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Many Worlds and Five Koshas
posted by Deepak Chopra on September 15, 2005 at 02:18 PM
In a recent post, Shaye responded, "I think there are as many worlds within this world as there are people in it."
I think this must be true, for we know that karma is highly individual, as is perception, memories, life history, and so on. Recently I have been researching theories of the afterlife, and I was struck that there may be as many worlds in the afterlife (loka, bardos, heavens and hells). With millions of worlds proliferating, how are they connected? If we can answer that, we might get hold of the difficult problem of changing this world.
I'd like to suggest that consciousness unites these many worlds. We can take the Vedic concept of Koshas that divide consciousness into layers without actually changing its basic nature. Kosha is translated as sheath, layer, or envelope, but it's easiest to think of pure consciousness as a point that wraps five bodies around itself like layers of an onion. I don't want to discuss the five Koshas at length except to say that pure consciousness takes on the body of bliss, then the body of ego and intellect, the body of mind, the body of Prana (subtle breath, life force), and finally the physical body.
Each person's consciousness is contained within the five Koshas, but so is society, and so is humanity. The Kosha are shared levels of reality as well as individual levels. So the analogy of the onion breaks down when we see that the various Koshas aren't the same. You can claim your body as your own, but even that is shared--the air you breathe today contains millions of atoms of oxygen that were in China being breathed out a few days ago. Still less can you claim that Prana is yours, because the animating force that imbues life operates equally through every living thing.
As you peel away the Koshas, they become more universal. Mind is composed of thoughts, and we all know how fast a thought spreads around the world. Even ego, the sense of "I," permeates consciousness in general. When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, he described himself as the "I Am." Now we are very close to the source, and the layer closest to pure consciousness--Anandamaya Kosha or the body of bliss, is the first, primal vibration of manifested self but also the hum of the universe.
I thought this was a fascinating way to link the physical world with the worlds of the afterlife, because the Koshas must exist in both realms. My aim all the time is to build a case for one reality, and this helps. Any step we can take toward uniting the gulfs of separation enables us to raise our own consciousness--here I am thinking about the gulf that separates life and death, but there is also the gulf between different people and different levels of consciousness, which feels more immediate, so let's look at that. I want to understand the whole "self system" that the Koshas make up.
Annamaya Kosha: The physical body is the most separate aspect of the self system. At birth most babies are very much alike physiologically, but by age seventy no two people's bodies are remotely alike. Time has made each of us a unique individual. This material fact underlies a great deal of the separation in the world, as people struggle to their share of good, money, possessions, and status. They want to promote the well-being of their physical bodies, to enhance its charm and beauty, to keep it young-looking, to protect it from the threat of injury and death.
At this level consciousness operates silently, without a voice, as it organizes the myriad functions of the body. Yet even here, if we look at what is happening at the cellular level, it turns out that consciousness is complete:
Cells cooperate, communicate, exchange functions, perform acts of self-sacrifice, remain in balance, keep aware of their environment, adapt to change, and know that they survive by being part of a greater whole.
Every Kosha reveals wholeness and separation at the same time. If we look upon Annamayi Kosha as the physical world, it's obvious that our bodies are isolated, one form another, and this gives rise to the illusion that one must struggle and compete with every other isolated body.
Yoga uses physical postures that combine balance, strength, and body awareness (Asanas) to bring a person to this level of self.
Pranamaya Kosha: In terms of the individual, Prana is the breath that sustains life. There is no equivalent in the West for Prana, although we do have a tradition called vitalism that centers on the "life force." Whatever name you use, the body is sustained by a subtler intelligence that participates in the physical world without itself being physical. Prana is vitality.
At this level people are united with all living things. When you feel that you share something with a pet or with animals in the wild, with flowers and Nature as a whole, you are feeling the flow of vitality that holds the ecosystem together. Suddenly the incredible intelligence that knits together every cell in the body expands, and it is no longer possible to say "I own this," the way you own your body.
Consciousness is still differentiated--there is no obvious connection between blue-green algae, tigers, geraniums, and human beings. But Prana acts as the binding force between all of these apparently separate forms.
