In this episode of “5 Minutes,” Dr. Robert Svoboda explores the Koshas and their traditional understanding as the layers through which human beings experience existence.

The word kosha means a sheath, a wrapping, or a covering. The doctrine of the koshas is a way of explaining how individual human beings exist in this world. There are five koshas, and they are named according to their primary constituents.

The first and most significant kosha is the Annamaya Kosha. The word maya here does not mean Maya, the force that causes us to perceive the world differently from how it truly is. In this case, maya means associated with or characterized by. Therefore, the Annamaya Kosha is the sheath of food.

This is the physical body. It is created by food, nourished by food, disturbed by food, and brought back into balance by food. We who exist on this plane of the five elements are deeply dependent on food. Life lives from other life. We are constantly taking substances that were once living beings and bringing their materials and their prana into ourselves so that we can continue to live.

The Annamaya Kosha is the most dense of the five koshas and the one most associated with tamas. It is the result of everything that has come before, and it is immediately surrounded and supported by the Pranamaya Kosha, the sheath of prana.

Prana is the life force. It is chi. Everything that happens in the body happens because prana is moving within the body. Where prana moves, things move. Where prana becomes still, things become stagnant and obstructed. So although the sheath of food is primarily characterized by food, it is strongly controlled by prana, and prana is strongly influenced by the mind.

More subtle and more influential than the Pranamaya Kosha is the Manomaya Kosha, the sheath of mind. Just as the body is created, nourished, disturbed, and balanced through food, the mind is created, nourished, disturbed, and balanced through its own substance. In the case of the mind, that substance is ideas, emotions, thoughts, tendencies, and all the mental activity that fills our awareness.

Where do these thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and tendencies come from? They come from the Vijnanamaya Kosha. Vijnana generally means a special type of wisdom, but in this context it refers to the understanding that comes through dealing with the karmas we have created in the past.

The Vijnanamaya Kosha is closely related to what is called the causal body. It is the sheath of causation, the sheath of karma. The karmas we have performed in the past, whose results are ready to come to us, manifest through the mind. They influence how we think, how we respond, and how we find ourselves in particular situations at particular times.

The Vijnanamaya Kosha is therefore structured through karma. Positive karmas help it become healthier, while negative karmas make it less healthy. It is more subtle than the mind, and even more subtle than this is the Anandamaya Kosha.

Ananda means bliss. This is not simply constant happiness, but the potential for bliss, especially when one is able to move beyond limitations. According to many traditions, this corresponds with the greater causal body.

This includes the shared karmas that we have with our families, our ancestors, our communities, those who live in the same region, speak the same language, or share the same culture and ways of life. These collective karmas influence our present actions, our thoughts, our emotions, and the movement of prana within the body.

Understanding the koshas and working with them allows the entire organism to become better aligned with reality.