Workshop on Spirituality - Part 2

7   Five Sheaths 

   According to Western thought we are on an evolutionary track. We are moving up from below. We see ourselves as moving towards a goal. Swami will also speak to us of that. The Western idea is that we have ascended from below. But there is another idea, which is strictly Eastern, and which Swami frequently speaks of, which is that we have descended from above. Recently, in one of his discourses, he said: "You are all avatars, you are all the divinity incarnated in human forms." He said the only difference between this avatar (pointing to himself), and these avatars, (pointing to the devotees) is a few extra powers.

   Yesterday, when we were reading Swami's interview, he was really giving us that point of view, the descent from above. That is also in the Gita, and in the 34 discourses that Swami gave in l984 on the Gita. At that time there was a great deal of political disturbance in South India. People were being shot only five miles from the ashram. It was a time of great turmoil and upheaval. The ashram gates were locked and those of us who were there, were locked in with Swami. Every evening in the temple, Swami gathered all the students together and gave these discourses on the Gita.

   In these discourses he chose to talk of two paths. One path is the one coming up from below and the other is the one coming down from above. And he showed us that we are on both paths. We need two feet with which to walk, one is the worship of the form, which speaks of the quest to reach the heights from below, and the other is the identification with the formless, which speaks of the boundless divinity which is our reality, and our descent into incarnation, from above. This is a very powerful teaching. It is the essence of all the teachings - the two paths, one from above and the other from below.

   We are used to coming up from below. It is the Western tradition. It is the idea of evolution which was propagated by Darwin in the middle of the 19th century. Darwin's work was limited to living organisms. But now, in the last thirty years or so, the evolutionary theory has been expanded to include just about everything that science knows. The big bang was the first evolutionary production.

First there was energy and then the simplest forms of matter, the subatomic particles. They formed simple hydrogen and simple helium. From these all the other chemical elements arose, as matter formed into stars and galaxies; finally the solar system with its 92 odd elements came into being. We're speaking here of the Western idea of the elements. There is no conflict between this Western idea and the Indian idea of the five elements. The five Indian elements refer not to the chemical composition of matter but to the five states of matter: space is the vacuum, air is the gaseous state, fire is the plasma state, water is the liquid state, and earth is the solid state. These are all the states that we find in the universe.

   In the Wetern idea we have the chemical elements. All of these had to be produced in stars and then exploded out into space, where some would eventually be gathered up to form the solar system, including the earth. And then on the earth, in time, life came in very simple forms: first, as simple one-celled organisms, as bacteria, and then as simple plants. Finally, animals came along.

We have been talking of these sheaths. The food sheath is the mineral or chemical stage. Later evolved the first life and the plant stage, the vital sheath. When evolution went on to the animal stage, when a nervous system developed, then we had the mental sheath. Later came man. Man is associated with the intuitive, or higher mental sheath associated with the buddhi.

   Finally, there is the realized sage who abides primarily in the fifth sheath, the bliss sheath. In this finest sheath there are no objects or energies or thoughts or concepts or intuitive flashes. There is only the pure experience of joy. You are free of everything, including world and body and mind. There is only the intensely delightful feeling of bliss. It is purely subjective.

9  Cosmic Bodies 

   When we think of bodies, we think of living organisms, not of the universe. But these individual sheaths heave their equivalence in the universal or cosmic bodies. The macrocosmic parallels the microcosmic. The physical universe is the first sheath of the cosmic universe. The second sheath of the cosmic universe has to do with the primeval energy which fills the whole physical universe and extends beyond it. From it all forms of matter arise. Then there is the subtle universe of the cosmic mind. Swami has also spoken of this as the mind space. From here on, the distinction between the macrocosmic and the microcosmic becomes fuzzy; the infinitesmal and the infinite merge into one.

   The subtle universe beyond the gross or physical and interpenetrating it, is the cosmic sheath or universe of the mind. All these sheaths are spaces or worlds. That's why we speak of many worlds, not just the one world. We create new worlds every night in our dreams. They make up the mental universe. Finally, there is the greatest of all the universes; it is the subtlest and finest of all, and also the most extensive and powerful. This is the causal universe, the potential, the archetypal memory bank from which all forms and worlds arise. This is the world of the creative principle. It is the biggest, and inexplicably, it is also the smallest. It is the sacred space of the heart. It is made of bliss, and so, it is related to the bliss sheath, that we spoke of earlier.

