Although consciousness is eternal, the material body does not share this quality. The body passes through the stages of birth, childhood, youth, old age, disease and death. At death, consciousness transfers to another body according to the laws of material nature (karma) and begins the cycle yet again. The ever-changing body never bewilders those who are cognisant of the difference between the material body and consciousness.
Embodied consciousness is said to have five stages known as the pancha-kosha – annamaya (satisfying our existence by eating, as seen in children), pranamaya (consciousness of the preservation of one’s body), manomaya (the stage of mental awareness), vijnanamaya (the cultivation of consciousness based on higher knowledge, understanding one is not this material body) and anandamaya (cultivating and entering into one’s relationship with the Supreme as part and parcel of Krishna). The first three stages, annamaya, pranamaya and manomaya pertain to all living beings that are caught in the doldrums of material sense enjoyment. Vijnanamaya and anandamaya concerns those who have acquired knowledge of self-realisation (vijnana) and perfection (ananda).
Those who are asleep, simply absorbed in bodily identification, never experience the world beyond their sense perception. Heat and cold, happiness and distress, pleasure and pain, birth and death – these are the perceptions of life experienced by those with no knowledge of consciousness. But those who are liberated from the bodily concept of life are awake in the conscious world and are always in balance, even in the face of opposing and contradictory situations in the material world. They are undisturbed.
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