Tuesday, August 23rd, 1977

CLASS at Wisdom's Goldenrod, Hector, NY

with Anthony Damiani (AD)

August 23, 1977

HINDUISM; VEDANTA; FIVE SHEATHS

TOPIC: Hinduism

SUBJECT: Vedanta

SUBSUBJECTS: Five Sheaths, Epistemology, Astral Body, Prana, Sensation, States of Consciousness

CONTENTS:

Reading from Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi on "I" and sheaths

Reading from Guenon, Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta, on sheaths

Anandamaya kosha: totality of possibilities for the Self; as causal body

Vijnanamaya kosha: union of buddhi with knowing function of tanmatra

Manomaya kosha: individuality and formation of concepts

Pranamaya kosha: draws senses out; prana is Atma; explanation of five vayus

Annamaya kosha: composed of bhutas; assimilation and excretion processes

Reading from Mead, The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tradition, on role of astral body in sensation

Epistemological discussion: Self, senses, manas, and prana

Annamaya as extension of alimentary canal

Rereading/discussing Guenon on five vayus; earth's atmosphere has undergone a change; Witness-I produces body/world and learns from their interaction

States of consciousness and the koshas

AD's disagreement with Vedanta: there is universal and individual universal

BOOKS READ FROM OR REFERENCED:

• Sri Venkataramiah (Swami Ramanananda Saraswati), Recorder, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi

• Rene Guenon, Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta

• G.R.S. Mead, The World-Mystery: Four Essays

• G.R.S. Mead, The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tradition

• Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya, Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 2, "Studies in Kant"

RETYPED AND REFORMATTED by IT 2021

NOTES:

• RETYPED PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT (hence V10). From 1977 0823 HIN F15.PDF. THERE ARE NO AUDIO CASSETTE TAPES EXTANT.

• Tony is Anthony Damiani (AD) and Richard is Richard Platek.

• All spelling, punctuation and capitalization errors have been corrected, all quotes looked up and corrected.

1977 08/23 at Wisdom's Goldenrod

Hinduism; Vedanta; Five Sheaths

[File 1977 0823 HIN F15.PDF Begins]

Vedanta Class August 23, 1977

Class begins with quotation from Talks With Ramana, November 9, 1936:

"Question: What is will? I mean -- where does it fit in, in the five kosas?

"Ramana: The 'I-thought' arises first and then all other thoughts. They comprise the mind. The mind is the object and the 'I' is the subject. Can there be will without the 'I'? It is comprised in the 'I'. The 'I-thought' is the vijnanamaya kosa (intellectual sheath). Will is included in it.

"Sri Bhagavan said further: Annamaya kosa is the gross body sheath. The senses with the prana and the karmendriyas form the pranamayakosa (sense sheath). The senses with the mind form the manomaya kosa (mind-sheath). They are the jnanendryas. The mind is formed of thoughts only. Idam (this) is the object and aham ('I') is the subject; the two together form the vijnanamayakosa (intellectual-sheath)."

February 4, 1935:

"Ramana: Enquiring further the questions arise,"Who is this 'I'? Wherefrom does it come?" 'I' was not aware in sleep. Simultaneously with its rise sleep changes to dream or wakefulness. But I am not concerned with dream just now. Who am I now, in the wakeful state? If I originated from sleep, then the 'I' was covered up with ignorance. Such an ignorant 'I' cannot be what the scriptures say or the wise ones affirm. 'I' am beyond even 'Sleep'; 'I' must be now and here and what was all along in sleep and dreams also, without the qualities of such states. 'I' must therefore be the unqualified substratum underlying these three states (anandamaya kosa transcended).

"'I' is, in brief, beyond the five sheaths. Next, the residuum left over after discarding all that is not-self is the Self, Sat-Chit-Ananda."

