Michael Prescott's Blog

Bodies and soul

In a comment on my post "Four Bodies," a reader named frith objected that Crookall's scheme of four bodies seemed overly elaborate. I gave this reply:

Well, Crookall was trying to work out an organizational scheme that would make sense of the various accounts. What he found was that people reporting leaving the physical body, often being veiled or befogged for a while, then achieving clarity, and later ascending to a state of still greater clarity.

So he posited four bodies — physical body, aura or astral shell, soul body, and spirit body.

Although somewhat complicated, this formulation does make sense of many disparate phenomena, such as the confusion of earthbound spirits, apparitions that seem mechanical and lifeless, the two different life reviews, the tunnel, the silver cord, the often confused or surreal accounts of astral projectors (still enshrouded in the astral shell), ectoplasm (seen as drawn from the astral shell/aura), the difficulty of spirit communications (because the soul body must enveil itself in the medium's aura, restricting lucidity), the idea that the frequency of "vibrations" increases as each body is shed, and other things.

I thought it might be worth expanding on these points in a more systematic way. First, let's look at the four bodies in Crookall's system.

The physical body — the one we use during our earthly incarnation.

The energy body — this is the term I've decided to use for what Crookall calls "the vehicle of vitality," and which other authors call the astral body, the aura, the etheric body, etc. I use the term "energy body" because, for Crookall, this body is something like an energy field (an aura) that serves as the interface between the physical and spiritual realms. It is essentially a veil covering the physical body, which allows impressions from higher realms to filter through.

The soul body – nested inside the physical body, the soul body becomes our main vehicle once the physical body and energy body have been cast off. The soul body is the one used by inhabitants of Summerland, the paradise-like environment reported by many discarnate communicators.

The spirit body – at the heart of the soul body is the spirit body, which remains after the soul body is cast off in preparation for ascending to higher realms of spiritual life. The Summerland environment is understood to be only a resting place, not a permanent destination.

With this in mind, let's take a look at specific issues in mediumistic communications, apparitions, deathbed visions, and so forth.

Earthbound spirits. According to Crookall, most spirits remain earthbound at least for a short time, usually three or four days. During this time, even though the physical body has been (at least mostly) cast off, the energy body continues to veil the soul body. As a result, the soul body's perceptions of its environment are distorted by the filtering effect of the energy body. Only a portion of the true environment gets through the filter, while the rest is either distorted or blocked entirely. This condition corresponds to the bardo in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, or the ideas of Limbo and Purgatory in the Abrahamic religions, or the shadowy, ghostly realm of Hades in ancient Greco-Roman religion.

Many communications through mediums come from spirits who are still in this condition and who are accordingly confused, befogged, bewildered, and prone to hallucinations and dreamlike experiences. Once the energy body has been completely shed, the soul body can interact with its environment without a filter, and the clarity of its perceptions will be immeasurably improved. This, according to Crookall, is why initial spirit communications are often unsatisfactory, while later communications are much better.

Apparitions. There are countless reports of apparitions that appear to be mindless or unconscious. Many ghost stories involve a figure repeating the same pointless action over and over, such as climbing a flight of stairs. In other cases, people report seeing an apparition that simply stands there, showing no expression and making no attempt to communicate. Crookall explains some of these as instances in which the energy body has been cast off but persists for a while as a hollow shell. People who are psychically sensitive may find it relatively easy to perceive the energy body (as an apparition or in a dream, etc.) and to mistake it for the soul body.

Life reviews. Mediums have described two separate life reviews. The first takes place immediately upon dying, or even before death has taken place. It is a quick panoramic overview of one's entire life, observed without judgment or even much emotion. The second typically takes place later and involves a subjective reexperiencing of critical life events, sometimes from the perspective of the persons affected by one's own actions. In this second review, which Crookall calls the Judgment, lessons are learned; the person discovers what he did right and what he did wrong, where he took the right path and where he went astray.

