Philosophy Of Patanjali

Before we enter Yoga Sutra 41, let us understand what Five Bodies are.

THE yoga system of Patanjali is not a philosophical system. It is empirical. It is a tool to work with. But still it has a philosophy. That too is just to give an intellectual understanding where you are moving, what you are seeking. The philosophy is arbitrary, utilitarian, just to give a comprehensive picture of the territory you are going to discover; but the philosophy has to be understood.

The first thing about the philosophy of Patanjali. He divides human personality into five seeds, five bodies. He says you don’t have one body; you have layers upon layers of bodies; and they are five. The first body he calls annamaya kosha – the food body, the earth body, which is made of earth and is constantly to be nourished by food. Food comes from earth. If you stop taking food, your annamaya kosha will wither away. So one has to be very alert about what one is eating because that makes you and it will affect you in millions of ways, because sooner or later your food is not just food. It becomes blood, your bones, your very marrow. It circulates in your being and goes on affecting you. So the purity of food creates a pure annamaya kosha, the pure food body.

And if the first body is pure, light, not heavy, then it is easy to enter into the second body; otherwise it will be difficult – you will be loaded. Have you ever watched when you have eaten too much and heavy foods? Immediately you start feeling a sort of sleep, a sort of lethargy. You would like to go to sleep; awareness immediately starts disappearing.

When the first body is loaded it is difficult to create great awareness. Hence fasting became so important in all the religions. But fasting is a science and one should not fool around with it.

Just the other night one sannyasin came and she told me that she has been fasting and now her whole body, her whole being, is disturbed – tremendously disturbed. Now the stomach is not functioning well. And when the stomach is not functioning well, everything is weakened, the vitality is lost, and you cannot be alive. You become more and more insensitive and dead.

But fasting is important. It should be done very carefully; one should understand the functioning of the annamaya kosha – only then. And it should be done under proper guidance – the guidance of one who has moved through all the phases of his annamaya kosha. Not only that – one who has gone beyond it and who can look at the annamaya kosha as a witness. Otherwise fasting can be dangerous.

Then just the right amount of food and the right quality of food has to be practiced; fasting is not needed.

But this is important because this is your first body and, more or less, people cling to their first body; they never move to the second. Millions of people are not even aware that they have a second body, a deeper body, hidden behind the first sheath. The first covering, is very gross.

The second body Patanjali calls pranamaya kosha – energy body, electric body. The second consists of electric fields. That’s what acupuncture is all about. This second body is more subtle than the first, and people who start moving from the first body to the second become fields of energy, tremendously attractive, magnetic, hypnotic. If you go near them, you will feel vitalized, charged.

If you go near a man who lives only in his food body, you will be depleted – he will suck you. Many times you come across people and you feel that they suck you. After they have left, you feel depleted, dissipated, as if somebody has exploited your energy. The first body is a sucker, and the first body is very gross. So if you live too much with the first – body-oriented people, you will feel always burdened, tense, bored, sleepy, with no energy, always at the point of the lowest rung of your energy; and you will not have any amount of energy which can be used for higher growth.

This type, the first type, the annamaya-kosha-oriented person lives for food. He eats and eats and eats, and that’s his whole life. He remains in a way childish. The first thing that a child does in the world is to suck air, and then to suck milk. The first thing the child has to do in the world is to help the food body, and if a person remains food addicted, he remains childish. His growth suffers.

The second body, pranamaya kosha, gives you a new freedom, gives you more space.

The second body is bigger than the first; it is not confined to your physical body. It is inside the physical body and it is outside the physical body. It surrounds you like a subtle climate, an aura of energy. Now in Soviet Russia they have discovered that photographs can be taken of the energy body. They call it bioplasma, but it exactly means prana. The energy, elan vital, or what Taoists call chi. It can be photographed now. Now it has become almost scientific.

And one very great discovery has been made in Soviet Russia, and that is before your physical body suffers some illness, the energy body suffers it – six months before. Then it happens to the physical body. If you are going to have tuberculosis, or cancer, or any illness, your energy body starts showing indications of it six months before. No examination, no testing of the physical body shows anything, but the electric body starts showing it. First it appears in the pranamaya kosha, then it enters into the annamaya kosha. So now they say that it has become possible to treat a person before he has fallen ill. Once it becomes so, then there is no need for humanity to fall ill. Before you will become aware that you are ill, your photographs by Kirlian methods will show that some illness is going to happen to your physical body. It can be prevented in the pranamaya kosha.