Reading from Guenon, Man and His Becoming, chapter IX, "The Envelopes of the Self":

"The first envelope (anandamaya-kosha, the suffix maya signifying 'made of' or 'consisting of' whatever is denoted by the word to which it is conjoined) is none other than the totality of the possibilities of manifestation which Atma comprises within itself, in its 'permanent actuality' in the principial and undifferentiated state. It is called 'made of Beatitude' (Ananda), because the 'Self', in this primordial state, enjoys the plenitude of its own being, and it is in no way really distinct from the 'Self'; it is superior to conditioned existence, which presupposes it, and it is situated at the level of pure Being; that is why it is regarded as characteristic of Ishvara. Here, therefore, we are in the formless order; it is only when this envelope is viewed in relation to formal manifestation, and insofar as the principle of the latter is contained in it, that it can be said to represent principial or causal form (karana-sharira), that by which form will be manifested and actualized in the succeeding stages."

Richard: Insofar as you view the anandamaya with respect to the things that come after it, it is called the causal body; namely because everything is based upon it.

Tony: Do you think that might correspond to the auric envelope?

Richard: How exactly is the auric envelope defined?

Tony: I imagine we could think of it in two ways -- on an individual basis, in terms of one lifetime; but on a much broader basis when we think of the totality of all lifetimes; and that the anandamaya kosa here would correspond to the auric envelope, the Divine, the radiant body.

Richard: Yeah, he has it as inseparable from the Self, that the Self is completely overclothed with anandamaya. He takes motion to be a constituent of Being. But of course Ramana talks of the anandamaya transcended. It's true, it's lawful to say the anandamaya kosa is nondifferent from the Self, but that's like saying it's lawful to say Brahman Saguna is equivalent to Brahman Niguna. Ok. Coming back, it's causal in the sense that everything after it can be traced back to something in the anandamaya which would view anandamaya in its principial form. But, in it's own sake, it's the totality of all possibilities for the Self. It could never be deployed; they are actually in a permanent actuality, in an undifferentiated state. All modes of existence exist there in an undifferentiated way in their true state. Hard to grasp.

(Richard continues to read from Guenon):

"The second envelope (vijnanamaya-kosha) is formed by the directly reflected Light (in the intelligible sense) of integral and universal Knowledge…it is composed of five 'elementary essences' (tanmatras), 'conceivable' but not 'perceptible', in their subtle state; and it arises out of the conjunction of the higher intellect (Buddhi) with the principal faculties of perception proceeding respectively from the five tanmatras, and the external development of which constitutes the five senses of the corporeal individuality."

(Richard reads this quotation three times and specifically emphasizes the words "formed", "composed", and "arises".)

Richard: So, vijnana is a composite; it is formed from Buddhi out of tanmatra. So it isn't so different from Ramana, because in Ramana, the aham and the idam are together: the "I" and the "this". The "I" would come from the Buddhi, the directly reflected light which carries the Selfhood with it; and the tanmatras in their unity are supposed to be the "this". It's really more of a synthesis than a union; whereas in the anandamaya, the totalities are actually unified. But this synthesis, this product is really a very powerful thing: this "I" thought and "object" thought melded together is the basis of all samadhi.

Jeff: Do you think the Buddhi comes from the Ananda?

Richard: Yes, the hint that it is "directly reflected light" means that it is directly reflected from the Ananda. Actually, from the Ananda, which is a unified thing, you'd have to have the Buddhi and the tanmatra, in a place like prakriti; and their synthetic union is vijnana.

(inaudible question about meaning of tanmatra)

Richard: He says that what the Buddhi combines with are the "principial faculties of perception", which themselves proceed from the tanmatras; it would be the part of the tanmatras which has to do with the knowing aspect. Those things actually become the sense organs and the other part of the tanmatra becomes the sensed object. He is saying that it is the union of the Buddhi with the knowing function of the tanmatra which becomes vijnana.

