How to go through the journey of Four Bodies – Part 1
It is possible that people don’t know about this journey at all and that all the bodies have their own qualities and nature. To awaken the bodies means to enter them. Soon as the first body is purified you enter the next body. Bodies wake up systematically in a sequence, they are joined together. All bodies get over one by one, and then they all collapse.
- Isthool Sharir
First is the isthool sharir (gross body), it will be awakened by hatha yoga – pranayama and yoga. A full-forced hatha yoga will get you entry to the first body. Second body is the bhava sharir, it is awakened by mantra yoga. The day your wakefulness towards the mantra is so absolute that it is mastered, you’ll enter the second body. The third body is sookshma sharir, one cannot enter this body without the bhakti yoga or devotion, when you live the full dimension of devotion with the remembrance of the supreme, filling up the supreme in each breath, then the whole culmination of devotion rises in you and you enter the third body. The Fourth body is manas sharir, it is awakened with raj yoga. It is a way of being a witness sakshi.
Work has to be done on the First body because of the way it is now, it needs to be made free from lethargy. Sleep and eating will be reduced as a result. If one is fond of too much eating, then he is below the first body, which is an animal body. You are roaming with the reservoir of sleeping energy, you have become dense and are not transparent. With the Hatha Yoga, whole of hidden energy will burst out and you’ll be out of the gravity, denseness will be gone and fluidity will be there, in this fluidity will occur mantra yoga.
Dynamic, Kundalini and Nadabrahma meditations come under hatha yoga, if these meditations done 4-6-8 months vigorously or if for a year or two, one can enter the first body and for the first time will experience the inner self not the outwardly self.
- Bhava Sharir
Everyone has to go through the Mantra yoga, today too there is a lot of importance of the mantra. Chant anything – Ram or Om or Om Namah Shivaye or Om Osho Namaye or Osho or your own name, but chant with such concentration, wakefulness and understanding that you become the mantra yourself. Chanting om mantra is the best because Om is a complete word, this word is rounded and doesn’t have corners and doesn’t prick. Ram is also good (not the Dashratha’s Ram) Practicing mantra will let you have control over the speech, you’ll understand the mystery of your speech.
- Sookshma Sharir
Third body is awakened with devotion or Bhakti Yoga, this phase will definitely arrive, and you will become a Meera. Devotion is the result of pure sentiments. Devotion makes you the Supreme’s person, Supreme will accept you. If you have not lived the devotion, you cannot practice the witnessing sakshi. If the devotion is pure, witness will occur. The thoughts will be pure in witnessing.
- Manas Sharir
Fourth body is awakened with raj yoga. In the raj yoga, you have to be a witness every moment, witness to every happening, there is nothing else here except for witnessing and it’ll happen on its own. Witnessing doesn’t occur to anyone because the previous three levels are bad and the unconscious catches you so quickly that you cannot become witness to thoughts, emotions or anything. If all three levels of yours are not awakened, how will you go for the journey to the fourth one? You will turn schizophrenic, you’ll fall sick, whoever tries practice for the fourth or the fifth’s body directly will become neurotic.
For the fifth body, you don’t have to do anything, it becomes the body of the supreme, the body of the soul atmik. If this journey starts, there is no other journey left after this because now you are not there. You are only four bodies, in the fifth one you are finished, the ego completely departs.
You have to go through the four bodies, the ego will be crystallized only with this sequential journey. The practice has to start from the first body, where you are now.
After Hatha Yoga, the mantra will come to you. It will be revealed to you but the most difficult is to enter the first body, people remain standing out of it.
If the hatha yoga is completed you’ll definitely enter the mantra yoga because hatha yoga will throw you into the mantra yoga. When mantra awakens, there will occur such a devotion within you that you’ll want to worship pebbles and stones, will want to touch everyone’s feet. The ego that satisfies will become the nature of the soul, it will dissolve into the witness. People begin wakefulness hosh from here in the fourth body.