The two different life reviews can be understood in terms of different bodies. The first life review involves the energy body, which retains a complete record of one's experiences. The review may simply involve the mechanical process of transcribing this record onto the soul body, preparatory to jettisoning the energy body. The second review (the Judgment) occurs after the energy body has been sloughed off, allowing the now-unfiltered soul body to not only observe but to deeply experience the events of a lifetime from multiple points of view.

Crookall acknowledges that some people who've had near-death experiences have undergone the Judgment, even though presumably they did not shed their energy body during their brief period of "death." He suggests that some people have an energy body that is more loosely attached; such people are more prone to dissociative experiences, psychic impressions, creative insights, etc. and may be more likely to undergo the Judgment right away. I don't know if he's right about this, but at least it would explain why not everybody who has an NDE reports a Judgment.

The tunnel. Reported by both near-death experiencers and some mediums, the tunnel is a passageway through which the dying person travels after leaving his physical body. Crookall says that because the energy body is still veiling the soul body, the soul body is limited in its impressions of its environment. Thus it may perceive a void, a dark tunnel, or – if the energy body is looser – a vague impression of a shadowy world beyond a tenuous barrier.

The silver cord. This shining threadlike connection between the physical body and the hovering soul body has been observed by sensitive persons at the bedside of the dying, and has been reported by mediums and some near-death experiencers, as well as many astral projectors. In Crookall's view, the dying process involves the egress of the soul body from the physical body. This egress is usually accomplished gradually, with the soul body building up in form and detail near (usually above) the physical body. Until the soul body has been completely reformed outside the physical body, there will be a connection of "soul stuff" which takes the form of one or more cords. The same is true of a person who practices astral projection and looks back at his temporarily discarded physical form. He will usually see a cord trailing from it. If shocked back into the body, he will feel as if the cord has yanked him back like a rubber band.

The dreamlike nature of astral projections. Many of the accounts provided by astral projectors are confused, surreal, and dreamlike. (See this old post for examples.) One explanation is that, although they have left the physical body, they remain veiled by the energy body, which distorts and filters their impressions of the spiritual planes they are visiting. The same thing possibly happens in dreams, where the experiences of the temporarily liberated soul body are altered and made to seem bizarre and illogical by the masking effect of the energy body.

Materializations. Ectoplasm remains a subject of great controversy in paranormal circles. If there is such a thing as ectoplasm, it would appear to be drawn from the body of the medium and, usually, some of the sitters in the medium's circle. This ectoplasm is then gathered together to create a more-or-less convincing simulation of some departed person (often only partial). If I understand Crookall correctly on this point, he thinks that ectoplasm is drawn from the energy bodies of the medium and some of the attendees, and that this material – temporarily borrowed – can be built up into a new form because it is essentially just a sheath or veil, with no consciousness of its own. This could explain why the purported ectoplasmic materializations in some séances can appear mechanical and mindless.

Mediumistic communications. Many communicators have indicated that, in order to use the medium's body as an instrument, they must "lower their vibrations" and enter that body, which the medium herself has temporarily vacated. It has never been very clear what is meant by lowering vibrations. In Crookall's scheme, the soul body vibrates at a higher frequency than the physical body. If the soul body attempts to enter a medium's physical body, it must reduce its frequency and also accept the filtering, distorting influence of the medium's energy body, which is still in place. The degree to which the energy body will hamper communication depends on how loosely or firmly it is attached to the medium's physical body. In general, people with highly developed mediumistic or psychic abilities have looser energy bodies, but even a loosely attached energy body will prove to be a barrier, to a certain extent, to communication. And many communicators have, in fact, complained that communication is extremely difficult and that it feels like trying to be heard through a barrier. The most famous example may be an automatic writer's record of a purported communication from early psychic researcher F.W.H. Myers:

The nearest simile I can find to  express the difficulties of sending a message is that I appear to be standing behind a sheet of frosted glass – which blurs sight and deadens sound – dictating feebly to a reluctant and somewhat obtuse secretary.

