Product Code Database
A subtle body is a "quasi material" aspect of the human body, being neither solely physical nor solely spiritual, according to various esoteric, occultism, and mysticism teachings. The subtle body is important in the Taoism of China and Indian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, mainly in the branches that focus on tantra and yoga, where it is known as the Sūkṣma-śarīra ().
Subtle body concepts and practices can be identified as early as 2nd century BCE in Taoist texts found in the Mawangdui tombs. It was "evidently present" in Indian thought as early as the 4th to 1st century BCE when the Taittiriya Upanishad described the , a series of five interpenetrating sheaths of the body. A fully formed subtle body theory did not develop in India until the tantra movement that affected all its religions in the Middle Ages. In Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, the correlation of the subtle body to the physical body is viewed differently according to school, lineage and scholar, but for completion stage in yoga, it is visualised within the body. The subtle body consists of focal points, often called , connected by channels, often called nadis, that convey subtle breath, often called prana. Through breathing and other exercises, a practitioner may direct the subtle breath to achieve Siddhi, immortality, or Moksha.
Subtle body in the Western tradition is called the body of light. The concept derives from the philosophy of Plato: the word 'astral' means 'of the stars'; thus the astral plane consists of the Seven Heavens of the . Neoplatonism Porphyry and Proclus elaborated on Plato's description of the starry nature of the human psyche. Throughout the Renaissance, philosophers and alchemists, healers including Paracelsus and his students, and natural science such as John Dee, continued to discuss the nature of the astral world intermediate between earth and the divine. The concept of the astral body or body of light was adopted by 19th and 20th-century .
The Theosophy movement was the first to translate the Sanskrit term as 'subtle body', although their use of the term is quite different from Indic usage as they synthesize Western and Eastern traditions. This makes the term problematic for modern scholars, especially as the Theosophist view often influences New Age and holistic medicine perspectives. Western scientists have started to explore the subtle body concept in research on meditation.
Subtle internal anatomy included a central channel (nadi). Later Vedic texts called and contain a theory of five "winds" or "breaths" ( vayus, ):
The classical Vedanta tradition developed the theory of the five bodies into the theory of the "sheaths" or "coverings" which surround and obscure the self (atman). In classical Vedanta these are seen as obstacles to realization and traditions like Shankara's Advaita Vedanta had little interest in working with the subtle body.
The main channels, shared by both Hindu and Buddhist systems, but visualised entirely differently, are the central (in Hindu systems: sushumna; in Buddhist: avadhuti), left and right (in Hindu systems: ida and pingala; Buddhist: lalana and rasana). Further subsidiary channels are said to radiate outwards from the chakras, where the main channels meet.
Chakra systems vary with the tantra; the Netra Tantra describes six chakras, the Kaulajñana-nirnaya describes eight, and the Kubjikamata Tantra describes seven (the most widely known set).
In the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, the subtle body takes a different form. More specifically, the tradition points to four areas of particularly concentration of bodily energy – viz. the heart ( tsitta), where the enlightened energy resides; the "luminous channels" ( ‘od rtsa), through which the energy flows; the skull ( dung khang), where it spreads before finally being released through the fourth hot-spot, namely the eyes ( tsakshu / briguta). Flavio Geisshuesler, who has studied the functioning of the Dzogchen subtle body in the context of the practice of sky-gazing, argues that many of the specific motifs that appear in the tradition's conception of the body are of pre-Buddhist origin. More specifically, he notes that the Dzogchen body's motifs of "deer-hearts, silk-channels, buffalo-horns, or far-reaching lassos ... reproduce the terminology of the hunting of animalistic vitality as if internalizing the quest for precious substances."
The subtle body consists of thousands of subtle energy channels (nadis), which are conduits for energies or "winds" (lung or prana) and converge at chakras. According to Dagsay Tulku Rinpoche, there are three main channels ( nadis), central, left and right, which run from the point between the eyebrows up to the crown chakra, and down through all seven chakras to a point two inches below the navel.
Lati Rinbochay describes the subtle body as consisting of 72,000 channels, various winds and a white and a red drop whilst a further very subtle body is a wind abiding in a drop at the centre of the heart chakra. The central channel is then described as being squeezed by two channels that encircle it at each chakra and thrice at the heart chakra, ensuring the winds do not move upward or downward until death.
Buddhist tantras generally describe four or five chakras in the shape of a lotus with varying petals. For example, the Hevajra Tantra (8th century) states:
In the Center i.e. of Creation at a sixty-four petal lotus. In the Center of Essential Nature at an eight petal lotus. In the Center of Enjoyment at a sixteen petal lotus. In the Center of Great Bliss at a thirty-two petal lotus.In contrast, the historically later Kalachakra describes six chakras.
In Vajrayana Buddhism, liberation is achieved through subtle body processes during Deity yoga practices such as the Six Yogas of Naropa.
The concept derives from the philosophy of Plato: the word 'astral' means 'of the stars'; thus the astral plane consists of the Seven Heavens of the . The idea is rooted in common worldwide religious accounts of the afterlife 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 their body of light into 'higher' realms."
Neoplatonism Porphyry and Proclus elaborated on Plato's description of the starry nature of the human psyche. Throughout the Renaissance, philosophers and alchemists, healers including Paracelsus and his students, and natural science such as John Dee, continued to discuss the nature of the astral world intermediate between earth and the divine. The concept of the astral body or body of light was adopted by 19th-century Éliphas Lévi, Florence Farr and the magicians of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, including Aleister Crowley.
|
|
