Bindi

https://savy-international.com/yoga/anandamaya-kosha/ author Dr Jitender K Sahdev https://savy-international.com/about/teachers/

The Anandamaya kosha or 'sheath made of bliss', or ananda is in Yoga and Vedantic philosophy the most subtle or spiritual of the five levels of embodied self. It is not possible to exactly translate the word ananda; its meaning is closer to equanimity than bliss. There is unified experience and that experience does not change. It is peace, joy, and love that is underneath, beyond the mind, independent of any reason or stimulus to cause a happy mental reaction. Taittiriya Upanishad says: Hidden inside it (Vigyanamaya Kosha) is yet a subtler body, composed of pure joy. It pervades the other bodies and shares the same shape. It is experienced as happiness, delight, equanimity and bliss. It further defines anandamaya kosha as having the shape or form of a person with love as its head, joy as its right wing and delight as its left wing, bliss as its trunk and Brahman as its support or foundation. Anandamaya kosha is the most interior of the koshas, the first of the koshas surrounding the Atman, the eternal center of consciousness. It is the subtlest of the five koshas… This is a state of mind which does not change, despite anything that happens in life. With that state of mind you can live with all the conditions of life. You are where you are, firmly rooted in your own self, but at the same time you can interact with everyone. You can do anything, but still not be affected. Death cannot change that experience; birth cannot change it; love and hatred cannot make your experiences swing. When your mind becomes steady in experience and does not fluctuate under any condition, that is ananda. So, anandamaya kosha means the kosha which comprises homogenous experience. Satyam Loka, the plane of ultimate bliss, corresponds to anandamaya kosha, which is none other than pure consciousness. The anandamaya kosha is extremely important in yoga because it’s the final and thinnest veil standing between our ordinary awareness and our higher Self. …Ananda is steady state of being, no matter what circumstance arises. The state of wholeness, of integration with the moment and with yourself, encompasses the inner sheath of anandamaya. This bliss state is usually experienced in fleeting moments, but can remain for longer periods. Anandamaya can be experienced in those moments when you are fully immersed in that which you are doing—when you no longer separate yourself from your experience. Importantly, anandamaya is still a sheath, a layer that can be peeled back. When anandamaya is peeled away, we reach atman—our very center. Atman is our direct connection with the divine, with the essence of all that is. It is our pure consciousness.

There IS manas consciousness, anandamaya consciousness etc until the moment they are all thoroughly and permanently disidentified from. Then they don’t exist, only Atman does. I have heard the experience of Atman cannot be put into words, but I see nondualists have no problem putting their experience into words.

I have tried to explain my frustration with nondual-speak, but I’ll say it again to try and clarify. From my perspective the nondual awakened have experienced anandamaya kosha and as you say above have then dropped out of that experience, from then in though they have set their manas consciousness to want to be in anandamaya consciousness always, to be perfectly aligned with it, I could say they are in love with anandamaya kosha in the way that manas loves and clings to store consciousness. What nondualists don’t comprehend is that anandamaya/nondual consciousness is not the endpoint, but one more form of consciousness that they are identifying with, just as they once identified with physical, emotional and mental consciousness. They disregard these earlier levels of consciousness as false, and don’t realise that their nondual perspective is equally false. Conceptually then, Atman is beyond duality, but it is also beyond nonduality.

Immersion (Piss Christ).

Agreed, emotional dysfunction, abusiveness, temper, addiction, all have nothing to do with nondual understanding as it is presented by nondualists. If all stories collapse upon realisation of nonduality, what are the further ten years for? They all collapse, but it takes ten years to let go of all the collapsed stories? As a nondualist how can you choose anything let alone whether you’d like to become an enlightened asshole or an enlightened saint, when as you say above the “whole idea that you are a person who is in charge of your destiny, or that which practice you choose is in your hands, is nonsense. Projecting yourself or objects into the future and thinking what you imagine might REALLY happen, or imagining that something that happened to you in the past has any absolute reality is nonsense.“ You can choose or you can’t choose, you can’t have your cake and eat it. If your practice hasn’t led you to recognising which action is right between these two, then I don’t think it is a healthy practice for humanity as a whole. My practice has a maxim: “When I think I think of others”. The closer I am to living this maxim the closer I am to my end point. I have no interest in philosophical justification for abuse. It would be good to be a nondually awakened Ukrainian at the moment.