In Crookall's scheme, the sheet of frosted glass that blurs sight and deadens sound is "the vehicle of vitality," or what I call the energy body, of the medium, which the communicator must put on when he enters the medium's physical body to use it as his instrument.

Vibration. Finally, we might make some sense of the idea of gradually increasing frequencies by seeing all of these interlocking bodies as coexisting at different rates of vibration. Presumably this is only a metaphor or a loose description, but it's not necessarily a bad one. Even in this physical world, two or more things can occupy the same space if they are vibrating at different rates. For instance, different waves on the electromagnetic spectrum can travel through the same airspace without interfering with each other. In something of the same way, two or more bodies could occupy roughly the same physical space without interference if each vibrated at a different frequency. Shedding a body would be equivalent to raising one's frequency. Resuming a previously cast-off body would be equivalent to lowering one's frequency.

It should be pointed out that Crookall insists that one's state of consciousness is intimately connected with both the rate of frequency of the body that's being employed and the nature of one's environment. 

1. The physical world requires a physical body and a consciousness that are severely restricted by the filtering effect of the energy body.
2. The Summerland world requires a soul body and a consciousness that are not restricted by the energy body.
3. Still higher planes of spiritual development require a spirit body that has a correspondingly higher range and clarity of consciousness.

Each environment is attuned to each body, or vice versa, and consciousness is always in tune with both. In fact, Crookall suggests that shedding bodies may be akin to simply changing one's focus of consciousness. In this respect, Art may be right when he said, in a comment on the previous post, "I suspicion the only thing that is real is consciousness. And that everything else is just a projection from one universal consciousness."

P.S. I came across a couple of pertinent quotes in William Buhlman's book The Secret of the Soul, a discussion of out-of-body experiences. The first is an except from The Bridge Across Forever, by Richard Bach, best known as the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Bach experimented with OBEs with his wife Leslie. At one point, while the two of them were in an out-of-body state, he perceived her this way:

Oh, my! I thought. The Leslie I've been seeing with my eyes isn't the tiniest part of who she is! She's body within body, life within life, unfolding, unfolding … will I ever know all of her?

Buhlman himself observes, "The spiritual form experienced by most people during an OBE is their astral or emotional body. This energy body is the seat of our personal desires and emotional needs, so it is only natural that sensual experiences with manifest themselves there." (He uses the terms "astral body," "emotional body," and "energy body" interchangeably; all of these refer to Crookall's vehicle of vitality or, as in this post, the energy body.)

Later, in discussing ecstatic unions (or reunions) that occur in some OBE's, Buhlman writes, "After decades of examination, I believe that many of these experiences are an internal reunification of our multidimensional nature." This comment is in line with the channeled teachings of Jane Roberts' Seth, the between-lives hypnotic regressions of Michael Newton, and, for what it's worth, my own speculations on the self as one facet of a diamond and the soul as a multidimensional entity with many different states of consciousness existing at once.

Four bodies

In The Supreme Adventure, Robert Crookall summarizes a great deal of evidence pointing to the idea that matter, in some sense, is part of the soul's experience throughout nearly all if its journey. Some kind of "body" is necessary, he argues, even at higher levels of development. Specifically he argues for four bodies, initially intertwined. They are:

1. the physical body
2. the vehicle of vitality, or the aura, which enshrouds the other bodies and serves as an interface between the physical and the spiritual realms
3. the soul body, which shines brightly once the vehicle of vitality has been cast off; and 
4. the spirit body, the highest and most sensitive vessel. 

As he sees it, at death, the latter three bodies disengage from the physical body, which is left to decompose. Sometime later — usually three or four days, but occasionally much longer in cases of "earthbound" spirits — the vehicle of vitality is sloughed off, in what Crookall calls "the second death." Until the vehicle of vitality has been shed, the discarnate person may be confused, existing in a dream world similar to the bardo described in the Tibetan Book of Dead. Crookall notes that many mediumistic communications originate from this realm and from this state of consciousness, which accounts for their confusing and sometimes even nonsensical nature. 

