Ulladu-Narpadu Verse 24: Body or Soul
Channel: Consciousness Research Centre
Date: 2017-05-04

This series is classified Ajata-vāda | Jñāna-yoga | Turīya | Sahasrāra-cakra

"The insentient body does not say or feel ‘I’. Existence-consciousness—sat-cit, the real Self—does not rise or subside. But in between the body and the real Self a limited ‘I’ rises as the measure of the body. Consciousness in the form ‘I am this body’ rises in waking and subsides again in sleep. Know that this ‘I am the body’ consciousness is called by various names such as the knot between consciousness and the insentient (cit-jada-granthi or hṛdāya-granthi), bondage (bandha), the individual soul (jīva), subtle body (sūkṣma-sarīrā), ego (ahantai), this mundane state of activity (saṁsāra) and mind (manas)."

The rising ‘I’ is distinct from the body because the body is insentient and has no inherent feeling ‘I’. It is also distinct from the real Self, because the real Self neither rises nor subsides. However, though it is neither the body nor the real self, it assumes the properties of both. Like the body, it rises and subsides (or appears and disappears) and is limited by time and space; and like the real Self, it shines as ‘I’. Therefore this rising ‘I’, whose form is the feeling ‘I am the body‘, is described as a Knot (granthi) between the real Self, which is consciousness (chit), and the body, which is insentient (jada). It is this knot alone which is called by various names such as bondage, the individual soul, subtle body, ego, samsara and mind.

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