Subtle Bodies: A Brief Primer #1
An overview subtle bodies in different traditions.
Having a Map of Subtle Bodies
As I have written about in the first two posts, just as we have a physical anatomy so too we have a subtle anatomy. Yet, these days the notion of subtle bodies is not well known or understood. As modern people focused on the physical body and its organs of sense, we have become out of touch with the subtle and energetic levels of our being. So much so, even the strange assertion that consciousness does not exist is taken as a serious position by some modern philosophers of mind.
The term ‘subtle body’ is a standard english translation of the Sanskrit term: sūkṣma śarīra,1 some of the earliest references to which can be found in the Upaniṣads. In the Taittirīya Upaniṣad (II.1–5), for example, we are introduced to the well-known pañchakośa or ‘five-sheaths’ model of subtle bodies. If you have attended any form of yoga workshop or meditation training within the studio-based yogic milieu, it is a model that you may have been introduced to. For the most part, however, the pañchakośa model is only superficially related back to experience. It may be learnt by rote, but without systematic exploration of its relation to actual experience — in practice and in all other aspects of life — it amounts to little more than empty theory; something accepted at face value without further attention.2
Be that as it may, if you were to query a cross section of meditators today, it’s a fair bet that a significantly large percentage of them are not familiar with this, or any model of subtle bodies at all. Or as some might claim, they don’t ‘believe in’ subtle bodies, choosing to ignore that such models refer to experiential phenomena. The corollary, then, is that many practitioners are left to navigate their experiences without such a map. At best, bits and pieces of terminology are patched together in order to help name certain experiences.3 But the process is fraught. There are a great number of cases where practitioners are lost, unsure, and missing a deeper context for understanding and assimilating some of the experiences that happen to them in meditation.4 Conversely, having a map of subtle bodies helps not only to identify and make sense of experiences, but also opens up new realms of experience that would otherwise be passed over, unnoticed. It goes without saying, of course, that any map is not a replacement for the terrain. Maps aren’t laws, rules, or premises one ‘believes in’. They are there to help guide experience.
Below I am going to post a table that I put together for an in-person course I ran a few years ago (Meditation, Yogic Vision, and Subtle Bodies). At some point I shall get around to updating and improving it. Like any such schematic it sacrifices nuance for simplicity, but provides a good overview of the correspondence of subtle body understanding across traditions, for this post and posts to come. It will be helpful not to think of each level it specifies like a stack of separate layers, but interpenetrated like water through a sponge. For instance, just as the Prāṇamaya Kośa is permeated by the Manomaya Kośa, in the same way the Etheric Body is permeated by the Astral Body.
The foregoing terms will be fully explained in due course. In the meantime, the table provides some very brief indications. The table introduces a simplified Four-Fold Model of subtle bodies that neatly encompasses the Vedantic pañchakośa model, yet also corresponds well to other models, including those from Ancient Greek and Hermetic traditions. As a simplified model, it’s designed to help us systematically identify and relate experiences of subtle bodies, without getting caught up in technical minutiae or indeed, philosophical differences that various models may reflect. It provides us with a language and handle upon super-sensible experience, where nuances can be (re)discovered afresh, experientially.
On that point, it is important to consider that some differences between models may not be reconcilable. We have to accept that the more one penetrates into the mysteries of spiritual reality, the more one encounters paradox. It may be comforting to say that all paths lead to the same goal, or that ‘this’ path got it more ‘right’ than ‘that’ one. But this kind of conclusion would be premature. In ways that are inscrutable to ordinary reason some differences reflect, at least to some degree, different streams of spiritual destiny.
Table of Subtle Body Correspondences
Prāṇa, Qì, Pneuma & Etheric
Taking the Upaniṣadic model as our initial key, in this post let us first briefly survey the Prāṇa. In the above verse from the Taittirīya Upaniṣad, we learn that the physical body (the layer “formed of food-essence”) is permeated by another “self”, that is formed of Prāṇa. In the pañchakośa model it is referred to as the as the prāṇamaya kośa: the ‘sheath’ or ‘envelope’ made of Prāṇa or ‘life-breath’. Prāṇa is equivalent in almost every respect to the Qì in the Taoist and Classical Chinese Medicine traditions. Notably, Pneuma in classical Greek also refers to the same phenomena. While these terms are also commonly translated as ‘breath’ or ‘wind’, as internal phenomenon it should be made clear that they don’t simply refer to material objects or events, but qualitatively as ‘vital energy’, ‘life-energy’ or ‘life-force’. That is, the vital, (re)generative life-energy that we share in common with all living entities, without which the organismic body or annamaya kośa — the ‘envelope made of food’ — from simple plant life to human being, subject to entropy, will revert back to its inert mineral nature. In other words dead, inanimate matter.
