"The essence of the soul is Pure Consciousness and Absolute Reality." There are three bodies, shariras, five sheaths, koshas, an inner and an outer aura. The chakras are windows of consciousness. We can find That which has never changed, then we're deep within the soul. That's a good place to look for Parasiva.

Path to Siva, Lesson 22

Master Course Trilogy, Merging With Siva, Lesson 15

Unedited Transcript:

Today we have Lesson 22 from Path to Siva entitled: What Is the Nature of Our Soul?

"Our soul is an immortal, spiritual being. The essence of the soul is Pure Consciousness and Absolute Reality. This essence is perfect, eternal and was never created. Visualize it as a light bulb covered by five layers of colored fabrics. These are our five bodies or sheaths. The physical body is our outer body of flesh and bones, which we need to function in this earthly world. Inside it is the pranic body, the sheath of energy, or prana, that flows through the physical body. Then we have the subtle or astral body. It is the sheath of ordinary thoughts, desires, and emotions. Next is the mental or intellectual layer. It functions on the higher mental plane. Finally, we have the body of the soul. This is the body that evolves from birth to birth, that reincarnates into new outer sheaths and does not die when the physical body perishes. Gurudeva describes it like this: 'The body of the soul actually looks like a plastic body filled with light. You have seen mannequins with arms, legs, torso and head made completely out of transparent, neon-like plastic. If you were to put a light in such a mannequin, it would glow. This is what your soul body, your psyche, looks like.' Our soul body is neither male nor female and never dies. Within our subtle bodies we have chakras, twenty-one in all--colorful, spinning force centers. The seven lower chakras, those of fear, anger and the other lower, instinctive impulses, are located in the legs. The seven middle chakras are along the spine, and the highest seven, accessible only after Self Realization, are above the head. We also have an aura, radiating within and around us, whose colors change according to our thoughts and emotions. Once physical births have ceased, this soul body still continues to evolve in the heavenly worlds. We are not the physical body, mind or emotions. We are the eternal soul, atman--consisting of the radiant soul body and its essence, Pure Consciousness and Absolute Reality."

Interesting to review just cause we use the English words, bodies and sheaths, that can be confusing when we start to look at the Sanskrit. Got our famous cosmology chart which we all are experts in, right? Helps us out here on the right side. Says: Three bodies, they're called shariras and three five sheaths, called koshas. So what we were just talking about are the five sheaths. Well how does three relate to five? Well, in the bodies we have the subtle body, sukshma sharira and it contains three koshas. Pranamaya kosha, manomaya kosha and vijnanamaya kosha. So that's how we relate the five to the three just for memory purposes.

Human aura is very interesting; it's something that's not necessarily talked about that much. As Gurudeva describes it in The Trilogy, there's two parts to the human aura, the outer aura and the inner aura. So the outer aura is what's being described in this lesson. The outer aura changes according to our current state of mind. The thoughts and emotions we're going through right now are what are determining the colors in our aura. If we change our thoughts, you know, if were to go into meditation a bit, go a bit deeper, the colors in our outer aura would change immediately. So it's an immediate reflection and it's just another way of saying our, it's another way of looking at our thoughts and feelings is to see them as colors.

The inner aura, Gurudeva describes it as: It looks a bit like modern art. Abstract shapes but the shapes don't generally move. Whereas, the outer aura is moving because we're, we're changing our thoughts and feelings and going in and out all the time. The inner aura tends not to move and it can have some, what would you say, strange looking objects in it which are unresolved subconscious issues. So, if we've managed to pack something down there really well that we just don't want to face, that's probably got some interesting shapes and colors. And it doesn't move, it's just sitting there. And, Gurudeva said, I don't know if it's in The Trilogy but he explained that sometimes when devotees were talking to him, about their life, it would start to move. And then one of these colors would come up to the throat. And as soon as it hit the throat the person would start talking about it. That's how you know how what it is, you know. And hopefully, it would be understood or resolved and either go away or else shrink, shall we say. Upgraded colors. So two aspects to the human aura.

Just as the concept of the three perfections of God Siva is very helpful in understanding God and not getting confused when we read these different descriptions of God. We can relate it to one, two or three of the perfections being described, likewise, the soul, having two aspects to it, get's around getting confused. Soul body is evolving, state of maturing, changing. And the essence of the soul is already identical with God Siva. Therefore, part of us is already realized. As Gurudeva likes to point out sometimes: You are already That. Just we don't, we don't know where it is. It's in there somewhere but we can't find it. Well it's now, and just figure out how to find that part of you that is perfect, already realized.

Chakras are windows of consciousness. Never heard anyone but Gurudeva describe chakras in such an insightful way. In other words, from a chakra you can look out and see a certain realm of consciousness. And you go up to this chakra. you can look out and see another realm of consciousness. And that's formalized in the Shum Meditations. Gurudeva says if you want to experience the chakras of the fourth dimension, you look out... if you want to experience the portraits in the fourth dimension, you look out from the fourth chakra. And you'll find them. So the fourth chakra is a window of consciousness into that particular rate of vibration.

If you want to experience the portraits of the fifth dimension you look out from this chakra, the throat chakra, and you can experience them. Where you can look out just means, if you're in meditation you just, you're not collapsed. You're, you're just kind of looking out from that area. And therefore, you can find, in consciousness, fifth dimensional portraits, sixth and seventh likewise. We have to be in the right chakra. That's why you need to understand or why it's helpful to understand what dimension a Shum word is cause then you know what chakra you need to look out from to find it. Otherwise, you're looking in the wrong place.

And we have Gurudeva's quote which is good:

"Reverse your thinking about yourself. Feel that you come out of timelessness, causelessness, spacelessness. Visualize the pure radiant body of light, the being of the soul, the "I Am," the "Watcher."

In other words, when we meditate, it's natural to say: Okay, here I am, I'm at Kadavul, now I'm going to go within myself. Gurudeva says: No, no don't do that. Start within and then come out. So, something to think about; I won't try and explain it. Different approach.

And then there was a related quote in the Merging with Siva Lesson for the Day. In other words some of these points are intellectual points, some are intellectual points. This is a very good experiential point in Today's Lesson that relates to the soul.

"Hold your center. Find the place within you that has never ever changed, that's been the same for many lives, that feeling that has been the same within you since you were a little child up to this very time. Find that! Catch that vibration, and you've caught the vibration of the soul, and identified it to your intellectual mind and your instinctive area of the mind. Then build on that. Work with that. Say to yourself, 'There's something within me that never changes, no matter what happens.'"

That's the experiential approach. If we can find that part of us that has that sense, always been constant and always will be constant. It's something that's inside of what changes. Around it is the things that, states of consciousness that change. This is inside of it and doesn't change. So we can find That which never changed then we're really deep within the soul. And that's a good place to look for Parasiva. You have to start somewhere that's already deep. So, if we could use that as a platform, the part of you that's never changed, then you just have to ask yourself the question: Well, what is the source of this which has never changed?

Thank you very much. Wonderful day.