ananda: divine bliss and happiness. A bliss that is not dependent on the objects or situations in the world or the mind, but inherent in each individual.

(See also: ananda , Hinduism, Yoga, Body Mind and Soul)

Brahman: The Absolute Reality; the Truth proclaimed in the Upanishads; the Supreme Reality that is one and indivisible, infinite, and eternal; all-pervading, changeless Existence; Existence-knowledge-bliss Absolute (Satchidananda); Absolute Consciousness; it is not only all-powerful but all-power itself; not only all-knowing and blissful but all-knowledge and all-bliss itself.

(See also: Brahman , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Trishna :

Trishna

(Sanskrit) The meaning of this word is "thirst" or "longing," but it is a technical term imbodying the idea that it is this "thirst" for the things which the human ego formerly knew, and which it wills and desires to know again  - things familiar and akin to it from past experiences  - which draws the intermediate nature or human ego of man back again to incarnation in earth-life. It is attracted anew to what is to it old and familiar worlds and scenes; it thirsts for the manifested life comprising them, for the things which it formerly made akin to itself; and thus is it attracted back to those spheres which it left at some preceding period of its evolutionary journey through them, when death overtook it. Its attraction to return to earth is naught but an operation of a law of nature. Here the intermediate nature or human ego sowed the seeds of thought and of action in past lives, and here therefore must it of necessity reap their fruits. It cannot reap where it has not sown, as is obvious enough. It never goes whither it is not attracted or drawn.

After death has released the intermediate nature, and during long ages has given to it its period of bliss and rest and psychical recuperation  - much as a quiet and reposeful night's sleep is to the tired physical body  - then, just as a man reawakens by degrees, so does this intermediate nature or human ego by degrees recede or awaken from that state of rest and bliss called devachan. And the seeds of thoughts, the seeds of actions which it had done in former lives, are now laid by in the fabric of itself  - seeds whose natural energy is still unexpended and unexhausted  - and inhere in that inner psychical fabric, for they have nowhere else in which to inhere, since the man produced them there and they are a part of him. These seeds of former thoughts and acts, of former emotions, desires, loves, hates, yearnings, and aspirations, each one of such begins to make itself felt as an urge earthwards, towards the spheres and planes in which they are native, and where they naturally grow and expand and develop.

In this our present life, all of us are setting in motion causes in thought and in action which will bring us back to this earth in the distant future. We shall then reap the harvest of the seeds of thought and action that we are in this present life planting in the fields of our human nature.

In the Pali books of the Orient this word is called tanha.

See also: Trishna , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Sachchidananda saccidananda (Sanskrit) [from sat reality + chit pure consciousness + ananda bliss]

Abstract being, abstract consciousness, abstract bliss; the state of the cosmic spiritual hierarch, Brahman or the Second Logos, the Absolute of our cosmic hierarchy. Subba Row wrote that the Logos is described as sachchidananda because as sat it is the efflux of parabrahman, as chit it contains within itself the whole law of cosmic evolution, as ananda it is the abode of impersonal bliss and the highest happiness possible for a person who has become a jivanmukta -- a freed monad, when union with the cosmic Logos is attained.

(See also: Sachchidananda, saccidananda , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Adwaithananda:

Adwaithananda: The Bliss of being One and Only. (BV-31)

(See also: Adwaithananda , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

anandamaya kosha: "Body of bliss."

The intuitivesuperconscious sheath or actinic-causal body. This inmost soul form (svarupa) is the ultimate foundation of all life, intelligence and higher faculties. Its essence is Parashakti (Pure Consciousness) and Parasiva (the Absolute).

Anandamaya kosha is not a sheath in the same sense as the four outer koshas. It is the soul itself, a body of light, also called karana sharira, causal body, and karmashaya, holder of karmas of this and all past lives. Karana chitta, "causal mind," names the soul's superconscious mind, of which Parashakti (or Satchidananda) is the rarified substratum.

Anandamaya kosha is that which evolves through all incarnations and beyond until the soul's ultimate, fulfilled merger, vishvagrasa, in the Primal Soul, Parameshvara. Then anandamaya kosha becomes Sivamayakosha, the body of God Siva. The physical body (annamaya kosha) is also called sthula sharira, "gross body." The soul body (anandamaya kosha) is also called karana sharira, "causal body."

The pranamaya, manomaya and vijnanamaya koshas together comprise the sukshma sharira, "subtle body," with the pranamaya shell disintegrating at death.

See: actinic, actinodic, manomaya kosha, niyati, odic, sharira, soul, subtle body.

(See also: Anandamaya kosha , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Atma-ananda:

Atma-ananda (Aathma-aanandha). Atmic bliss, bliss of Self-realization.

(See also: Atma-ananda , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Reincarnating Ego :

Reincarnating Ego

In the method of dividing the human principles into a trichotomy of an upper duad, an intermediate duad, and a lower triad  - or distributively spirit, soul, and body  - the second or intermediate duad, manas-kama, or the intermediate nature, is the ordinary seat of human consciousness, and itself is composed of two qualitative parts: an upper or aspiring part, which is commonly called the reincarnating ego or the higher manas, and a lower part attracted to material things, which is the focus of what expresses itself in the average man as the human ego, his everyday ordinary seat of consciousness.

