The etheric body is a name given to a supposed vital body propounded in esoteric philosophies as the first or lowest layer in the human energy field or aura. It is said to be in immediate contact with the physical body, to sustain it and connect it with higher bodies.

The term etheric in this context seems to derive from the Theosophical writings of Madame Blavatsky, but its use was formalised by C.W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant due to the elimination of Hindu terminology from the system of seven planes and bodies.

The term gained some general popularity after the 1914-18 war, Dr. Walter John Kilner having adopted it for a layer of the human atmosphere which, as he claimed in a popular book, could be rendered visible to the naked eye by means of certain exercises.

The classical element Aether of Platonic and Aristotlean physics continued in VIctorian scientific proposals of a Luminiferous ether as well as the cognate chemical substance ether. According to Theosophists and Alice Bailey the etheric body inhabits an etheric plane which corresponds to the four higher subplanes of the physical plane. The intended reference is therefore to some extremely rarefied matter, analogous in usage to the word spirit. In selecting it as the term for a clearly defined concept in an Indian derived metaphysical system, the Theosophists aligned it with ideas such as the prana maya kosha (sheath made of prana, subtle breath or life force) of Vedantic thought.

In popular use it is often confounded with the related concept of the astral body as for example in the term astral projection. The early Theosophists had called it the astral double. Others prefer to speak of the lower and higher astral.

Linga sarira is a Sanskrit term for the invisible double of the human body, the etheric body or etheric double, or astral body in some Theosophical concepts. It is one of the seven principles of the human being, according to Theosophical philosophy.

Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy, often referred to the etheric body in association with the etheric formative forces and the evolution of man and the cosmos. According to him, it can be perceived by a person gifted with clairvoyance as being of peach blossom color.

Steiner considered the etheric reality or life principle as quite distinct from the physical material reality, being intermediate between the physical world and the astral or soul world. The etheric body can be characterised as the life force also present in the plant kingdom. It maintains the physical body’s form until death. At that time, it separates from the physical body and the physical reverts to natural disintegration.

According to Max Heindel’s Rosicrucian writings, the etheric body, composed of four ethers, is called the Vital Body since the ether is the way of ingress for vital force from the Sun and the field of agencies in nature which promote such vital activities as assimilation, growth, and propagation. It is an exact counterpart of our physical body, molecule for molecule, and organ for organ, but it is of the opposite polarity. It is slightly larger, extending about one and a half inches beyond the periphery of the physical body.

Samael Aun Weor teaches that the vital body is the five dimensional part of the physical body and the foundation of organic life. He states that in the second Initiation of Fire, which is reached through working with sexual magic with a spouse, the Kundalini rises in the vital body. Then the initiate learns how to separate the two superior ethers from the others in order for them to serve as a vehicle to travel out of the physical body.

Some clairvoyants and occultists have produced drawings and paintings that record their perceptions of the etheric body, such as Leadbeater’s Man Visible and Invisible for one example. The images produced by Kirlian photography bear obvious resemblances to these graphics, showing a spiky looking energy field extending a few inches around the human body, as well as other biological specimens, like leaves, and objects like coins. The fact that Kirlian photography can capture the acupuncture points of the body links the technology with concepts of prana, qi, bioplasma, and related ideas and theories. For some believers in the etheric body, Kirlian photography provides important supporting evidence, though skeptics are generally not swayed.

Modern theosophists sometimes claim that the ideas are related to a contemporary area of fringe science, modern Aether theories. However, there are alternative explanations that some Theosophists may regard as plausible, which includes the conception of the dynamic aether, possessing a fluid crystal structure, subdivided in different levels of density, with density proportional to the density of any physical substance occupying the area of space concerned, increasing around large bodies such as stars and planets, acting as a refracting medium, affecting the speed of propagation of light and conveying electromagnetic forces.

This confirms all the experimental data and astronomical observations currently cited in support of the special and general theories of relativity, including the phenomena known as vacuum energy and other unsolved problems in physics that baffles the current standard theories. Also taken into account are the internal inconsistencies and unwarranted assumptions of standard relativity theory have been pointed out by dozens of scientists. It must be reiterated, though, that these ideas should in no way be construed as being indicative of generally accepted scientific opinion on the subject.