The gulf that has to be bridged here has to do with higher and lower life forms. Consciousness doesn't recognize higher or lower, it orchestrates diversity into a wholeness. At every level we confront wholeness and separation together, and here the separation still seems to dominate over the wholeness, which is why human beings continue to depredate the ecosystem without realizing that they are destroying part of their own self-system.
Yoga uses exercises in conscious breathing (Pranayama) to bring the person to this level of self.
Manomaya Kosha: This is the mental body, the level at which we process the raw data of the world through the five senses. Mind sometimes includes emotions, sensations, memories, and other uses of the brain. But the root quality here is individual ideas and thoughts. You know who you are by what you think. You know who you are by what you remember about the past.
At this level consciousness faces a world of infinite diversity; it finds itself at play in the cosmos without boundaries, for the mind can fly anywhere, imagine anything. But since each Kosha is about separation as well as wholeness, Manomaya Kosha has lost some of that original quality of bliss. Your mind is free to interpret the world any way it wants, and some of those ways include ignorance of the self. It is impossible to restrict the mind, and many people fear such freedom. So at this level we come up against the self-created boundaries of belief, fear, and prejudice. Blake's "mind-forged manacles" create separation and repression where none need to exist.
Balanced against this is wholeness, for ideas aren't in fact individual. They are shared; they arise in groups and are sustained by groups. There aren't in truth separate isolated worlds that each of us fit into. We carve out individual niches in collective consciousness, and as a wave of evolution passes through humanity, each of us can decide to seize the wave or ignore it, to defend against it or embrace it.
Manomaya Kosha is therefore the level of evolution in consciousness, both for you and me and for human beings as a whole.
Yoga uses the whole field of discrimination (Gyan) to bring a person to this level of the self.
Vigyanmaya Kosha: This is the level of the ego, the sense of identity. Ego is a hot topic in the politics of spirituality, and its reputation is low. People feel it is their duty to kill the ego and control its impulses. However, the word Vigyan means realization that has no particular object. In popular usage it means science before any particular branch of science is mentioned. If we look at "I-ness" without any prejudice against the ego, this level of the self bring identity into being.
Identity isn't a blank. It becomes filled with attachments and associations. Vigyanmaya Kosha is that level where myth and archetypes operate. They give us knowledge about identity itself, what it means to be human. The gods play out primal desire, competition, family life, social interactions, love and war. They define the quests and visions of life.
In that way this Kosha unites human beings, but it also separates them through ego drives that clash with one another. To be fair, this clash develops in the mind, not in the ego itself. When we say ego, we usually mean the ego-personality, which is full of individual desires, dreams, beliefs, like and dislikes. Vigyan is closer to unity than that. At this level wholeness dominates over separation, as can be seen from the world's shared archetypes and myths.
Yoga uses mindfulness in all its various forms, such as contemplation and meditation, to bring a person to this level of the self.
Anandamaya Kosha: This is the body of bliss. At this level life is about the joy of being. It is about numinous presence and the inner knowledge that separation is a thin veil. Behind the veil shines the light of consciousness. One can also think of Ananda as the basic vibration, or hum, of the universe. It is the ground state from which all diversity springs. In its primal state Ananda isn't an experience but only the possibility for creation to manifest. This Kosha allows bliss to be felt.
One can imagine an afterlife where one no longer has a body, where there is no need for breath, where the mind doesn't process data anymore. But as long as there is individuality, there must be a faint sense of both ego and bliss. Ego says, "This is happening to me, I am the focus of life." bliss says, "I feel the spark of creation." Bliss is far from the feeling of happiness or even joy, though in diluted form it can be experienced as both. It is the vibratory connection that allows pure consciousness to enter into creation.
This Kosha reveals wholeness so entirely that there is only a shadow of separation. One could say that Anandamaya Kosha is pure Being mixed with just a touch of karma, just enough to allow someone to live in physical form, or in whatever form the afterlife takes. Without this sheath you would dissolve into Being and become bliss itself, without an experiencer.
Yoga uses transcending--deep awareness of Being (Samadhi) to bring a person to this level of the self.
The five Koshas, operating in unison, give rise to the self, or to put it more accurately, the self-system. In the next post I'd like to talk about the practical implications this holds for our future and what we want to achieve: raising consciousness everywhere.
