(Energy bodies grow less dense across nonphysical planes)
The simple act of thinking about college friends we haven’t heard from in years shortly before getting an e-mail or phone call from them often passes unnoticed. We call it a coincidence instead of an instance of precognition.
Buhlman wasn’t able to perceive the third energy body, except that it seemed “lighter (less dense)” than the second. Subsequent adventures taught him not only that we have multiple energy bodies, but also that they “become progressively less dense” over time.
From such evidence, it appears that the longer we spend in nonphysical reality, either in a particular experience or cumulatively over many years, the less likely it is that our energy bodies will retain a human form.
What’s a Plane? The word plane is tricky to define. As theosophists use it, the term translates the Sanskrit word loka, which can mean realm, place, plane, or planet. In Hinduism and Buddhism, loka often appears as a suffix in the names of heavens, hells, and nonphysical realities visited in deep meditative states. For example, Svargaloka is heaven-realm. In Paramhansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, however, Hiranyaloka, where Yogananda’s guru goes after death, is translated as Illumined Astral Planet.
First, a plane is a state of consciousness. Like a place, it has a range or extent. It’s defined by that range or extent, in the same way we might define the dimensions of a plot of land with a property line.
Third, a plane is defined—which is to say created—by the action of some force. In theosophy, the seven primary planes of existence have been created by a godlike being called the Logos (Greek for word).
The spiritual sun is the Logos, the heart of the system. I call it the Source.
(Planes defined — states, senses, bodies, and environments)
This is my thesis: When we achieve a certain level of consciousness (state), we have access to a set of abilities (senses) that can function like a separate self (energy body), uniquely attuned to an environment (plane) that would otherwise be imperceptible.
Theosophist Arthur E. Powell says that the astral body has the same shape as the physical body, as do most contemporary astral projectors. He claims that this shape is a result of habits of mind and behavior—how we perpetually think of ourselves. We recreate that self-image on the astral plane, where our thoughts create our reality. Some projectors, like Buhlman, perceive the astral body as energy in the form of a human body. We can generate this image with or without clothes. It seems to be enormously pliable. Monroe says that we can even travel by reaching our hands over our head like divers and stretching toward a location on the physical or astral plane until we reach it.
Multiply that sense of bliss times ten and you have some idea of how much more ecstatic it is to access the mental body. For me, the rush usually lasts two or three days. And so it goes, on up the ladder. My one brief experience of buddhic consciousness generated a sense of bliss that lasted several weeks. Leadbeater writes about how surprising this continual multiplication of bliss is as we move from one plane to the next: At every step the same surprise comes over again, and no thought beforehand can prepare one for it, because it is always far more stupendous than anything we can imagine, and life on all those higher planes is an intensity of bliss for which no words exist.
My nonphysical teacher, Charles, explains that one of our tasks as human beings is to master the lessons of identity and union, blending them into a perfect balance. The lesson of identity allows us to discover who we are, our purpose in this lifetime, our unique contribution to the whole of humanity. With every step we take in the direction of living from our true identity we become stronger, more centered in ourselves, more capable of experiencing union with others. Union allows us to experience the bliss of merging with another human being through love.
(Unfulfilled desire as the engine of embodiment — Yukteswar’s three bodies)
According to Yukteswar: A soul, being invisible by nature, can be distinguished only by the presence of its body or bodies. The mere presence of a body signifies that its existence is made possible by unfulfilled desires. For Yukteswar, the unfulfilled desires that generate the physical body are for “egotism and sense pleasures.”2 By egotism, he means self-centeredness, the satisfaction of our own desires at the expense of others’ happiness and well-being. The unfulfilled desire that generates the astral body is “enjoyment in terms of vibration.” Such enjoyment occurs by means of surges of emotional energy, experienced on the astral plane as “ethereal music” or “changing light.”3 We get caught up in these surges, riding them for thrills, as people ride a roller coaster. Think of how exciting our dreams can be, like movies, and how passively we experience them. The unfulfilled desire that generates the causal body is perception or understanding, the attempt to perceive “all created things” either “as forms of consciousness” or “the dream-ideas of God.”4 In this body, the focus is on creating reality with a thought in order to understand the power of ideas and come closer to God (the Source). Because, at the causal level, we’re all “individualized points of joyous Spirit,” we’re part of God.
