The 5 Kosas or Strata of the Mind

4. Saḿskára is a distortion of the mind-stuff waiting for expression.

Actions create a sort of mental distortion.

The mind regains its normal composure after undergoing the consequences of one’s actions.

Saḿskára is when action has happened, but its consequences have not realized.

• In this state, the reaction [vipáka] is suspended or deferred.

At the time of death, unrealized reactions are held in the causal or unconscious mind.

In order to realize those reactions, Prakrti connects bodiless minds with living structures in the wombs of different beings that have parallelism with those bodiless minds’ saḿskára-determined mental waves.

This leads to the rebirth of that unit mind.

One generally goes away after death with saḿskáras in accordance with one’s deeds performed during one’s lifetime.

5. In the bodiless mind there is no doership, no feeling of pleasure or pain

After the separation of the mind from the body after death, the unit mind no longer has cerebral nerve cells.

Partially, nerve fibres are necessary for the perception of pleasure and pain.

Because of this, the sense of good and bad times cannot exist in the unit mind.

So the popular dogmas and beliefs that one’s soul after death will be happy or miserable are completely wrong.

6. The sight of ghosts is created by the cittáńu (mind-stuff) in concentrated thought

Spirits and ghosts do not exist.

A frightened, indignant, or hypnotized person can attain temporary concentration of the mind.

• In such a case, his mind-stuff takes the form of the object imagined.
• He sees the vision of one’s thought

Thinking about ghosts and spirits in solitude, he or she sees them also in the open.

The external vision of the internal thought may be termed as positive hallucination.

Conversely, in such a state of mind even the actually existent object may appear as non-existent.

This we may call negative hallucination.

Those that say that they have seen a ghost do not lie. Only the delusion of the mind appears to them as visual perception.

If hypnosis be thoroughly introspective, one may mistake one’s own entity for a spirit or ghost.

In such an event the person behaves in such a manner that people start saying that So-and-so is possessed by a spirit.

Theomania or theophanic possession is also of the same variety.

7. The requital of an action is guided by the (divine) longing for welfare

Behind the mechanism of fruits of actions is the divine desire of benevolence.

The punishment for an evil act teaches one to keep away from evil doings.

The reward for a good and benevolent act teaches people that they will never get such a reward if ever they commit an evil act.

8. Out of the intense desire for mukti (liberation), one attains one’s sadguru (perfect master)

When a vehement desire for emancipation wakes up in a person, he or she attains his or her sadguru [true spiritual preceptor] on the strength of that desire.

9. Only Brahma is the guru, no one else

Brahma alone is the guru.

Brahma alone directs the units to the path of emancipation through the media of different bodies.

Only Brahma conforms to the real significance of the word “guru”.

10. Obstacles are the helping forces that establish one in the goal

Obstacles are the friends, not enemies on the path of sádhaná [spiritual practice].

• These only do service to a person.

These obstacles creates a battle against these obstacles.

• This counter-effort alone carries the sádhaka [spiritual aspirant] to his cherished goal.

11. Prayer and ritualistic worship become a source of confusion

It is useless to pray to God for something, for He is sure to give what is necessary.

Solicitation or importunity in the name of worship is nothing but toadyism and flattery.

12. Devotion is ideation on God, not flattery or ritualistic worship of God

Being merged in the constant thought of God is devotion.

Devotion is not related to the chanting of hymns or ritualistic worship with different paraphernalia.

A devotee may perform these, but they are not an indispensable part of devotional sádhaná.

Footnotes

(1) “Living structures” did not appear here in the previous English edition. “With living structures” is a rendering of “jaevii dehe” in the original Bengali sentence. –Eds.