That’s why yoga insists very much on the purity of breathing, because the pranamaya kosha is made of a subtle energy that travels inside you with the breathing. If you breathe rightly, your pranamaya kosha remains healthy and whole and alive. Such a person never feels tired, such a person is always available to do anything, such a person is always responsive, always ready to respond to the moment, ready to take the challenge. He is always ready. You will never find him unprepared for any moment. Not that he plans for the future, no. But he has so much energy that whatsoever happens he is ready to respond. He has overflowing energy.

T’ai-chi works on pranamaya kosha.

Pranayam works on pranamaya kosha.

And if you know just how to breathe naturally, you will grow into your second body. And the second body is stronger than the first. And the second body lives longer than the first.

When somebody dies, for almost three days you can see his bioplasma. Sometimes that is mistaken for his ghost. The physical body dies, but the energy body continues to move.

And those who have experimented deeply about death, they say that for three days it is very difficult for the person who has died to believe that he has died because the same form – and more vital than ever, more healthy than ever, more beautiful than ever – surrounds him. It depends on how big a bioplasma you have; then it can continue for thirteen days or even for more.

Around the samadhis of yogis…. In India we burn everybody’s body except the body of one who has attained to samadhi. We don’t burn his body, for a certain reason. Once you burn the body, the bioplasma starts moving away from the earth. You can feel it for a few days, but then it disappears into the cosmos. But if the physical body is left, then the bioplasma can cling to it. And a man who has attained samadhi, who has become enlightened, if his bioplasma can remain somewhere around his samadhi, many people will be benefited by it. That’s how many people come to see their gurus’ forms.

In Aurobindo ashram, Aurobindo’s body is put in a samadhi, not destroyed, not burned.

Many people have felt as if they have seen Aurobindo around it. Or sometimes they have heard the same footsteps the way Aurobindo used to walk. And sometimes he is there just standing before them. This is not Aurobindo; this is the bioplasma. Aurobindo is gone, but the bioplasma, the pranamaya kosha, can persist for centuries. If the person has been really in tune with his pranamaya kosha, it can persist. It can have its own eXistence.

Natural breathing has to be understood. Watch small children, they breathe naturally.

That’s why small children are so full of energy. The parents are tired, but they are not tired.

One child was saying to another child, “I am so full of energy that I wear-out my shoes within seven days.” Another said, “That’s nothing. I am so full of energy I wear out my clothes within three days.”

The third said, “That too is nothing. I am so full of energy I wear out my parents within one hour.”

In America they have done an experiment where one very powerful man, with an athletic body, with tremendous energy, was told to follow a small child and imitate him.

Whatsoever the child was going to do, this athlete had to do, just imitate for eight hours.

Within four hours the athlete was gone, flat on the floor, because the child enjoyed it very much and he started doing many things – jumping, jogging, shouting, yelling. And the athlete had to just repeat. The child was perfectly full of energy after four hours. The athlete – was gone; he said, “He will kill me. Eight hours! Finished! I cannot do anything more.” He was a great boxer, but boxing is one thing. You cannot compete with a child.

Where does the energy come from? It comes from pranamaya kosha. A child breathes naturally, and of course breathes more prana in, more chi in, and accumulates it in his belly. The belly is the accumulating place, the reservoir. Watch a child; that is the right way to breathe. When a child breathes, his chest is completely unaffected. His belly goes up and down. He breathes as if from the belly. All children have a little belly; that belly is there because of their breathing and the reservoir of energy.

That is the right way to breathe; remember not to use your chest too much. Sometimes it can be used – in emergency periods. You are running to save your life; then the chest can be used. It is an emergency device. Then you can use shallow, fast breathing, and run.

But ordinarily the chest should not be used. And one thing to be remembered: the chest is meant only for emergency situations because it is difficult in an emergency situation to breathe naturally, because if you breathe naturally you remain so calm and quiet you cannot run, you cannot fight. You are so calm and collected you are Buddhalike. And in an emergency – the house is on fire – if you breathe naturally you will not be able to save anything. Or a tiger jumps upon you in a forest and if you go on breathing naturally you will not be bothered; you will say, “Okay, let him do whatsoever he wants.” You will not be able to protect yourself.