If any delusion has set in about your practice then reverse the practice, go back to the first step, complete it to move to the next bodies. I’m pointing to all the friends if the practice has not been fruitful then there is a mistake, and the mistake is that the beginning has not been proper. Everyone has to check within – who needs to start with what body and then start it, i have told the Sutras and the way is this. It is not possible that the practice does not fructify when one has walked through the sequence, it will, it is my guaranty.
How to know what body we are in? – Part 2
It is the quality and the nature of the bodies – If you have come back into the first body, there is lethargy. As it purifies, lethargy will be reduced, sleep and hunger will go down. If you are in the second body, which is a body of mind, here is the distortion of the sentiments, you know it, the crooked thoughts like – killing someone, robbing someone, having sly intentions. Distorted sentiments means to ‘take away than to give’. If this distortion is persistent then your second body has not been purified. Only mantra can purify it. Now you fall back and will practice more for the first body to go to the second body, going up and down like this will go on. When you’ll be crystallized in the first one then only you’ll be free from it, and then you won’t have to come back to it.
Once free from the second body you won’t need the Mantra practice again, free from third body, devotion will be over, no need of any devotional sentiment. In fourth the witnessing will take birth and in the fifth, the soul will be born in you.
Hatha yoga will throw away all the lethargy because lethargy and religion have got nothing do with each other, a lethargic person cannot be on a religious journey. Then mind is very fickle, mind carries a lot of distortions, which goes away with the mantra yoga because all the fickleness will be drunk by the mantra. Thoughts will be stopped, they all will be collected and absorbed in the mantra. And you will have full control over your speech.
All this will go on naturally, nature works up till the fourth body. Sometimes accidentally too people reach the fourth body, after meditation for four days if the journey has been over for the last bodies. The journey of the last life carries only up till fourth body. The fifth body has no such play of the last birth, its practice will only be in the present life. If in this life all your four bodies are purified, if the Raj Yoga has fructified, the old journey will be added and continued in this life. If its the journey of the fifth body then this birth will be the last one, you won’t take a birth again. If there still a journey, it will be in an esoteric way, where there is no need to take up a body.
People become deities Devatas, and live on their deity’s plane Dev yoni. Their journey goes on by helping many people and they are full of compassion. For all of us also there is continued support from some or the other esoteric plane, we cannot do it alone.
On the journey for the fifth body, up till fourth the nature will create obstacles. After fifth all obstacles will be removed because now you have been caught by some esoteric support. Now whatever happens here you won’t be scared, wherever you fall, you’ll rise. This is the state in the fifth body.
After this nothing can be talked about because there are many esoteric talks.
Our understanding cannot go beyond fourth body, the Manas Sharir. There are reasons for that, it is most difficult that someone leaves the first platform, generally the whole life is spent and gets over at the very first platform. There is no progress beyond the gross body. If one is not a practitioner, the understanding to go beyond the gross body won’t be born in him. In the practice we understand the gross body and enter into it. The difference between a practice and non-practice is that when there is any pain one experiences the other body otherwise not, but a practitioner experiences another body without any pain or problem arising.
What is the crisis of the questioner’s here is crisis of everyone, actually the journey to the fourth body remains as it is. it is not that you have gone above any of the bodies, these are four levels of only one body, like a building has four floors. And you have believed the fourth floor to be the last one, but there is a journey beyond it. If any practitioner returns in the practice means he hasn’t gone beyond the fourth body.
First he needs to accept that he goes to the fourth floor and its roots are in the first floor because the building is one, so he goes to the fourth floor and comes back to the first one. This works on the grace, when you are on the first, you get the grace of second and so on, when on fourth you get grace of fifth, when the practitioner cannot understand this and thinks he has reached and there is no further destination. The day this is felt he will fall down because the journey is still on.
If feels there is nothing left to cover and this is fourth and the last destination, so you’ll have to come down from the fourth because you are in the momentum still.
Question : Why does the energy move in circles?