(continues reading):

"The third envelope (manomaya-kosha), in which the constituents of the preceding envelope are linked up with the inward sense (manas), especially brings into play the mental consciousness or thinking faculty; this, as we have previously explained, belongs exclusively to the individual and formal order, and its development arises from the radiation, in reflective mode, of the higher intellect within a determinate individual state, which is in this case the human state.

Jeff: Do you think he's using manomaya here the way we talk about lower manas?

Tony: It wouldn't matter here, manas lower or higher. Manas brings in the individuality.

Richard: Where vijnana is concerned, there is no inner or outer; it's a field of consciousness. The manas takes an excerpt of that and makes a subjectivity out of it.

Drea: Is that why it would be called formal?

Richard: Yes, vijnana would be considered formless.

Drea: So is that distinction between inner and outer what characterizes it as being formed?

Richard: Yes, that's true; what's being formed is the inner, and everything left over is considered other. So what the manas does is to extend the contents of vijnana and say, "This is I". All the rest of it goes to make up the external world -- external to the subject. The world of gods is external to you, our forces, everything which you don't feel you have direct control over. The manas defines your property rites -- manas rites.

Tony: Actually, it's the reverse; the manas is External.

Richard: Well, it is what WE would call internal, in terms of our internal object. In vijnana there is no inner and outer. So when we say "inner" for manas, it means that out of vijnana we make the internal object, which is felt to be personal, our concepts of the thing which are felt to be less real, they belong more to me. The big ideas in vijnana become inwardized as concepts.

Tony: Yeah, except I call it externalized. Because that's your world.

Richard: Well, what he would say is that what's left over is your world which is not your world; it is THE world which you don't even understand. The manas will try to appropriate more of the vijnana and that would be called building up a world picture within the thoughts.

Tony: Ok. I follow what he's doing. I think the point is made.

Richard: You see, this is where the formation of concepts comes about; not by gazing into the external world, but by gazing into vijnana so to speak. Included in the concepts here of course is the 'I-thought'; that would be one of the concepts. Manomaya -- the totality of all thoughts. So one of the basic concepts here would be the conceptualization of the Buddhi, which would be the 'I-thought'; and then there would be the conceptualization of the various tanmatras which would be the categories of the understanding. So what Kant meant by space here would be the attempt to conceptualize the five basic categories, and the self would be the 'I-thought' which would be the conceptualization of that.

Richard: (reading footnote) "It is starting from this second envelope that the term sharira properly applies, especially if this word, as interpreted by the methods of Nirukta, be given the sense of 'dependent upon the six [principles]', that is to say upon Buddhi (or upon ahamkara, which is derived directly from it and is the first principle in the individual order) and the five tanmatras…"

Tony: Starting from vijnana down then, that would be the auric envelope.

Richard: Yes, I thought vijnana would be the auric envelope.

(reads on): "The fourth envelope (pranamaya-kosha) comprises the faculties which proceed from the 'vital breath' (prana), that is to say the five vayus (modalities of this prana), as well as the faculties of action and sensation (these last already existing principially in the two preceding envelopes as purely 'conceptive' faculties, at which stage, indeed, there could be no question of any sort of action, any more than of any external perception). The combination of these last envelopes (vijnanamaya, manomaya, and pranamaya) constitutes the subtle form (sukshma-sharira or linga-sharira), as opposed to the gross or corporeal form (sthula-sharira)…"

Richard: You see, at this stage, the pranas throw the senses out; there could be no question of action before this, or external perception. They draw it out and then you get an externally perceived world.

Jeff: Would he be saying then that in manomaya you operate in a dream state?

Richard: Well, suppose you energize in thinking, you wouldn't say the thoughts were exterior; you cut down on the external senses. So any sort of outwardization would come through prana; prana builds the world…Nature.

Drea: Prana then really seems to be linked to the gross body.

Richard: Well, they do seem to say that when you die, the prana and annamaya leave, and then after a while, the manomaya.

Drea: How would you derive the prana from the manomaya?

