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Astral body

 
Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia: Astral Body
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An exact replica of the physical body but composed of finer matter. The term is chiefly employed in Theosophy, and those numerous occult systems derived from it, to denote the link between the nervous system and the cosmic reservoir of energy. The astral body corresponds to the double of out-of-the-body experiences reported in psychic research. The term double, however, is less comprehensive and refers only to the living; astral body refers specifically to the bodily counterpart of the dead. The etheric double or body, in Theosophy, is distinct from the astral, but in Spiritualistic literature they are often inter-changed. These concepts derive from traditional Hindu mysticism, though there are also Western precursors.

The astral body is the instrument of passions, emotions, and desires, and, since it interpenetrates and extends beyond the physical body, it is the medium through which these are conveyed to the latter. When it separates from the denser body— during sleep, or by the influence of drugs, or as the result of accidents—it takes with it the capacity for feeling, and only with its return can pain or any other such phenomena be felt. During these periods of separation, the astral body is an exact replica of the physical, and as it is extremely sensitive to thought, the apparitions of dead and dying resemble even to the smallest details the physical bodies which they have lately left.

The Astral World is said to be attainable to clairvoyants, and many claim that the appropriate body is therefore visible to them. In accordance with theosophical teaching, thought is not the abstraction it is commonly considered to be, but is built up of definite forms, the shape of which depends on the quality of the thought. It also causes definite vibrations, which are seen as colors. Hence, clairvoyants may tell the state of a man's development from the appearance of his astral body.

For example, some suggest that a nebulous appearance indicates imperfect development, while an ovoid appearance betokens a more perfect development. As the colors are indicative of the kind of thought, the variety of these in the astral body indicates the possessor's character. Inferior thoughts produce loud colors, so that rage, for instance, will be recognized by the red appearance of the astral body. Higher thoughts will be recognizable by the presence of delicate colors; religious thought, for instance, will cause a blue color.

This teaching holds true for the bodies higher than the astral, but the coloration of the astral body is much more familiar to those dwellers in the physical world who can see into the astral plane. Less familiar are the coloration and feelings of the higher bodies, for humans are relatively unacquainted with them.

There is a definite theory underlying the emotional and other functions of the astral body. The astral body is not composed of matter alive with an intelligent life, but it nevertheless possesses a kind of life sufficient to convey an understanding of its own existence and wants. The stage of evolution of this astral life is that of descent, the turning point not having yet been reached. He who possesses the physical body has, on the other hand, commenced to ascend, and there is, therefore, a continual opposition of forces between him and his astral body. Hence, the astral body accentuates in him such grosser, retrograde thoughts as he may nourish, since the direction of these thoughts coincides with its own direction. If, however, he resists the opposition of his astral body, the craving of the latter gradually becomes weaker and weaker, till at last it disappears altogether. The constitution of the astral body is thereby altered, for gross thoughts demand for their medium gross astral matter, while pure thoughts demand fine astral matter. During physical life the various kinds of matter in the astral body are intermingled, but at physical death the elementary life in the matter of the astral body seeks instinctively after self-preservation, and it therefore causes the matter to rearrange itself in a series of seven concentric sheaths, the densest being outside and the finest inside.

Physical vision depends on the eyes, but astral vision depends on the various kinds of astral matter capable of receiving different undulations. To be aware of fine matter, fine matter in the astral body is necessary, and so with the other kinds. Hence, when the rearrangement takes place, vision only of the grossest kinds of matter is possible, since only that kind is represented in the thick outer sheath of the astral body. Under these circumstances, the new inhabitant of the astral sphere sees only the worst of it, and also only the worst of his fellow inhabitants, even though they are not in so low a state as himself.

This state is not eternal, and in accordance with the evolutionary process, according to Theosophists, the gross sheath of astral matter wears slowly away, and the individual remains clothed with the six less gross sheaths. These also, with the passage of time, wear away, being resolved into their compound elements, and at last when the final disintegration of the least gross sheath of all takes place, the individual leaves the Astral World and passes into the Mental. However, this rearrangement of the astral body is not inevitable, and those who have learned and know are able at physical death to prevent it. In such cases the change appears a very small one, and the socalled dead continue to live their lives and do their work much as they did in the physical body.

Sources:

Mead, George R. S. The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tradition. London: John M. Watkins, 1919. Reprint, Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Publishing House, 1967.

Powell, Arthur E. The Astral Body and Other Astral Phenomena. London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1927.

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Wikipedia: Astral body
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The Astral Sleep - by Jeroen van Valkenburg

The astral body is a subtle body posited by many religious philosophers, intermediate between the intelligent soul and the physical body, composed of a subtle material.[1] The concept ultimately derives from the philosophy of Plato: it is related to an astral plane, which consists of the planetary heavens of astrology. The term was adopted by nineteenth-century Theosophists and neo-Rosicrucians.