Complete disidentification? What about The Scam of Nonduality. Emotional dysfunction persists beyond nondual awakening. So you either have to categorise the emotionally dysfunctional nondual awakened as not really having had a nondual awakening, or acknowledge that nondual awakening in general is only part of an equation. Awakening to atman is an ultimate solution because all koshas including the emotional kosha level are transcended, the entire limited consciousness structure collapses. If emotional or mental dysfunction remain at all then I can say the whole kosha structure remains operational because it has to collapse in its entirety to be truly overcome. In my understanding of the kosha system emotional and mental health would have been dealt with at an earlier stage, equivalent to disentangling the tendrils and branches of the vine from the structure first. Equally, without disentangling the tendrils and the branches first, perception of what is vine and what is wood at the the trunk of the vine is impossible. If the above is the state of store consciousness and manas, how can they be easily separated? Or does the Arhat simply ignore it as illusion? Or is it the case that if no one is there to see it then it effectively doesn’t exist, even though emotional dysfunction patently still exists?

Well they have rather successfully staged a coup, and are now ensconced as the dominant ‘Eastern’ and New Age spiritual paradigm. Hordes of smug nondual awakened bastards coming to a store near you.

The issue for me is that this ‘natural state’ that nondualists describe sounds a lot like anandamaya kosha to me: The issue is that “anandamaya kosha is still a sheath, a layer that can be peeled back. When anandamaya is peeled away, we reach atman—our very center. Atman is our direct connection with the divine, with the essence of all that is. It is our pure consciousness.” So I’m basically saying there is something beyond the ‘natural experience of nonduality’. The problem with ‘self’ is not ‘self’ but self’s identification with consciousness states that are ‘not self’, up to and including anandamaya kosha. My ‘self’ would be equivalent to atman, permanently free from the restrictions of identification of myself as body, mind, emotions or anandamaya kosha. What that would be like is impossible and pointless for me to guess at, but as has been mentioned earlier it’s likely to be hard to describe. The idea of losing atman is on a whole different level, I don’t think it can even be contemplated until one has actually arrived at that point in the first place. Equally whether atman experiences itself in a dual or nondual way is impossible to guess at, and actually unnecessary to know anyway, the only thing that ever needs to be known is how to disentangle atman from identification with the koshas, everything beyond that will be as it is.

Most nondualists on this forum promote their ideas as the only and ultimate truth, and they are generally very quick to negate views other than their own as inferior, limited or just plain wrong. Sometimes I get tired of the nondual supremacy that operates here, and sometimes I feel like pushing back.

Hi 鞏三孝, I have a particular interest in the external yellow court scripture, I would really like to go through this with a Chinese speaker who is interested in the Classics.

I quote from 鞏三孝's post above "Ironically, she accused me of having a sexy name. But in fact, it was through Google Translate that she accidentally turned an important Taoist teaching into something related to sex. I wished to warn her that she has accidentally done this kind of thing many times." When I used google translate to translate 鞏三孝 into english I got "Gong/three/filial piety".

Hi awaken, I’ve just read through this thread, and I believe I understand what the person you have blocked is trying to say to you. In your most recent post the same translation mistake seems to have happened, the translation problem is “when sex work has the right direction gas will be generated automatically.” To an English speaking person this means ‘bedroom arts’, ie., sex, as a way to cultivate gas/qi. I don’t think this is what you mean, maybe it is, perhaps you could clarify.

