Mandukya_Upanishad

even a little buttermilk in his house. What is the use ofcalling a poor man as Daulat Rām? There are names that wegive without any connection with the nature or the status ofthe person, and the internal structure of the subtle body.The real name, liṇga, indication, mark, is thesūkṣhmaśarīra, and it is the determining factor of thephysical form, the body in which we are engaged.This subtle body which is vibrant with desires,unfulfilled, puts on a form called the body, for the sake ofthe fulfilment of the desires. This putting on of a body iscalled birth; and birth cannot cease for us as long as thesubtle body is not extinguished. There are births and births,as also deaths and deaths, processes of samsāra ortransmigration, which are nothing but the effort of thephysical body to find newer and newer avenues ofsatisfaction for the desires that are left unfulfilled. Aninfinite number of jīvas fills this cosmos. All these jīvas areanimated by a consciousness that is common to all. Thisconsciousness is; Vaiśvānara; but, individually, when thisconsciousness is considered in terms of bodies, it is calledjīva.While the consciousness in terms of the totality of allthe physical bodies, inclusive of all animate and inanimatethings, may be regarded as the Vaiśvānara, or the Virāt, thevery same consciousness animating a particular body in thewaking consciousness is called Viśva. The Viśva is theĀtman enlivening the physical body; Vaiśvānara is theĀtman reigning supreme in the physical cosmos. This is thetwofold waking life, individual and the Cosmic –jāgnritasthāna.62