Sadhana Panchakam, Instruction 23

Translation and Commentary by Jayaram V

3.7 Discard the thought, “I am the body”

The thought that “I am Brahman” and “I am not the body” are interlinked. Both thoughts are necessary to overcome the ego-sense and attachment to name and form and become established in the self. As the Bhagavadgita (2.13) states, you are a dweller of the body (dehi) not the body itself. When the soul departs from the body, it takes along with it all the divinities who reside in its organs and travels to the next world, leaving the body behind.

Thus, for the self, the body is like a cloth, which it wears in each life at the time of birth and discards at the time of death. When the self is present in the body, it is Shiva (the breathing one). When it departs from it, it becomes shava (the one without the breath). As Ashtavakra suggested, realizing that he is neither the body nor the body is his, the high-souled one witnesses his own body as if it were another’s and remains undisturbed by praise of blame.

The self is immutable, eternal and indestructible. It is immune to all such modifications to which the body is subject such as birth and death, aging and sickness. Since it is complete, indivisible and unchanging, it cannot be cleaved by any means nor does it hurt or harm anything. Always the same, untouched and unstainable, it neither participates in any actions of the organs in the body nor causes them to perform any actions nor undergoes any changes due their activities or modifications. Unlike the body, it was never nonexistent and will never be nonexistent. For a spiritual student, these distinctions between the body and the self are important to remember to stabilize the mind in the self and see the body as a vehicle or support rather than the self.

The notion that you are not the body but pure consciousness is very helpful to practice contemplation (nidhidhyasana) upon the self. Paying mindful attention to your mind and body, you can establish yourself in the witness consciousness and change your habitual thoughts and your awareness of yourself. It is also helpful in cultivating detachment, patience and endurance. As you see the body as distinct and different from you, you develop mindfulness and see the modifications in your body as happening outside you rather than to you. Thereby, you do not react to them but view them with stoical indifference. If you feel anger, fear, revulsion or annoyance, you do not attribute those feelings to you but to your physical self, and allow them to arise and subside on their own, accepting them as the natural functions of your mind and body. You will not breathe fire into them and prolong them with your involvement and identification.

When the thought that you are not the body but the self grows stronger, you also see others in the same manner. You treat them equally, with sameness and equanimity, as pure souls or Brahman himself, ignoring their appearance and physical qualities. The new awareness will also help you see the self in all and ignore their apparent diversity and distinction. The body is a formation, an outer sheath, which is meant to keep the embodied souls bound to Nature and its modifications. Thus, it is a prison, in which the soul is held as captive. Everything you do out of attachment to your body prolongs your suffering and your sentence upon earth. When you are established in the self, you are free even when you are in the body, but when you are in the body you are not free even though you are in essence the self. When you realize this distinction, you strengthen your resolve to cultivate oneness with the self and become free.

Your identification with the body and your attachment to it manifest in your thinking and actions in numerous ways. The impurities and the resultant suffering are not confined to the mere physical body, but extend to all the five sheaths (kosas) in the body namely the food body (annamaya), the breath body (pranamaya), the mind body (manomaya), the intelligence body (vijnanamaya) and the bliss body (anandamaya). The ego-tattva (aham) imposes itself upon them all as their overlord and all the tattvas that are distributed in them in their gross and subtle forms. This superimposition is known as adhyasa. It is responsible for the delusion that your physical-self consisting of the mind and body is the real self rather than the true-self which is hidden in them.

The superimposition is an obstacle to knowing the truth of yourself. Because of that, you cannot see yourself as Brahman but as a limited being who is subject to birth and death, sickness and aging. Deluded by its influence, you identify yourself with all the modifications in you, assuming as if they are all happening to you rather to your mind and body or their tattvas. This identification makes separation from your not-self or false-self difficult and painful, apart from subjecting you to modifications and afflictions.

Thus, when sickness arises in your gross physical body, you think that you are sick. When happiness or sorrow arises in your mental body, you assume that you happy or sorrowful. When there is a depletion of prana in your breath body, you feel that you are tired and weak. By examining these modifications in each of the five sheaths during the nidhidhyasana and thinking that they are happening in the respective spheres of the body rather than to you, you can cultivate detachment and indifference. This process is known as panchakosa prakriya.

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