Once the vehicle of vitality has been shed, the soul body is free to shine without the distorting and veiling influence of the auric field. It is as if blinders have been taken off. Confusion is replaced by expanded awareness, and this change in consciousness is matched by a change in "location," as the discarnate moves into the Paradise or Summerland environment. 

According to Crookall, most people will experience two life reviews. The first, occurring at the point of death, is unemotional and without moral significance — one's whole life flashes before one's eyes, but with no judgments being rendered. Crookall interprets this experience as the vehicle of vitality imprinting itself on the soul body. The second life review comes after the vehicle of vitality has been discarded, when the soul (now in touch with the higher self) is able to survey the panorama of its earthly life and form mature judgements about it. To distinguish it from the first life review, Crookall calls this one the Judgment. 

Crookall acknowledges that some people have experienced the Judgment at a surprisingly early point in the dying process. Even in his day, before the term "near-death experience" had been coined, there were scattered reports of people who had nearly died but had been revived, a few of whom had reported a life review complete with moral judgment. He says that such reports pertain only to a minority of cases, which still appears to be true; most NDEs do not include the Judgment. In his opinion, NDErs who undergo the Judgment are those whose vehicle of vitality is unusually "loose" to begin with. Mediums, psychics, seers, and people of elevated spiritual awareness are characterized (he thinks) by a looser vehicle of vitality, which accounts for their spiritual or paranormal gifts. Such people may experience the Judgment right away, but others must wait until the soul body has entirely cast off the vehicle of vitality. 

Throughout all these changes, there is still a body of some kind. As noted above, Crookall argues that a bodily vessel of one sort or another is necessary until one arrives at the very highest level of spiritual evolution. He writes, 

On earth, the subjective (or thought) aspect is subordinate to the objective (or environmental) aspect: as the 'spheres' are ascended, the importance of the subjective increases and that of the objective decreases … Only the 'Father', the Infinite Absolute, Transcendent and Unmanifested is purely 'subjective', pure 'Spirit', unconditioned by even the finest 'matter'.…

The importance of the physical body, and the corresponding physical environment in the development and evolution of the human 'soul' was indicated by Phoebe and Dr. L.J. Bendit (Man Incarnate, Theosophical Publishing House Ltd., 1957, p. 5). They said: "Without a body, man, as naked Spirit, would be left in a subjective state, with no consciousness and hence no possibility of gaining objective experience or realizing himself for what he is."

The idea here is that matter plays the largest role in our present, physically incarnated existence; a somewhat lesser role in the transitional state that Crookall calls "Hades" (i.e., limbo, the bardo), when the vehicle of vitality maintains a tenuous connection to the earth; a still lesser role in the Paradise or Summerland environment; and an increasingly minimal role as the soul ascends to higher realms. But only the very highest realm (or state of consciousness), that of the divine, is entirely free of any dependence on what we call matter.

In order to make some sense of this, I'd like to suggest two different models. They both say essentially the same thing, but in different terms. First, the information-universe model.

In this model, our experience of the physical world is analogous to our interaction with images on a computer screen. The images may appear like real objects, but they are actually only arrangements of pixels dictated by the underlying computer code. Likewise, our experience of the physical world consists of sensory impressions in which we are immersed. These impressions originate in matrices of information that are constantly undergoing changes (information processing). Ultimately the information itself is what is real, while the sensory impressions (like the images on the computer screen) have only a secondary, dependent, and – in a sense – illusory reality.

The "rendered" images that surround us are what Crookall calls "matter" or "the objective." What he calls "consciousness" or "the subjective" is the mind that apprehends these images. Thus it is perfectly true that "without a body" a person would be left with "no possibility of gaining objective experience or realizing himself for what he is," since there would be no way of perceiving any sensory impressions and therefore no way of obtaining any contents for consciousness. The mind would still exist, but it would be empty – a blank – a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of.

As the soul climbs higher in the planes of spiritual development, it becomes less dependent on the "rendered" images and more aware of the underlying information – the source code. If a given consciousness were to become completely conversant with the source code, to the point where the source code constituted the entire contents of the mind, then it would be, in effect, God. That's because in this model, the source code or fundamental information is held in the mind of God – that is, in a universal, primordial consciousness that transcends time and space.

