The Koshas

In yoga the human structure is build of different bodies or layer call koshas. They go from the grosser to the subtler. It start with the most evident to our eyes; the physical body or food body call annamayakosha the one made of bone and flesh. Follow by pranamaya kosha the energetic body, the one which whom our electricity is transport, the one wich create energy chanels and the vortex call cakras, the third one is manomaya kosha the body of the mind were the the thinking took place, were the brain and the intelligence of the cells expresse their faculty. The forth one is vijnanamaya kosha;it is within this body that intuitive insight happen, its within this body that real knowledge start to express its reality. some call it the soul body. Then the last is anandamaya kosha;the body of bliss were we connect with our true self the greater Self; consciousness.Each and every body are interconnected.

Annamaya kosha
The physical layer is the grosses of all the five koshas and it is often with this one that majority of us identify ourselves. It is where our sensorial universe take place, and its within this layer that we “normally” interact with our environment. In the Vedas (Hindu scripture) it is written that we are compose of food which come direcky from the earth and that consequentially it is very important to understand what we are doing when we are eating. We have to realize the importance of the quality of what we are eating specially if we are completely composed by it. If we want to optimize the outcome of our harvest, it is important to work the soil previously with proper fertilizer. It is the same for our corporal garden, more will took care of it, better we feed ourselves, better will be our physical body.

Our physical body is a ground field where we can easily observe our state of being and easily work on it directly to modify it. Annamaya kosha will often be the medium by which more profound disorder will express themselves. For example, when someone have chronic digestive problems often it is psychosomatic, the person live a situation probably too hard to digest and its manifest itself trough stomachache or ulcers.

With the practice hatha yoga specialy of asanas(postures) and thenshatkarmas(cleaning exercices), a special attention is given to annamaya kosha. In their practice we learn to look and feel the body, we try to understand the messages it tries to send us. There is millions, billions of cells moving trough our body each of them have some kind of intelligence maybe we should try to listen to what they have to say! The postures and movements free the tension accumulated from are past experience, they tones our important organs, and by doing so the allow the energy to move freely and harmoniously.

The prana is the vital force, which exist within every living thing, human, animal, plant, the whole planet and even the whole universe. It exists everywhere around us and varies in force and quality.

The energetic body is compose of thousand and thousand of Nadis, energy channel which have roots in what is call the chakras. The chakras are subtle energy vortex situated along the spinal cord. Each chakra are related to a certain energy and our goal is to make sure that every single of those vortex work at its full capacity. We’ll see later on how to work on them and how they work on us. It’s a fascinating reality that can be very helpful if we allow it to be. Because it is very subtle people have tendencies to deny their existence they can’t see it or observe it scientifically. If everything was too easy to experience the game would lost its originality.

The prana can also be see as the electric current moving through our body it is the mode of transport of all information that goes in and out of ourselves. It is necessary to every single action or tough; without prana in our body we died. It is like without sun we won’t be able to survive because the sun is our ultimate source of prana. When we eat an apple we eat the prana of the sun transform in fructose and water etc etc. This prana do the same work trough our cell, and trough our mind. There is different level of energy like there is different sources.

We can work directly on the pranic body with pranayama practices. Like I’ll explain later those are most of the time breathing exercices and by working on the breath we work on our pranic bodies. It’s quite simple to understand like most of the engine, the human body need air to run properly and by working on our breath we induce the proper amount of air in our body to make it work more efficiently.

Yogis have thousand of years of expertise in those technique of pranayama, I think we have a lot to learn from it and a lot to experience with it, never forgot that we are here to experience and widen our consciousness. To play more efficiently, I am certain that pranayama can be a wonderful tool for us to use.

It is within this body that our intellect, our thought and our reasoning took place. It is naturally intimately related with the two previous body. It is through its main command center that movement of the body will took place. It is were information come in and order go out. Its here were we bridge the outside world with the inside world. Or the inner being and the outer being. It is through this layer that we experience the ego, the limitation of our self. But it is through this body that one can realize its limitation and can coordinate proper action to rectified is course and play more harmoniously with is whole potential. Manomaya kosha is expressing its capability via different component, as we know our cells have some kind of intelligence and its not because their structure are different then our brain structure that we should deny their immense potential. And it is probably true to many other component of our being. When the scientist said that we use only one tenth of our brain capacity this mean that there is a huge potential waiting for use to awaken and its part of our role in this game to try to find a way to release this energy and enjoy its magic.

With the practice of concentration, meditation and kundalini yoga we can realize this capacity within us, we can find a way to listen to the other realities. Our Self is talking to our self; the spirit within is always giving us insight and clue to the game. If we can find a way to tune our being properly we can manage to grasp and understand its words of wisdom. Slowly by sharpening our awareness through different practice and technique we can learn to listen to every kind of intelligence within and outside ourselves.

This way of listening will then awakes in us another kind of understanding and another way to experience life at a subtler level, then come our next body vijnannamaya kosha.

The forth layer is a quite tranclucide one, it doesn’t realy veil our perception of the true Reality, it is throughout this layer that the Self express itself it is within this layer that we connect with our much wider Being our real essence. Vijnamaya kosha is the entry door of the subtle reality of all being and all things. It is within this layer that one can perceive and touch other now and other here. No mind is needed here, no concept no theory just the flow of life expressing its pure entity. It is our intuitive body our astral authenticity. On this level of reality all being are connected with each other, every movement or thought have an influence on the others and vice versa. Most of us are unaware of it, we go on thinking of our individuality, our limited self as being our only reality but there is a much greater truth and if we take the necessary attitude we can realize this beautiful, complex and infinite reality and their we start to really enjoy the game, we start to realize or infinite possibility.

Here, if our ego is still present, even if it is no more tainted by our mind pollution, we can’t really proceed consciously to the next layer. The next layer being our spirit our real essence what is call our atman, the expression of god at the microcosmic reality. how can we experience the infinite by separate ourselves from it. The absolute with the concept of a I looking at it can’t be call absolute but when no more I is experiencing then we can maybe call it absolute but what does it mean realy the absolute the infinite.

What to say about this body, how can I even try to express its reality. This is the spirit within every single expression of our world and of every other world if any other can be experience. If you try too look deeply into your being you will find it very difficult to experience who you really are, and if you continue, persevere in your attempt maybe you will get a glimpse of what you are not and slowly realize that there is something vast, too vast to even try to see or feel it, then maybe you’ll be incline to let go and then maybe you will understand what I mean by losing your ego.

Some people call it the infinite light other the complete abyss, but for sure, saints and sages for centuries has express the necessity to lose our ego, to be able to realize the impermanence of thing and to experience the reality as it express itself to use here and now.

The different bodies are the textile giving colors and textures to our envelopes. By working on them we can design and modified our pattern. We have the power to give to our soul, our pawn or our actor a wonderful dress with which it will be able to express its infinite nature during the play.