You see, ultimately, in this strange play of creation, the whole of it can just be reduced to eternal delight. Everything we can call universe turns out to be totally subjective; there is nothing objective. It is consciousness only, knowing itself as 'I'. Only when it has become gross and densified into physical energy and things, does it appear to be something objective. But ultimately everything is subjective.

   The path then is to move our center of gravity, so to speak, from the physical to the vital to the mental to the intuitive on to the bliss sheath. Swami, as an embodied human being, lives mostly in the bliss sheath. He is always in bliss. An ordinary person on the street exists primarily in the gross sheath, the physical. When we are young and have lots of energy as vigorous youth, then we will live primarily in the vital sheath. Then as we develop our minds, we abide more and more in the mental sheath. But, you see, this is still only the animal level. Eventually, as we begin to incorporate some of these higher values, as we begin to know something of why we are here, we become established in the intuitive sheath, in our buddhi, our discriminating intelligence. And we become worthy of calling ourselves human beings.

    But, Swami says, ultimately, calling yourself man must mean: (m)aya or illusion removed, (a)tma or the supreme self realized, (n)irvana or liberation attained. So, what we have been speaking of as a human being, even one who lives a righteous life, is still only a transitional stage. It is not our true state, for truth is that which never changes, which is neither born nor dies. All that changes is illusion. So, we have to keep moving, drop off this illusion of a separate individual and move onto the stage of a sage, to spend most of our time in the equanimous state of bliss. But even that is still illusion, although it is the finest and thinnest veil. The seed of illusion is still present and the potential for returning to denser levels remains. A faint shadow of the individual still lingers on, which could sprout again. We must go totally beyond illusion, beyond all phenomena, to be established in who we really are, the absolute, the immortal self.

   Question: "Would you say some more about how we can use our knowledge of the dream and the deep sleep states to help us on our spiritual path?"
   Answer: As I mentioned yesterday, this is a very important consideration. We really cannot go very far on the wisdom path without a deep investigation of the dream and deep sleep states. Swami has spoken of this often and we are also guided in this by the Mandukyo Upanishad, which is the epitome of all the Upanishads. But, I must warn you; this is not easy to comprehend. Still, let us try. In the Mandukyo, this question of the different states of daily experience is taken up in terms of the OM. The entire range of human consciousness from the waking state to the supreme state of the absolute are seen to be characterized by the sound symbol OM. Every time we chant the OM we are going home. Let us see why this is so.

   The OM is considered to be the all-inclusive name for the whole universe, both visible and invisible; and it is also the symbol for the absolute, both as the supreme reality and as the immortal self. The Om is an integral whole, a single syllable of great potency. But, it can also be analyzed by breaking it into its constituent sound elements. For this we write it as AUM, which represents the three parts that make up the familiar written symbol for OM in Sanskrit:

   Here, the A of the AUM stands for this physical universe... everything that has to do with the waking state. The U stands for the mental universe... everything that has to do with the imagination, with the mind, with the dream state. Dream appears to be a totally different state from the waking state, but as we shall see, there is little that distinguishes these two states, except for the privileged position that we have assigned to the waking state, deluded as we are into believing our waking self to be our true self. Let us come back to this knotty issue later. Then what about the M of the AUM? It refers to the deep sleep state. Here we have the causal world. It is from here that all forms and all phenomena arise. It is like a vast library in which the video cassettes of all possible worlds, waking and dream, with their multitude of players and story lines, are kept. It is a potential state of infinite possibilities.

   The waking and the dream states are dynamic; there we find all kinds of forms and activities. The mind is active; a movie is going on. A picture is playing on the video screen. But, in deep sleep there is no picture; there is only the luminous screen, covered by a dark curtain that hides its effulgence. But, when we put on a video cassette without rewinding it, leaving it somewhere in the middle of the tape, then immediately the show starts playing from there. We find ourselves in the midst of a story involving a world of people and things that appear to have been going on forever. That is the mystery of the dream, and as we will discover when we exlore it deeply, that is the mystery of the waking state, as well.