Koshas
Wisdom Sheath
vig-yah-nah-MY-ah
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Origin 700 to 900 CE
The Wisdom Sheath, Vijnanamaya Kosha in Sanskrit, is the fourth of the five koshas, or sheaths, that Vedantic philosophy describes as layered around the innermost self, a model first set out in the ancient Taittiriya Upanishad, likely composed in the middle of the first millennium BCE. It is described as the sheath of intellect, discernment and higher wisdom, sitting between the Manomaya Kosha, the sheath of the ordinary thinking mind, and the Anandamaya Kosha, the innermost sheath of bliss, and it is this layer that Vedanta credits with the capacity for judgement, decision and spiritual discrimination. The five koshas as a whole move from the grossest to the subtlest, beginning with the Annamaya Kosha, the physical body sustained by food, and the Wisdom Sheath sits second from the innermost, more subtle than mind but not yet the direct experience of bliss. Unlike the physical and vital sheaths below it, the Wisdom Sheath and the two above it are understood in this tradition to survive the death of the physical body, persisting as part of the subtler bodies Vedanta describes.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period700 to 900 CE 1Tradition: Advaita Vedanta Origin Period700 BCE to 500 BCE 2Tradition: Taittiriya Upanishad Origin PeriodNamed in the Taittiriya Upanishad in the middle of the first millennium BCE, and given its systematic five-sheath treatment within Advaita Vedanta by the eighth or ninth century CE. 2 Place of OriginThe Vedic schools of northern India. 2Tradition: Taittiriya Upanishad Attributed Author / CompilerNone. The Taittiriya Upanishad belongs to the Taittiriya school of the Black Yajurveda and is anonymous; no author is claimed for it by the tradition or assigned to it by scholarship. 2Tradition: Taittiriya Upanishad Origin of the NameEach name is literally "the sheath made of X", so the scheme is a series of containers and not a series of bodies 2Tradition: Taittiriya Upanishad Origin of the NameKosha is Sanskrit for a sheath, case or scabbard, and -maya is a suffix meaning made of 2Tradition: Taittiriya Upanishad LanguageVedic Sanskrit 2Tradition: Taittiriya Upanishad Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceVijnanamaya, made of understanding: vijnana, discernment and judgement, which the text places nearer the self than the ordinary mind. 2Tradition: Taittiriya Upanishad Status
Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 3 Learn More
Vijnanamaya, the Wisdom Sheath
Vijnanamaya kosha is the fourth of the five sheaths of Vedantic thought, the sheath made of wisdom or intellect, vijnana or buddhi, the faculty of discernment, judgement, discrimination and higher understanding, as distinct from the restless processing mind of the sheath outside it. It lies within the mental sheath and is subtler than it, the layer of the intellect that decides, discriminates the real from the unreal, and carries the sense of the individual "I" as a knower.
In the nested scheme of the Taittiriya Upanishad this sheath is the seat of the discerning intelligence and of the will, closer to the self than the ordinary mind, and it is by refining this faculty of discrimination that the seeker distinguishes the atman from all that merely covers it. Within it lies only the sheath of bliss and, beyond that, the self. The five koshas are the classical Vedantic model of the layered person, and the wisdom sheath is the innermost but one. The doctrine is ancient and Indian.
Vijnanamaya and the Three Bodies Doctrine
Vedantic thought overlays the five koshas with a coarser scheme of three bodies, or sharira: the gross, sthula sharira, the subtle, sukshma sharira, and the causal, karana sharira. Vijnanamaya, the wisdom sheath, belongs to the subtle body along with the vital and mental sheaths, distinct from Annamaya, the food sheath, which alone is identified with the gross body and left behind at death.
Because Vijnanamaya lies within the subtle body, the tradition holds it to persist beyond physical death, carrying the faculty of discernment forward until liberation dissolves both the subtle and causal bodies; this sheath is also given particular weight in Vedantic practice because it is the faculty said to be capable of recognising the difference between the true self and the sheaths that cover it, a recognition liberation itself depends on.
Vijnanamaya's role as discriminator sets it apart from Manomaya, the more reactive mental sheath just outside it: where Manomaya processes sensory input automatically, Vijnanamaya is held to judge and decide, the faculty of buddhi that a serious meditator is trained to strengthen against the pull of unconsidered reaction. Twentieth century Theosophical writers later adapted kosha vocabulary into a separately bounded scheme of subtle bodies, a distinct later Western system rather than a continuation of this Vedantic teaching.
Sources The Principal Upanishads with Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to BrennanKurt Leland
Cross-Tradition Connections
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