No longer does the soul have to experience its joy as an individualized wave of consciousness, but is merged in the One Cosmic Ocean, with all its waves. Although Yukteswar makes no distinction between the mental and causal bodies, as does theosophy, his “Sea of Bliss” corresponds to theosophical descriptions of the buddhic plane.
The idea that the energy bodies are based on unfulfilled desires can be a powerful means of gaining access to them. All we need do is change the phrase unfulfilled desire to yearning. We yearn for a deeper experience of our identity. We yearn to serve others and experience union with them.
We can visit the Akashic Records to observe any event in human history and discover what we as individuals or humanity as a whole learned from it. We can enter the worldview of others to understand them better. But once again, we get bored. Yearning drives us even farther on the path of spiritual evolution.
One of Leadbeater’s students achieved buddhic consciousness by using the love he felt for his spiritual teacher as a means of “raising his consciousness to a higher level.” He hoped to “unify it with that of his teacher.”7
After entering a tunnel that carried him past this barrier, he emerged into a “blinding light.” He felt that he was floating in “a sea of bliss” that seemed more real than physical reality, yet “utterly spiritual.”
In this sea of light, the student had a sense of being “simultaneously present at every point.” He seemed to exist as both the sea of light and “a point floating in it.”9 Leadbeater later identified the student’s experience as having taken place on the buddhic plane. As he explored this state, the student discovered that the consciousness of people he knew existed “as points within his extended self.” Through “focusing himself at any one of these points he could at once realize the highest qualities and spiritual aspirations of the person whom it represented.” The resulting empathy allowed him to understand people as deeply as possible, from the inside out. He wasn’t just entering their worldviews, he was temporarily becoming them.
In his nineteenth breathwork session, Bache saw a “massive tree of radiant energy suspended in space.” He felt like one of the leaves of this tree, and his family and friends appeared as a cluster of adjacent leaves. A Guide took him to different parts of the tree and showed him “how easy it was to move from one person’s experience to another.” He felt that he “was the tree,” though without “having the full range of its experience” at once. It seemed to him that: Different lives around the globe were simply different experiences the tree was having. Choice governed all experience. Different beings who were all part of Being Itself had simply chosen these manifold experiences.
Some people yearn to get beyond even the bliss of the buddhic body and the advanced stage of consciousness it represents—the experience of oneness with all beings.
(Approaching the Source — Monroe, monads, and the return to the Whole)
Monroe’s journey to the source of our universe involved swimming against the outward flow of a “spiraling mass of energy moving outward”—the life-currents mentioned by Besant. He entered a state of “total joy, total beauty” and woke up to a higher self, for whom his life on Earth had been like a dream.
Approaching the Emitter, Monroe was bathed by its radiation, which caused him to remember who he was: a part of the Whole, the restless part that desires to return, yet lives to seek expression in doing, creating, building, giving, growing, leaving more than it takes, and above all desires to bring back gifts of love to the Whole.
He lists three stages of being that must be lived in simultaneously: individuality, unity, and universality. Following his journey to the Source, Monroe came to believe that what he calls the Creator is to be found “beyond the Emitter and the Aperture.”
He discovered that through expanding his consciousness, he could go beyond understanding the universe “from outside.” He could now comprehend anything in the universe “by tuning to that level in my being where I was that thing.”24 Theosophical teaching indicates that this combination of omnipresence (the ability to focus consciousness on any part of a plane) and omniscience (becoming whatever one needs to know) is characteristic of nirvanic consciousness.
The one Source became many monads—and this was the starting point of human evolution. These monads began in what theosophist Geoffrey Hodson calls “a static condition, enfolding all divine potentialities.” They grow through many stages until they’ve “become dynamic, unfolding all divine powers.”
