Journey Into the Causal Body
15.1 Bhagavān says,
'It is said that there is an imperishable Banyan tree whose roots are on the outside; leaves and branches are under the earth.
The leaves are said to be the Vedic hymns. He who knows this tree knows the Vedas.'
15.2 The branches of this tree extend below and above the earth, nourished
by the three human attributes, guṇas. Its buds are the sense objects.
This tree also has roots going down and these are bound to the resultant actions of humans.
Krishna refers to the banyan tree as the causal body. This is a continuation of the previous chapter. Chapters 14 to 17 are interconnected. They are connected discourses. In Chapter 14, Guṇatrya Vibhāga Yoga, Yoga of the Division of the Three Guṇas (attributes), Krishna spoke about the first four layers of our being. In this chapter, Puruṣottama Yoga, Yoga of the Supreme Self, He refers to the fifth layer.
Seven energy layers surround us. I talk about this in great detail in the Nithyananda Spurana Program, Life Bliss Level 2. In this four-day course, I take participants through the experience that they will face at the time of death. At this time, the spirit traverses seven layers of energy that surround it before it leaves the mind-body entity. The seven layers are: physical, prāṇic, mental, subtle, causal, cosmic and nirvāṇic layers.
The first layer is our physical body, the body with flesh and bones. Other layers are components of our being. The totality of the entire seven layers is our mind-body-spirit system. The second layer is the prāṇic body, the body that controls air movements inside our physical body. It controls prāṇa, apāna, udhāna, vidhāna and samāna (various air movements inside the body).
In the previous chapter, Krishna explained that this layer is filled with desires. He further explained how we create contradicting desires and suffer. Self-contradicting desires leave us in rajas (restlessness). They make us suffer and force us into tamas (inactivity or depression).
The fifth layer is the causal body. Krishna refers to it as ūrdhvamūlam adhaḥśākham where all saṃskāras, our embedded memories*,* are stored in seed form.
Everyday we enter the causal body in deep sleep. We take saṃskāras out from this layer and create the world.
In this chapter Krishna reveals the secrets of this layer. In the previous chapter, Krishna explained how to use the power of desire energy. Desire is also energy. That energy is abused by creating self-contradicting desires. Self-contradicting desires put us into restlessness. After that, if we don't correct ourselves, we fall into depression. He gave techniques to clear self-contradicting desires.
Few desires are our own. These are desires born out of our vāsanās, the mindset that we carry over from previous births. These are also referred to as prārabdha karmas, karma we are born into this body with. These desires carry their own energy for fulfillment, as they are the basic needs and purpose with which we are born.
The Universe blesses us with the power to meet all our real needs. As Mahavira, the founder of the Jain religion says, when we are born on this planet we are sent with all that we need. However, once here we accumulate other desires. These desires are the wants that we borrow from others by comparing, copying and envying others.
Ramana Maharshi says, 'This Universe can fulfill the needs of all its inhabitants; but it cannot fulfill the wants of even a single person.' How true!
When desires are borrowed, when they are based on coveting other people's belongings, there will be a serious contradiction between our wants and needs. Fulfillment of our needs gives happiness, true joy. That is why a poor man eats his simple meal of roti and dal (bread and curry) with such gusto.
Chasing wants, borrowed desires, causes sorrow. Have you ever seen a rich man eat with true happiness? His accumulated wealth has given him ulcers, diabetes, heart problems and many other problems so that he needs to have a designer diet. He needs personal trainers and dieticians to keep him fit and healthy.
Borrowed desires are caused by samskaras, deeply embedded memories of experiences of what we have perceived through our senses. Samskaras are stored in our unconscious mind layer. Over ninety percent of what we perceive through our senses is stored in the unconscious. Our mind finds it difficult to cope with even these ten percent of sensory inputs that are fed into its conscious realm. Imagine what would happen if it were one hundred percent!