The idea is rooted in common worldwide religious accounts of the afterlife[2] in which the soul's journey or "ascent" is described in such terms as "an ecstatic.., mystical or out-of body experience, wherein the spiritual traveller leaves the physical body and travels in his/her subtle body (or dreambody or astral body) into ‘higher’ realms".[3] Hence "the "many kinds of 'heavens', 'hells' and purgatorial existences believed in by followers of innumerable religions" may also be understood as astral phenomena, as may the various "phenomena of the séance room".[4] The phenomenon of apparitional experience is therefore related, as is made explicit in Cicero's Dream of Scipio.

The astral body is sometimes said to be visible as an aura of swirling colours.[5] It is widely linked today with out-of-body experiences or astral projection. Where this refers to a supposed movement around the real world, as in Muldoon and Carrington's book The Projection of the Astral Body, it conforms to Madame Blavatsky's usage of the term. Elsewhere this latter is termed "etheric", while "astral" denotes an experience of dream-symbols, archetypes, memories, spiritual beings and visionary landscapes. In reference to the secular scientific world view the concept is now generally considered superseded, being rooted in an attribution of materiality and dimensionality to the psychic world.

Contents

History

Planes of existence

Gross and subtle bodies
Theosophy
Neo-Theosophy
Rosicrucian

The 7 Worlds & the 7 Cosmic Planes
The Seven-fold constitution of Man
The Ten-fold constitution of Man
Thelema

Body of light | Thelemic mysticism
Surat Shabda Yoga

Cosmology
Sufism

Sufi cosmology
Hinduism
Talas/Lokas - Tattvas, Kosas, Upadhis
Buddhism
Buddhist cosmology
Kabbalah
Atziluth -> Beri'ah -> Yetzirah -> Assiah

Sephirot
Fourth Way

Ray of Creation
The Laws
Three Centers and Five Centers
Castaneda

The Double Body
The Second Attention
The Third Attention
The Dream Attention
The Realm of Inorganic Beings
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The classical world

Neoplatonism is a branch of classical philosophy that uses the works of Plato as a guide to understanding religion and the world. In the Myth of Er, particularly, Plato rendered an account of the afterlife which involved a journey through seven planetary spheres and then eventual reincarnation. He taught that man was composed of mortal body, immortal reason and an intermediate "spirit".[6]

Neoplatonists agreed as to the immortality of the rational soul but disagreed as to whether man's "irrational soul" was immortal and celestial ("starry", hence astral) or whether it remained on earth and dissolved after death. The late Neoplatonist Proclus, who is credited the first to speak of subtle "planes", posited two subtle bodies or "carriers" (okhema) intermediate between the rational soul and the physical body. These were; 1) the astral vehicle which was the immortal vehicle of the Soul and 2) the spiritual (pneuma) vehicle, aligned with the vital breath, which he considered mortal. [7]

The word "astral" means "of the stars", thus the astral plane, consisting of the celestial spheres, is held to be an astrological phenomenon: "The whole of the astral portion of our earth and of the physical planets, together with the purely astral planets of our System, make up collectively the astral body of the Solar Logos". There are "seven types of astral matter" by means of which "psychic changes occur periodically".[8]

The modern era

Such ideas greatly influenced mediaeval religious thought and are visible in the Renaissance medicine of Paracelsus and Servetus. In the romantic era, alongside the discovery of electromagnetism and the nervous system, there came a new interest in the spirit world. Franz Anton Mesmer spoke of the stars, animal magnetism and magnetic fluids. In 1801, the English occultist Francis Barrett wrote of a herb's "excellent astral and magnetic powers" - for herbalists had categorised herbs according to their supposed correspondence with the seven planetary influences.

In the mid-nineteenth century the French occultist Eliphas Levi wrote much of "the astral light", a factor he considered of key importance to magic, alongside the power of will and the doctrine of correspondences. He considered the astral light the medium of all light, energy and movement, describing it in terms that recall both Mesmer and the luminiferous ether.[9]

Levi's idea of the astral was to have much influence in the English-speaking world through the teachings of The Golden Dawn, but it was also taken up by Helena Blavatsky and discussed in the key work of Theosophy, The Secret Doctrine. Levi seems to have been regarded by later Theosophists as the immediate source from which the term was adopted into their sevenfold schema of planes and bodies, though there was slight confusion as to the term's proper use.

