If it were possible, would you like to live eternal Bliss Consciousness? Why not, right? Most of us do what we can just to be happy.

Rumi tells the story of a fish who was thirsty and searched for water, swimming around everywhere to find it. Finally, the fish tires and rests, and in that stillness discovers the water it sought.

We are much like that fish. Through all the activities of our lives, we seek to be happy. Yet India’s scriptures tell us the nature of existence is supreme bliss. Your very Self is divine Bliss Consciousness, and all this creation is an expression of the same bliss.

The Ribhu Gita sums this up succinctly:

I am, indeed, the Self that is supreme Bliss, ever Bliss only. I am of the nature of complete Bliss. The world is all Consciousness-Bliss. —16:2

By the way, such scriptures are not speaking of merely feeling blissful. That is a sensation or feeling, which like any sensation or feeling is passing. Rather, they’re referring to realizing the ultimate, eternal Truth of existence, realizing that all is Sat Chit Ananda, Truth-Consciousness-Bliss. That is eternal, divine Bliss Consciousness, not just a sensation or feeling. Once realized, That persists despite anything: crisis, injury, sickness, even death.

Through the centuries, many have realized and lived divine Bliss. But how? Let’s take a look…

The Path to Eternal Bliss Consciousness

There are many facets to the spiritual path:

• Living ethically along with selfless service.
• Practicing virtues such as compassion, love, truthfulness, ahimsa, and patience.
• Spiritual practice, like prayer, meditation, yoga, and pranayama.
• Study and contemplation of scripture.
• Devotional rituals.

All these and other aspects of spiritual growth are important. There is no doubt they produce great happiness, in this life and the next. Yet when it comes to actually living divine Bliss Consciousness, to realizing your essential nature as bliss and the world as bliss, there is one aspect of spiritual growth that is especially important: tapas.

Tapas is often translated as austerity, as turning the senses away from their objects to pursue your inner, spiritual goal—and doing so with sturdy self-discipline. This might conjure images of yogis standing in ice-cold rivers for hours or in contorted positions till their limbs atrophy. Such feats of austerity are said to be tamasic tapas. That is, tapas dominated by ignorance, tapas that causes injury. This will not lead to bliss.

There is another tapas, though, that does lead to the realization of Bliss Consciousness. It is sattvic tapas, tapas that brings purity, knowledge, bliss, and wisdom. It is the best tapas, the easiest tapas. It is the only tapas you need practice to realize your Self and all existence as Bliss Consciousness. What is this miraculous tapas? Deep, profound, intense meditation.

How Tapas Brings Bliss

Now you may think, “Sure, Ajayan loves meditation and teaches meditation, so he’s bias and is just making this up.” No, this is common knowledge among India’s yogis. The best tapas is deep, profound, intense meditation. Here is why:

First, when you dive deep into meditation, you are turning the senses away from their objects in the world. That is tapas. Also, the root of the word tapas in Sanskrit is tap which means “to heat.” Deep meditation ignites a subtle inner fire that burns away impurities.

This subtle heat cleanses the pancha koshas, the layers of your mind-body complex. This purification makes all the layers of your being transparent to your inmost nature: your Self, which is Bliss Consciousness. Then you can clearly recognize that you are the very Self of Bliss. You are Bliss, and all this world is Bliss.

Now, let’s dive into this process a little deeper. First, just a few words on the pancha koshas.

The Pancha Koshas

According to Vedanta and Yoga Philosophies, your relative being consists of 5 (pancha) sheaths (koshas).

• Annamaya kosha—sheath of food. This is your physical body, essentially made of the food we eat.
• Pranamaya kosha—sheath of prana, vital energy. This is your energetic body, consisting of the five aspects of prana: prana vayu, apana vayu, udana vayu, samana vayu, and vyana vayu. These prana vayus flow through channels called nadis. The chakras are also a feature of this layer of your being.
• Manomaya kosha—sheath of mind. This is your mental-emotional body.
• Vijnanamaya kosha—sheath of discernment. This layer of your being is your intellect and intuition.
• Anandamaya kosha—sheath of bliss. This is the most subtle level of your relative being that inherits the bliss of your inmost Self.