Cells are individual conscious entities that participate in collective consciousnesses at various levels. There are many varieties of one celled beings who do not live in cell communities but spend their lives free and self regulating. When cells join in cooperative association they do not lose consciousness any more than a fish in a school. There is a body of evidence indicating that there is more to an organism than simply chemical reactions.

Dr. Harold Saxton Burr spent much of his life experimenting with electrical fields that envelop all organic forms. We need to keep in mind that all form is of a field nature. When we put iron filings around a magnet we see the shape of an immaterial field. When we examine matter we see an atomic field that assumes many forms. The nature of form is that it has boundary. Organic forms have the familiar material boundaries that we see and then there is an electrical envelope outside this boundary that has been studied by Dr. Burr.

This envelope is an extremely weak, direct current electrical field, extending out less than an inch. This field exists around all organic forms. There are also other energy fields such as the alternating current fields of electricity extending out from various regions of the human body, but none of these encompass the whole body. Dr. Burr was interested not so much by the fact that such a field exists but by the fluctuation of energy potential in these fields, which resonated with terrestrial and extraterrestrial events.

By monitoring the direct current field around living things, Dr. Burr found that the change in potential energy of this field correlates with specific events both internal and external to the body. This energy field that Burr studied is the same as the energy field that is monitored by the lie detector. The lie detector monitors fluctuations of the emotions. It is important to note that the field of electricity itself is probably not the emotion but a byproduct of its functioning. The symptomatic fluctuation makes it possible to monitor the actual phenomenon.

By his study, Burr found that each of us is a participant in the metabolism of the solar body through this field. Fluctuations in energy potential of this direct current field correlate with the lunar cycle and the sun spot cycle. He also discovered that by monitoring the field, the ovulation of the human female could be determined exactly, a matter of extreme importance to the human family. The electrical monitoring indicates an immaterial force that both controls and is controlled by the material. It is an integrated whole.

Burr’s research led him to the discovery that by monitoring the energy field he could determine the longitudinal axis (spinal column) of an unfertilized salamander egg. As he monitored it after fertilization his monitoring of the immaterial guiding field indicated that the spinal column remained congruous with the electrical polarity throughout its development. That is, the guiding field was there before fertilization and remained there as the guiding field, as the biological form unfolded. Burr went further and demonstrated that the guiding field not only participates in guiding the development of form but also is always at work with the living organism.

Burr also found the cosmic fluctuations of moon cycle, sun cycle and sunspots caused changes in the electrical potential of field, thus giving us evidence of the intimate connection of our bodies and emotions to cosmic events. In addition to being simply another piece of evidence that everything is connected, the Burr material shows an interaction between a force field that can be monitored by its electrical side effect and the physical organism. It suggests even further that important aspects of the control of the material form exists in this field.

Student and colleague Leonard Ravitz carried Burr’s work forward. Ravitz focused especially on the human dimension, beginning with a solid demonstration of the effects of the lunar cycle on the human energy field, reaching a peak of activity at the full moon. Through work with hypnosis he demonstrated that changes in the energy field directly relate to changes in a person’s mental and emotional states. Ravitz stated, “Both emotional activity and stimuli of any sort involve mobilization of electrical energy, as indicated on the galvanometer, hence, both emotions and stimuli evoke the same energy. Emotions can be equated with energy.” Most intriguingly, Ravitz showed that the energy field as a whole disappears before physical death.

When one looks out into the heavens at night, one sees points of light. This light is the transmission of pure energy striking the cells in our eyes. We know intellectually that the universe is full of pure energy going in all directions from those stars, but sometimes we cannot perceive that the light is something that is formed by the same source that has created us.

The present moment is what happens. Since this changes constantly it seems that life consists of thousands of moments in which different things happen. Time is seen as an endless succession of moments. Yet, if we look more closely we find that there are not many moments at all. Life is always now and unfolds in the constant present. Even past or future moments only exist when they are remembered or anticipated.

Scientists, the specialists in discovering what is true about the world and the universe, often work like detectives. They make a guess, called a hypothesis, about what might be true. They then say to themselves, “If that were really true, we ought to see so and so”. This is called a prediction. For example, if the world is really round, we can predict that a traveller, going on and on in the same direction, should eventually find himself back where he started.