Embedded memories, samskaras, drive our actions. The Brihadaranya Upanishad says, 'We are our desires. Desires shape our will. Our will shapes our actions. Actions make us what we are.'
We do not realize that these desires are not the true desires that carry energy to be fulfilled, yet for the most part our samskaras define us.
Now Krishna moves on to the next layer, where samskaras are stored in the seed form. Even if we move beyond the three layers of desire, restlessness and depression, these samskaras in seed form, bija samskara, need to be cleared.
Krishna speaks of techniques to destroy these samskaras. These may not express themselves in us right now. Yet if they are allowed to be there in seed form, at one time or another, they will exploit us.
In an office, some files are on the table, some are in the archives, while others are in the safety vault. The previous three layers are like the office table and archived material. This Causal layer is the office safety vault. The next two layers are the external vaults. In the previous chapter, Krishna explained techniques to clear the table. Now He gives techniques to empty the office safety vault.
Krishna says, 'The roots of the tree are on the outside; the branches are inside.' From the causal body, if the roots are taken to be outside, it should be in the earlier three layers ending up in the physical body. In a tree, the roots feed nutrients to the tree. The tree takes water and minerals through roots. The roots decide the condition and growth of a tree. That is why Krishna says the roots of the tree are in the physical body. The tree of samskara is watered by the five senses of the physical body and our actions. The samskaras in seed form in the causal body are formed and watered by the five senses of the physical body.
Krishna further says that the leaves are the Vedic hymns and one who knows the tree is knower of the Vedas. He says samskaras are the Vedic hymns, the mantras. Mantras are defined as manasasya sthiraha iti mantraha, whatever controls or stabilizes the mind, or man thrayate iti mantraha, whatever paves the road of life of man.
Words that are settled in our inner selves pave our road. Words expressed or coming out when we are alone, are the samskaras printed in the causal body. Our lives move behind them.
Words are double-edged swords. Whatever words we use to offend others settle in our inner self. They emerge whenever they find a chance to push out of our inner self. No man is intelligent enough to use harsher words for outside and smoother words inside. It is an unconscious action. That is why, in ancient Hindu society, usage of harsh words was controlled by various customs.
Our mind is constantly occupied in inner chatter. Eventually we express part of this chatter in words. Part
of it we suppress for fear of societal repercussions. We do not express what we fear would hurt others or be unacceptable to others. All these words settle deep inside our manipuraka chakra, the navel chakra, which is the seat of words.
There are words we feel comfortable using based on our position relative to the listener. We may say harsh things to subordinates, spouses, children and others whom we think we control. We dare not dream of saying those words to superiors and strangers. Words that are harsh, whether expressed externally or internally, settle down within us. What goes out also goes in. These settle within our manipuraka chakra. Both expressed and unexpressed words build our bank of samskaras.
I have mentioned before about the book, Hidden Messages from Water. In it the Japanese scientist Masuro Emoto, talks about experiments with water. Emoto filled bottles with ordinary tap water. He placed labels on the bottles with words such as love, hate, fear, worry, trust, faith, surrender, children, enemies, Koran, Bible, etc. He spoke to each bottle several minutes a day on the subject written on the label. For example, he spoke of love and with love to the bottle with the 'love' label. To the bottle labeled 'fear', he spoke of fear and with fear. To the bottle labeled 'Koran', he spoke verses from the Holy Koran.
After a month or so, he froze the water in these bottles. He looked at these ice crystals through powerful microscopes. To his amazement, the crystals reflected what he spoke to that particular water sample.
Ice crystals from the water labeled 'love' shone brilliantly as if they were diamonds. Ones from the bottles labeled 'fear' looked ghostly and misshapen. Amazingly, the crystals from the bottle labeled 'Koran', to which he spoke from the Holy Koran, seemed to contain the image of the Holy Kaabaa shrine at Mecca.
Emoto then froze polluted industrial water and studied the crystals. As expected, these looked terrible. He invited Buddhist monks to direct their prayer energy to these bottles. When he analyzed the crystals of the energized water, these crystals looked like diamonds, exquisite and sparkling.