These sheaths cover but also provide the vehicle for your transcendent Self. Again, the key to realizing your Self and all this world as Bliss Consciousness is to purify your pancha koshas, making them transparent to the blissful nature of the Self.

How Meditation Purifies Your Pancha Koshas

When you dive within during deep meditation, something very important happens: Your attention transcends the gross world of activity and you enter into subtler and subtler levels of thought, deeper and deeper inner silence. Finally, you transcend the mind and abide in perfect stillness and silence as pure Being, pure unbounded consciousness, samadhi. This is a journey into two seemingly contradictory values:

• Greater and greater silence and stillness.
• Greater and greater energy and dynamism.

These two are represented in Tantra as Shiva and Shakti, Pure Consciousness and Pure Energy.

How can this be that greater silence equates with greater energy? The quiet, invisible, subtle layers of existence are always more powerful than the gross. This is true of the mind, and it is true of the world. At the gross level, the objects of the world appear inert. Yet, if you could dive into the subtler molecular level of the chair you are sitting on, for example, you would see molecules shimmering with activity. There is more dynamism, more energy at that level. If you could dive deeper yet into the atomic and sub-atomic levels of your chair, you would see immense dynamism, immense energy.

Likewise, on the surface of the mind, thought is in terms of language and is relatively concrete and inert. It is like the gross level of the chair. There is not much power there. In deep meditation, though you’re entering into deeper inner silence and stillness, you’re also as if bringing the mind to a subatomic-powered layer of thought. Here thought transcends language and is a flow of pure energy-intelligence. Just as there is more energy evident at subtler levels of matter, so there is much more energy-intelligence at subtler, quieter levels of thought.

Experiencing this flow of energy-intelligence in the manomaya kosha has three important effects:

• Purifies the manomaya kosha (the mind) directly, making it subtler and clearer. This purification clears subtle impressions left from past experience, so your current experience of life becomes immediate and unconditioned. This is essential to eventually recognizing existence as Bliss.
• The koshas are not independent of each other. They are intimately interconnected. As your awareness flows as pure energy-intelligence in the manomaya kosha, this ignites prana to flow in the pranamaya kosha. This flow of prana purifies the pranamaya kosha. It clears and opens the nadis and chakras.
• The pranamaya kosha mediates between all the other koshas, and so with prana-shakti activated in the pranamaya kosha, there is a domino effect of prana penetrating and purifying the remaining koshas.
  • The vijnanamaya kosha (sheath of discernment) is cleansed to experience pure divine intelligence. You gain profound insight, intuition, and knowingness.
  • The anandamaya kosha (sheath of bliss) is cleansed to experience divine bliss.
  • The annamaya kosha (physical body) receives profound rest as your whole system is plunged into the stillness of Being. This rest purifies, restores, and invigorates the entire body. The flow of prana also creates a cascade of purification in the physical body, purifying and further developing the biochemistry and even the structure of the nervous system.

Over the years, as your practice of deep meditation continues, your mind becomes subtler and clearer, which means the flow of prana gets subtler and more powerful. Prana-shakti becomes more refined, more powerful, more penetrating, to continue to purify all the pancha koshas. It is a beautiful, dynamic process. As this happens, the Bliss of your innermost nature shines through more and more to illumine all the pancha koshas. You become ripe for Self-realization and the recognition that you and all this world are one great mass of unbounded Bliss-Consciousness.

