In one of the earlier blogs we talked about astral and physical bodies and how they are related (https://www.mayoan.com/post/12-the-domination-of-astral-body-over-gross-body)
In this blog, I dwell and try to ruminate a little more on this topic. While a person is living, his physical or sthula body is playing a dominating role. After death, the astral body may live a little more and thus is considered more dominating than the sthula body.
Let us understand how the different apparatus of an integrated human body plays out. This is purely my assumption of how the 2 bodies interplay while a person is alive or when he is dead.
Please refer to my other blog, if you have not done so earlier, before proceeding - https://www.mayoan.com/post/11-the-construct-of-a-human
1. Outside to Inside communication :
The Karmendriyas or organs of action does the actions necessary driving from free-will. The action and the outcome is processed by the brain based intelligence and then is felt by the heart based feelings, if necessary, in different intensities as demonstrated by the emotions.
The Gnanendriyas or organs of senses converts its inputs which are processed by our brain and again it may be converted into heart-based feelings if necessary.
The intelligence-based inputs and heart-based feelings are then converted into tanmatras and is passed by the 3rd koshana-Pranamayakoshana-(https://www.mayoan.com/post/26-the-panchakoshanas-or-5-sheaths) to the chittam
This tanmatras impinges on the chittam (locus of all thoughts/feelings)
2. Inside to Outside communication :
From the chittam, based on karmic inducements or other interactions, selected thoughts climb into manas. Few of the selected, may, then climb into buddhi. A person may experience a glimpse of a thought while it is residing in chittam as a feel and undefined by a language construct. Intuition is also a feel from the chittam. (The vak system consisting of para, pashyanthi, madhyama and vaikahari will be taken up later in a separate blog)
Those thoughts can be of 3 kinds:
Conscious thoughts processed by the brain.
Sub-conscious thoughts processed by the manas
Conscious thoughts that lead to some actions through Karmendriyas
These thoughts in manas can again induce some sensory perception. This is different, in the sense that it is not as strong as those from the sensory perceptions coming out of Gnanendriyas (in the outside to inside process).
Now if we break-up the above process into its constituents and map it the first 2 layers of the human bodies, we obtain the below mapping:
Karmendriyas – Present in sthula body and astral(sukshuma) body. The Karmendriyas in astral body is not as fully defined as in the sthula body.
Gnanendriyas – Present in sthula body and astral(sukshuma) body. The Gnanendriyas in astral body is not as fully defined as in the sthula body.
In fact, the basic 3 functions – FOOD, SEX and SLEEP are not attainable fully in astral-body only existence and hence this condition propels it to the next stage naturally. Hence this astral-body only existence is considered as not sustainable.
Intelligence or Buddhi – Present in sthula body (brain centred)
Manas or thoughts – Present in astral body (heart centred)
Chittam – Present in the soul.
Now, while we are in pursuit of excellence, and expend our karmas, this outside to inside communications and vice-versa takes place continuously.
From the chittam (holding all past and current impressions), a real world person can get the required information/wisdom through intuition, beliefs/assumptions and facts. Sometimes a known fact from chittam can be converted into an assumption by the same person. The reverse process - a real world person's scientific knowledge, beliefs, facts and assumptions can get stored in chittam as impressions. These impressions of chittam are generally believed to last over several life-cycles of birth that, that soul may probably undertake.
Please also read -