Emoto theorized that words and thoughts influence natural elements such as water. Our scriptures support his findings. There is an important corollary to his findings. The human body is nearly ninety percent water. Therefore, every word we speak affects us and affects others who listen to them or at whom they are directed. The same effect happens with thoughts.
Someone who knows how can influence other people through his thoughts and words, perhaps more effectively than through his actions. Even we do not know how our thoughts and words influence and affect other people; they may not be as focused and effective, but they will still affect others and us.
For those in business and corporate life, communication is the key to success. Communication is not about our facility with language. It is not about the accent we cultivate. It is not about how fluently we speak. Communication is expressing what we feel. If our feelings and thoughts are negative, however much we try to hide these, our words or body language reveal the inner feelings and motives.
Someone who practices and masters the art of using only positive words automatically develops positive thoughts. These two are interconnected. Sometimes it is difficult to develop positive thoughts about certain people and situations. However, if we constantly change the negative words that we use to express our feelings into positive ones, our attitude towards others changes.
In business, this leads to money. When practiced sincerely in personal relations, this brings happiness. The basis to this is simple. We cannot say a word without visualizing the object. The moment we say 'cow', our mind visualizes the animal that we call a cow. Try saying 'cow' while thinking about an elephant. If not impossible, it makes us uncomfortable.
Similarly, when we use negative adjectives to describe a person or situation, a picture crops up on our mental screen. With practice and awareness, we can erase that word before it surfaces with respect to that particular person and situation. As the word changes, our mental image changes.
In this area, we have good news as well as bad news. The good news is that at any time we can reorganize our causal body. The bad news is that we are now in hell.
A small story:
A woman telephoned her husband at his office. Her husband explained that he was too busy to talk. The wife said, 'It won't take long. I have one piece of good news and one bit of bad news.'
Her husband replied, 'Tell me the good news because the bad news can be handled later.'
She said, 'I have just discovered that the airbag in our car is working perfectly.'
The bad news was obviously that she had an accident; that is why the airbag in the car went into operation!
Every piece of good news has hidden bad news. So we have good news and bad news about the causal body.
Krishna further states that one who knows this tree is the knower of the Vedas. He says one who has the knowledge that samskaras, which constitute the causal body, are the result of the five senses, knows the Vedas or the knowledge of life's guiding force.
The water a tree receives through its roots mainly decides the condition of the tree. If good water and
manure are available, the tree flourishes. The leaves will be green. If poison is poured on it, the tree sheds its leaves and slowly dies.
This tree of samskaras, which is in the causal body, lives mainly due to the five senses. Ashvattha also means that which is transient, that which is not today as it was yesterday and that which will not be tomorrow as it is today. It refers to material life where nothing is what it seems. Everything is temporary; as Buddha says 'aniccha,' impermanent.
Life, as people say, is not unreal. If it were truly unreal, we would not be able to experience it. The fact that we experience material life and seem to enjoy it, even if temporarily, means it is real. It is unreal to the extent that whatever we experience is transient and impermanent.
Unreal does not mean nonexistent. If something is nonexistent, we cannot perceive it or experience it, even temporarily. Even a dream is real. When we say dreams are unreal, we deny that we experience dreams. People recollect some dreams vividly. How can dreams be unreal? It is a fact that we do not have self-awareness while dreaming.
Once we become aware, we wake up from the dream. It has never happened that a lion or a murderer chasing a person has caught that person in a dream. I have not come across reports of people being slain in such a manner based upon a dream sequence. It may happen in a movie, but not in real life. As soon as we are threatened, as soon as we become aware of ourselves, we wake up and the dream ends.
Dreams are not unreal in the sense that they are nonexistent; they are unreal to the extent that we are unaware. In the same manner, sages tell us that we are unaware even when we are awake. 'Jagrat, jagrat,' they say, 'wake up, wake up.' They do not ask us to wake up from sleep. They ask us to wake up from our unaware wakefulness into an aware wakefulness.