Love,
Deepak
posted by Deepak Chopra on September 15, 2005 at 02:18 PM
In a recent post, Shaye responded, "I think there are as many worlds within this world as there are people in it."
I think this must be true, for we know that karma is highly individual, as is perception, memories, life history, and so on. Recently I have been researching theories of the afterlife, and I was struck that there may be as many worlds in the afterlife (loka, bardos, heavens and hells). With millions of worlds proliferating, how are they connected? If we can answer that, we might get hold of the difficult problem of changing this world.
I'd like to suggest that consciousness unites these many worlds. We can take the Vedic concept of Koshas that divide consciousness into layers without actually changing its basic nature. Kosha is translated as sheath, layer, or envelope, but it's easiest to think of pure consciousness as a point that wraps five bodies around itself like layers of an onion. I don't want to discuss the five Koshas at length except to say that pure consciousness takes on the body of bliss, then the body of ego and intellect, the body of mind, the body of Prana (subtle breath, life force), and finally the physical body.
Each person's consciousness is contained within the five Koshas, but so is society, and so is humanity. The Kosha are shared levels of reality as well as individual levels. So the analogy of the onion breaks down when we see that the various Koshas aren't the same. You can claim your body as your own, but even that is shared--the air you breathe today contains millions of atoms of oxygen that were in China being breathed out a few days ago. Still less can you claim that Prana is yours, because the animating force that imbues life operates equally through every living thing.
As you peel away the Koshas, they become more universal. Mind is composed of thoughts, and we all know how fast a thought spreads around the world. Even ego, the sense of "I," permeates consciousness in general. When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, he described himself as the "I Am." Now we are very close to the source, and the layer closest to pure consciousness--Anandamaya Kosha or the body of bliss, is the first, primal vibration of manifested self but also the hum of the universe.
I thought this was a fascinating way to link the physical world with the worlds of the afterlife, because the Koshas must exist in both realms. My aim all the time is to build a case for one reality, and this helps. Any step we can take toward uniting the gulfs of separation enables us to raise our own consciousness--here I am thinking about the gulf that separates life and death, but there is also the gulf between different people and different levels of consciousness, which feels more immediate, so let's look at that. I want to understand the whole "self system" that the Koshas make up.
Annamaya Kosha: The physical body is the most separate aspect of the self system. At birth most babies are very much alike physiologically, but by age seventy no two people's bodies are remotely alike. Time has made each of us a unique individual. This material fact underlies a great deal of the separation in the world, as people struggle to their share of good, money, possessions, and status. They want to promote the well-being of their physical bodies, to enhance its charm and beauty, to keep it young-looking, to protect it from the threat of injury and death.
At this level consciousness operates silently, without a voice, as it organizes the myriad functions of the body. Yet even here, if we look at what is happening at the cellular level, it turns out that consciousness is complete:
Cells cooperate, communicate, exchange functions, perform acts of self-sacrifice, remain in balance, keep aware of their environment, adapt to change, and know that they survive by being part of a greater whole.
Every Kosha reveals wholeness and separation at the same time. If we look upon Annamayi Kosha as the physical world, it's obvious that our bodies are isolated, one form another, and this gives rise to the illusion that one must struggle and compete with every other isolated body.
Yoga uses physical postures that combine balance, strength, and body awareness (Asanas) to bring a person to this level of self.
Pranamaya Kosha: In terms of the individual, Prana is the breath that sustains life. There is no equivalent in the West for Prana, although we do have a tradition called vitalism that centers on the "life force." Whatever name you use, the body is sustained by a subtler intelligence that participates in the physical world without itself being physical. Prana is vitality.
At this level people are united with all living things. When you feel that you share something with a pet or with animals in the wild, with flowers and Nature as a whole, you are feeling the flow of vitality that holds the ecosystem together. Suddenly the incredible intelligence that knits together every cell in the body expands, and it is no longer possible to say "I own this," the way you own your body.
Consciousness is still differentiated--there is no obvious connection between blue-green algae, tigers, geraniums, and human beings. But Prana acts as the binding force between all of these apparently separate forms.