Baba: The manner of practice is that the steps below have to be broken, if you have lived the first body properly, it should be finished, because you have lived it, used it and now it got captivated (taken over) by the next body, then you have lived the second and second got captivated by the third and so on, when this happens then what remains to go back to, in circles? If you are going round in circles it means that you are still left with all four bodies, you go from first to fourth and from fourth to first, your energy is moving in circles otherwise the energy does not move like this.
There is a lack of wakefulness, dedication and faith, there is a lack of practice. One has to look at the first body in a complete wakefulness. Journey from the first to fourth body happens naturally also. But man falls off only when he has not wound up all the bodies. When you are stable in the fifth all these bodies will be wrapped up.
In five bodies there are actually only four, fifth is something else, it is a union of these four. In the fifth body the practitioner is steady, he develops compassion, amiability, love and many other qualities will take birth. Why will he go down now? He will go on to compassion. He will be full of love for the entire cosmos, from every child to ant to mountains. Now the course of his energy will be in a different flow.
Up till fourth body, no one has a center, you are falling rising and falling. When all four bodies rise and dissolve into the fifth body then for the first one finds a center. Then you are crystallized in yourself, and there you cannot experience yourself as a person, no matter how hard the world tries you don’t perceive yourself to be a person because there is no notion to be a person is left anymore. There is only one notion, the notion of the totality. You become the whole samashti, not a person. Then there are journeys of the whole, there is a play of the cosmos after the fifth body – the cosmic body brahma kaya and then the nothingness shunyata.
The role of ego ahankaar in the practice – Part 3
This is the story of many practitioners. If this journey is not carried out in a well-organized way, being on fourth body they feel as if they have reached the sixth or fifth, now they come down, go up and then come down, this irony remains with such practitioners.
There is a huge role of ego (ahankaar) here, an amazing role. A worldly person doesn’t have such a strong ego, really a worldly person has no ego at all. The person who hasn’t touched the fourth body, ego hasn’t touched him only. Your ego lives in many pieces in the worldly life, there is neither ego nor determination in the world. This kind of ego is ready to bow down anywhere, ready to compromise anywhere, anyone can lure your ego for a little money. Is this called an ego? This is no ego, no one is an egoist here and I’ll excuse a worldly person for it. Position, wealth etc. is a cheap ego.
A real egoist is a saint, why is he an egoist, because there can be no journey without an ego. What happens with a saint is the ego begins to experience contentment, because it starts to become integrated. A worldly person’s ego is scanty and scattered. Try and understand what I’m saying here, the ego for the first time births in a saint.
Ego is not a bad thing, it is the ego only that we need to unify, integrate.
In the world, the one who is earning wealth, one in politics, one for a designation, all are trying to crystallize in the ego, get integrated in it, but even after a lot of efforts this doesn’t happen to the people in the worldly quests, ego doesn’t get crystallized, it happens to a very few men but then a derangement starts to set in. Don’t understand it wrongly.
Ego gets crystallized in a practitioner, the journey is not possible without the ego. It is only the ego that does the journey, I practice, and I want to know the supreme, here who is this ‘I’, who wants to know the supreme, wants to gain the supreme?
If you have ever possessed anything, then that only thing is the ego, and it is shallow, so you are suffering its pain because when ego splits, it cannot get the full fun of itself in the pieces. It is in pieces, broken, ready to bow, ready to be sold, ready to diminish, this kind of ego does not get contented.
A saint’s ago is amazingly contented and what is this contentment about? When a saint with his continuous practice reaches the fifth body, internally he starts to feel – ‘I’m a god, I’m everything”. Unless the ego can say this that ‘it is a god’, it cannot be contented. Really it has been a big play (leela), been a big journey for the ego – in the journey of the four bodies, you have given away the first body then second and when given away the fourth body a little bit, you get the fifth body in the form of ego as ‘self’ asmitaa.
But there is a tough wall in between the fourth and the fifth body. It is a wall of the ego itself. From here the dissolution will begin. The energy works up till here, energy works only as far as there is no contentment of the ego. Ego vanishes as the gap of the energy stops – this rise and fall of the energy, from first to fourth body and reverse, this is how the journey of the ego goes, all the superficial play of the ego, it keeps producing the energy in order to satisfy itself.