Ashvattha signifies this state of unawareness. To understand this unawareness produced by our senses and directed by our samskaras is to gain knowledge, the Veda. Krishna goes on to explain more about this state of unawareness.
Krishna says the roots go upwards as well as downwards. He says the leaves of the tree are decided by the tricks of the five senses and the resultant action of mankind. The roots are not only in the physical body, but also in the action. Krishna says the tree is deeply rooted because the action of the entire mankind is always result-oriented. It is always guided by greed and fear.
The ashvattha tree, the banyan tree, is like a human body. Its roots, like in a human being, are above, like our hair. The hair is said to be a channel to draw in cosmic energy. Metaphorically Samson's hair represented this energy and when it was cut, he lost his power. Our
limbs, hands and legs are like branches of the banyan tree. The human system is truly upside down!
Krishna gives a beautiful tip to clear out the samskaras. If we are not guided by greed and fear, if our actions are not result-oriented, no samskaras will be created. If you serve selflessly at least half an hour a day, it will do you a lot of good.
While doing service, don't plan anything. Don't even plan to have a group of volunteers do the service. Just do any work that you can do. It may seem silly and a waste of time. But at a later date, this time alone will be felt as purposeful. If your service is fueled by greed or fear, you may end up in a mess and a trouble to others, too.
There are three interlinked elements in the karmic cycle. Vasanas are the mental attitudes, the essence that the human spirit carries with it as it moves from body to body. Imagine for a moment that we are all bubbles on a
white space. Let us imagine that these bubbles are circles drawn with a colored pen on a white paper. The colored circumferential lines are our mind bodies, the boundary.
The space inside the circles, or the bubbles, is the same as the white space that is outside. This white space is energy. Outside it is the cosmic energy; inside it is our life energy.
When we die, the colored lines are erased. The energy inside becomes one with the energy outside. Matter perishes into energy. This is death. It is the shift from one state to another.
One small difference exists though. Each individual white space is slightly colored by its vasana, its mindset. When the spirit goes into the cosmic space, it remains separated from the cosmic space by this shade or essence of vasana; the spirit then seeks a mind-body to suit the particular mindset with which it left the previous body. This is how rebirths are determined.
Vasana is like a seed. It is subtle. If we have insight, we can see the potential plant inside a seed. In fact, British scientists were shocked when they photographed a rose plant without flowers and found that the photograph contained impressions of flowers yet to come!
There is no vasana in an enlightened person. Consequently, when he leaves the mind-body system at death he fully merges into the cosmic energy without any separation. Thus, he has no rebirth.
For the rest of humanity, on the other hand, vasanas carry over into a new body. This mindset creates the samskaras as the new mind-body develops. Experiences of the new mind-body allow carried-over vasanas to bloom into samskaras. If vasana is a seed, samskara is a plant. Finally, samskaras drive us into action. This action is karma. Karma is the fully-grown tree born out of the seed of vasana, which first grew into the plant of samskara. So-called bija karmas, karmic seeds, are our vasanas.
To understand, imagine that a woman sees a pair of shoes in a store window while shopping in a mall. At first, it may be a curious glance. However, if she is attracted to them, she looks a few more times. A seed is sown in her mind to possess that pair of shoes. That is vasana, the seed.
After a few looks, her mind tells her how elegant she will look in those shoes and how she will be a hit at next weekend's party. A picture forms in her mind. She has now developed a strong desire. This is the samskara working. The plant has grown from the seed.
Finally, she buys the shoes. She is convinced she cannot do without them. This is action; this is karma, the tree.
The first week after the party, she wears the shoes on all occasions. The next two weeks the attraction wears off and she wears them less often. Soon, the shoes are discarded under the stairs, not to be looked at again. Then she sees another pair of shoes!
