The bliss sheath
What is the sheath made of bliss? In the same way, the clouded sattva that rests in the ignorance which is the causal body, joined with the mind's movements of liking and the like. This is the sheath made of bliss. These are the five sheaths.
What is the bliss sheath (ānandamaya-kośa)? It is the impure sattva that abides in the ignorance forming the causal body, together with inner states such as pleasure (priya). This is the bliss sheath. These, then, are the five sheaths.
- ānandamaya-kośa
Deep sleep is restful and free of every trouble. Why does this teaching still place its bliss in a sheath rather than call it the Self?
- Because the ease of sleep ends when one wakes, and ignorance stays through it, so it is an experience that comes and goes, not what one always is
- Because deep sleep holds no bliss at all, and the word bliss is only a manner of speaking
- Because the bliss of the Self is a stronger and longer version of the same pleasant feeling
- Because only waking experience can be trusted, and sleep reveals nothing about the Self
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The bliss that is still a covering
The sheaths have been moving inward, from food to breath to mind to the discriminating intellect, and now the last one is named. It is the bliss sheath, and its name is almost the name of the goal. This is exactly why the inquiry slows down here. The contentment felt in deep sleep, the quiet ease that underlies all our busier states, is real and worth knowing; but it is being marked as a sheath, a covering, and not as the Self that the whole text is walking toward.
What is this sheath made of? Clouded sattva: the mind's clarity dimmed and mixed with restlessness and dullness, resting in the ignorance that forms the causal body. It shows itself as the soft movements of liking, the small pleasures of the mind, contentment when a wish is met. These movements rise and fall. Anything woven of movements that rise and fall is something one has, not something one is. So the bliss here is bliss-shaped, a covering with the look of happiness, while the bliss the text means by the Self is not a state and not a feeling, but what remains when every state has been set aside.
Deep sleep is the plain test. There the whole world drops away and only ease is left, and that ease is easily taken for freedom. But ignorance has not dropped away; it is still there, holding the seed of waking, and one returns from sleep no wiser and no freer than before. An ease that ends, however deep, cannot be what one always is. The bliss sheath is as close as a covering can come to the Self and still be a covering, near enough that the seeker must be told, gently and clearly, that this too is to be seen through.
Here the five sheaths are complete, and the count is closed. Each in turn looked for a moment like the Self, and each in turn has been set aside, the last and finest with the most care. What is laid down is not a denial of bliss but a refusal to stop short of it: the contentment that comes and goes is honored as real and then released, so that the bliss which never comes and never goes can be recognized for what it is.
Whether the bliss spoken of in deep sleep is a covering over the Self, as this Advaita primer teaches, or a true taste of the Lord's own bliss, is read differently across the schools when they turn to the bliss-passages of the Upanisads.
When you wake and say you slept well, who was it that rested, and who is it that now knows the rest is over?
In the commentaries
The bliss sheath is the last and innermost covering, and the inquiry is careful here for a reason: its name is almost the name of the Self, and the two must not be confused. What is meant is the ease felt in deep sleep, the quiet contentment that runs under waking and dream. It is made of clouded sattva, the mind's clarity dimmed and mixed with restlessness (rajas) and dullness (tamas), resting in the very ignorance that is the causal body. Because it is joined with passing movements of the mind, liking and its kin, it rises and sets; the bliss that is the Self never rises and never sets. So this is a sheath of bliss, a covering shaped like bliss, and not the limitless ananda that the Self simply is. The trial of deep sleep makes the point plain. There the world is gone and ease remains, yet ignorance remains too, and one wakes still unfree; an experience that ends, however sweet, cannot be what one already is. The text marks this off now so that when the Self is named as being, consciousness, and bliss a few steps on, the bliss meant there is not mistaken for the contentment of sleep.