*Please dont analyze what you are going to read.

Just like you need a microscope to see germs that are invisible to
naked eye, in the same way you must have spiritual microscope which is deep meditation to realize the truth.
Trying to understand spirituality merely on the intellectual plane wont be of much help.

Three vehicles of human soul

What is soul anyway?
The soul is your core consciousness; it is the ground of your being. Without soul, the body is like
a light bulb without electricity; a computer hardware without software. With the introduction of
soul, body acquires life, sight and hearing, thought, speech, emotions, intelligence, desire, will,
identity and personality. Everything in this universe has this consciousness, even the inanimate
objects like minerals and plants. They have life though they are immovable.
Am I just a mortal physical body?
No. We are not just a physical body like most of us identify ourselves with it. In essence, we are
immortal souls and live in this heavy overcoat of physical body. A soul is successively encased
in three bodies:
1. Idea or causal body (Subtle body)
2. Astral or spiritual Body (Subtle body)
3. Physical Body (Gross body)

Lets take an analogy. Take three jars. In the smallest jar, you put pint of salt and water. Then
you cork it and put it in a bigger jar, corking it, which is then placed in the biggest jar which is
finally corked. Now, put them in sea. For salt water to unite with sea, all these jars must be
broken one by one.

In the same way, in order to unite with cosmic consciousness (or ocean of spirit) forever, all the
three bodies must be cast off which are corked tightly with our ignorance. Only physical body is
destroyed at death. Soul, however, remains encased in the astral and causal bodies. The cohesive
force by which all three bodies are held together is desire. The power of unfulfilled desires is
root cause of all of mans slavery.
More about these bodies:
When man is sensually intent on tasting, smelling, touching, listening, he is principally working
through his physical body. It is gross in nature.
When Visualizing or willing, he is working mainly through his astral body. When a person is
dreaming, he does it through astral body. It is the seat of all our emotions. Our energy centers or
chakras reside in this astral body. It is subtle in nature.
Mans causal body finds expression when he is thinking or diving deep in introspection or
meditation. Causal body is the vault of all our karmic accounts and thrives on cosmic energy. It
is highly affected by our state of peace or chaos. Every action, thought or word of all our
lifetimes is deposited and stored and worked out in causal body. This is why when a person
enters into deep meditation, karmic sensations start resurfacing on physical body. Illness first

starts with causal body. Of course, ones karmic account lodged into the causal body also will
determine the state of health of it.
Benefits of meditation:
With meditation, the causal body gets cleaned and absorbs more and more cosmic energy which
is filtered to the astral body and then into physical body. Greater the silence, the stronger and
healthier the causal body or vice versa. Meditation helps in achieving that silence. Along with
meditation, prayers, charity, spreading the light and masters grace are extremely helpful in
cleaning causal body.