Theosophy

Blavatsky aligned the term "astral body" with the Indian linga sharira which is one of the seven principles of human life according to her, and the astral light with the Akashic Record, a kind of cosmic memory. According to the Theosophical founder William Q. Judge the astral world is also analogous to the world of ghosts. Judge wrote; "There are many names for the Astral Body. Here are a few: Linga Sarira, Sanskrit, meaning design body, and the best one of all; ethereal double; phantom; wraith; apparition; doppelganger; personal man; perispirit; irrational soul; animal soul; Bhuta; elementary; spook; devil; demon. Some of these apply only to the astral body when devoid of the corpus after death." [10]

However C.W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant (Adyar School of Theosophy), and following them, Alice Bailey, equated it with Blavatsky's Kama (desire) principle and called it the Emotional body a concept not found in earlier Theosophy. Astral body, desire body, and emotional body became synonymous, and this identification is found in much later Theosophically-inspired thought. The astral body in later Theosophy is "the vehicle of feelings and emotions" through which "it is possible...to experience all varieties of desire". We have a "life in the astral body, whilst the physical body is wrapped in slumber". So the astral body "provides a simple explanation of the mechanism of many phenomena revealed by modern psycho-analysis".[11] To this extent, then, the "astral body" is a reification of the dream-world self.

Post-Theosophists

Hand-coloured version of the anonymous Flammarion woodcut (1888).

According to Max Heindel's Rosicrucian writings the Desire body is made of desire stuff from which human beings form feelings and emotions. It is said to appear to spiritual sight as an ovoid cloud extending from sixteen to twenty inches beyond the physical body. It has a number of whirling vortices (chakras) and from the main vortex, in the region of the liver, there is a constant flow which radiates and returns.[12] The desire body exhibits colors that vary in every person according to his or her temperament and mood. However, the astral body (or "Soul body") must be evolved by means of the work of transmutation and will eventually be evolved by humanity as a whole. According to Heindel, the term "astral body" was employed by the mediaeval Alchemists because of the ability it conferred to traverse the "starry" regions. The "Astral body" is regarded as the "Philosopher's Stone" or "Living Stone" of the alchemist, the "Wedding Garment" of the Gospel of Matthew[13] and the "Soul body" that Paul mentions in the First Epistle to the Corinthians[14]

Many other popular accounts of post-Theosophical ideas appeared in the late 20th century. Barbara Brennan's Hands of Light distinguishes between the emotional body and the astral body. She sees these as two distinct layers in the seven-layered "Human Energy Field". The emotional body pertains to the physical universe, the astral body to the astral world. The Mother sometimes refers to the astral body and experiences on the astral plane. The Indian master Osho occasionally makes use of a modified Theosophical terminology.

According to Samael Aun Weor, who popularised Theosophical thought in Latin America, the astral body is the part of human soul related to emotions, represented by the sephirah Hod in the kabbalistic Tree of Life. However the common person only has a kamarupa, body of desire or "lunar astral body," a body related to animal emotions, passions and desires, while the true human emotional vehicle is the solar astral body, which can be crystallised through Tantric sex. The solar astral body is the first mediator between the Cosmic Christ, Chokmah, and the individual human soul. [15]

George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff

Gurdjieff refers to the astral body as the "body Kesdjan" or "vessel of the soul": it is of the sun and all planets, just as the physical body is of the earth. While it is not developed one is a "human being only in quotation marks", who cannot be considered in any meaningful sense to have a soul and who will "die like a dog".[16]

Depth Psychology

Parallels drawn between the idea of the astral and that of the unconscious mind have been noted above, for Sigmund Freud inherited Mesmer's awareness of the animal self, the value of hypnosis, trance and dream, replacing the physical idea of the life-force with a purely psychological paradigm of libido, id and subconscious mind. Later Wilhelm Reich tried to use vitalist biological theory and experiments to re-establish the materiality of the life-force.

Carl Jung has been aligned with the idea of the astral body by Jungians and Theosophists alike.[17] Jung himself drew on alchemical and classical imagery to explore the dynamics and symbols of memory, dream and religious initiation. He saw the astral journey as a paradigm of "modern man's search for a soul", and pictured a collective unconscious memory, driven by archetypal forces and knowable in the symbolic language of dreams and visions.[18]

Moreover, Jung saw this archetypal world as, like the astral plane, an "objective psyche", extending in the world at large, bridging mind and matter.[19] He worked with physicist Wolfgang Pauli in his attempt to lend rigor to an idea largely absent from European science since the renaissance. Early twentieth-century biologists like Ernst Haeckel viewed embryology as a recapitulation of evolution, which implies a kind of organising memory, and a few modern fringe biologists, such as Rupert Sheldrake, influenced by Jungian ideas and by vitalism, have posited organising fields of life consisting of memories and drives.

