What is the causal body or karana-sharira?

Transcript

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any other questions something called a causal body basically if you say this cause as causal body is concerned my understanding would be that there are different even in the vedic tradition there are different models for explaining the inner reality so even with respect to theories of matter there is sankhya and there is vaiseshika so now vaiseshika is basically the because of the atomic theory of matter now in modern in western history western intellectual history there have been two broad theories of matter traditionally what kind of kind of plato it was there was called elemental theory of matter i mean there are the fundamental blocks of matter are elements now this element is different from what in the periodic table we call the elements they’re simply material components but then for various reasons that theory was not accepted and now the current view of matter is of atomic atomic theory of matter where we may have various things which appear as elements to us but if you go further down those elements are made of atoms now of course you can go further down and say subatomic particles are there quantum physics says everything is waves so it is not necessary that atomic theory of matter is is necessarily the complete or the accurate description of reality but that is one model which has been mainstream accepted because now the so in the vedic tradition also there is a sankhya which talks about the elemental theory of matter and vaiseshika which talks about the atomic theory of matter so these two how exactly they are to be reconciled that’s a whole different universe so this is there are two different theories of matter within the vedic traditions i would say in respect to understanding of subtle body also there are different models so the the bhagavatam and the bhagavad gita they derive if you consider this is the existence of philosophy existed in the past also now we could look at scriptures from a transcendental perspective that everything is by the plan of the lord but you could also look at scripture from a historical perspective in the sense that when shukadeva swami spoke the bhagavatam at that time there were already certain schools of thought that were present and parikshit maharaj knew various knew many of them so now shukadeva swami presents all of them all the existing schools of thought or at least major sections of them in a devotional context with a devotional theistic worldview so the bhagavatam primarily draws on sankhya it doesn’t draw so much on the vaiseshika so within this model in sankhya model the karana sharira is not talked about so much so it’s just like in ayurveda you have digestifier in allopathy there is no concept of digestifier so in science they say that facts are theory laden facts exist in the context of theories so without it’s not a theory free fact some facts are theory free again all of us have a intestine we have a we have a lungs we have a heart they’re theory free facts but that health is because of the balance of kapha vata vitta or health is because of the balance of certain homeostasis or biochemical balances in the world these are two different these are theory laden facts so basically the concept of the karana sharira causal body is not something which is primarily used in sankhya as it is understood our tradition so now but still if you want to look at it what it means so we could say karana sharira is sometimes similar to the sukshma sharira something similar to the sukshma sharira there are some few differences over there because if you consider that the many of the other schools of thought sankhya itself was a analysis of matter but the analysis of matter can be done in a theistic way it can be done in a non-theistic way also so basically in the Indian tradition there are three systems of sankhya they call it 24 sankhya 25 sankhya and 26 sankhya 24 sankhya is materialistic sankhya you say analyze matter and just that’s all that exists 25 sankhya is that you could say monistic sankhya there is matter and there is consciousness the bhagavatam sankhya is 26 sankhya there is matter there is finite consciousness and there is infinite consciousness so similarly with respect to the karana so the karana sharira refers to the if now this could be explained in theistic way also but if you consider say buddhism buddhism does not accept the existence of any ishwara any god but then what what fuels transmigration so they say that all impressions are stored in the in the subtle body or whatever word the word may be different and those impressions are what cause the next body to take place but we also do the same thing but we say that it is under divine supervision but they say that those impressions themselves are the cause so in that sense the karana sharira becomes the karana the cause so we are so if we consider that it is one cause but there is also a supreme cause if you see that in that context in the karana sharira and sukshma sharira can be in some models we seen a same but in the sukshma sharira the emphasis on the subtlety in the karana sharira the in the terminology the focus is on the causality so focus on causality means that they think that this itself produces spiritual reality so this itself produces the next body so i would say this this is one understanding but in the way in which matters analyzed within the bhakti tradition the karana sharira is not given that big emphasis so just a different model of looking at the world