Atma - Our Soul

Religion seems to have all the answers doesn't it. All the mysteries of life can be answered by religion. For instance to the question 'Who am I?' The answer is the most unobvious. It's not our body nor who we think we are or whom we call ourselves. Instead it is this indestructible, intangible part of ourselves that is the soul. This soul was created by God, religion's doctrines state, and it is unaffected by death, disease or destruction. It is ever pure.

If not for the fact that all these qualities of the soul can be experienced, one could conclude that this is an escapist theory, trying to distract us from the realities (especially the harsh realities) of life.

Yes! We can experience our soul. From personal experience I can tell you that when I experienced my soul for the first time, it created a paradigm shift in the way I perceived my life. I felt complete and an unfading feeling of fulfillment started to take hold within me. I felt an affinity with my guru and all those sages and rishis who spoke so loftily about the realities of life. Finally, I understood, and I could share the same sense of profoundness about life. It is an amazing experience to touch into the atma.

The atma is that part of us that is immortal, the Life of our lives as my guru used to say. The atma has a discernable form like our other bodies though it is made of spiritual elements. It is the deepest of five bodies or sheaths of existence within us.

It was revealed by God to the rishis who wrote the Vedas that there are five bodies within man. These bodies exists in gradually deeper dimensions within us.

Our physical body (annamayakosha) is our vehicle on earth. This body is created from the food that we consume. Thus the sanskrit name, annamayakosha (anna-maya-kosha). Anna means food, maya is creation and kosha is body. Our physical body functions through the perception of the five senses ( sight, hearing, taste, smell and feel or touch ) and physiological processes. The basic nature of the physical body is that of survival instincts. Without guidance or control over this body, baser impulses of fear, anger, domination, jealousy and hatred can be the ruling forces in our lives. However these latent impulses in the physical body when properly guided by wisdom create great will to do what is righteous and noble.

The pranic body or pranamayakosha, is fused with the physical body. It is the body that gives vitality and health to our physical body. While the physical body uses food to create tissue and organs in our body, the pranic body imbibes the life-force contained within the food.While we breathe our body absorbs oxygen while the pranic body absorbs the life-force (or the ionic charge) within the air. This life-force is called prana. Prana is also derived from performing spiritual practices such a meditation and hatha yoga which opens ourselves to our soul force, which is also a source of prana. It is by learning to imbibe prana through spiritual means that yogis are able to keep revitalising their pranic body and maintain their physical body even though they may be in constant meditation and not be eating or drinking water for days on end.

The pranic body gives us vigour in life. A person with strong pranic body generally has a positive outlook in life, is healthy and is naturally driven to achieve goals. A weak pranic body is generally the cause for bleak outlook on life, depression, laziness and lethargy. Fresh foods, especially fruits and freshly cooked foods, clean air and pure water are all filled with prana. Exercising, swimming and doing yoga exercises all increase prana in our lives and gives us a greater zest in enjoying life. Living in stale, air-conditioned spaces most of our day, eating too much junk foods and fast foods, and watching too much television decrease the strength of our pranic body and subsequently also our immunity to diseases.The physical and pranic bodies lasts only for one lifetime on earth.

The astral and mental bodies are part of our spiritual bodies. In sanskrit mano means mind stuff and vijnana means intelligence. These two bodies are fused together like the physical and pranic body. These bodies are the source of our thoughts and the intellect. Our mental abilities (including memory), personality and ego are developed in these bodies. These bodies give us the ability to create attachments to people, things and places. We absorb knowledge through the spoken or written word and formulate our opinions based on our experiences or other people's thoughts. Our memories are stored here. Human ingenuity is born of these bodies, so also is our sense of timing and sense of purpose in life. While our physical body is the vehicle through which we express our life, it is through our astral and mental bodies that we develop the many attributes of our personality.

The astral body (manomayakosha) is the seat of our personality that drives our lives. Depending on our personal spiritual evolution, the faculties in our astral body and it’s intellectual abilities can be used either to live a life driven by baser instincts or by our divine, soul nature or a by a mix of the two. The emotions that we feel are first stimulated in our astral body before they show up in the physical body. These stimulations of emotion in the astral body show up as astral colors that creates our aura. This aura surrounds our astral body and can be seen by those who are trained to see it using their third eye.

The manomayakosha (astral body) looks identical to the physical body. However it is more durable than the physical body. It does not feel the effects of heat or cold, nor is it bound by the laws of earth. In the astral body one can fly and penetrate objects. If the physical body is injured the injury will show in the astral body however it heals very fast compared to its physical counterpart by means of prana. However this body is most adversely effected by emotions. It is elated by joyful and sublime emotions but it gets injured and feels pain by negative or baser emotions directed towards it. Such injurous emotions can be created by oneself or from other people. This is why in Hindu ethics hurtful thoughts or words are considered acts of violence equal to physical harm.

The vijnanamayakosha (mental body) is the mind of the astral body. However it is of a deeper intelligence that functions beyond the intellectual mind. The vijnanamayakosha (pronounced vig-nyana-maya-kosha) gains it’s strength and abilities through the wisdom we derive from life experiences. This wisdom comes from lessons we learn from life and also through personal spiritual realizations. The vijnanamayakosha feeds on experiential knowledge. This is different from our normal intellectual function that is mainly gained through memorizing ideas and opinions and basic logic reasoning. Through the vijnanamayakosha we obtain profound insights into life through intuition. The organs of the vijnanamayakosha are the chakras along the spine and in the head.