The integration occurs in the fifth body. In the fifth body the ego has to be crystallized, consolidate. The practitioner feels that he has reached because it is the ego that has to reach, the ego feels the contentment. In the beginning of the fifth body, there is an amazing contentment, which can be its barrier too. The journey halts for many practitioners, it takes many lifetimes for further journey. It requires a grace of Guru and the second important thing that it requires is ‘understanding’.
Now there is no game of the energy in you, rise and fall of the energy becomes a kiddish stuff, now there is nothing except for dying. When anything arrives at its full destiny it begins to be erased. This is the law of this universe; either you are into the process of building up or fading away, when the building process is over, you get into the process of fading away.
If you live with utter wakefulness, the ego builds up as far it can, will reach the role it can. There the ego experiences that it needs nothing, as if it is contented, it is out of everything but it itself is sitting still.
Here the practitioner needs to be very cautious because his ego is crystallized and others have shallow egos, others will be attracted, they will love to hear from the practitioner because they get some contentment out of people with crystallized ego, 99% do not understand this and their marketing starts off, they get into talking out. They fail to break the wall between the fourth and the fifth body. This wall is so intense that breaking is almost a death. The death of ego feels like you are going on committing suicide. The ego has to die and it has been the ego that has bought you up till here, it has made you integrated, reached you a state. The journey now has bought you as far as it could. Now after this, it is the ego that has to disappear. It can disappear.
Now the practitioner has to get into seclusion, talk to no one, no second person should know, it’s a very secret affair. If such a state has built up for someone, he should get away from the people, people will catch you, will flatter you, will get you trapped and can bring you down into the hell. This is the game of nature, it is such a beautiful state and there is a trap here too. Nature traps you in a very sweet way, it will get you to be worshiped and you feel that you have arrived. All is the game of the ego, you have crystallized it so much with the practice that you begin to in-cash it. Here the practitioner will fall, rise and fall again, will experience hell and heaven 2-4 times in a day, but the ego is crystallized enough that even after falling, it won’t stay there, he’ll rise and come back to the same place.
In a saint the same ego gets intensified, gets crystallized and the same ego when erased within you, becomes the soul. The ego departs, melts and the soul will manifest. So long you take the juice out of the ego, the soul keeps sleeping in it. It’s not anything different, believe ego is a sleeping soul, not any other thing. That’s why it has so much power in it. When it starts to crystallize, the man gets specific vibrations around him, the aura abhamandal changes. The ego crystallizes for a worldly man too, but there remains a demand in a worldly man’s ego, so that ego is impotent. But an abstainer sanyasi is an ultimate egoist, it sparkles in their eyes and it should sparkle because their ego has crystallized so much that no one can defer from what they say.
Stronger the practice more the rise in intensity, this intensity has its own beauty. If there is no intensity, there will be no jump, when anything that comes into its completeness, starts to erase. This is natural.
Those who are experiencing rise and fall in the practice, they need to be very watchful. If they collect even four followers for themselves, the followers can spoil the whole life-work for a practitioner. The soul is nourishing like being in the womb. You have to walk very carefully in the ego, like a pregnant woman walks. You need to be alert completely towards yourself, towards your ‘I’. Now your ‘I’ is not an ordinary ‘I”, it is very strong, and you should not have any association with it. Whenever ‘I’ appears you must stand away from it completely, do not take juice out of it and here the ‘I’ is most juicy, because in journeys of four bodies in many lifetimes it has turned absolute now, after millions of years. This can be a fortune and misfortune both.
Once the practitioner crosses the 5th body, he is not there anymore, there is only the soul and the soul gets on to the journey to supreme, it fades away and dissolves into the supreme. Here, there is a thick wall of void shunaya, not material but an incredible wall.
-Baba Purnanand Bharati
Translation from a Hindi Discourse on Baba’s Telegram group
Sat Sangha Salon 