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Chapter 3: The subtle body and vital energy

Ever since humans have existed, there has probably also been hope that something will survive physical death after its inevitable demise. Belief in a heaven or a hell, a paradise or some other reality is widespread. Our human consciousness with a soul could be the suitable candidate for our continued existence in some form after our physical death. However, many neuroscientists believe that consciousness is a construct of neural activity in our brain that it dissolves shortly after we die, just like our neurons, which then break down to dust. The materialistic worldview that has existed for over 100 years is still widespread and tells us that we consist of energy and matter and nothing else. But where does life actually begin? Does it start where cells reproduce themselves for the first time? And if so, who wrote the blueprint for the cells with their proteins and amino acids so that they could copy themselves for the first time. Just a coincidence? In order for our body to come to life, we need life force or life energy, the so-called prana. In order to function properly, our body not only needs spiritual information and awareness, but also this mysterious prana. It supplies our body with life energy at least until we pull ourselves out of our body into the purely spiritual world with our last breath at the end of physical life. From Tibetan and Chinese Ayurvedic medicine, we know these life-giving channels as energy meridians or nadis, which transport these life energies. Nadis are subtle energy channels in our body. In the ancient scriptures, the Prashna Upanishad 3.6 speaks of 101 major nadis, 10,100 minor nadis and 727,200,000 subordinate nadis. These run through our whole body like trees. Prana can be compared to the Qi in ancient China, the Ki in Japan, the Kundalini in India, the Ruach in the Old Testament or the Tibetan Lung. The mysterious Prana flows in two energetic tubes called Ida and Pingala from the lower end of the tailbone along the spine up to the brain and provides us with life energy to vitalize our body. However, these two tubes winding around the spine are not physically present, but are to be considered purely energetically, and have been described by yogis in their ancient techniques for spiritual development for thousands of years. Imagine an electrical cable that transports electricity and, in our example, corresponds to the nerve pathways in the body. From a purely energetic point of view, an energy transfer would correspond to the remote control of your television set. There is no cable there either. However, energy is transmitted.

Another energy channel is the sushumna, which energizes all the body's chakras in the middle of the spine and is also connected to the nadis. The prana is, so to speak, the »fuel« for the »motor« cell and thus for our whole body. Our consciousness is in connection with the mind that thinks, the »driver« who turns this engine on and off. In order to be able to use the prana, the spinal fluid in the spine must be in motion. This happens automatically every time you inhale and exhale. The more energy flows in our spine, the more (light) energy is made available to us via the prana tubes Ida, Pingala and Sushumna. The constant movement of the fluid of charged molecules in the spine creates an electromagnetic field that moves from the lower part of the spine up to the brain and over the top of the head - as if we were sitting in the middle of a donut or apple that completely enveloped us and thus encompasses the entire human body. Meditators all over the world have been using techniques for thousands of years to actively support this torus field (which completely surrounds us) through breathing techniques and thus to achieve vitality, balance and expanded states of consciousness. If our two halves of the brain are balanced and our pineal gland is activated, another opposing torus forms around the first or one level further outside our body. This flow of prana energy in the spine and the resulting torus fields are the connection from the inner subtle world to the material outer world. Consciousness and spirit are thus able to express themselves in the material low frequency world and to manifest for a certain life span.

We'll learn more about this in the chapter on the pineal gland and meditation. The human being consists not only of a physical body, but also of invisible energy fields, just as a magnet is not just a piece of iron, but also has an electromagnetic field, which in turn affects other fields and objects. The more recent esotericism assumes the existence of a so-called subtle body or astral body, which is usually described as a subtle carrier of our consciousness and can move in the astral world (the dimension closest to the vibrational level of the physical world). In this book I describe the world that is connected to the physical world and not separated from it as an »interworld«, which in turn is composed of worlds of ideas, different realities and all the potentials of experience that are available to all of us. These ideas are supported by numerous scientists, doctors, healers, psychologists and psychiatrists who report on their own experiences or those of their patients, as well as thanatologists (thanatology refers to the science of death, dying and burial) who have documented the near-death experiences of thousands of people.

Does a part of us separate from our body after physical death? Does a piece of consciousness survive our body when it dies? Is that the soul or is it an energy or vital body? We will see…

There are techniques that can help us have out-of-body experiences while we are still alive. Robert A. Monroe tells us of such experiences in his 1985 book »The Second Body«. With the discovery and development of so-called »binaural frequencies« for brain stimulation and expansion of consciousness, he became known worldwide. This patented technology stimulates the brain to enter a frequency range necessary for out-of-body experience that allows mind and body to be separated. Robert A. Monroe had a multitude of such experiences, which he describes in detail in his books.