I used these terms manas and store consciousness because I think the author captured the interplay between manas and store consciousness so well. I had a dream of a grape vine growing entwined on a pergola structure, it was so entwined that at its trunk it was almost impossible to tell what was vine trunk and what was pergola post. On top of the structure the branches had grown around the beams, and the tendrils had also wound themselves around the beams. I propose that this is the state that manas and store consciousness are in, echoing the article I referenced. What to do about this state differed in my dream though. Where Thich Nhat Hanh states “When we meditate, we practice looking deeply in order to bring light and clarity into our way of seeing things. When the vision of no-self is obtained, our delusion is removed,” in my dream instead I began separating the vine from the structure, starting at the tendrils, unwinding them, then unwinding the branches, and after some time coming to the trunk which had grown around the post to the point that it was was indistinguishable from it. I couldn’t unwind it as it was hard wood, not pliable like the tendrils and branches, so instead I held the trunk and the post above where they were enjoined and worked at pulling them apart. They did come apart but the whole structure started to topple over so I pushed it up again, and then this happened again, the structure started to topple and I pushed it up again, and then it started to topple a third time, and this time I just walked away. When I looked back the overgrown heavy old vine had disappeared along with the structure, but in its place a new young vine had been planted with no structure around it, and I marvelled as I realised that the vine had never needed the structure in the first place. This is why I said earlier that both manas and store consciousness have to be extinguished at the same time. But my dream is more relevant to the concept of the koshas, where even anandamaya kosha whose description is remarkably similar to the description of nonduality experience, needs to be disidentified from. Anadamaya kosha in my dream would be the structure, and my ‘self’ would be the vine. Once anandamaya kosha is disidentified from, my ‘self’ is seen as the newly planted vine free of all structures that are identified with. So I have a diametrically opposite view it seems, for I don’t want to get rid of my self, I want to get rid of my attachment to anandamaya kosha (and all previous koshas, body, emotional and mental identification) leaving my self free of all restricting consciousness states.

Also from the article referred to above I would differ and say when we have destroyed manas consciousness both it and store consciousness disintegrate, but there is another consciousness that was hidden by all these previous layers of consciousness, and it is this consciousness or Self that needs to be discovered/uncovered and allowed to develop. It is this ultimate consciousness that is the ‘Higher Self’, the Self at the centre of the Koshas, beyond the “Anandamaya Kosha, or the Illusory Self of Bliss … the ‘All is I’ experience which is an unbroken epiphany.” “Beyond the sense of self-identity, past the realm of intuitive wisdom, rests the thin layer of cosmic particles separating you from the nakedness of Self. This field is your bliss body, anandamaya kosha. When you embody anandamaya kosha, you merge with the experience of bliss and enter a yogic state of samadhi. This rapture, no matter how intensely enjoyable, is not yet the highest of samadhis — that resides outside the realm of all experience. The samadhi you encounter here sparkles with subtle perceptions and streams of ecstasy. EVERYDAY EXPERIENCES OF ANANDAMAYA KOSHA Ever been so absorbed in an activity that there was no thought of yourself or the action? A joyous levity and freedom of movement often accompanies this state of immersion. That is anandamaya kosha. A child at play, without a sense of time or space, naturally embodies it.” To think this Kosha is the end point is to be trapped in the store consciousness forever, with the manas consciousness still fully entwined, because they only disintegrate both together at the same time.

Using the terms in this article, Thich Nhat Hanh: The Four Layers of Consciousness the root of the problem is that manas operates in store consciousness and creates a sense of self there. The sense of self can be intellectually negated at the level of working mind consciousness, but it’s not easy to negate the sense of self in the background store consciousness because it is so clingy (see below). I’m guessing it is the manas consciousness that nondualists claim is so easy to extinguish. I don’t believe the average nondualist has uprooted their sense of self/ego on the level of store consciousness, more likely their manas is actually strengthened (smug) in the belief that they have achieved so simply and directly what is almost impossible.

I will continue to follow a path just because TWO people who don’t know what they’re SEEING told me something I HAVE COME TO understand. Such a minimising view of dreams. Maybe my dreams are so special because I allow them to educate me about reality instead of making decisions about reality for myself via my mundane mind. So you say. Of course I will believe what I want, just as you will. I didn’t miss it , I’m just not interested because I find something else more valuable. I have already agreed that the truth lies beyond the mundane mind, we only disagree on what the truth is beyond the mundane mind.

No, they both consistently had no idea of the explanation of what they were seeing, I have made sense of what they see over time, though I will add that I have not progressed from consciousness in Ida and Pingala yet, so I have not so much to say yet about the reality of consciousness in the central channel. When I do get to that point it’s highly likely that I will have something to say about it though 😄 Actually they’re mine and other people’s, I have found that we all refer to the same thing despite individual bias. Dreams are an amazing offering, within them we have access to the highest teaching, but the inability to interpret them (or remember them in the first place) closes that amazing and prolific door. From what I have come across consciousness flows in nadi’s specifically not dantians, and Ida and Pingala are special Nadi cases because as far as I have understood they carry the emotional and mental forces. These are very accessible to clearing by us, and once cleared result in entry into the central channel. I could equally say to you, consciousness doesn’t work in the way you think it does. I know who I am potentially, but as I say I haven’t realised my Self beyond emotion and mentation yet. It’s all just part of the nondual talk to me. Do Yoga and Neigong aim for nondual realisation in the first place? Nondual realisation is not my aim, though if that happens to be the end result I wouldn’t have a problem with that, if nondualism was the natural outcome of my subtle body development. I’m not aiming for anything, I’m just seeing where the journey takes me.

