Whatever mental state one is recollecting (smarana-bhāvam)
while giving up the body at the time of death, Arjuna,
s/he attains that state, being always
absorbed in such contemplation.
                                                                                               (Akshara-brahma Yoga, Gita, 8-6).  

What exactly does this mean?  The mental state continues on?  Do I have a choice to pick my thought in the final moments?   Then, can I meditate my way into whatever I want to be in my next birth?  Even then, what’s the relationship between current mental state (bhāvam),  continuous contemplation/absorption (smarana), and attainment of that state? When is that state attained after death?

And, most importantly, what if I (can) enter a thought-less state in the final minutes?

Whatever is’ thought of by one. at the time of his death, that will be realized by him afterwards. Will a glass reflect other than that which is placed before it?             – Yogavasista

The basis for all this is the hypothesis that there exists a “subtle body” or a “scaffolding” that is made up of more fundamental things, that survives even the process of death.    That which cannot be destroyed by fire, nor can be cleaved by a weapon…   This is a key ramification of the vibrational/ pulsatory nature of vayu/vata.  Looking at it from another angle, yogis consider death as nothing more than waking up from the current dream, and entering the next.

For definitions, vāta according to the tri-doshic theory is the combination of the elements space (reservoir of information/memories) and vāyu (the moving force).  Will come to this in the future.

At the functional level, that subtle body or scaffolding is essentially the mental map of the current state of the body. All the way from our thought traces to all our action histories are stored in this scaffolding. We think of something repeatedly? That shows up as a feature in our body! Also, more importantly, when the body is injured – imagine a gash – it’s this mental map that helps to address the injury. It either heals it to a point where one can’t tell or changes the scaffolding to fit the new reality. This ability to heal and/or modify this scaffolding is the key difference between the sentient and insentient beings.

What’s interesting about vāta, movement, particularly waves?   Waves never really die completely – they only wane, add up with other waves, or gain energy…  This provides a key support to another characteristic of yogic models – continuity.  Nothing is sudden or random really. Everything comes from something that was there before.   These techniques are prevalent in today’s modern mathematics also.  Discontinuous phenomena require precise boundary conditions, a difficult task that continuity condition eliminates. This continuity condition as applicable to the scaffolding is what master yogi is explaining to the seeker in the opening verse – reincarnation – or continuation of the subtle information body – is the result.  Not the way it is commonly thought about.  Essentially this relates to Stephen Hawking’s theory on information indestructibility, even inside black holes…

As a side note, this also is the reason why those yogis find suicide futile. Because it will start where we ended it here!

What’s happening to all the vibrations that we pass up and down the nadis every moment of our daily lives? They modulate the reservoir of I-vibrations.  This I-vibration reservoir or ensemble is commonly translated as subtle body, and it’s essentially the entanglement-information “body” in modern science terms, and ati-vāhika body in yogic lore.  How the entanglement information organizes itself is a huge topic of discussion in physics departments around the world.  As we did while contemplating on karma, this subtle body evolution and its journey is definitely non-computable.  Yoga Vasisthta calls this body Jiva.

Some slokas from Yoga Vasistha

Sloka 943.  Jiva is that subtle entity consisting of mental impressions (vāsana) at the time when micro-prāna merges with the macro-prana.

Sloka 944.  All directions (disa) are just filled with currents (pavane) accompanied by prana-vibrations (prana vata) pregnant with throbbing intentions (spurat-sankalpa)…

Sloka 945. Within macro (kha), the prana of the dead reside.  In the interiors of these pranas, reside minds (mana) of the dead. In the mind resides their worlds, like oil in sesamum seed [the holographic aspect; the world that I built up for myself is in my nervous system!]

Basically  the essence of I (subtle body) decouples from the physical body at the time of death, or put in another way, is left behind as residue ,as the physical parts start to disintegrate. Think of the gash-example again – if a dead body is gashed, would it heal? The driver for the subtle body decoupling from the physical body is the deepest desire at the time death.  Our deepest desire drives the subtle body find another suitable vehicle to reach it’s own goal.

This is different from dualism – here, all the stuff is the same, that one construction material -different embodiments. This I is an information-bundle at that moment, which contains our deepest desires, intentions and such thought constructs.

Sloka 944 is very instructive – world around is full of intentions/desires, codified as  information-bundles, ready to manifest. Waiting for the right time? In the modern-science terms, each conjugal event involves a billion sperm cells to be released, to fertilize an egg; only one sperm cell gets that chance.  What happens to the remaining sperm cells?  They contain karmic residues along with variants of the DNA material.  In vedic terms, they disappear back into to cosmic waters (apah).  These egg-sperm combinations, along which conjugal event, followed by when the subjects become interested in participating in this conjugal act are all part of the universe around us throbbing with intention/desire bundles.  Depending upon the (successful) path, that specific intention/desire package manifests.

What causes these vibrations?  Has to be our thoughts!!  Our mind propels these thought waves, some of which translate into physical outwardly actions.  Goes back to the third tenet of Karma yoga – Intentions over Results (Actions). The energy for these thoughts come from the food we eat – the anna and prana polarity theory of Prasnopanishad.

When a new vibration is added to the I wave-packet, which is already a superimposition of all the vibrations to that point in time, that wave-packet gets modified.  This is where things get interesting and a little hazy…  This also implies the corollary – which is that the vibration that’s going though the nadi, or a personal thought vibration, also has an imprint of I-reservoir with it.  This association or entanglement is what makes this I-vibration persist in us. Without this I-entanglement, things just pass-through us.  This takes us back to one of the instructions from yogis – “let the thoughts come and go, and don’t own them.”  By saying that, they are asking us to decouple of thoughts from that I.  As long as we don’t react, they just pass through.  What we call “emotion” is that entangler.

Now how can a subtle body pick up a material or physical body? It is easier to think in terms of an analogy – whirlwinds picking up lose material and sweeping or entraining those objects to spin with the air in the whirlwind.  All the way from weak whirls in the air to strong tornados and hurricanes are great examples.  We can’t see the wind, but we can visualize by the objects, dust or water drops it entrains/carries with it.   But what belies such whirlwinds?  It is the temperature and pressure gradients in the air!  What causes temperature and pressure gradients – it’s the sun!  Can we see the sun actually creating these gradients?  No, but comprehend them by only making measurements.  Similarly, we can’t exactly see subtle bodies, but we can only comprehend them by the physical ingredients it picks up.  Just like how the whirlwinds carry the objects to meet it’s objective, the subtle bodies carry physical bodies to meet their own ends, which are the desires! The strongest desire creates the largest and the strongest whirlwind, which is the message in the sloka at the top.

Let’s quickly look at this loose whirlwind analogy ties into the model of five sheaths yogis have.

1. The objects drawn into the whirlwind is the physical sheath (anna-maya-kosha)
2. The wind giving it the shape is the breath pulsation sheath (prana-maya-kosha)
3. The temperature and pressure gradients are the thought or the mind sheath (mano-maya-kosha)
4. The sun seeding the specificity into different regions/zones creating all the temperature and pressure gradients is like the knowledge sheath (Vijnana-maya-kosha)
5. Finally the Sun is the cause, shining behind all this is like the core (ananda-maya-kosha)

The last point in this analogy is a little weak, as the ananda-maya-kosa is more than what Sun does in the whirlwind analogy.  When we talk about Brahman, we will see that it has layers to it.

Now, how to access this subtle body? Mantra is one of the ways- hence the long chanting and breathing sessions in kundalini yoga practices. We will continue…

May we all become proficient at letting things pass through us_/\_/\_/\_