Richard: The prana is really a link back to the Atman -- or maybe the anandamaya; it's what makes the external world real; it's the mark of reality in perception. The prana is Brahma as forming your world.

Tony: (reading from The World-Mystery, Mead) ""Image" seems to mean a reflection, or something thrown off from the Self, in a potential condition, not actual, but containing within itself the whole of its own creator. "Imagination" in this sense is not a faculty of the mind, but an atmic spiritual power." So what you're saying is prana is Atma. This is the whole notion of sensation; the reason this is so important is that unless the astral body is understood, the whole notion of sensation will never be understood -- and it will never be explained.

Richard: (continues reading from Guenon) "The five vital functions or actions are called vayus, although they are not strictly speaking air or wind (which is the general meaning of the word vayu or vata, derived from the root va, 'to go', 'to move', and usually denoting the element air, one of the characteristic properties of which is mobility), since they belong to the subtle and not to the corporeal state; as we have said above, they are modalities of the 'vital breath' (prana, or more generally ana) considered chiefly in relation to respiration. They are: (i) aspiration, that is, respiration regarded as ascending in its initial phase (prana in the strictest sense of this word), and attracting the still unindividualized elements of the cosmic environment, causing them to participate, by assimilation, in the individual consciousness; (ii) inspiration, considered as descending in a succeeding phase (apana), whereby these elements penetrate into the individuality; (iii) a phase intermediary between the two preceding ones (vyana), consisting, on the one hand, of all the reciprocal actions and reactions which are produced upon the contact of the individual with the surrounding elements, and, on the other hand, of the various resultant vital movements, of which the circulation of the blood is the corresponding movement in the bodily organism; (iv) expiration (udana), which projects the breath, while transforming it, beyond the limits of the restricted individuality (that is, the individuality reduced simply to those modalities which are commonly developed in all men) into the sphere of the possibilities of the extended individuality, viewed in its integrality; (footnote 8: It should be observed that the word 'expire' means both 'to eject the breath' (in respiration) and 'to die' (in respect of the bodily part of the human individuality); both these meanings are related to the udana in question.) and (v) digestion, or inner substantial assimilation (samana), by which the elements absorbed become an integral part of the individuality. It is clearly stated that all this is not purely a matter of the operation of one or of several bodily organs; it is, in fact, easy to realize that it refers not merely to the analogically corresponding physiological functions, but rather to vital assimilation in the widest possible sense."

Do you know what he means by assimilation here? (in 5) When you die, the totality of all your experience is what you've assimilated from all your breathing; i.e., excitement was a fast way of breathing, a sigh was another way, etc. Prana feeds you; your inner emotional states are patterns of breathing; what you assimilate of it would correspond to digestion. In the one about circulation (3), whether you are learning or not, the circulation of the elements within the body are still going on. The intention of the breath here has an effect on the cosmic field. Suppose you SCREAM…the effect might be illness; building up and discharging karma.

(reading) "The corporeal or gross form (sthula-sharira) is the fifth and last envelope, the one which, for the human state, corresponds to the most external mode of manifestation; it is the alimentary envelope (annomaya-kosha), composed of the five sensible elements (bhutas) out of which all bodies are constituted. It assimilates to itself the combined elements received in nutriment (anna, a word derived from the verbal root ad, 'to eat'), secreting the finer parts, which remain in the organic circulation, and excreting or rejecting the coarser, excepting those however which are deposited in the bones. As a result of this assimilation the earthy substances become the flesh, the watery substances, the blood, and the igneous substances, the fat, the marrow, and the nervous system (phosphoric matter); for there are corporeal substances in which the nature of one element or another predominates, although they are all formed by the union of the five elements."

Randy: It seems easy to see the relationship between the vijnanamaya and the manomaya; it also seems easy to see the relationship between the pranomaya and the gross body.

Tony: I don't think there is a relationship. We are speaking about one thing here.

