Atma (soul)

What in reality is this body? It is but the Atma (soul) encased in five Koshas or sheaths – Annamaya (sheath composed of food), Pranamaya (sheath composed of vitality), Manomaya (one composed of thought), Vijnanamaya (sheath of intelligence), and Aanandamaya (sheath of bliss). By understanding this truth and contemplating over it, one attains discrimination to recede from these sheaths to the inner, more real core.

Thus, step by step, a spiritual aspirant abandons one sheath after another and is able to dissolve away all of them, to achieve the knowledge of his unity with Brahma (Divinity).