I’m sorry I misrepresented what you wrote, I can see you didn’t say that you have to go on retreat to maintain your nondual perspective. Re-reading your comment today would it be more appropriate to say that you noticed during a retreat that you fell short of actualising the nondual perspective in many areas of your life? In this thread you seem to acknowledge that you can appear to be smug when you think you are operating in a more nondual manner than you actually are, mistaking thoughts, ideas and feelings of the view rather than resting in nonduality. This does suggest to me that sometimes you are resting in nonduality, and sometimes you are aware that you are not, but that you have a definite preference to always rest in nonduality and that you are working towards this in your way.

Some people are able to perceive subtle forms and the subtle energy channels, I have been lucky enough to come in contact with two of them - in both cases they didn’t have a clue as to what they were seeing, they weren’t teachers, merely seers, but I have been able to build up an understanding over time about the meaning of what they see, and to work with my subtle body via what they’ve seen to follow its natural evolution. This information broadly accords with Indian Yoga knowledge of the nadi’s and chakras as well as Daoist dantians, and my personal dream information, so I am satisfied that this is the fundamental reality that we need to understand and align with. Non-dualism has no interest in developing these subtle channels as far as I know, I don’t think early Buddhism did either, but Yogis of course did and still do. Here’s a question, why did Tibetan Buddhists who as I understand it have a nondual outlook get involved in working with subtle body channels, was there something lacking in their nondual view that needed subtle energy body work? Or was it subtle energy body work that lead to their nondual view? Perception can change in a single moment, but the blocks in the subtle energy channels take time to clear. I have no wish to change my perception because I equate achievement of nondual perception with the stopping of subtle body development, and I value subtle body development a lot higher than the rewards of nondual perception that I have heard about. “The various yogas all have their own story to tell about liberation, and can be pursued on their own. But as nondualism sees it, the yogas tend to serve as ramp-ups to non-dual inquiry itself.” ~ Greg Goode (Ph.D)

The first time the term non-dual was used in Buddhism was by Nagarjuna. Gautama could have used this term but didn't, and he didn't teach non-dualism as a metaphysical principle, instead he taught dependent origination, Non-clinging and Emptiness which aren't the same as non-duality. Yes I mean he never taught it and didn't experience it himself. my earlier reference (which I see is a wikipedia reference originally) claims that he outright denied doctrines such as “this cosmos is the self” and “everything is a Oneness", ie., he specifically rejected the idea we are all parts of one whole or totality. This is what I read, where he specifically says this might be supplied by a Buddhist scholar ( on this thread if I was lucky).

I think this is the post which made me come to my conclusions

Yes, I read that the other day. I don’t think I agree that consciousness is not the self, I believe the self is bound up with consciousness, and where consciousness exists is the point. I believe Gautama came up with a very clever solution to suffering, but I don’t think he managed to bring consciousness to the central channel. I think there is a definite need to come to this realisation “I am not the doer” when it comes to thoughts and feelings, but there is a point where “I” identifies with something beyond thoughts and feelings, and this identification isn’t something that needs to be separated from. To actualise this ‘something beyond’ is the first step, and it takes time, it’s like making sure that there is a vehicle to shift into before leaving the old identifications of ‘I am my thoughts’ and ‘I am my emotions’. If the next vehicle hasn’t been developed then leaving the thought and emotion identification prematurely will leave one without any vehicle whatsoever. I think this is seen as success in non-dual philosophy.

I questioned Steve on this because he posted publicly that he occasionally has to go on a retreat to maintain his non-dual perspective. Ramana spent many years in meditation to finally reach a stable non-dualness in his normal waking life, which he referred to as Sahaja samadhi. Non-dual teachers whose personalities are out of control will occasionally admit that they haven’t actually arrived. I know the narrative, but I believe that for most it is a state, which I agree is not the aim.

Yes I can. My lower self is consciousness running through Ida and Pingala with no access to the central channel. My higher Self is consciousness present in the central channel, consciousness which is no longer exclusively identified with Ida and Pingala, though it has not lost touch with them. Achieving this cannot be immediate.