Richard: The living body.

Tony: The astral body, without which you can't have no sensation. This is a detailed description about what the astral body is. This is epistemology. The hint is that prana is Atma. When I talk about the sun, it could be prana and it could be Atma. I will read this quote from The Subtle Body (G.R.S. Mead). You should change the word 'spirit' to 'astral'.

p. 39 "Moreover this same spirit is the common sensory. …"The sensible--the spirit--is that which doth discern appearances. It is distributed into the various sense-organs." A portion of it becomes "spirituous sight," or "spirit by means of which we see," and so for the rest of the senses.

"If this spirit, in the case of man,"is led upwards by the understanding," then it discerns sensibles,--that is, apparently, what are called objective realities: "But if it is not, it only maketh pictures for itself,"--that is, is given over to phantasy or imagination…"

The Subtle Body, pp. 51-53

"It is, moreover, laid down as a general dogma that the power of sensation resides not in the physical body but in the spirit (astral). It is, for instance, not the ear, nor even the membrane or drum of the ear, that is the hearing sensory, but the spirit (astral). …

"This, Philoponus says, is the doctrine of both Aristotle and the Platonici. Thus he tells us that, according to Aristotle:

""The first sensory, in which is the sensing power, is the spirit, the substrate of the irrational soul; for in this the sense has first of all its being.

""Eyes, ears and nostrils are sense-organs only, they do not come first, for the feeling soul is not in them. They are the means whereby sensible experience is referred to the spirit."

"And again, according to Aristotle:

""The powers of sensation are established in the spirit (astral), for the whole, through the whole of it, both sees and hears and is active in the rest of the senses. And thus all the senses are in it, just as in plants are the vegetative powers. . . . The spirit itself is not organised."

"The Platonists also declare, he tells us, that"the apprehension of sensibles does not at all take place through the [physical organs], inasmuch as both in us [i.e. in the case of men] the common sense, residing in a single spirit, perceives the objects of the five senses, and the irrational soul [in the case of animals] by means of a single spirit apprehends all sensibles."

"And so in general Philoponus sums up the doctrine as follows:

""The common sense, which in itself is incorporeal, functions in the body which is its ground. This ground is the spirituous body. Thus the various orders of sensible phenomena, though different from one another, occur in the spirituous body (astral), now in one portion, now in another of it. Subsequently the power itself [i.e. the common sense] discriminates the sensible experiences in the spirit. And so we keep the reason free [from sense], and do not say that different forms occur in that which has no parts [sc. the rational soul], but [that they occur] in the greatest [body], that is the spirituous (astral), in different portions of it.""

Tony: If I follow the gist of this, they are using this to describe the pranamaya in conjunction with the manomaya and annamaya. So that when Bhattacharyya spoke of Kant's description of the senses taking in matter, we are really at a very primitive level of epistemology. This is a much more technical precise detail of what sensation is.

Richard: But what are those senses? In the Vedanta scheme, there's two places where the senses come up. The senses + the manas is the manomaya, and the senses + the prana is the pranamaya. Now, when you're speaking of this astral or ordinary sensation, you are speaking of the senses + prana. What are the senses without the prana?

Tony: Well, wouldn't you say that the lower one puts you in contact with the cosmic and the other one puts you in contact with your own inner self.

Richard: Yes, but what are those senses doing in themselves? The senses in the manas are portraying the individual; like in a dream, the senses are involved in projecting and portraying various aspects of the individual, and different parts will be sensized in different ways -- some as smell, color, etc. It's like different senses are different modalities of the subject. Now this would have to be one of the functions of the senses even when they are operating externally. The true meaning of sight, for instance, would be the faculty of delivering a true aspect of the Self. I mean there's a reason there are five senses -- like maybe there's five constituents of the Self that are capable of being externalized and known in this era.

