Dr. N.L. Kachhara
A living being commonly has three bodies - a physical (audarik), fiery (tejas), and karma body. The physical body is visible but the other two are invisible. The karma body contains karma, as we now know, and is a kind of information body. The fiery body, comprised of fiery vargana, is supposed to be the electric or energy body. The fiery body has two important functions: (1) management of the body systems; and (2) support and control of the physical body. The karma body and the fiery body never depart: both of them are always united with the soul in the mundane state. This union is maintained until the soul attains the state of emancipation. The liberation of the soul is, in fact, obtaining freedom from imprisonment by these two bodies. Kirlian photography has shown that a luminous body leaves the physical body at the time of death, indicating the existence of some kind of subtle body.
A simple model of the body system is shown in Figure 2. The system consists of three bodies: the karma, fiery, and physical bodies. The soul pervades the entire space of the body and is manifest in all three bodies. The karma body is closest to the soul and consciousness; powers of the soul are first manifested in the karma body. The fiery body acts as a link between the karma body and the gross body; it converts these powers into physical actions and interacts with the environment. By means of this system, the soul interacts with the environment and vice versa. Environmental effects are first communicated to the gross body and then reach the soul via the fiery and karma bodies.
Figure 2 The body system
The bhava karma comprises psychical bhava karma and biological bhava karma. Some of the bhava karmas, those which are in a state of fruition (or rise), are active at any instant. The active psychical bhava karmas are supposed to constitute the bhavamanah, the psychical mind. The agitations or vibrations due to passions in the psychical mind are called adhyvasaya and bear the characteristics of the karmas that are active at that instant. The vibrations in the soul due to the rise of biological bhava karma are also named adhyvasaya, but these are of a different kind. Adhyvasaya continuously change with time and nimitta plays an important role in this change, as mentioned above. Good or bad nimitta produce good or bad adhyvasaya, respectively. Adhyavasaya vibrations in the soul induce similar vibrations in the karma body, since the principle of parallelism between the bhava karma and dravya karma holds good. The events in the soul and karma body take place simultaneously. The rising psychical adhyavasaya and biological adhyavasaya must operate in different ways. The psychical adhyavasaya interacts with the fiery body and produces another kind of vibration called lesya. The biological adhyavasaya is supposed to interact directly with the body's cells, most probably with the DNA and structural proteins, and is supposed to regulate and control the gene functions, biochemical activities, autonomic and other body-related functions. The lesya represents our bhava, or emotions, thoughts and attitude. Some of the adhyvasaya bypasses the fiery body and directly interacts with the brain. This interaction produces a physical imprint of our past memories and impressions in the brain, which in their physical form are citta. The adhyvasaya themselves are subtle citta and comprisethe following four aspects of our personality:
1. Non-righteousness or perversity (mithyatva), which distorts vision so that we are not able to see things in the right perspective.
2. Non-restraint (avirati), which develops desires in us that produce greed and greed-based habits.
3. Non-vigilance (pramada), which develops attachment or delusion.
4. Passions (kashaya).
All of these are our internal creations and have no relationship with the physical body or brain. These characteristics originate from adhyavasaya or karma.
Adhyavasaya are present in all living organisms, but the mind is only developed in human beings and other five-sensed beings. The adhyavasaya performs the functions of the mind in the rest of the living organisms. Adhyavasaya is the means of harvesting the intelligence of the soul, as explained in chapter 5. The adhyvasaya may be pure or impure. Because of adhyavasaya, organisms without a mind (or brain) can also have bondage of karma. This happens in plants and in organisms with one, two, three or four senses.
Lesya provide connections between the subtle body and the physical body. This works in both directions: they pick up signals from the karma body and transmit them to the mind and the physical body, and whatever is performed through the activities of the mind, speech and body is communicated to the karma body by the lesya.
The lesya are of two kinds: dravya (physical) lesya and bhava (non-physical) lesya. Physical lesya are radiations; bhava lesya is the (perverted) state of the soul. The physical lesya in the form of radiation have colors and are classified on that basis. There are six kinds of physical lesya:
1. Krishna lesya - dull blackish color.
2. Nila lesya - dark blue color.
3. Kapot lesya - grey color.
4. Tejo lesya - bright red color.
5. Padma lesya - right yellow color.
6. Shukla lesya - whitish color, bright color.
Each kind of lesya represents specific qualities of the organism that correspond to the state of the soul or active bhava karma. The first three types are the malevolent lesyas and indicate negative qualities or emotions. The last three types are the benevolent lesyas and indicate the positive qualities of the being.
The intensity of the good and bad attitudes denoted by lesya has been explained with the example of getting a fruit. The person who picks up a naturally-dropped fruit has the best, unblemished, attitude, like a pure white colour (Shukla lesya). The person who plucks only ripe fruits from the branches is slightly tarnished and possesses an attitude like a light yellow colour (Padma lesya). A third person who cuts away small branches to have all of the fruit, both ripe and unripe, has an attitude that is compared with a red colour (Tejo lesya). A fourth person who cuts a bigger branch is even lower class, with an attitude like a light grey colour (Kapot lesya). A fifth person who cuts the biggest, main branch is very bad, with an attitude like a dark blue-colour (Nila lesya). A sixth person cuts away the whole tree, taking a limited quantity of fruits and totally depriving others of the fruits by destroying the very source. He has the worst attitude, which is compared with a dark colour (Krishna lesya).
Lesya change over time and only one lesya is present at any one time. Human beings and animals can have all six lesya. Hellish beings have only malevolent lesya and celestial beings have only benevolent lesya. Lesya are also influenced by colors. Colors have been found to have an effect on our feelings and thoughts. Modern psychologists assess the characteristics of a person based on his liking for a particular color.
In the human body system, according to Acharya Mahaprajna, the lesyas are supposed to interact with the endocrine glands and influence the secretion of hormones. Hormones mix with the blood and reach the nervous system and brain, influencing and controlling our emotions, thoughts, attitude, speech, conduct and behavior in the physical plane. Thus, the active psychical karmas, through lesya and hormones, determine our psychical personality and traits. The endocrine glands provide a system that establishes the link between the subtle body and the physical body. These glands convert the information received from the karma body in the form of radiation into chemicals, which finally control the body and the brain.
We can now speculate on the working of the body system. The karman vargana attracted from the cosmos by resonance action converts into karma by bonding with the karma body. Karma exists in this form for a certain period, as determined by the bonding conditions, and on maturity is emitted as radiations known as adhyavasaya. These karma radiations interact with the fiery body to produce lesya radiations. As karmas are distinguished by frequency, the lesyas also exist in a range of frequencies. This justifies the classification of lesyas by colour. These different-frequency lesyas interact with DNA, which besides having a chemical composition has also been found to possess the character of vibration and works like a holographic computer. The fiery body formed by tejas vargana is a kind of bio-plasma body that emits radiations to perform management and control functions, of which one form is lesya (the other is prana, as described above).
From the foregoing, we note the following important roles of karma:
1. Karmas store and maintain information about the activities of the soul.
2. Karmas are the means of communicating the intelligence of the soul to the mind and body. Matter has some organizing power, such as the formation of crystals and some simple types of molecular structures, but the intelligent functions (genetic, cellular, biological and physiological) observed in the body are due to karma.
3. Karmas provide the psycho-physical force for the operation of the body and mind.
4. The karma body functions through radiations that interact with the body, mind and fiery body.
5. The functions of biological and psychical karmas differ in their action. The biological karmas determine, and are essential for, physical existence; the psychical karmas determine the psychical activity of the soul.
