  It was observed recently, that the low energy effective action of the
four-dimensional supersymmetric theories may be obtained as a certain limit of
M Theory. From this point of view, the BPS states correspond to the minimal
area membranes ending on the M Theory fivebrane. We prove that for the
configuration, corresponding to the SU(2) Super Yang-Mills theory, the BPS
spectrum is correctly reproduced, and develop techniques for analyzing the BPS
spectrum in more general cases. We show that the type of the supermultiplet is
related to the topology of the membrane: disks correspond to hypermultiplets,
and cylinders to vector multiplets. We explain the relation between minimal
surfaces and geodesic lines, which shows that our description of BPS states is
closely related to one arising in Type II string compactification on Calabi-Yau
threefolds.
