Sat-darshana Bhashya (translation)

Verse 7.

यत्पञ्चकोशात्मकमस्ति देहं
तदन्तरा किं भुवनं चकास्ति ।
देहं विना पञ्चविधं तदेतत्
पश्यन्ति के वा भुवनं भणन्तु ॥

Five-fold is the bodily sheath. Apart from it, the world appears not. Can it? Without the five-fold body, Where are they that cognize the world?

The form of the body is made up of five sheaths (five-fold) and they differ in kind. Beginning with the gross material existence, there are five sheaths, called the physical annamaya, the vital pranamaya, the mental manomaya, the sheath of Truth-knowledge vijnanamaya, and the sheath of Bliss anandamaya. And without embodiment of some kind there is no knowledge of world-existence. The apprehension of the world depends upon the embodiment of the apprehending consciousness. Therefore it is questioned “without the five-fold body, where are they that cognize the world ?” Every one that cognizes the world in any state is embodied in any of the five sheaths, and none that is not embodied in any of these has cognition of the world. It should be borne in mind that in this Shastra the connotation of ’body’ extends to the five-sheaths kosas, physical, vital, mental and others, and is not restricted to the narrow sense of the gross, visible and material body.

The body is related to the world as the individual to the universal (lit. collective) and as part to the whole. The embodied knower is bound to, and identifies himself, with the embodiment without which he ceases to be the knower. In the absence of the bodily bondage there can be no such thing as a knower knowing. To whom then can the world as the seen present itself?

As the seeing subject in man is a mental being and the seen object (the world) is of a mental form, the next verse deals zoith the subject of the identity of subject and object, of thought and world, of Vritti and Vishaya.