The samskara cycle and karmic cycle go on and on. As long as the desires are unfulfilled, they reappear. The samskaras remain to reappear again. If all we can afford is one pair of shoes, our desire will be fulfilled with one pair; that will be our mindset. Our samskaras for shoes will not bother us. We enjoy what we get. We do not hanker after the getting, without ever enjoying it fully.
This is why the business tycoons are never satisfied no matter much they achieve. How big is big? Business theory says that which does not grow will shrink and die. Therefore, there is this constant fight to expand. As long as the business objective is selfish, be it of benefit to the owner or shareholders, final satisfaction in terms of achievement is elusive. The greed to acquire and build generates attitudes and behavior that are selfish and harmful to others. That is why corporations have earned notoriety in terms of disregard for public welfare and environment.
If corporate goals were to become more open, inclusive and of greater benefit to society and the world, corporate samskaras would dissolve just as selflessness benefits an individual in dissolving samskaras!
Selfish desires can never be fulfilled. They have no purpose in terms of selfless service. Selfish desires are food to our ego and they serve no universal cause.
A small story:
The boy scouts in a school were required to do one social service daily and report it to their
scoutmaster. Three boys jointly said that they helped an elderly lady cross the street. The master was not able to understand. 'Helping an old lady cross the road is a good service, but it does not require three boys. One is sufficient. Why three of you?'
The master was puzzled. The boys said, 'No sir, it was a job for three of us, because the old lady did not want to cross the road. We had to carry her!'
Systemized service often leads to such a situation. So don't plan anything. Just do service anywhere. This service will infuse enormous power into your being. For at least half an hour a day do something selfless. I tell my devotees to contribute service to the mission at least half an hour a day. This service is meditation. It inculcates the spirit of collective consciousness and lays the path to realizing the divinity underlying the service.
Bhagavan says, 'karmanu bhandhini manushyaloke.' Entire mankind swings around result-oriented action. So, at least in this service, don't think of dollars or fame. Don't plan to impress. Don't plan to make your presence felt. Do the work for the work itself.
Even when we do so-called philanthropic or charitable work, we must be careful not to bind ourselves to the results of our actions. People ask, 'What is the point in meditation when the rest of the world suffers?' If we can genuinely feel the suffering of humanity and wish to do work to alleviate that suffering out of compassion, that is good. However, we must have the understanding of this extended Consciousness to feel this compassion.
Mostly we do charitable work based on notions of earning brownie points that will do us good in our afterlife, whether we believe in rebirth or not. Or we would like to see ourselves in the media and feel good. It fulfills our need for attention either in this world or in another world after death.
There is no concept of sin or merit on the spiritual path. No one, neither a Chitragupta nor a Saint Peter stands at the pearly gates enquiring whether you have done your recommended dose of charity work down below.
When you work, whether it is charitable as you and society define it, or commercial and mercenary, as long you do it with no expectation of results, your actions will be selfless. These actions are not motivated by fear and greed. They will not result in the hangover of samskaras.
This may seem difficult for the intellect to accept. When individuals and corporations embark to do good, philanthropic activities, they measure the success of their input, whether in terms of money or effort, by what has been achieved. Objectives need to be well defined, budgets need to be created, results need to be analyzed and the course must be corrected.
Yet, there is a way in which the process is defined and not the results. When a defined process is followed,
results naturally follow. If we follow the right path, we reach the right destination. It takes courage to believe and implement this. It takes courage to say that we will work without expecting rewards. It takes a truly confident person to accept that what is important is 'doership' and not 'ownership' and that status is not as important as the state of doing.
If we are able to accept this, we find a true liberation within ourselves. A load will be lifted from our shoulders. The burden of constantly looking over our shoulders to peep into the future will be gone. This is a contradiction in terms, driving forward by looking into the rearview mirror. However, we look at past results to define what needs to be done for the future. This so-called course correction is of no value since conditions of the future are different from what prevailed in the past.
What needs to be done is to focus on the present, to define a path and a process and ensure that the process is followed. If this is done with awareness, results will follow.