Anandamaya, the Sheath of Bliss

Anandamaya kosha is the fifth and innermost of the five sheaths of Vedantic thought, the sheath made of bliss, ananda, the covering nearest to the innermost self, experienced in its purest ordinary form in deep, dreamless sleep and in states of profound peace and joy. It is the subtlest and most refined of the five, so close to the atman that some later Vedantic writers cautioned against mistaking it for the self itself, since bliss too, however exalted, is still described as a sheath and not as the pure consciousness it veils.

In the nested scheme of the Taittiriya Upanishad the seeker passes inward from the food-sheath through the vital, mental and wisdom sheaths to this sheath of bliss, and beyond it lies only the self, the atman, identical in the teaching with the ultimate reality, Brahman. The five koshas together form the classical Indian model of the layered person, a map of the inquiry that moves from the outermost body to the innermost ground of being. The doctrine is ancient and central to Vedanta.