The causal body
What is the causal body? It is of the form of beginningless, unsayable ignorance, the one cause of the other two bodies, the not-knowing of one's own being, undivided in form. That which abides as this is the causal body.
What is the causal body (kāraṇa-śarīra)? It is beginningless and indescribable ignorance (avidyā), the sole cause of the other two bodies. It is the not-knowing of one's own true being, without any distinctions. That which exists as this is the causal body.
- kāraṇa-śarīra
Why is this third body called causal?
- Because it is the oldest of the three and is formed first in the womb
- Because it is the seed-state of ignorance from which the gross and subtle bodies unfold
- Because it causes the body to age and at last to die
- Because it is what gives rise to dreams during sleep
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The seed of the other two
After the gross body and the subtle, a third is named, and it is unlike either. The gross you can see and touch; the subtle you can trace through its breaths and senses, its mind and intellect. This one shows nothing. It is called the causal body because it is the cause of the other two, the seed in which they lie unopened, and what it is made of is not any element but avidya, ignorance: the not-knowing of your own being.
Two words guard it from being grasped too quickly. It is anirvacya, not to be called real, since it goes when knowledge comes, and not to be called unreal, since it is plainly here and holds the two bodies in seed. And it is anadi, without beginning: you cannot point to the moment not-knowing started, for any such pointing already takes it for granted. Beginningless, though, is not the same as endless. Of the three bodies this is the one that ends, and it ends not by dying but by knowing, the way a dark room is not emptied of its dark but simply lit.
It is called undivided, and the place to feel this is deep sleep. There the world has not been spun into a waking show or a dream show; subject and object have not yet drawn apart; nothing is known, and yet you are. That is the causal body abiding, the Self resting under the one veil of not-knowing itself, with waking and dream folded away inside it, waiting. It is the quietest of the three coverings, and the nearest to what it hides.
So this body stands just before the Self is named, because it is the last thing to be seen through. The gross and subtle are clearly not you; they are had, used, set down. This third is subtler, for it is not a thing you have but a darkness about what you are, and inquiry moves toward it as toward the final door. To know the Self is, in the same motion, for this not-knowing to end.
This ignorance has no beginning, and yet it ends. What it is in itself stays unsettled: not quite real, since knowing dissolves it, and not simply nothing, since it holds the two bodies in seed. It is named only as the unsayable, and there the naming stops.
In deep sleep you knew nothing, and yet you were there to say so afterward: what was present then, when even the not-knowing was all that covered you?
In the commentaries
The first two bodies could be shown and counted: the gross has limbs and its six changes, the subtle its seventeen parts. This third is called a body only as the seed from which those two unfold, the one cause standing behind both, for what it is in itself is not any element but avidya, the not-knowing of one's own being. Sankara holds this ignorance to be anirvacya, not to be classed as real, since it goes when knowledge comes, nor as simply unreal, since it plainly holds the two bodies in seed; and anadi, without a beginning, since one cannot name the moment not-knowing began. It is called undivided because here, as in deep sleep, seer and seen have not yet parted and the divisions of waking and dream lie folded away, so this last and quietest covering is set just before the Self is named, the final thing the inquiry must see through.