Knowing vs. Living Bliss

This raises an important point. Some think by trying to “awaken” through neo-Advaita discernment, for instance, that they will have bliss. Yes, they may gain the intellectual understanding that they are bliss and all this is bliss. But knowing something intellectually is not the same as experiencing it and living it. No insight, no mere awakening can fully cleanse the pancha koshas. You may understand that you and the world are bliss, but you won’t really experience it. You can’t live eternal bliss without the tapas of deep, profound, long and intense meditation.

Likewise, others feel that by devotion to God, they will get bliss. Yes, through devotion, you will develop sublime, blissful feelings. But again, feelings come and go. Without tapas, ordinary devotion alone cannot bring the realization that you and all this are of the nature of eternal divine Bliss. Intense devotion, however, can be a tapas in itself. Such extraordinary devotion is rare, and it inevitably is conjoined with deep meditation and samadhi. 

Through tapas in conjunction with discernment and devotion, you can realize you are the ocean of Bliss Consciousness. On that ocean of consciousness, your heart can rise in huge waves of devotion and love. With a foundation of tapas, both devotion and discernment bring eternal Bliss Consciousness.

Breaking Through Your Invisible Happiness Ceiling

It’s only natural that we think we’ll be happier if we can just experience more and more of what we like. So we are drawn to whatever we think will bring us happiness: relationships, travel, fine dining, great sex, buying things we want, and seeking to fulfill our desires in so many ways. Yet, there is a saying, “Wherever you go, there you are.” Similarly, “Whatever you experience in the pursuit of happiness, you’re limited by your capacity for happiness.”

There is an invisible ceiling to the happiness you can gain from outer experience. What is that ceiling? The capacity of your mind-body complex to experience happiness. Therefore, no external experience can bring you a measure of happiness exponentially greater than other positive experiences. That is, unless you are specifically developing your capacity for happiness, which is entirely possible—but that is an internal journey of purifying the pancha koshas. It is not an external one of roaming the world of sense objects.

In fact, seeking happiness from the objects of the world gradually reduces your capacity for happiness. Why? It eventually exhausts your inner equipment of experience, your gross and subtle senses, your nervous system. Unless balanced by deep rest (like the profound rest of deep meditation), it creates fatigue and gradually builds stress. Also, by allowing the senses to constantly roam the gross world of matter, your senses become duller and grosser. This gradually shuts down your capacity to experience profound bliss, for bliss is an extremely subtle experience. In fact, divine Bliss Consciousness is subtler than the subtlest.

Tapas does just the opposite of this. It restores and energizes your mind-body complex on all levels. It refines and strengthens your mind and senses and so opens your system to experience the subtler layers of existence and so greater degrees of happiness and bliss. It breaks through your happiness ceiling, until it finally enables you to realize you ARE bliss consciousness.

So as you purify your pancha koshas through tapas, you enjoy bliss within and without. You can also enjoy the world so much more, because your mind and senses are fully awake.

Not all Fun and Games

Tapas is all about purifying the pancha koshas. Let’s be realistic: Purification is not always fun. You may have emotional ups and downs; some days you may be clear and blissful and loving, other days not so much. In other words, it’s much like life. Only instead of creating new impressions by pursuing your desires, you’re burning up old impressions by pursuing liberation.

Purification also tends to come in waves. Depending on your level of development, times of purification may last only a few minutes in meditation or a few hours, or a few days at most. Then the clouds of purification clear, and your bliss, knowledge, intelligence, love, joy are noticeably deepened and expanded. You soon learn there’s always a payoff to purification. Which means you can look forward to it, you can embrace it, because you know what is soon to follow.

Finally, the more the Bliss Consciousness that is your true nature shines through, the less significant purification becomes. A literal ocean of Bliss is opening within you. Any purification is a small thing by comparison, and it passes more quickly as the purifying prana-shakti becomes more and more pure and powerful.

So this is the supreme value of tapas. It’s the admission you pay to live the divine love, knowledge, intelligence, and bliss that is your true nature.

For more information on practical steps you can take to realize your nature as Bliss Consciousness, see the Effortless Mind Meditation Courses page.