Hello:
I am currently reading “Structural Yoga Therapy” and have a question that I hope someone on the forum could answer for me. Mr. Stiles talks about the Koshas (pg. 43-45) and after introducing each Kosha he adds “which is an illusion.” I don’t understand what that means. For example, “The first yoga body is called the Annamaya Kosha, literally the ‘body sheath made of food, [I]which is an illusion[/I].’” Could anyone explain what he means by an illusion?
Thanks!
Susan:confused:
The word “maya” is often translated as illusion. That is why Mukunda adds the word “which is an illusion” to each kosha. The koshas (sheaths, layers) are illusory (not real) because they cover the true Self, which lies even beyond bliss, the anandamayakosha. Only the Self is real, the world is an illusion according to this philosophy. The path of yoga is one of gradually dissolving these layers to that you may realize your true Self. Hope this makes sense.
It’s the roughest introduction she ever experienced I think. 
To ease her burden, I confess that I find the whole illusion philosophy obsolete. Not by any persoal fancy but after years of study, mind you. But because the nature of this media through I am speaking now does not allow for a real justification, I juts shortly say that I admit the relative illusiory nature of the sensorial world, but not an absolute one. It’s more like when you see a magician pull out a rabbit out of nowhere. You know the rabbit was there somewhere, you just failed to asess it’s presence.
Those schools of thought what teach an absolute illusory nature of the sensorial world (the physical body or annamya kosha belongs to this realm) fail to realize the Purpose of creation. This is characteristic to the proto-indian age, when people still posessed a form of natural clairvoyance in form of a living memory of the spiritual realms humanity descended from. (if you’re a darwinist, you can stop reding now *) Thus, when they faced the sensorial world, they knew that it is a veil, something what is a manifestation of the divine, and not divinity itself. So they felt decieved, and thus the concept of maya-illusion was born.
As about the illusory nature of the other, subtler bodies, that again is relative. For the yogi, attempting to get back to the bosom of God, and be dissolved in the divine, indeed, these sheats were obstacles, something to be shed, something useless. Thus, they were not destined to eternity, they were time contained, passing, and according to the yoga logic, what did not exist before, and ceases to exist in the future, cannot exist now, so it must be an illusion.
Lets turn the table. Another perception can be, that all we experience is of divine origin, and thus, can lead us to divinity. It does not matter if it changes, or it seems to be of passing nature. There are no passing things, really, but only things we fail to trace back to that realm without time and space. The fact that things appear and disappear is an illusion, by the very limits of our perceptions. And thus we can close the circle and say: we can be negative, and shed everything, or we can be affirmative, positive, and expereince everything, we can grow instead of shrinking. Than, what many religions or ancient teachings reveal, that human beings can grow, earthly existence is a school, we came far and still have a long journey ahead of us, becomes more familiar.
We can say, the subtle bodies are useless illusions, or we can say, the subtler bodies (sheats, koshas) are something we need to work on, to make them suitable for a heavenly-higher existence. Atman, Buddhi, Manas are not static esoteric concepts than, but the future spiritualized koshas.
What Buddha attained at his death, was the creation of Buddhi, the spiritualized life body or pranomaya kosha. Such a being needs no more earthly incarnation. The same thing happened to Christ Jesus on mount Tabor. That’s why it is nonsense to talk about the reincarnation of Christ, just that it is nonsense and most offending to say to a buddhist that someone is the reincarnated Buddha. The very staple of buddhist religion is the fact that Gautama Siddharta attained buddhahood, and will not return. The Maitreya Buddha to come is another entity.
Anyway, it is hard to explain briefly how the support of our intelligence and even our long term memory is linked to pranomaya kosha rather than annomaya (physical brain), or how our very own morality is reflected by our astral nature (manomaya kosha), and if we go higher things get even more confusing, not because they do not make sense but because they need more meditation, focus, and a much broader general view. Still, I wanted to underline the importance of understanding, and honest attention to our reflections to various teachings and what they evoke in our soul-mind, and being careful not to discard or accept things without discernment. Everything is true from a particular point of view, so we need to be able to put ourselves into that point. Being judgemental, clinging to concepts we don’t quite understand are obstacles to understanding. Learning to asess our simpathies and anthipaties what usually arise unconsciously, and being able to put them aside in order to form an unprejudiced opinion is a very good exercise, and is helped by a genuine yama and niyama practice.
PS. The work on our koshas and their spiritualization, transfiguration or divination of man (aka human being) is done by letting the higher Self rule the lower. Thus it involves the development of certain old fashioned moral qualities like humility, honesty, openness, renunciation. Again, yama and niyama work wonders. 
- not because the evolutionary theory is totally wrong but because I can’t bridge the gap between that and a spiritual world view what is it’s exact opposite, in the confines of the space we have here, and people abhorr practicing the leap of faith today
- which is actually a good thing.
Roughest introduction? Yes, but I like to be concise.
The word “maya” is really to be read as “illusion”. The philosophers who adhered to this theory truely meant that the manifest world is illusory. They thought that only the divine is real and that the world is not. The implication is that the various levels of human existence (koshas) are unreal, too. They are like veils that cover our divine reality. This divine reality lies beyond the subtlest of them, the bliss-body. The rest is an illusion (maya).
This has nothing to do with my personal feelings. That’s just the way these philosophers thought. You cannot begin to imagine my personal difficulties with these principles. I believe that both the divine and the world exist. They are both real. And that they are interconnected in some mysterious way, as in “samsara = nirvana”. And that is only a beginning of my difficulties, because I have come to believe that the “self” is an illusion (small s). You can imagine what this does to the concept of Self (capital S). My buddhist and hatha yoga paths collide sometimes, but only in a conceptual way. I see all of these human-invented words as useful means (upaya). Reality is beyond what we can “think”.
Anyway, back to the koshas. Whether illusory or not, I really appreciate them as a practical tool, a map of human anatomy. Looking for health, I look for health on all of the layers. Looking for means to improve health, I look for methods on all of the layers. For example, vegetarian diet for annamaya kosha, peaceful sense impressions for pranamaya, watching my thoughts for manomaya, spiritual literature for vijnamaya and meditation for anandamaya. So let’s just say I forget about the word “maya” and make practical use of the koshas. They are “real” to me, in the sense that they are like a road map. The map is not the territory, but it does help you to get from A to B.
So much for conciseness!
Thank you for your replies. I believe I better understand the concept. I sure appreciate it.
Namaste,
Susan