Each monad was created to fulfill a unique purpose. It watches us and learns through us as we discover and implement that purpose bit by bit through many lifetimes. Eventually, it has learned enough to guide us home. At the completion of our evolution, we merge with our monad,
Second, the inner ego is “the ‘I’ of the astral body.”3 Third, “The inner senses operate on all planes and under all circumstances” but “the outer senses vary according to plane and circumstance.”4
(Inner senses — the toolkit for navigating nonphysical reality)
From Seth’s statements about the inner senses, I’ve concluded that each energy body is a particular configuration of inner senses, designed to perceive the plane it characteristically operates upon. If our goal is to access the higher planes, we need to develop the inner senses that underlie all the energy bodies.
Based on the Seth material and my own experience, I’ve identified twenty inner senses and grouped them into four sets of five. Each set has a different function. The existential inner senses involve our experience of ourselves as consciousness with an individual identity.
When our existential senses are sufficiently developed, we’re not threatened by psychic information and what it implies about our multidimensionality. The result is that adventures in consciousness become more frequent, rich, and varied.
The kinesthetic inner senses have to do with how our consciousness operates within any physical or nonphysical environment. These senses are necessary to experience full embodiment on any plane, to enter and exit planes and subplanes, and to move freely within each. Without these senses, we have no conscious control over where we end up during our adventures in consciousness.
They clear our minds of obsessive thoughts and reactive emotions, opening the way to higher planes.
But perception of auras is a function of the inner senses. I “see” them from my etheric body, usually an area just above my navel and below my breastbone. This so-called seeing may not be associated with color. Sometimes I perceive only light and dark areas, indicating where energy is flowing and where it’s not—call it the black-and-white version.
The consciousness sense grants awareness of ourselves and others as consciousness. It’s the basis of self-awareness, the gateway to all the other inner senses. If everything is consciousness, then we can build relationships with anything that exists, on any plane, on the basis of our common consciousness.
Monroe defines idents as the “mental name or ‘address,’ i.e., energy pattern” of beings encountered in nonphysical reality. A similar idea exists among theosophists: the mystic chord, which Leadbeater describes as the unique combination of vibrations generated by our etheric, astral, mental, and causal bodies. This “combination of sounds” is our “true occult name” by which we may be identified and located anywhere in nonphysical reality.
The provisional belief that activates the durability sense is: Our consciousness is inviolable. We won’t suddenly become someone or something else as a result of exploring psychic and mystical experiences. We continue to be ourselves, no matter what. Believing in our durability of consciousness and its inviolability is essential for feeling safe in any nonphysical environment. No matter what pressures or influences we encounter there, our consciousness will endure. Aspects of our personality may change as a result of such experiences, but the core or essence of who we are—the monad—will not. Even death does nothing to change the durability of our consciousness. We leave the physical body behind and our consciousness takes up residence in our most developed energy body, usually the astral, mental, or causal.
Charles defines seven components of the soul’s plan. Creating a lifestyle in which we live from all of them on a regular basis is the best way of developing the evolution sense. In line with the master intention’s idea of serving the greater good, each component of our life purpose is a mode of service. The first is service to the body. By this, Charles means eating nourishing food (neither too little nor too much) and getting regular exercise. If your body breaks down, none of the other components of your life purpose can be served effectively. You may be confined to physical reality, unable to access psychic information or explore the higher planes.
The fourth component is service to personality. Many spiritual traditions teach us to deny the senses or kill the ego. By personality, Charles means the full range of being human on the physical plane, from dancing to viewing the wonders of nature, from great sex to seeing a movie, from going to a museum to riding a mountain bike.
The provisional belief that awakens the inner sense of fulfillment is: Bliss is the result of living from our life purpose (dharma), a sign we’re getting closer to Source. When our degree of bliss or happiness rises, we’re fulfilling the soul’s master plan for our growth—we’re following our dharma. When it falls, we’re working against this plan. We may be pursuing selfish ends rather than the greater good, neglecting ourselves in favor of serving others, or avoiding the next step in our growth.