When death occurs, the mortal and material portions sink into oblivion; while the reincarnating ego carries the best and noblest parts of the spiritual memory of the man that was into the devachan or heaven world of postmortem rest and recuperation, where the ego remains in the bosom of the monad or of the monadic essence in a state of the most perfect and utter bliss and peace, constantly reviewing and improving upon in its own blissful imagination all the unfulfilled spiritual yearnings and longings of the life just closed that its naturally creative faculties automatically suggest to the entity now in the devachan.

But the monad above spoken of passes from sphere to sphere on its peregrinations from earth, carrying with it the reincarnating ego, or what we may for simplicity of expression call the earth-child, in its bosom, where this reincarnating ego is in its state of perfect bliss and peace, until the time comes when, having passed through all the invisible realms connected by chains of causation with our own planet, it slowly "descends" again through these higher intermediate spheres earthwards. Coincidently does the reincarnating ego slowly begin to reawaken to self-conscious activity. Gradually it feels, at first unconsciously to itself, the attraction earthwards, arising out of the karmic seeds of thought and emotion and impulse sown in the preceding life on earth and now beginning to awaken; and as these attractions grow stronger, in other words as the reincarnating ego awakens more fully, it finds itself under the domination of a strong psychomagnetic attraction drawing it to the earth-sphere.

The time finally comes when it is drawn strongly to the family on earth whose karmic attractions or karmic status or condition are the nearest to its own characteristics; and it then enters, or attaches itself to, by reason of the psychomagnetic attraction, the human seed which will grow into the body of the human being to be. Thus reincarnation takes place, and the reincarnating ego reawakens to life on earth in the body of a little child.

See also: Reincarnating Ego , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Ananda:

bliss, ecstasy

(See also: Ananda ,Yoga, Yoga Dictionary)

Gwynfyd, Clych y Gwynfyd

(Welsh) Bliss, the cycle of bliss. In Druidism, the worlds above the human, the second of the three cycles of being; that to which the soul attains after evolving beyond the Little World -- the human state -- and the cycle of Abred. From Gwynfyd the soul might elect to take on further incarnation in the Little World, moved by the desire to help forward human evolution.

(See also: Gwydion , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Ananda - spiritual bliss, ecstasy, joy, happiness; that which Sri Bhagavan relishes through His hladini-sakti (see hladini).

(See also: Ananda , Bhakti, Bhakti Yoga, Bhakti Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Anandamaya:

Anandamaya: full of bliss.

(See also: Anandamaya , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

Quantum ReleaseWork: Process that uses the Higher Self to perform vibrational, multidimensional healing. Its originators are two former university professors: medical anthropologist Beatrix Pfleiderer, Dr.Phil., and consciousness researcher Andrew Terker, Ph.D.

According to Quantum ReleaseWork theory:

(a)   culture and frozen emotions suppress one's true core;

(b)  bodily cells hold emotional and psychological woundings;

(c)   woundings compress information in cells;

(d)  such compression prevents one from fulfilling one's true potential; and (e) as one decompress the information in one's cells, one slows aging and obtains access to one's hidden potential for bliss, energy, and creativity.

(See also: Quantum ReleaseWork , Body Mind and Soul, Alternative Health, Alternative Health Dictionary)

Paramapadha (Sanskrit). The place where - according to Visishtadwaita Vedantins - bliss is enjoyed by those who reach Moksha (Bliss). This "place" is not material but made, says the Catechism of that sect,

"of Suddhasatwa, the essence of which the body of Iswara", the lord, "is made".

(See also: Paramapadha , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Moksha (Sanskrit). "Liberation." The same as Nirvana; a post mortem state of rest and bliss of the "Soul-Pilgrim".

(See also: Moksha , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Mahasivarathri:

Mahasivarathri: A holy day dedicated to the Worship of Siva (SSS-II) The Linga is a 'mark' or 'symbol' representing the merging of the particular in the universal, the dissolution of the mind (with its agitations, aspirations and accomplishments that attach and adhere) in the Atma-awareness. The wise realize that the mind and the vast phantasmagoria that it weaves are all subsumed in the Linga, in the beginningless endless ocean of existence-knowledge-bliss.

(See also: Mahasivarathri , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

A Dictionary of Spiritual Terms. From Acupuncture to Zoroaster.

Please note that all words in grey, like "yoga", "enlightenment" or "kundalini" are hyperlinked to archives further explaining the term. At the corresponding archive you will also find articles related to the term.

Ananda (Sanskrit). Bliss, joy, felicity, happiness. A name of the favourite disciple of Gautama, the Lord Buddha.

(See also: Ananda , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Nirvana:

(Lit., blowing out, as a flame) Annihilation of desire, passion, and ego; Liberation, characterized by freedom and bliss.

(See also: Nirvana , Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z

Koshas:

The five sheaths: physical body, energy, mind, wisdom, bliss.

(See also: Koshas , Kundalini, Kundalini Yoga, Kundalini Dictionary)

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z

ANANDAGHANA: mass of bliss

(See also: ANANDAGHANA , Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)