Physical, Etheric and Astral Bodies
The Basics
We start with the simple and obvious. You see through your eyes, hear through your ears, feel through your body, and think through your brain. But you are not your eyes, ears, body, or brain-these are just things you experience the world with. So then, what are you? Remember that anything that can be taken away from you cannot be you. Like your clothes or hair-without them you would be bald and naked, but you would still be you. Now take away your body and brain. Is there anything left? Did you know that people have come back from being dead for a few minutes, remembering all they did while they were gone? Yes, sometimes they recall floating above their own lifeless bodies, seeing and hearing the doctors and nurses working on them, maybe floating away and exploring what’s around before being brought back to life. Even without their bodies and brains, they were still alive somehow, aware and experiencing. This shows that they are not their bodies, and neither are you.
Think of your body as a character inside a video game. To interact with the game world you need to play a game character. But you are not the character; you are merely controlling it from outside the game. Same thing with your body. To interact with the physical world, you need a physical body. Through the body, your mind existing outside this world can play this game called life. A first-person game where you look through the eyes of a character makes it seem like you are inside its head, but really you are sitting in front of the computer. Likewise, although you sense yourself inside your physical head, you are actually located far beyond it in another dimension.
When your body dies, it is just like dying inside a game. Nothing happens to the real you since, if you remember, you are not your body. The real you, which is essentially your mind or spirit, gets to hang around for a little while, maybe quit the game for now, maybe start a new game as a new character. But in this life, you only get one turn, so it is important to stay alive as long as needed, to keep your health and energy at a good level while having fun with the game.
The real you was born into this body, into this world, and has forgotten it is just a game character. It does not remember where it came from, where it’s going, why it’s playing the game, and what the point of this game is. It has gotten all wrapped up in the daily experiences of life. But now you are learning what you really are: a spirit that cannot be harmed or killed even if the body is harmed or killed. And like a game, some of the things that happen are scripted, meant to happen from the very beginning.
Etheric and Astral Bodies
Unlike the body, your mind is not at all physical. You cannot touch or weigh your mind. For this nonphysical mind to work through a physical body, there needs to be a couple in-between layers connecting them. These layers are known as the etheric and astral body. They are shaped like your body but just barely physical enough to influence the body while also being influenced by the mind. Normally you cannot see the etheric and astral bodies, but with special vision or special instruments you can detect them.
The etheric body looks like a ghostly glowing copy of your physical body. It is a pattern of energy that guides your biological cells into growing and behaving in an organized way, keeping you alive and healthy. Think of the etheric body like the field of a magnet pulling on a bunch of tiny metal pieces, pointing them into an orderly pattern. It does the same thing to the cells in your physical body. Without the etheric, your physical body would eventually fall apart. People who lose their limbs in accidents often continue to feel something there even though the physical limb is gone-they are feeling the etheric part that stayed intact. Normally the etheric overlaps your physical body, but during sleep it may expand and hover above it a little. The energy that the etheric body is made of is lifeforce energy. Fresh fruits and vegetables have lots of it because they are alive, and everyone knows that fresh is healthier for you than cooked, though not everyone knows it’s because cooking also removes the etheric lifeforce energy in food.
Even less physical than the etheric, but also more vibrant and sophisticated is the astral body. It does to the etheric body what the etheric does to the physical. Basically it influences the shape and behavior of the etheric. What makes the astral body different is that instead of dealing with lifeforce energy, the astral deals with emotional and creative energy. Rather than moving the cells of your body, it moves your feelings. The types of feelings you regularly have determine the shape and color of your astral body. But because the astral is so close to the mind, the way it looks is often more symbolic than anything. For instance, an angry or wicked person will have an astral body that looks crooked and scary, even though the physical body looks normal.
So to summarize, the mind influences the astral, the astral influences the etheric, and the etheric influences the body. In this way the mind can control the body. Now if you think negative thoughts all the time, it will affect your astral body and make it full of negative emotions, which then influence the etheric by making it darker and weaker, which then over time causes illness in the physical body. Therefore to stay healthy, it is important to not dwell all the time on stress, useless negative thoughts, and bad feelings.
Also, children fall ill more easily than adults. This is partly because their physical immune system has not yet been trained to fight disease, and partly because their etheric body is softer and weaker. If you eat more living foods like fruits and vegetables, focus on the happy things in life that fill you with gratitude, and stop worrying about what you cannot change, you can greatly reduce how often you get sick regardless of your age.
Montalk. Fringe Knowledge for Beginners . montalk.net.
