Out-of-Body Perception & Ancient Cosmology
 Part two of an article by Jim DeKorne. To understand the out of body experience we need a clearer view of our multi-dimensional nature and purpose.
The etheric double
The so-called etheric double is an energy body which is more or less "hard-wired" into the physical. Although it does dissociate from the physical body during sleep, it cannot travel more than a short distance away from it. It has only a rudimentary awareness, corresponding in some respects to the Kabbalistic concept of the nefesh, or "animal soul."
The Theosophists describe it thus:
The etheric double... [is] the exact duplicate of the visible body, particle for particle, and the medium through which play all the electrical and vital currents on which the activity of the body depends.15
Those familiar with computers might regard the etheric double as a kind of "DOS" - the Data Operating System which activates the physical body. Robert Monroe describes his own etheric double this way:
One of the earliest discoveries... was that I had more than one nonphysical body... My physical body appeared to be not one, but two - much as when your vision is slightly impaired by astigmatism... I began to take particular notice of physical reentry and found that I did indeed reenter a second form just prior to the physical body... I could stay in the second body, hovering near the physical, but could move no more than ten or fifteen feet away.16
Since consciousness cannot function very well in the etheric double, it holds comparatively little interest for us in this discussion. The body that most people experience while in the OOBE state of awareness is the so-called astral, or emotional body.
The astral body
The celebrated astral body is known in Hindu philosophy as both mayavirupa ("shining illusory body") and kamarupa ("desire body"), and the astral plane itself is called the Kamaloka, or "desire world." (Since much of Theosophy is based upon Vedic and Buddhist concepts, its earlier authors often used the terminology of those systems.) This is the body Monroe describes travelling in while visiting the lower rings of Locale-II (i.e. Kamaloka). As portrayed in our previous articles, it is quintessentially an emotional-desire vehicle - sexuality being perhaps the most compelling force experienced while in this state of awareness. Here is a description of what the astral body of an average person might look like when seen by an out-of-body observer:
When he is asleep a separation has occurred, and we see the physical body - the dense body and the etheric double - lying by themselves on the bed, while the astral body is floating in the air above them. If the person we are studying is one of mediocre development, the astral body when separated from the physical is the somewhat shapeless mass before described; it cannot go far away from its physical body, it is useless as a vehicle of consciousness, and the man within it is in a very vague and dreamy condition, unaccustomed to act away from his physical vehicle... The whole effect given to the observer is one of sleepiness and vagueness, the astral body lacking all definite activity and floating idly, inchoate, above the sleeping physical form.17
Here is how an advanced adept, such as Oliver Fox, Robert Monroe or William Buhlman might appear to someone with astral vision:
But if a person be observed who is much more developed, say one who is accustomed to function in the astral world and to use the astral body for that purpose, it will be seen that when the physical body goes to sleep and the astral body slips out of it, we have the man before us in full consciousness; the astral body is clearly outlined and definitely organized, bearing the likeness of the man, and the man is able to use it as a vehicle - a vehicle far more convenient than the physical.
It is significant to observe that few modern out-of-body explorers make further distinctions between their subtle bodies, leaving the impression that the etheric and astral vehicles are all there are. The Theosophists however, have differentiated realms and bodies of ever increasing abstraction. The next level of subtlety is the mental plane, and of course the vehicle used to explore it is referred to as the mental body.
The mental body
The mental body sheathes the astral body in the same way that the astral body sheathes the etheric double, which in turn sheathes the physical body. Indeed, all fit into one another like Chinese balls. They constitute the spectrum of our aura - each body and its perceptual attainments being represented by a range of colours visible to those observers with the ability to see them.
It goes without saying that when consciousness is focused in the physical vessel, none of these subtle bodies feels like a "body" - each is experienced as a capacity of awareness: when thinking, we use the mental "body," when feeling, it's the emotional "body." It is only while in the disembodied state that we perceive these functions as differentiated vehicles of perception.