The first studies on the subject of out-of-bodyness date back to 1954. 155 students were asked whether they had ever had an out-of-body experience. 27.1% answered in the affirmative. In another study from 1968, 380 students were asked if they had ever felt like they had leaked out of their bodies. Here too, 34% of the participants answered the question with yes. A large-scale study at the University of Southampton in 2016 with 2,060 participants also showed that consciousness and thoughts continue even when the heart has stopped beating. According to the Epoch Times, 40% of those affected by cardiac arrest reported that they experienced some type of awareness. 2% of the study participants reported out-of-body experiences. The lead researcher of the study, Dr. Sam Parnia, emphasized the importance of the experience of a patient who has already been declared dead. Up to now, near-death experiences have mostly been interpreted as illusions or hallucinations that occur before the heart stops beating or shortly after the heart has been successfully resuscitated. What this patient experienced, said Dr. Parnia, however, is »paradoxical«. His detailed memories corresponded exactly to what had actually been going on around him, even after his clinical death. In a survey published by Palmer and Dennis of a randomly selected group of 1,000 students in a small town in the US state of Virginia, 39% said they had had this experience at least once in their life. Based on the assumption that something leaves the body in an out-of-body experience or after death, the idea of weighing patients' bodies in the process of dying came up. Duncen MacDougall, an American physicist from Haverhill, Massachusetts, had weighed tuberculosis patients as early as 1907, over 100 years ago. He put the patient's beds on scales and recorded their weight as they died. He was able to determine a weight loss of up to 40 grams. Dr. Klaus Volkamer has continued this weighing method in a modern form. He is able to weigh the subtle field body with precision scales, as they have only been around for almost two decades.

Illustration 7: The astral body

According to his statements, weight reductions up to the kilogram range can be demonstrated in deep meditation and in expanded states of consciousness. He weighed sleeping people who lost up to 650 g weight in the dream phase, but immediately regained their initial weight completely on waking. The subtle field body goes on a journey, so to speak, in a dream and suddenly returns when you wake up, that is, it can disconnect from the body. The fact that water is withdrawn from the body by inhaling and exhaling during sleep is not a sufficient explanation, because then the initial weight of the dreaming could not be reached again almost immediately upon waking. With the phenomenon of weight reduction it is also possible to make calculations about the density and subtle matter of the astral body. As a result, the astral body must be about 7-10 times thinner than air. This is also the reason why many people with near-death experiences repeatedly describe that after death they tried to speak to relatives, nudge them or look at them, but this was not possible. On the contrary, they could move through their bodies.

The Indian Guru Paramahansa Yogananda, who was and is a unique spiritual guide for millions of people worldwide, is said to have become 65 g lighter at the time of his death. So we can assume that a deep mental and spiritual development also affects the weight of the soul.

»You have always felt that something enormous was hidden within you without your knowing what it was.«

(Paramahansa Yogananda)

If the human field body, or the astral body, is detached from the physical body, conscious experiences can be made in the astral world or in the subtle world. Consciousness can travel back and forth between the spiritual and physical world. It is said that the astral body is connected to the physical body by a silver cord, just as we are connected to our mother by the umbilical cord when we are born. Only when this silver cord is cut does the human body die as it connects all the chakras in the body. The subtle body can be understood as a sum of different fields that keep our cells alive and organized. It is the conductor of the entire physical body and consists of an energy (vital), mental (consciousness), emotional (feeling) and causal (soul) body. It provides, so to speak, the mental software for the physical hardware and thus contains all the information, feelings, thoughts and sensations of our entire life. If, for example, cardiac arrest occurs, as in near-death experiences, the subtle body detaches itself from the physical body, leaves it through the spiritual eye (as an extension of the spine, the pineal gland and skullcap) and returns from the astral world with a successful resuscitation.

In western Reiki, four different levels of the astral energy body are described:

• Ethereal subtle body

• Emotional subtle body

• Astral subtle body

• Mental subtle body and spiritual aura or causal body

In order not to confuse the reader, I stick to the ancient Indian traditions listed in the following picture