The astral and mental bodies do not die when the physical body dies. However it is not immortal nor deathless like the soul. These two bodies are discarded when we are reborn on earth. The wisdom, experiences and memory stored in these bodies turn into “seed form” and are stored within the soul. These 'seeds' will reemerge in future lives as our innate personality, abilities or spontaneous spiritual realizations.

At birth, when we get a new physical body we also develop new astral and mental bodies as our personality and experiences develop. We utilize our astral and mental body every time we think, emote or ponder. When dreaming during sleep we are functioning almost entirely in these two bodies. When the physical body dies, the pranic body dies with the physical. After that the astral and mental bodies form our outer bodies, through which we exist in heaven (or hell).

The Five Bodies (1) Video Tutorial

Our soul lies in the deepest dimension of our being. It is our soul that breathes life into the other four bodies. The soul body was created by God who is the Uncreated and Original Soul, the Primal Soul (Paramatma). The Scriptures explain that God created our soul in His likeness as emanations of Himself, just as a spark of fire emanates off a larger fire. Our soul body is a body that is filled with light. It is ever shinning, never growing weaker, only stronger through its lives on earth. It is our soul that gives rise to our individual awareness. Individual awareness allows us to 'be' a person who is independent and endows us with free will. Our higher functions of intelligence, willpower and love originate from the soul.

Our soul body does not die nor does it feel pain or sorrow. The soul body cannot be hurt nor be destroyed nor diseased nor can it be sullied or tainted by sin, or bad karma that plagues the other bodies. It is our most permanent body and identity. Our soul incarnates and reincarnates on earth many times. With each life on earth it gains wisdom through experience and grows brighter. As the soul grows older it gains greater control over the emotions and thoughts and begins to direct individual pursuits toward spiritual goals. When we are intouch with our soul nature, our mind is filled with inspiration and joy. By performing spiritual disciplines and worship we get closer to God and become more intune with our soul nature. Our soul is also the source of our conscience, which is the knowing voice within us that directs and warns us of consequences of our actions or inactions. You have probably experienced the power of your conscience and discovered how things worked out perfectly when you went along with your conscience and vice-versa, may have experienced going against your conscience and suffering the consequences.

Having been created out of God's image our soul is God-like. The soul shares God's qualities of immortality, self-effulgence and indestructibility. The main difference between God and our soul is that God is uncreated while our soul is created by God. The soul also doesn't have the power to create another soul while God does. To better understand the similarities and differences between God and our soul we need to explore the structure of our soul.

For the sake of understanding I will divide the soul to two parts, though in actual experience such a division is not discernible.

The first part of our soul or the outer sheath is known as the soul body, or the anandamayakosha. Anandamayakosha means the sheath or body of bliss. This is the part of our soul that God created. The soul body is the source of our individual awareness which perceives separation from God. The soul body grows through acquiring wisdom from life experiences, mastering control over the mind and emotions and its dominance over the other four bodies. The Anandamayakosha's development is mainly cultivated through practicing spiritual disciplines.

The soul body has a face, hands, torso and feet. Its body is constituted of particles of spiritual light. It's face can be likened to the innocent face of a 6 year old child.The soul does not have organs of ingestion nor reproduction. While the four outer bodies have gender, the soul is genderless. Also, unlike the physical and astral body that generates into being anew with each incarnation, our soul remains the same ancient creation of God. The soul body however does grow with each life on earth. This growth is apparent in its brightness and dominance of form over the other four bodies. Basically the soul body grows in size and spiritual brightness. When we are aware in our soul body, we feel spiritual and divine. We also feel the security of being immortal and lose the fear of death and rebirth.

The second part of our soul is identical to God. It can be called the essence of the soul. It is the innermost core of the soul. It is the source of the soul’s effulgence and immortality. It is God Himself as Parashakti and Parabrahman. The essence of the soul, being God Himself, is the reason why Hindu gurus teach that God is within all people. It is also why the soul body is always shinning and unsullied by bad karmas. The purpose of yoga is for us to realize this constant union with God within us. When our awareness is turned toward the essence of the soul our awareness dissolves into Parashakti and ultimately Parabrahman and we experience our eternal oneness with God.

3. The Five Bodies (2) Video Tutorial

Just as water vapour created from the ocean, turns to clouds, falls as rain, becomes a river and finally returns back to the ocean, our soul having been created by God will finally return to God's being. This is the cycle of our soul body and its final destiny.

The evolution of our soul is the evolution of our awareness. When our soul was created it existed in the Heavens in a very simple state of consciousness with very little awareness of itself. Just like a fish in a school of fish has very little awareness of itself and follows its school wherever the school goes. From the Heavens the soul is then is thrust into its sojourn of incarnations on earth where it faces the challenges of living in a dense physical body and the mind with their intense impulses and strong tendencies for attachments. As the soul lives from life to life, it slowly gains mastery over the body and mind. The soul's individual awareness is thus developed from its simple beginnings.

According to the enlightened masters, without living on earth with the physical body the soul’s awareness cannot develop. The spiritual development of the soul ultimately leads to the realization of our innate Oneness with God within the core of our soul.

When our soul, or rather when we are firmly grounded in God consciousness through these realizations we will attain freedom from rebirth on earth or moksha. After moksha we continue to live in the heavens in our soul body for many more eons until we finally merge back into God Almighty from whence we came.

This is the destiny of all souls, no matter what ones religion or beliefs may be. When the time is opportune according to our karma and by the Grace of God, the primordial stirrings of our soul will motivate us to seek God within ourselves in the quest to know the truths of God and life. This will inevitably happen to all souls in one life on earth or another.