Experienced out-of-body observers are unanimous in saying that the mental body (whether or not they call it that) in the upper rings of Locale-II (i.e., the mental plane) is perceived as an ovoid sphere:
[The mental body] does not, like the astral body, become a distinct representation of the man in form and feature when it is working in connection with the astral and physical bodies; it is oval - egg-like - in outline, interpenetrating of course the physical and astral bodies, and surrounding them with a radiant atmosphere as it develops - becoming, as I said, larger and larger as the intellectual growth increases. Needless to say, this egg-like form becomes a very beautiful and glorious object as the man develops the higher capacities of the mind: it is not visible to astral sight, but is clearly seen by the higher vision which belongs to the world of mind.18
Everyone from Fox to Buhlman has described this ovoid perceptual sphere, though they seldom differentiate it specifically as a "mental" vehicle. Here's Fox's description:
Occasionally I have not been able to see any astral body when I looked for it - no legs, no arms, no body! - an extraordinary sensation - just a consciousness, a man invisible even to himself, passing through busy streets or whizzing through space.19
Notice how Fox still refers to his body as "astral." This suggests that one fades into this more subtle vehicle without necessarily being able to feel the change. Monroe, for example, never differentiates beyond the term "second body," regardless of the realm he's visiting:
In the early stages of OBE activity, you seem to retain the form of your physical body - head, shoulders, arms, legs, and so on. As you become more familiar with this other state of being, you may become less humanoid in shape. It is similar to gelatin when taken out of the mold. For a short period it retains the form of the mold; then it begins to melt around the edges and finally it becomes a liquid or a blob.20
A Theosophical Initiate might explain that Monroe only noticed that his "Second" body changed when he began visiting the upper rings, which is to say, when he passed from the astral realm into the mental. Monroe himself never makes that differentiation, and he is so adept by now that he takes his egg-shaped spherical body for granted.
Because all of these bodies and their higher-dimensional environments interpenetrate the physical, the illusion is that we are "One." We experience spacetime as physical monads, as single "vessels" containing relatively integrated sensations, feelings, thoughts and intuitions. However, this conviction of unity is illusory, for the truth is that we are not One at all: we are actually the fragments of a higher Essence, or "Self." The proper Theosophical term for this transcendental organism is the causal body.
The causal body
The causal body is the most vitally important, yet probably least understood, concept within the Perennial Philosophy. Without a firm comprehension of what it represents, anyone's spiritual evolution is severely hampered. The consciousness represented by the causal body is nothing less than our true substance, our "essence," the source of all our potential. In conception it corresponds exactly to the Jungian Self, as we shall see.
Each causal body is one of the sparks from the original Monad which has descended to the causal plane - that spiritual realm situated immediately above (when visualised three-dimensionally) the rarefied outer rings of the mental plane. (I use three-dimensional terms solely for ease in visualisation - in actuality, all realms interpenetrate.)
For all practical purposes, the causal plane represents the outer limit of "human" functioning. There are dimensions beyond this realm to be sure, but they are too ethereal for pragmatic apprehension at our level. In his last book, Ultimate Journey, Robert Monroe penetrated the spaces beyond the rings, but was "sent back" because he wasn't ready to explore them yet. For now, we will be doing very well indeed if we can learn to orient our awareness to the causal body/Self and attune ourselves to its intentions.
The Perennial Philosophy observes that the soul (spark, monad, Self, or causal body), cannot itself descend lower than the causal plane. Instead it projects portions of itself into the denser mental, astral and physical dimensions below it. These salients into spacetime are human beings - each of us is but one projection of our respective causal body. Therefore, objectively imagined, we are not One at all: we are the second-generation "descend-ents" of those eternal first-generation monads projected during the Primary Emanation. Every causal body is an immortal reference point existing outside of space and time. This makes us, in essence, one half of a temporary dyad: the whole soul being dimensionally separated for the duration of each spacetime incarnation. The Kabbalah describes it this way:
In substance the souls as such remain above and do not enter into bodies at all but rather radiate sparks of themselves that can be called souls... by analogy only. The true soul hovers over a man, whether from near or afar, and maintains an immediate magic tie with its spark below.21
Which is to say: the Self repeatedly projects ego-bodies composed of mental, astral and physical matter into three-dimensional space. According to the Perennial Philosophy, the purpose of these incarnations is to gain experience leading to enlightenment, to ultimate union with the original Monad. Thus, it is not any given ego ("you," your predecessors, or followers) who reap the full benefits of spacetime incarnation: instead, the experience of each ego-lifetime is absorbed by its causal body after death. Seen in this way, every ego is temporary: i.e., "mortal" - it is the Self, the monad, which is "immortal." Looked at another way the ego does participate in immortality, but only as an organ of the Self, not as the whole entity. (The contrary might be compared to the hand or the foot hallucinating a separate existence from the body.)