So, in this model, the slow climb toward the spiritual heights involves shedding one's dependence on quasi-illusory "rendered" imagery and apprehending the source code directly. This corresponds to a gradual lessening of reliance on "matter" or the "objective environment," and a gradually deepening apprehension of pure information.

For those who don't like the computer model, here's an alternative. We can see the world as a manifestation of ideas in the mind of God. We apprehend these ideas in the form of sensory impressions. We don't directly perceive abstractions; we perceive concretes and imaginatively extrapolate abstractions from them. As the soul climbs the ladder of spiritual development, it gradually becomes less reliant on sensory impressions or concretes and more able to apprehend the underlying abstractions. This brings the soul closer and closer to God, because only God has unimpeded, comprehensive access to these ideas. 

In either analogy, whether we see the "objective environment" of "matter" as an expression of information or ideas, the basic concept is the same. We are intended to eventually lose our dependence on quasi-illusory forms and to become fully conversant with the supporting reality, the ground of being, which is the mind of God and its contents — or Source and source code, or the Thinker and its thoughts. 

From the files: the tunnel

Here's a repost of an entry from December 2007, concerning a book by geologist-turned-psi-investigator Robert Crookall. I was rereading this book last night and came across some of these passages again.

Crookall's books are all highly worthwhile. His writing style is dry, sometimes excessively so, but at least he avoids any whiff of sensationalism. The organizational scheme he developed for the dying process is consistent with what we know from more recent NDE research. He made a serious, concerted effort to bring order and structure to the mass of reports he'd collected on OBEs, NDEs, channeled commendations, deathbed visions, and related phenomena. His work ought to be more widely known. 

Incidentally, I just noticed that with this repost, I've published 1600 entries to this blog. Yikes! That's a lot of bloviating.

My original post follows. 

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Lately I've been reading The Supreme Adventure: Analysis of Psychic Communications, by Robert Crookall. In it, Crookall collects many accounts of the dying process from a variety of sources and examines them to see if they tell a more or less consistent story. His idea is that if the details of the story are consistent and cannot credibly be explained by collusion or coincidence, then there's good reason to believe that these details are true.

One particularly interesting detail is the well-known "tunnel" through which the spirit is said to travel after leaving the body. This imagery became famous in the 1970s when the term near-death experiences was coined by Raymond Moody, but Crookall's book precedes Moody's by 14 years and contains the same imagery.

Crookall writes,

A common symbol used in describing the act of shedding ... the Physical Body is that of passing through a 'tunnel' (or a 'door', 'passage', 'tube', 'shaft', 'hole', 'funnel', etc.): this is clearly related to the 'momentary coma' [experienced upon separating from the body], though lasting somewhat longer and, perhaps, with some dim consciousness, of existence if not of environment. There are many considerations which strongly suggest that in this symbol a genuine experience of a surviving soul is indicated.

He then lists a number of statements "by people who left the body other than by death and who use identical symbols" -- that is, by people who had out-of-body experiences (astral projection) or, in some cases, what we would now call near-death experiences. (Where possible, I have given the date of the published account.)

"I seemed to float in a long tunnel. It appeared very narrow at first but gradually expanded into unlimited space." (1952)

"Suddenly there appeared an opening, like a tunnel, and, at the far end, a light. I moved nearer to it and was drawn up the passage." (1950)

"A constant preliminary to the loss of consciousness is the symbolic passing through a pitch-black tunnel." (1953)

"I was falling ... down a dark, narrow tunnel or shaft ... Sometimes the speed is so tremendous that one gets the effect of tumbling through a hole into a new sphere."

"I find myself going down a long dim tunnel ... At the far end is a tiny speck of light which grows, as I approach, into a large square, and I am there!"

