Spiritual Technology

All that has a beginning, has an ending. Everything that is born, eventually dies. And everyone who dies is invariably born again. This is a process. When you transit this body, where do you go to and where do you come back from? This question might linger in your mind sometimes in case you believe in reincarnation. To comprehend this, you must understand the Spiritual Technology. Even if you do not believe in reincarnation, please continue to read on.

Our Various Vehicles

Every day you sleep. Who sleeps? Your body sleeps. Your body takes rest. So, what happens to you when your body is taking rest? Sometimes you say, “I had a good dream” or “I dreamt about so and so”. That means you have another place where you go to and come back. It is comparable to going out somewhere in your car and coming back. Like, you drive your car and reach a different place in the car. When done, you come back and are out of the car.

To understand this better, let us consider a small exercise. Can you please move your body? What are you moving? You may say, “I am moving my body”. This is a very profound statement. Who is moving the body? “I am” is the mover! And what is being moved? It is the body which is being moved. This is similar to, “I move or drive my car”. I am the mover or the driver. The car is my vehicle. In the same fashion, the body is like your vehicle. You are not your body.

Let us now extend this exercise to our feelings and then to our thoughts. Do you have feelings? Do you experience emotions? You may say, “Yes, I do feel or sense emotions”. So, neither are you your emotions, nor your thoughts. You either generate thoughts or pick up other’s thoughts to further strengthen them.

In order to experience these emotions, you have another vehicle which is known as the Emotional Body or Kamamaya kosha in the Hindu religion. Similarly, to generate thoughts you use another vehicle known as the Mental body, also known as the Manomaya kosha. To be more precise, the Kamamaya kosha is actually a single term coined for all the lower emotions or desires and the lower thoughts that are entangled with these desires. For more clarity, we shall use the terms Emotional Body and Mental body. Hence, we are a being with a physical body, which is quite apparent, and also an emotional body and a mental body which are not visible to our naked eye.

At night, in our sleep, when our physical body rests, our consciousness shifts majorly from the physical body to the emotional body. The memory of our time spent in the emotional world at night is what we call as dream. Like the physical world, there are other worlds of emotions and thoughts. Further, there are seven sub-planes in each of these worlds. Where in the emotional world you go to, in your sleep, depends on your state of mind before falling asleep.

This physical world is also made up of seven sub-planes, denser to subtler. You know the solid, liquid and gaseous states of matter. The remaining four states are energy or etheric (E4 – E1, denser to subtler). The physical science is looking at the three denser physical states and a little bit of the energy, may be E4 which is the medium of ordinary electricity and sound; and E3 which is the medium of prana.

Hence, our physical body has two parts. The visible part is the visible physical body. The invisible part is known as the bio-plasmic body, the energy body or the etheric body. The Spiritual technology goes further beyond the understanding of these physical, emotional and mental bodies.

What is the Meaning of Spirituality?

There is something called Spirit. Trying to go towards Spirit is called Spirituality. That is to say, you have come from the Spirit and you are trying to go back to the Spirit. Then, the next question that springs up in your mind is, “What is the purpose of coming from the Spirit”? There has to be some purpose for you to manifest in these bodies and to go back. This purpose is the development of the Spirit. In Sanatana dharma, this is called the Adhyatmic path. What is Adhyatma or Adi-atma? It is the Spirit or Paramatma. You come from the source known as the Adi-atma or Paramatma. Adhyatmic path is thus, the path taking you to Spirituality. All traditions, scriptures, customs, religions and practices try to take you back to Paramatma. But before that, you are here in the lower bodies for developing, improving and upgrading yourself.

The Spiritual technology involves the understanding of how you come down into manifestation, how you go back, what is the purpose and how you can achieve the purpose?

What is Death?

Coming back again to our sleep condition, how do you know that you had a good sleep or a not so good sleep? Does that mean somebody was observing the sleep state of the body? Consequently, you are the one observing it, and not sleeping. You have only transited temporarily into another body, the emotional body and even higher.

One day you would discard the car. In like manner, you would one day discard this physical body too. We call this as death. However, it is only a transition to another body. You transit to the emotional body, into the emotional world. That’s the first level in the inner world, the kama-loka. At some point, you will discard this emotional body to transit into the next higher vehicle, that of thinking, the mental body.

Thus, your personality includes these three bodies of physical, emotional and mental in the three worlds. There is development taking place in each of these worlds for all these bodies. That’s why Sanatana dharma uses the term Tri-loka. The Divine Mother is sometimes referred to as Tripureswari. The Divine Father is referred to as Triloknath, the Father of the three worlds. The Mother manifests into the three worlds to help building the three bodies. This is similar at higher levels as well.

The personality having the three vehicles is transient. You come to the mental, emotional and physical bodies into incarnation and when out of incarnation, you go back from one to another and back. This can be compared to going to school, learning your lessons, developing and coming back. So, until your learning is not complete, you keep going to school, keep coming into incarnation and going back home. And once you are done with all the learning, you no more go to school.