Illustration 8: The astral body, as represented in ancient Indian traditions

The astral body is connected to everything and not limited to the physical world that we perceive with our five senses. It is part of the astral world and for us in the invisible area of the hereafter. People with increased perception are often able to see this astral body through additional sensory perception and to describe it in its different colours. Numerous indications of near-death experiences, astral journeys, lucid dreams, channeling, shamanism and media who can perceive the deceased and can provide comprehensible information from the hereafter prove that man wanders back and forth between the dimensions or between the here and now and the hereafter. The knowledge of a subtle body has been handed down to us over thousands of years, including in the Vedic scriptures (the Bhagavadgita) and the Mahabharata, which are said to have originated in the Golden Age, around 6,700 years before our era. The Mahabharata consists of 18 booklets with around 100,000 pairs of rhymes and tells of a sacred dialogue between Bhagavan Krishna and his disciple, the Pandava prince Arjuna, on the eve of a terrible war. Then the world fell into the Kali-Yuga, the »dark age«. In Book 12, Chapter 253, our holistic body is described, consisting of a subtle body (lingam) and a material body. It tells of a self that is independent of the body in which it only resides for a limited period and how much a person identifies with his material body. The advanced yogi, on the other hand, can lay off his material body and exist as an invisible being with his very own self and the subtle part. Near-death experiences or the phenomenon of astral travel suggest that parts of this subtle body separate from the physical body after death and thus consciousness continues to live. There are countless examples in the literature of the most incredible but verifiable neardeath experiences. In chapter 33, »Near-death Experiences,« I put some of them together.

The ability to perceive an aura, the subtle or spiritual body, is usually only assigned to so-called media¹ but should be anchored in every person and can be learned by everyone. Many mediums are even able to see the deceased in their subtle bodies. An example of this is Pascal Voggenhuber, who is very well known in Germanspeaking countries. He says of himself that he can see the deceased and also describe them to the bereaved. He speaks to the deceased and thus helps the bereaved to come to terms with their loss and to solve open problems that have often remained unspoken for years. He is also able to help people with his skills in the here and now, as he has been able to support the police in their work in some difficult cases. In his seminars, for example, he tells the story of a grieving woman whom he was able to save from her financial distress after the death of her husband. The deceased had sewn money under his mattress and passed this on to his wife as valuable information through the medium Pascal Voggenhuber.

The oldest records of out-of-body experiences can be found in archaeological and ethnological finds left by shamans around the world. Discoveries between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago show us that humans have probably been undertaking soul journeys for hundreds of thousands of years. Shamans can be found all over the world, from the Canadian Arctic to Siberia (where the root of the word »shaman« comes from), in South America and Borneo. The methods they use to get into another, subtle world are similar to each other worldwide. Shamans are magicians, healers, doctors and priests at the same time, who as a rule slide into a brain-stimulating state of consciousness with a monotonous rhythmic drumming (4–7 beats per second). With its wavelength of 4–8 Hz, this is in the theta wave range and is considered the gateway to another reality. In Siberia, residents believed that the world was divided into three levels or layers. People in the here and now live in the middle level, the deceased are in the lower and upper world, that is, heaven, which can be reached through a small gate, where there are further levels with landscapes, animals and people. With indigenous peoples it is often common to open the gates to the upper or lower world with the help of psychedelic drugs, which can also bring about the necessary state of consciousness. This was researched back in the 1960s by Dr. Michael Harner. To do this, he travelled to the world of shamans, in the eastern part of Ecuador, and lived for a while with the Conibo people. As he himself writes, at that time he only wanted to take psychedelics in the interests of anthropology. He reports of unbelievably real out-of-body experiences after taking Ayahuasca, which the Conibo obtain from the plant stock of a liana and to which DMT²-containing plants are often added. The use of this drug also harbors certain dangers, because the state of expansion of consciousness is no longer reversible immediately after administration. A chemically determined period of time cannot be broken off and it is reported that some people have returned insane from their journeys into the world of the shamans. In contrast, with classic shamanic drumming, a return to reality is possible at any time.

»Shamanic healing means restoring relationships.«

(M. Eshowsky)

In out-of-body states of consciousness, shamans usually travel with power animals to the lower or upper world to do soul work for people who need healing. In doing so, parts of the soul that have been lost in this or in other lives are brought back and thereby complete a person's higher self. Power animals serve to protect the shaman on this journey and give him additional skills and powers to be able to master the tasks set. The nature and reality of shamans is greater and more diverse than that of many western people. Shamanic healing is the intuitive use of all available potentials such as the placebo effect, transpersonal entanglement and out-of-body travels to other realities. The relationship between the shaman and the patient forms the essential basis for successful work with people. If both drugs (like ayahuasca in shamans) can induce expanded states of consciousness and the media are able to perceive an expanded reality, then it stands to reason that we should take a closer look at our brain. What exactly does it do and does it contain some sort of filter to something bigger? Is it just separating us from a much broader reality? And how far is our science in exploring this organ that makes us great thinkers with our intellects? The next chapter is dedicated to these questions.

¹ Parapsychology describes a medium as someone who is particularly capable of making connections to the supernatural realm.

² N,N Dimethyltryptamin, or DMT, is a very strong psychedelic drug with shortliving effects.