The gulf that has to be bridged here has to do with higher and lower life forms. Consciousness doesn't recognize higher or lower, it orchestrates diversity into a wholeness. At every level we confront wholeness and separation together, and here the separation still seems to dominate over the wholeness, which is why human beings continue to depredate the ecosystem without realizing that they are destroying part of their own self-system.
Yoga uses exercises in conscious breathing (Pranayama) to bring the person to this level of self.
Manomaya Kosha: This is the mental body, the level at which we process the raw data of the world through the five senses. Mind sometimes includes emotions, sensations, memories, and other uses of the brain. But the root quality here is individual ideas and thoughts. You know who you are by what you think. You know who you are by what you remember about the past.
At this level consciousness faces a world of infinite diversity; it finds itself at play in the cosmos without boundaries, for the mind can fly anywhere, imagine anything. But since each Kosha is about separation as well as wholeness, Manomaya Kosha has lost some of that original quality of bliss. Your mind is free to interpret the world any way it wants, and some of those ways include ignorance of the self. It is impossible to restrict the mind, and many people fear such freedom. So at this level we come up against the self-created boundaries of belief, fear, and prejudice. Blake's "mind-forged manacles" create separation and repression where none need to exist.
Balanced against this is wholeness, for ideas aren't in fact individual. They are shared; they arise in groups and are sustained by groups. There aren't in truth separate isolated worlds that each of us fit into. We carve out individual niches in collective consciousness, and as a wave of evolution passes through humanity, each of us can decide to seize the wave or ignore it, to defend against it or embrace it.
Manomaya Kosha is therefore the level of evolution in consciousness, both for you and me and for human beings as a whole.
Yoga uses the whole field of discrimination (Gyan) to bring a person to this level of the self.
Vigyanmaya Kosha: This is the level of the ego, the sense of identity. Ego is a hot topic in the politics of spirituality, and its reputation is low. People feel it is their duty to kill the ego and control its impulses. However, the word Vigyan means realization that has no particular object. In popular usage it means science before any particular branch of science is mentioned. If we look at "I-ness" without any prejudice against the ego, this level of the self bring identity into being.
Identity isn't a blank. It becomes filled with attachments and associations. Vigyanmaya Kosha is that level where myth and archetypes operate. They give us knowledge about identity itself, what it means to be human. The gods play out primal desire, competition, family life, social interactions, love and war. They define the quests and visions of life.
In that way this Kosha unites human beings, but it also separates them through ego drives that clash with one another. To be fair, this clash develops in the mind, not in the ego itself. When we say ego, we usually mean the ego-personality, which is full of individual desires, dreams, beliefs, like and dislikes. Vigyan is closer to unity than that. At this level wholeness dominates over separation, as can be seen from the world's shared archetypes and myths.
Yoga uses mindfulness in all its various forms, such as contemplation and meditation, to bring a person to this level of the self.
Anandamaya Kosha: This is the body of bliss. At this level life is about the joy of being. It is about numinous presence and the inner knowledge that separation is a thin veil. Behind the veil shines the light of consciousness. One can also think of Ananda as the basic vibration, or hum, of the universe. It is the ground state from which all diversity springs. In its primal state Ananda isn't an experience but only the possibility for creation to manifest. This Kosha allows bliss to be felt.
One can imagine an afterlife where one no longer has a body, where there is no need for breath, where the mind doesn't process data anymore. But as long as there is individuality, there must be a faint sense of both ego and bliss. Ego says, "This is happening to me, I am the focus of life." bliss says, "I feel the spark of creation." Bliss is far from the feeling of happiness or even joy, though in diluted form it can be experienced as both. It is the vibratory connection that allows pure consciousness to enter into creation.
This Kosha reveals wholeness so entirely that there is only a shadow of separation. One could say that Anandamaya Kosha is pure Being mixed with just a touch of karma, just enough to allow someone to live in physical form, or in whatever form the afterlife takes. Without this sheath you would dissolve into Being and become bliss itself, without an experiencer.
Yoga uses transcending--deep awareness of Being (Samadhi) to bring a person to this level of the self.
The five Koshas, operating in unison, give rise to the self, or to put it more accurately, the self-system. In the next post I'd like to talk about the practical implications this holds for our future and what we want to achieve: raising consciousness everywhere.
Love,
Deepak
posted by Unknown @ 4:05 AM
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