See also

References

  1. ^ Arthur A.Powell, The Astral Body and other Astral Phenomena, The Theosophical Publishing House, London, England; Wheaton,Ill, U.S.A.; Adyar, Chennai, India, 1927, reprinted in 1954 and 1965, page 7, online June 2008 at http://www.theosophical.ca/AstralBodyByPowell-A.htm
  2. ^ Suki Miller, After Death: How People around the World Map the Journey after Death (1995).
  3. ^ Dr. Roger J. Woolger, Beyond Death: Transition and the Afterlife, accessed online June 2008 at the website of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/PDF/RWoolgerTransition.pdf.
  4. ^ Powell, op.cit.
  5. ^ C.W. Leadbeater, Man, Visible and Invisible; Barbara Brennan, Hands of Light; Dora Van Gelder Kunz, The Personal Aura; Barbara Y. Martin, Change Your Aura, Change Your Life.
  6. ^ Plato, The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee, Harmondsworth.
  7. ^ Dodds, E.R. Proclus: The Elements of Theology. A revised text with translation, introduction, and commentary, 2nd edition 1963, Appendix.
  8. ^ Powell, op. cit. page 9.
  9. ^ Chic Cicero, Chic C, Sandra Tabatha Cicero The Essential Golden Dawn, Llewellyn Worldwide, 2003.
  10. ^ William Judge, The Ocean of Theosophy 2nd Ed. TPH, 1893, Chapter 5, book online June 2008 at http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/ocean/oce-hp.htm
  11. ^ Powell, op. cit. Ch.1 passim.
  12. ^ Currents in the desire body
  13. ^ Cf. Matthew 22:1-14
  14. ^ Cf. 1Cor 15:44 (concordance Greek/Textus Receptus): "It is sown a soul body [Gr. "soma" – body and "psuchicon" – psu(y)che – soul; mistranslated "natural body"]; it is raised a spiritual body (...)"
  15. ^ Samael Aun Weor (1953), The Seven Words, Thelema Press, http://www.gnosticteachings.org/content/category/10/100/103/ 
  16. ^ Kenneth Walker, A Study of Gurdjieff's Teachings.
  17. ^ Dr. Roger J. Woolger, Beyond Death: Transition and the Afterlife, accessed online June 2008 at the website of the Royal College of Psychiatrists http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/PDF/RWoolgerTransition.pdf. - "Buddhists from Tibet talk of the bardo realm in which many states of the spirit/soul, i.e. bardos, exist between lifetimes on earth. The Spiritualists in their teachings call it the Spirit World, following the great visionary Swedenborg....In the Celtic tradition, the intermediary realm is often called the Middle Kingdom or the Faery World. Australian aborigines call it the Dreamtime, the Sufis of Persia called it the alam al-mithal or Mythic World, which Henry Corbin (1995) has dubbed the mundus imaginalis. Jung called it the collective unconscious....."
  18. ^ Karen Gibson, D and D Lathrop, Carl Jung and Soul Psychology,1991, Haworth Press
  19. ^ Jung, C.G. (1947/1954) par. 420 Collected Works

Sources

  • Besant, Annie, Theosophical Manual No. VII: Man and His Bodies, London, Theosophical Publishing House, 1914.
  • Brennan, Barbara Ann, Hands of Light : A Guide to Healing Through the Human Energy Field, Bantam Books, 1987.
  • ----- Light Emerging: The Journey of Personal Healing, Bantam Books, 1993.
  • C. W. Leadbeater, Man, Visible and Invisible, London, Theosophical Publishing House, 1902.
  • Kunz, Dora van Gelder, The Personal Aura, Wheaton, IL, Quest Books/Theosophical Publishing House, 1991.
  • [Carl Edwin Lindgren]. 2005. Debunking Auras and Aura Cameras.
  • Martin, Barbara Y., with Dmitri Moraitis, Change Your Aura, Change Your Life, Sunland, CA, Wisdomlight, 2003.
  • The Mother (Alfassa, Mirra) Collected Works of the Mother.
  • ----- The Agenda
  • Poortman, J.J. Vehicles of Consciousness; The Concept of Hylic Pluralism (Ochema), vol I-IV, The Theosophical Society in Netherlands, 1978.
  • Powell, Arthur E. The Astral Body and other Astral Phenomena
  • Steiner, Rudolf, Theosophy: An introduction to the supersensible knowledge of the world and the destination of man. London: Rudolf Steiner Press. (1904) 1970.
  • ----- Occult Science - An Outline. Trans. George and Mary Adams. London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1909, 1969.
  • Heindel, Max, The Rosicrucian Mysteries (Chapter IV: The Constitution of Man: Vital Body - Desire Body - Mind), 1911, ISBN 0-911274-86-3.
  • Walker, Benjamin, Beyond the Body: The Human Double, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1974, ISBN 0-7100-7808-0; Fitzhenry, Toronto, 1974; Arkana, 1988, ISBN 0-14-019169-0.

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