11. Avasthā Trayam and Kosha Panchakam

Avasthā Trayam refers to the three stages experience and Kosha Panchakam refers to the five layers of our personality. 11.1. Avasthā TrayamWe will first start with Avasthā Trayam – the three states of experience. We sill see three factors relating to each state of experience. By studying the three factors, we will understand what these three states of experience are First we will study the condition of the mind in each state of experience because...

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10. Sharīra Trayam

We are seeing the technical terms used in all our scriptures which have been comprehensively presented in the small book called Tattvabodha. Not only does it give the essence of Vedāntik teaching, but also systematically introduces the technical terms. In Sanskrit a technical term is called a Paribhāshā Shabdaha. We are seeing the Paribhāshā Shabda of the scriptures. Paribhāshā mean technical and Shabdaha means term. In the last session, we introduced...

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09. Sādhanā Chatushtaya

If we look at the book of Tattvabodha, we will see that none of the above topics are covered in Tattvabodha. The text book Tattvabodha assumes that a student of Tattvabodha knows all the topics that we have already discussed. They are all taken for granted in this particular book. In fact they are implicitly contained in Tattvabodha. Now that we are familiar with these topics, we can enter into Tattvabodha summary proper. Tattvabodha is a book...

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08. Bhakti Yoga

Today we will deal with the topic of Bhaktihi found in the scriptures and a topic with various shades of meaning in different contexts and therefore often a confusing topic also. So we should clearly understand what Bhaktihi is. The word Bhaktihi is used in the scriptures in two different meanings. 8.1. First Meaning of Bhakti - Devotion to GodOne is Bhakti as in devotion towards God. Devotion is nothing but a love directed towards a higher principle....

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07. Jnāna Yoga

Earlier we saw that the scriptures first present an ideal infrastructure for the fulfilment of the human goals or Purushārthāhā. After presenting the infrastructure the scriptures also present a course of discipline for the accomplishment of these goals. This course of discipline we classified into three – Karma Yoga, Upāsana Yoga and Gnana Yoga. Upāsana Yoga is also known as Samādhi Yoga. Jnāna Yoga means a course of discipline meant for gaining...

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