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.
- The physical world requires a physical body and a consciousness that are severely restricted by the filtering effect of the energy body.
- The Summerland world requires a soul body and a consciousness that are not restricted by the energy body.
- 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.
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