Tony: Let me see if I follow you. If we say that the Self is the subject that underlies the individual in this cosmic phenomena, the way that this Self is going to make itself self-conscious is to come through sensation, which means it has to hit a psychal-physical level, it has to move the physical organism. And here, the pranomaya, at this lower level is what's going to do it -- vayu, the principle of air. Now, this has to be translated into a psychal essence, it has to be conceptualized, and then this conceptualization of it can reach the manomaya, and then it becomes the assimilated experience. The soul has assimilated that.

Richard: But nothing is translated. The true senses are irrational! It's true, we approach this temporally; so something happens to us, and we reflect upon it, and we derive a meaning from our external experience. But actually, the REAL faculty of sight, for example, is to deliver that meaning; it may have gone in a roundabout way, but to get at the real essence of sight, you have to attack it through that meaning aspect, capable of delivering certain kinds of meaning, or certain aspects of the soul. So in the manomaya, the senses there must be the real senses, they are closer to the Self.

Tony: Yes, those are real powers of knowing.

Richard: But they are powers of knowing the Self, not the external object. That's the point.

Tony: Yes…because like you were saying before in regard to the five vayus, there's an assimilation of the cosmic, but it's unknown to the ordinary person. The soul knows this.

Richard: Yeah, the dream is really a good example here; because there obviously you know that what you are knowing is the psyche; you see the dream world happening as the psyche knowing itself, you almost get a taste of the meaning of sensation -- that it is all for knowledge of the Self. In one sense dreams seem trivial, why bother dreaming? Things don't really happen and what's going on? But obviously for the soul, dreams are very important; one of the things dreams display is the real meaning of sensation as a way of knowing the Self. Otherwise the world is accidental. In a dream, what is revealed is the certitude of mind -- when you wake up, there is no object.

Drea: You were talking before about prana as being direct from Atma; now you seem to be saying that the senses too have a direct access to the Self?

Richard: Yes, but through subjectivity: the pranas are Atma but in an objective way, the world appears objective. Before we said that the manas appropriates something of what's above it, and this provides an inner world; the senses are included here. Now, the pranas meet the Atma again but in an objective way. They bring home to you the transcendence of the Atma to the manas. That's the beauty of materialism -- Brahman is greater than the manas. Kant speaks exactly of this phase; that is, how the senses as an aspect of manas go to form the experience. As they grasp the world, they carry the categories of understanding along with them, and that forms the world that is being grasped.

Tony: That's a strange thing though because as the mind goes forth it creates for itself some sort of intentional or epistemological being to grasp the reality of the pranas.

Richard: Yes, that's what I meant by saying the senses were rooted in the manas; it knows what it is looking for before it reaches it. The object doesn't come into the mind; the mind goes out to the object, in a directed way. Except in some cases when it doesn't, like when you get startled, and then it searches.

David B.: Is the annamaya kosa what we ordinarily mean by our gross bodies? I mean, isn't even what we mean a reflection within the senses which put you in touch with things?

Richard: I would agree with you if you lived on air. If you were a person who lived on air, then your body would be the pranamaya kosa. But your body lives on food, so that's the annamaya kosa. There are those that live on air, but they define the annamaya as the body made of food, and by food they mean that which comes from the earth. It's true you have to take the vital out of the food through a process of taking that out and excreting the other, and you could get it directly but you don't. And you don't because you do have an annamaya. The only way to look at it is as an extension of the alimentary canal; like a worm. The hands are there to feed the mouth, the feet are there to run to get the food, even the brain is there to think out ways to get the food. "Plant more food", says the Upanishad.

David B.: It just seems like the gross body is a likely story, that it occurs within the pranamaya.

Richard: But they all in a sense occur within one another. But you don't have the pranamaya appearing directly; you have a reflection within the gross, what we know of these higher things are only a reflection within the gross. So don't call it a likely story, if that becomes a likely story, so is everything included within it, including the Self.

Tony: Of course it's difficult. Do you want to go over the whole thing again now? We still have to try to work in the four matras with it. Read over those five things on the air. The pranas is really the most difficult part.