Far from imagination or superstitious belief as the disenchanted modern imaginary encourages us to assume, anyone can directly experience prāṇa when they pay attention in the right way. While practices such as yogic Prāṇāyāma or Taoist Qìgōng are now popular and common, they are typically re-conceptualised through a reductive secular lens, and understood in acceptable physiological or psychological terms. This has largely foreclosed the possibility of recognising in the practice a tangible connection with the life-principle. In the Four-Fold model this subtle body layer is the Etheric Body, which ranges from the most organic, digestive, and regenerative processes of the body, to highly refined layers that relate closely to the imprints of memory, imagination and thought from the Astral worlds (the table will help provide you with a sense of what ‘Astral’ means. It will be explained further in a future post).
A Quick Pointer
Before I briefly elaborate one way to begin perceiving this layer of our embodied being, I should emphasise that whatever I offer here on Substack in practical terms, should be regarded as only snippets or indications that are part of a whole practice context. As such, they are only starting points or experiential entryways to an entire world of subtle experiences, not in themselves the ‘whole thing’. Not by a long shot!
Step 1: Friction Breath
Make a slight constriction at the back of the throat and as low down in the throat as you can, so that you make a friction sound while breathing through the nose on both the in breath and out. Loud enough so that someone sitting nearby would be able to hear it. You may note a built up of vibration in the larynx. In essence it is a simple form of prāṇāyāma called ujjayi breath. But in this case, we are applying it in a much more specific way than is usually spoken of.
The Mysteries of the Larynx start here.
Step 2: Awareness between the eyebrows
After about 1 or 2 minutes of that, maintain the friction breath and place your attention on the spot between the eyebrows. With your attention between the eyebrows, what you are looking for some is kind of vibration or sensation there. Do not imagine, creatively visualise it, or anything like that. When it comes it will come on its own. It may arise as a tingling or pressure, density or pulsing sensation, maybe a heat or wave, or even feeling as if there were a magnet there. When it comes it will be tangible. Unmistakable. Now, importantly, you may note how the friction breath brings definition, amplification, and stabilisation of awareness of the vibration, there, between the eyebrows. You are now activating the Etheric layer of your energy; the master switch effect of the ājñā cakra or third-eye I spoke of in the first post:
In a peripheral way, you may also sense similar qualities throughout your body as you practice. You may also notice that it can activate a quality of stillness that is different to trying to keep still, or trying to calm the mind in the usual way.
As a rule of thumb, then, any quality that arises in your practice that carries this sort experience, with vibration, tingling, density, pressure, or other vibration-like qualities in your body, belongs to the Etheric Body. Again, let me reiterate, this is only the starting point; an entry into a whole treasury of subtle experience. Especially when you begin to cultivate and apply the felt-sense of this domain in the world. Aside from meditation, for anyone that practices forms of Qìgōng, Haṭha Yoga Āsana, or similar embodied practices, I invite you to add this to it and explore what it awakens.
The Mysteries of Yogic Vision start here.
If you do try it out, play with what comes up. I welcome your comments and questions below.
Or alternatively: linga ṣarīra.
While this point calls out for a pañchakośa diagram, it is for this reason I will not post one here. A simple google image search will turn up hundreds, if readers are interested.
Such as pīti from the Pali Canon, meaning the experience of bliss or rapture, that can arise in the practice of jhāna, which is in fact a translation of the Sanskrit dhyāna, meaning ‘meditation’. Pīti is often reduced to abstract ‘mental’ or ‘psychological’ factors.
Dr. Willoughby Britton’s now defunct ‘Dark Night Project’ at Brown University, her work on ‘trauma-informed’ mindfulness, and the numerous articles in popular media on the ‘dark side’ of meditation it inspired, is a typical example. The expression ‘Dark Night’ has been popularised to refer to people experiencing disorientation, depersonalisation, and other serious ‘side effects’ of meditation. Like many such appropriations in the modern meditation scene, there is a spiritually significant side in the original text The Dark Night of the Soul by Christian mystic St. John of the Cross, which has largely been omitted.
Very curious about the part where you talked about different paths leading to different spiritual destinies!