Class 31, Tattva Bodha

In this decisive and illuminating class, Acharya Tadany completed the entire exposition of anātmā (non-self) by reviewing the five sheaths (pañca-kośa) and their correspondence to the three bodies (śarīra-trayam), emphasizing three fundamental truths: 

(1) all three bodies — gross (sthūla), subtle (sūkṣma), and causal (kāraṇa) — are made entirely of the five elements (pañca-bhūta: ākāśa/space, vāyu/air, agni/fire, jala/water, pṛthvī/earth), either gross (pañcīkṛta), subtle (apañcīkṛta), or potential, and are therefore inherently insentient (jaḍam / acetanam) and incapable of producing consciousness; 

(2) matter cannot generate sentience — the body-mind-sense complex is logically inert, no different from a desk in essence (both made of matter), and even food (insentient oats yesterday) becomes today’s seemingly sentient body components (sapta dhātus in Ayurveda), proving consciousness is not produced by matter; 

(3) the consciousness we experience in the body is borrowed from a non-material source, which must be ātmā, whose very nature (svarūpa) is caitanya (pure consciousness), illustrated by the powerful moonlight analogy: the moon appears luminous but has no light of its own (borrowed from the sun), just as the body appears conscious but has no intrinsic awareness — it borrows consciousness from ātmā. 

Acharya Tadany stressed the common mistake of taking consciousness for granted as belonging to the body (like assuming moonlight belongs to the moon), and concluded that understanding this distinction — “The body is mine, but I am not the body” — gives objective space to deal with pain, aging, and conditions without inner misery, completing the 11 subdivisions of anātmā (three bodies, three states, five sheaths) and setting the stage for the next profound topic: the direct, essential revelation of ātmā itself, the unchanging Self, which he described as the heart of Vedānta.

Tattva-Bodha_Class-31_AI-Generated-Summary_Acharya-Tadany