"In one of my own experiences I seemed to pass through a tunnel in a dream-like state and emerged through the opening at the end into a scene of bright sunlight." (1956)

"I was hurried off at great speed. Have you ever looked through a very long tunnel and seen the tiny speck of light at the far end?... Well, I found myself... hurrying along just such a tunnel or passage." (1935 near-death experience)

Crookall includes a 1946 mystical experience:

"I closed my eyes and watched a silver glow which shaped itself into a circle with a central focus brighter than the rest. The circle became a tunnel of light proceeding from some distance on in the heart of the Self. Swiftly and smoothly I was borne through the tunnel."

And a number of statements from people who had an out-of-body experience under anesthesia:

"I was in a long tunnel with a light at the end... I knew that if I could only get to the light at the end I should understand everything." (1935)

"I seemed to float down a dark tunnel, moving towards a half-moon of light that was miles away."

"On being given ether I was moving, at a terrific rate, through what seemed to be a tunnel."

"I found myself in an avenue of trees, slowly moving farther and farther from my body... I continue to advance along the avenue towards a brilliant light at the end of it." (1955)

"I found myself proceeding along a straight black tube with hardly any room to move." (1894)

What is most interesting is that these statements agree with communications through mediums.

"I remember a curious opening, as if one had passed through subterranean passages and found oneself near the mouth of the cave... The light was much stronger outside."

An alleged discarnate who said he helped people make the transition said he tried "to make this passage through the tunnel as happy as possible." (1931)

Another communicator said he traveled through a "dark tunnel" while leaving his body. Yet another spoke of "traveling down a tunnel".

A 1926 communicator said: "I saw in front of me a dark tunnel. I stepped out of the tunnel into a new world."

These ostensible communicators also seem to agree that returning to the physical body can require going through a tunnel. This is true even if the discarnate entity is trying to temporarily enter the body of a medium.

"Do not look at me too critically: to try to transmit through the organism of a medium is like trying to crawl through a hollow log." (George Pelham, communicating through Mrs. Piper to Richard Hodgson)

Another discarnate compared entering a medium's body to getting into "a sort of funnel" (1948).

One would-be communicator failed to get through: "He was able to see the light in the darkness of a long funnel. But he doubted so much that it went out. He was frightened for fear he would never find his way back." (1936)

Interestingly, Crookall notes that the tunnel symbol "is also used for describing the experience of reentering the Physical Body" in what we would today call near-death experiences. "This also is felt as a brief coma, 'blackout', or passage through a 'tunnel' (depending on the duration of the experience)."

One NDEr said, "I turned away from the bright light... and entered a gloomy tunnel. I fought my way back to a tiny light in the distance... When I got back to the light, I found myself back in bed."

Crookall even quotes an account given by Plutarch in A.D 79 (On the Delay of Divine Justice) in which a certain Aridaeus suffered a severe fall and was momentarily startled out of his body. Surviving the fall, he felt himself reenter his physical shell. "Then, as though he were suddenly sucked through a tube ... he lit [i.e., alit] in his body."

However, Crookall notes that most people appear to have only a momentary blackout, rather than the full tunnel experience, when they reenter their bodies. He cites a 1923 study of out-of-body experiences in support of this statement. Modern studies of NDEs also find that the tunnel phenomenon is more commonly remembered when leaving the body than when returning, and that the return is often much more rapid.

It appears, then, that the tunnel phenomenon is not easily explained as a neurological quirk. Neurology might explain the experience of the tunnel in NDEs, when the brain is presumably shutting down. It does not explain the tunnel imagery in more routine out-of-body experiences, such as astral projection experiments, when there is no physical damage to the brain. Nor does it explain the persistence of this imagery in mediumistic communications ostensibly originating from the deceased, who are describing their own passage - either their passage out of the body upon death, or their passage into the medium's body for purposes of the séance.

And remember that all of the above quotes were collected prior to 1961, the publication date of The Supreme Adventure. This rules out the conjecture that the tunnel with a bright light at the end is merely a meme originating in Raymond Moody's 1975 bestseller Life after Life and popularized by the media.