Yoga and Meditation: An Introduction

Mamta is software professional with many years of experience in Information technology implementing Industry best practices, business process reengineering and change management. . On a personal front she is very passionate about Yoga and Meditation and follows a lifestyle practicing them daily. She has an experience of studying and learning yoga from the last 20 years. She believes that Yoga teaches to bring the body, mind and soul into a perfect balance. The moment body, mind reaches a balanced state the mind is already in a meditative state and the inward path to bliss starts. And in this meditative state, you move to a higher realm where you can unfold the infinite potential within you.

Yoga is a way of life, an integrated system of education for the body,mind and inner spirit. The art of right living was perfected and practiced in India thousands of years ago but, since Yoga deals with the universal truths , its teachings are as valid today as they were in ancient times. Yoga is a practical aid, not a religion, and its techniques may be practiced by people of all religions as well as atheists alike.Yoga is union with all.

Three Bodies

Most of us might question whether the body has a soul. But the Yogi would say definitely, “I am a soul that has taken a body”. Yoga philosophy sees the body as a vehicle for the soul in its journey towards enlightenment, and goes on to discuss not just one body, but three bodies , each more subtle than the one before. Gross Body, Subtle Body, Casual Body.

Gross Body :

The gross body is the actual physical body and it contains two layers or sheaths :

Food Sheath and the Vital Air SheathFood Sheath :

Food Sheath or the food layer is called the Annamaya kosha. This visible dense body is created with food, grows due to food, changes and decays and dies as a result of food, and the component then returns to the earth and the food cycle. Looking at the attention that a Yogi pays to the physical body, it might seem that yoga is about glorification of the physical body, but the actual aim is to bring the physical body under conscious control of the mind. Both can then be used for higher spiritual pursuits.

Vital Air Sheath : This is also called the air layer or the Pranic Sheath. This layer is more subtle than the food sheath, but similar in form. It is made up of around 72000 nadis, or astral tubes, through which pran or vital energy flows. The air we breath mixes with our blood and reaches every cell of our physical body.

The vital air sheath controls all the organs of action, and its five folds, with five different functions,

1. Faculty of perception (Pran) which controls the perceptions of five sense organs.
2. Faculty of excretions (Apan) which controls throwing out of the body .
3. Faculty of digestion (samana) which controls digestion of food
4. Facult of circulation (vyana) which controls the distribution of digested food to all body parts.
5. Faculty of thinking (udana) which makes it possible for people to entertain, absorb and assimilate thoughts.

• The Food Sheath and the Vital air sheath together is called the gross body.
• Subtle Body : This body actually consists of the mental sheath and the intellectual sheath.

Mental Sheath : None of us is unaware of the existence of the mind. This sheath comprises of the automatic mind. The automatic mind entertains our doubts, joys and variety of emotions and constantly erupts with a nonstop flow of thought-lava. The mind can reach or fly to things and places seen or heard and because of its vast reaches, it is considered subtler than the food and the air sheath.

Intellectual Sheath : While the mind is doubting the element of thought, the intellect is the determining factor in each one of us. The intellect controls and guide the automatic mind. Discrimination of thoughts and decision making takes place here and pass down to the more gross sheath. The intellect is subtler than the mind because it ventures into realms unheard and unseen. Realms not yet experienced are fields of its revelry and conquest.

The mind and the intellect together makes up the Subtle body.

Causal body : This is actually comprised of the bliss sheath. This is the subtlest of the sheaths, is made up of ignorance(nonapprehension) that exists in our deep sleep state of consciousness. It is considered blissful because whatever be the condition of our waking consciousness, when once we fall asleep, whether rich or poor, successful or disappointed, healthy or sick, young or old, we experience undisturbed peace and bliss. It is a state of pure nonapprehension, that is the absence of everything.. This sheath is called the causal body.

Atman the life center, the subtlest of all is the core of this five sheath structure. All this together constitute the spirituo- physical entity that plays as you and me. Consciousness exhibited by the organism depends upon the conditions of its mental and intellectual sheaths.

Stones have no awareness in them as mind and intellect is absent in them. Plants have a rudimentary mind and intellect and hence they live and grow and possess some awareness. Animals are more developed and hence they are more aware then plants. The supreme development has reached human being. The human being is different and superior to animals only through the capacity to integrate and develop, through conscious effort, both his mind and intellect. Once integrated the vascillating mind comes under full control of the discriminating intellect.

The purer the mind and intellect, the brighter are the beams of consciousness that radiate from the individual. When the mind gets thus chastened , the clarity and brilliance of that individual’s intellect also come about, thus each serves each other. The cultivation of this control leads to the development of a fuller personality,and this marks the beginning of meditation. To realize pure Awareness , which is the Atman or the life center should be the goal in life.‘Brahmavit Brahmaiva Bhavati” The knower of the Absolute becomes the Absolute – Upanishad