Probably because it can contemplate the consequences of its choices in all of the dimensions, some Theosophists refer to the Self as "the Thinker":
The growth of the permanent body, which, with the divine consciousness, forms the Thinker, is extremely slow. Its technical name is the causal body, because he gathers up within it the results of all experiences, and these act as causes, moulding future lives. It is the only permanent one among the bodies used during incarnation, the mental, astral and physical bodies being reconstituted for each fresh life; as each perishes in turn, it hands on its harvest to the one above it, and thus all the harvests are finally stored in the permanent body.22
The spacetime ego's fantasy that it is the centre of the psyche rather than just one of its causal body's many satellites is arguably the greatest misconception a human being can have and the first illusion to be eliminated before meaningful spiritual growth can take place.
Jung observes that the inner Self (causal body) is interpreted by uninitiated awareness as a "god-image." Which is to say: because the naive observer does not recognise this force as a part of his own psychological makeup, he perceives it as a divine personality (a "not me"), existing "outside" of himself - as God, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Moloch, whoever. Ironically, we "project" (in the psychological sense of the word) our conception of a supreme being onto that part of ourselves who has projected us (in the physical sense of the word) into spacetime!
Unfortunately, when a partial comprehension of the ego's true connection with the Self dawns, it is common for people to hallucinate that "they are God." Because such errors are obviously short-circuits in the individuation process, the phenomenon is a definitive diagnosis of faulty integration, or psychosis. We may be "God," (technically, "a god") at some level, but for all practical purposes these syntheses seldom, if ever, take place in the spacetime dimension and never with the ego as the focal point.
Jung notes that Christ is a common God-image of the Self in Western cultures. If we follow the symbolism of "the Father" as the emanating Monad (God), then "the Son" (Christ) is the projected monad, or Self, and each individual human ego is just one of the Self's projections into the spacetime dimension. Assuming that all higher dimensions are "within" (as described in the fourth article of this series; see New Dawn No. 74), then Christ's statement in John 14:20 becomes immediately clear:
On that day you will understand that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you.
This image of dimensional interpenetration makes little sense except within the cosmology of the Perennial Philosophy. Viewed this way, most of the divine entities worshipped by the world's religions are symbols emerging from the Objective Psyche which enable an uninitiated awareness to visualise its own inner essence.
Intellectually the self is no more than a psychological concept, a construct that serves to express an unknowable essence which we cannot grasp as such, since by definition it transcends our powers of comprehension. It might equally well be called the "God within us." The beginnings of our whole psychic life seem to be inextricably rooted in this point, and all our highest and ultimate purposes seem to be striving towards it.23
Nevertheless, because each Self is but one of many evolving monads on the causal plane, it is essential to remember that it is by definition incomplete and has some distance to go yet before it can reunite with its own Source! Although seemingly "godlike" from the uninitiated ego's point of view, the Self is hardly a fully integrated entity - a subtle fact seldom understood even by psychologists.
From the unconscious emerges the ego - a fruit grown by the Self specifically for the furtherance of its own evolution. Implicit is the concept that the Self is not yet perfect, is indeed itself evolving, and though it possesses powers which the ego can hardly conceive of, it is not "God" in the sense of a totally perfected being.24
If every earthbound human ego is but one of many projections of their own incomplete, discarnate, "god-image" Selves (each undergoing a multi-dimensional individuation process of its own), then we have a credible structure for understanding analogous "projections" of "gods," "demons" and (especially) "archons" from hyperspace. It's also a plausible context for evaluating virtually any psychic phenomenon. Is it possible that all those entities hiding behind the world's "God-Images" aren't quite as perfect as we imagine them to be?
FOOTNOTES
 Part 1 | Part 2
This chapter is excerpted from the author's work in progress called The Structure of Reality.
Jim DeKorne is the author of Psychedelic Shamanism: The Cultivation, Preparation, and Shamanic Use of Psychotropic Plants (ISBN: 0-9666932-5-6), available via mail order from Polyester Books in Melbourne, Tel: (03) 94195223 or on the Internet through www.loompanics.com. Interested publishers can contact Jim DeKorne via New Dawn at editor@newdawnmagazine.com
This article originally appeared in New Dawn Magazine No. 75 (November-December 2002)
© Copyright New Dawn Magazine, http://www.newdawnmagazine.com. Permission to re-send, post and place on web sites for non-commercial purposes, and if shown only in its entirety with no changes or additions. This notice must accompany all re-posting.
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