatory system streaming prana in, through, and out of your body, which have been described as streams of light. The marmas or points of light function like energetic tidal pools where the energy streams of your physical body and your subtle body, or what you tend to think of as your "self," converge and concentrate.
Prana also concentrates in energetic vortices or wheels (chakras), the primary seven of which are centered along the spine, extending outward from the spine beyond the front and back of the physical body. The chakras are like energetic whirlpools that funnel life energy through the aura and via the nadis to the organs of the physical body. When functioning optimally, chakras regulate the flow of energies to harmonize our personal energy field with the energy fields of our environment and sustain our greater health and well-being.
The Three Bodies (Sariras) & Five Sheaths (Koshas)
Traditionally categorized into three energy bodies known as the Gross, Subtle, and Causal, the spectrum of consciousness contains five fields or "sheaths" loosely labeled food, energy, mind, wisdom, and bliss.
Gross Body (Sthula Sarira)
Your Gross Body (gross meaning material, not icky) includes all the systems of the physical body, constitutions (Doshas), as well as the five elements of the physical body: earth, water, fire, air and space. The skeletal system corresponds to earth, the circulatory and immune systems to water, the respiratory system to air, the digestive system to fire, and the central nervous system to space.
“We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea...There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.”
Matter/Food (Body) Sheath (Annamaya Kosha): the visible manifestation of energy, the material body of form and flesh sustained by proper food, nutrition, exercise, rest, and relaxation, as well as fresh air and clean water. It is the body, which (and with which) we can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. It is the form and appearance of our embodied existence bound by space and time subject to birth, growth, disease, old age, decay, and death. When healthy, we experience this as stability and sensuality.
Primary yogic practices: asanas and mudras
Subtle Body (Suksma Sarira)
Your Subtle Body is comprised of the innermost fields (koshas), streams of light (nadis) and energy bodies (chakras) that support our physical health and well-being. It includes the five pranas and five types of sensory impressions--the sensations of sound, touch, sight, taste, and smell.
“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
Vital/Energy (Life) Sheath (Pranayama Kosha): the immediate prana field surrounding and permeating the physical body that supports and mediates physical (body) and psychological (mind) life. It is the active energy of our will to live, our primal emotions and our instinctual desires for life. When healthy, we experience this as vitality and sensitivity—an exquisite, essential felt-sense and ecstatic motion of being alive that we can most readily access and enhance whenever we attend to the quality and flow of our breath.
Primary yogic practices: breathwork (pranayama) and sacred sounds, words, chants (mantra)
Mental/Emotional (Mind) Sheath (Manomaya Kosha): this is the conceptual stream of impressions and moods—the labels and roles that we inhabit—underlying the individual personality or the appearance of the self. It is the consciousness of separation, ownership, and agency—me, myself, and I. It is reflected in the nervous system and organs of perception. When healthy, we experience this kosha as sensibility and empathy.
Primary yogic practices: symbolic visualization (yantra), introversion, solitude and silence (pratyahara), meditative concentration (dharana)
These first three sheaths (matter, vital/prana, and mental/emotional) form the basis for the personal self or egoic consciousness. Yogic philosophy distinguishes between the small self or egoic self and the universal Self of spiritual being.
“In the beginning remember abiding in the ‘I’ is abiding in the ego, in the mind. As you continue to abide in the ‘I’, the ‘I’ becomes the real ‘I’, which is the Self. Because there is only one ‘I’, not two and you are That. So abiding in the ‘I’ is following the ‘I’ thread to the source and the source is “I-am.””
“Consciousness is usually identified with mind, but mental consciousness is only the human range which no more exhausts all the possible ranges of consciousness than human sight exhausts all gradations of colour or human hearing all the gradations of sound—for there is much above or below that is to man invisible and inaudible. So there are ranges of consciousness above and below the human range, with which the normal human has no contact and they seem to us unconscious—supramental or overmental and submental ranges.”
Wisdom/Knowing (Soul) Sheath (Vijnanamaya Kosha): the realm of true knowledge or wisdom and genuine discerning awareness that inspires deeper insights about who we are and the nature of reality. We experience this as clarity, integrity, and transparency. This is the entrance to the experience of unity—of being One Self.
“Spiritual truth is a truth of the spirit, not a truth of the intellect, not a mathematical theorem or a logical formula. It is a truth of the Infinite, one in an infinite diversity, and it can assume an infinite variety of aspects and formations: in the spiritual evolution it is inevitable that there should be a many-sided seizing of it; this many-sidedness is the sign of the approach of the soul to a living reality, not to an abstraction or a constructed figure of things that can be petrified into a dead or stony formula. The hard logical and intellectual notion of truth as a single idea which all must accept, one idea or system of ideas defeating all other ideas or systems, or a single limited fact or single formula of facts which all must recognise, is an illegitimate transference from the limited truth of the physical field to the much more complex and plastic field of life and mind and spirit.”
Primary yogic practices: meditative concentration (dharana) and meditation (dhyana)
Causal Body (Karana Sarira)
Your Causal Body is the soul vehicle or seed body containing the karmic keys to our Self-realization
Bliss (Spirit) Sheath (Anandamaya Kosha): often called the Bliss Body, this is the threshold of the non-dual realm of unconditioned, infinite, eternal being consciousness. We experience this as pure joy or bliss, peace, and tranquility.
“When the Peace of God descends on you, when the Divine Presence is there within you, when the Ananda rushes on you like a sea, when you are driven like a leaf before the wind by the breath of the Divine Force, when Love flowers out from you on all creation, when Divine Knowledge floods you with a Light which illumines and transforms in a moment all that was before dark, sorrowful and obscure, when all that is becomes part of the One Reality, when the Reality is all around you, you feel at once by the spiritual contact, by the inner vision, by the illumined and seeing thought, by the vital sensation and even by the very physical sense, everywhere you see, hear, touch only the Divine. Then you can much less doubt it or deny than you can deny or doubt daylight or air or sun in heaven...”
Primary yogic practices: meditation (dhyana)
These latter two sheaths form the basis for our universal Self, the self that knows itself to be the one in the many and the many in the one.
“That inner Self, as the primeval Spirit,
Eternal, ever effulgent, full and infinite Bliss,
Single, indivisible, whole and living,
Shines in everyone as the witnessing awareness.
That self in its splendour, shining in the cavity of the heart
This self is neither born nor dies,
Neither grows nor decays,
Nor does it suffer any change.
When a pot is broken, the space within it is not,
And similarly, when the body dies the Self in it remains eternal.”
“Our supreme Self and supreme Existence which has become the universe are one spirit, one self, and one existence.”