NEW LEVEL 6 - THE FIVE

SHEATHS

Session Six

Handout

Practices for the week

1. During the week practise training the mind to be creative and useful.
Whenever we observe that it is employing the power of imagination to create
an inner dream world reconnect manas through the senses to the present
situation. Allow it to attend and provide a creative response to the situation.

2. Meditate deeply. Remember that in meditation only the mantra matters.

Keep the practice simple.

Key points

- The third of the sheaths is manomayakośa, the sheath made of mind. It

permeates the vital sheath and the food sheath, being more subtle than either.
It controls both completely. The mind, manas, is simultaneously the cause of
bondage and the instrument of release.

- Manas has the power of imagination. This is highly creative. Whenever we

desire to achieve some goal it is manas which formulates the desire and
shapes it mentally. The idea that we dwell on, we enact.

- Manas interprets impressions from the senses and formulates them into
intelligible shapes and forms. Manas needs to be trained. Once trained, the
action becomes natural.

- Manas is a most willing servant but also a terrible master. Manas

uncontrolled is the almost unbroken stream of commentary in the mind, what
we refer to as circling thoughts and imaginings.

- Practice is required to train manas to act creatively and not destructively. The
primary practise is to reconnect it with the present situation through the
senses and let it be usefully employed.

- All this is the realm of manomayakośa.

Quotations

1. Clouds are brought in by the wind and again driven away by the same
agency. Similarly, man's bondage is caused by the mind, and Liberation too
is caused by that alone.
(Vivekacūḍāmaṇi v.172)

2. One who considers oneself free is free indeed and one who considers
oneself bound remains bound. "As one thinks, so one becomes," is a
popular saying in this world, which is too true.
(Ashtāvakra Gītā 1.11)

3. The consciousness, the force of the Absolute, is creative, artistic. All

manifestations at different stages in the creation are only the different
stages of the art of the Absolute.
(Śrī Śāntānanda Sarasvatī)

4. For better creative forces to be under one's control, one's heart and mind must
be clean.
(Śrī Śāntānanda Sarasvatī)

5. The mind verily, is, O Krishna, restless, turbulent, strong and obstinate.
Thereof the restraint I deem quite as difficult as that of the wind.
The Blessed Lord said:
Doubtless, O mighty-armed, the mind is hard to restrain and restless; but
by practice, O son of Kunti and by indifference it may be restrained.
(Bhagavad Gītā 6.34-35)

6. The organs of knowledge (that is, the five senses) together with manas form
the sheath made of mind - the cause of the diversity of things such as 'I' and
'mine'. It is powerful and endued with the faculty of creating differences of
name...
(Vivekacūḍāmaṇi v167)