(Richard rereads Guenon's quotation on the pranamaya kosa with running commentary added):

"…(i) aspiration, that is, respiration regarded as ascending in its initial phase…and attracting the still unindividualized elements of the cosmic environment, causing them to participate, by assimilation, in the individual consciousness; (ii) inspiration, considered as descending in a succeeding phase [(apana)], whereby these elements penetrate into the individuality…"

Richard: In the first, the mind goes out, and in the second, the elements are being brought in, these elements penetrate into the individuality. At this phase, they are not yet assimilated; they could just as well pass through.

Drea: How do you think of theses elements? Are they images?

Richard: It would be like if the doctor sends you to the seaside for a rest, and after looking at the ocean for a while, you come back completely refreshed. Now, what has come into you? Isn't it a kind of nutriment?

Tony: Perhaps you could think of the atmosphere of the earth as a huge reservoir: any change in the atmosphere will have a tremendous effect. Your generation knows this, I mean 12, 13 years old, they are mature; a hundred years ago people weren't mature at forty. There has been a definite change in the atmosphere in the last thirty years, a real ethereal change.

Richard: "…(iii) a phase intermediary between the two preceding ones [(vyana)], consisting, on the one hand, of all the reciprocal actions and reactions which are produced upon the contact of the individual with the surrounding elements, and, on the other hand, of the various resultant vital movements, of which the circulation of the blood is the corresponding movement in the bodily organism…"

So, everybody who touches the cosmic, changes the cosmic environment; the second part is like you see a thing and your hair turns white -- obviously something in what you are seeing is capable of changing the metabolism.

"…(iv) expiration [(udana)], which projects the breath, while transforming it, beyond the limits of the restricted individuality…into the sphere of the possibilities of the extended individuality, viewed in its integrality…"

Tony: That would be the entirety of the perceived world, or the Witness-self productive intelligence. …the Witness-self in creating all this, then the corporeal you as embodying its principles…when it rejects the breath, then it is transforming its own world.

Richard: "…(v) digestion, or inner substantial assimilation [(samana)], by which the elements absorbed become an integral part of the individuality."

Drea: Which is the individuality that all this is being assimilated to?

Richard: I think it's the manas -- the totality of thoughts. Obviously the physical is changed by breathing, and the vital, but I think it's for the development of the manas.

Tony: It may sound strange, but actually this amounts to pointing out the expediency of even the Witness-I. The Witness-I experiences within its world a certain relationship to the cosmic; but then the very experience which that empirical individual goes through helps to extend the vision or the depth of understanding of the Witness-I. It's a reciprocal relationship that's going on. On the one hand the productive intelligence produces this body and everything that's related to it, and on the other hand the very interaction of this body with its cosmic environment helps change the point of view of the Witness-I. Are you taping this? You label this esoteric and keep it hidden.

Richard: By Witness here do you mean vijnana or mano?

Tony: Manas -- the higher part; I have to make the distinction between the lower and higher part. The true individuality would be manas, but the lower manas would be the empirical individuality, this restricted individuality that I know myself to be. And every effort to penetrate into the cosmic environment will transform the understanding of the manas. Could we try now to take these bodies and correlate them with the different consciousnesses--sleep, dream, etc?

Richard: Well, they say that in deep sleep, the vijnana lapses, and that you sleep in the anandamaya -- that's why sleep is so blissful; but the remembrance of sleep is in the vijnana. So you say, how could vijnana -- the universal principle lapse? Well in itself it doesn't lapse, just for the individual. The anandamaya is a permanent thing -- that can't lapse, and so he rests in it. Now when the man wakes up, he knows intuitively, directly, that he slept and that's why they say that the knowledge of sleep is vijnana -- it's not discursive, it's an intellectual intuition. Now, for somebody who is not identified with the manas, who is situated in vijnana, there is no sleep.

Tony: Would you say then that if a person were able to hang on to the self-revealing consciousness in sleep, then one would know the whole plan of his life?

Richard: This life? He'd know all of them; not only that, the Ananda is not individual, so there would be nothing left unknown -- because everything is in its integral form there. If he could know the Self -- even the anandamaya Self -- he'd be omniscient.

Tony: Well, you know how skeptical I am.

Richard: Well, in fact it is true that you go to sleep and you wake up and there is a realignment of everything, the values change, etc. and that's a good example of the fact that you do bring back a little bit of the self-revealing consciousness to the manas.

Tony: Let me ask you this then. If we take the totality of the kosas, can we imagine them existing within the states of consciousness?

Richard: Well, they say the subtle body consists of the vijnana, the mano, and the prana. If you equate dream with subtle, I'd say the prana with the others are within that, and waking leads back to the physical. But of course there's all different degrees of the dream. Let's say you go to a Freudian analyst and he tells you your dreams are bound up with your instinctual nature; isn't he viewing the dream as conjuring up from the prana various desires? And isn't Jung adding to it in terms of the aspiration part of the prana?

Tony: Oh yes, definitely; because to me all Freud was occupied with was the kama rupa. So then would all of this above be immersed in the sthula (gross)? So then the Gods do enjoy perpetual wakefulness. Could we say then that these bodies are illuminated by the consciousness streaming through them.

Richard: We could say that primarily it's the dream consciousness which shines through the subtle, etc. But this is not always true. You take a man who has a big dream, you'd imagine it was the waking consciousness (vaishvanara) which shines through; he KNOWS that what he experienced was REAL even though it was all in the subtle body. And of course it goes the other way too: for many people what shines in the gross is not waking consciousness. We have really three states; waking, dream, sleep: and three bodies, causal, subtle gross. And I think there are all nine possibilities. Prana has to be available in the waking state, dream state, and sleeping state; and similarly for all the others.

Randy: Why don't they consider vijnana causal?

Richard: Because according to their way of thinking, it lapses when you go to sleep. The causal doesn't lapse.

Jeff: P.B. says, "The first of our thoughts is I", and he makes that arise from the Overself; and when I read the Vedanta, I can't understand why they put it in the subtle body. In the Greek sense we equate it with the Intellect.

Richard: Yes, exactly, and that's why these people criticize Plato. To them, there's only one thing which is eternal and that's the Self. Everything else is perishable. See you too are asking, "Why isn't vijnana causal?" and you want to give it the status of something permanent. For them, it's temporal.

Jeff: Then the Intellect and the Intelligible would be Ananda?

Richard: But Ananda is partless.

Jeff: There are no parts to the Intellect and the Intelligible.

Richard: Ok then it's Ananda. For them Ananda is like the One Being, Phanes, which would contain within it all the possibilities in an integrated whole -- the fourth house, covering the Self-existent Brahman. Now maybe for vijnana they take the fifth and sixth, but it would not be permanent. They would point to deep sleep and say it lapses. But we might say deep sleep happens in the physical. We might say when you go to sleep, it's not true the vijnana lapses, maybe it's just overcome by the denseness of the physical body. So in sleep there would be the nonmanifestation of duality, but not the overcoming of ignorance, or, not the apprehension of reality. If the entirety of these sheaths are condensed as one, then that's the object. Now what's the difference between deep sleep and the yogi who has realized Ananda? There's no knowledge, except the Self-existent, a lapsing of vijnana, what's the difference between these two people? What does the yogi have that the guy in sleep doesn't have?

Tony: That's where I have a slight disagreement with the Vedanta; if we don't speak about this glimpse of Ananda, we are correct; if we speak about it, we must bring in manas, there are no two ways about it. In other words, you have the universal and the individual universal (a reflection of the universal in manas), otherwise, there is no individual immortality. Thanks a lot Richard, arrivederci...

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