We use evidence to learn about the world and the way it operates. It is much more clever and complicated than that, however. It is based on cause and effect and the internal processing of this material to convince us of what is true or not. Evidence is a good reason for believing something, but there are three bad reasons for believing anything. They are called tradition, authority, and revelation.

Tradition means beliefs handed down from generation to generation, or from books handed down through the centuries. Traditional beliefs often start from almost nothing. Perhaps somebody just makes them up originally, like the stories about Thor and Zeus. But after they’ve been handed down over some centuries, the mere fact that they are so old makes them seem special. People believe things simply because people have believed the same thing over the centuries. That’s tradition.

Authority, as a reason for believing something, means believing in it because you are told to believe it by somebody important. In the Roman Catholic Church, the pope is the most important person, and people believe he must be right just because he is the pope. In one branch of the Muslim religion, the important people are the old men with beards called ayatollahs. Lots of Muslims in this country are prepared to commit murder, purely because the ayatollahs in a faraway country tell them to.

When religious people just have a feeling inside themselves that something must be true, even though there is no evidence that it is true, they call that feeling revelation. We all have inside feelings from time to time, sometimes they turn out to be right and sometimes they don’t. People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside. Sometimes people have a strong inside feeling that somebody loves them when it is not based upon any evidence, and then they are likely to be completely wrong. Inside feelings must be backed up by evidence, otherwise you just can’t trust them.

Astronomers have discovered evidence to suggest that the universe came into existence fifteen billion years ago in a gigantic explosion and has been expanding ever since. Not only has it been expanding, but it is also growing in complexity and becoming more and more differentiated. Some scientists also postulate that this movement from unity to multiplicity will eventually become reversed. The universe will then stop expanding and begin to contract again and finally return to the unmanifested, the inconceivable nothingness out of which it came, and perhaps repeat the cycles of birth, expansion, contraction, and death again and again. 

For what purpose? “Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?” asks physicist Stephen Hawking, realizing at the same time that no mathematical model could ever supply the answer.

If you look within rather than only without, however, you discover that you have an inner and an outer purpose, and since you are a microcosmic reflection of the macrocosm, it follows that the universe too has an inner and outer purpose inseparable from yours. The outer purpose of the universe is to create form and experience the interaction of forms. The play, the dream, the drama, or whatever you choose to call it. Its inner purpose is to awaken to its formless essence.

Then comes the reconciliation of outer and inner purpose, to bring the essence of consciousness into the world of form and thereby transform the world. The ultimate purpose of that transformation goes far beyond anything the human mind can imagine or comprehend. And yet, on this planet at this time, that transformation is the task allotted us. That is the reconciliation of outer and inner purpose, the reconciliation of the world and God.

Cycle and balance are the basic processes of the universe. Events are circular, cyclical and vibrational. They travel from one pole and back around to the other. We are born into cycle and motion. From the time that the reproductive cells are formed in each of our parents, we are in motion. When we are later carried in the womb, we are in a sea of motion. After the cycle of gestation, we are finally born out of the body into a world of motion where winds blow, seasons cycle, and cycles of our own growth occur.

Each of us has been born onto a sphere travelling in space called the Earth, which is spinning around the central sun. The central sun with its planetary companions travels in a circle within our galaxy which itself is moving around a supercluster of galaxies. From the moment our first cell is created, we are part of the whole, and we never cease being in motion. 

We are a part of increasingly larger processes. There is no such thing as linear expansion toward some static security. The motion we experience is not random, but is cyclic. The circles of the Milky Way Galaxy, the solar system, our earth and the moon around us, occur in cycles so finely balanced and timed that they may be computed exactly, far into the future or into the past. 

These invariable motions are the Law. These impeccably tuned, harmonious cycles are imposed upon us by forces so powerful that there is no question that they are Cosmic Law. Within these celestial cycles the planet spins in a constant cycle of sunlight and darkness that is functionally a day night alternating current. Each point on the planet’s sphere is saturated with energy, then shadowed from it in precisely timed measures. 

Within this cycle and the energy cycle of the seasons, organic life on earth proliferates. The life of the earth was able to grow and develop because it remained in a state of dynamic balance. There is certainly change in the earth’s life but this occurs within a context of balance. If the earth tilted even a few more degrees or if there were any deviation of the earth’s orbit around the sun, the life of the earth would be greatly altered or non-existent.

The earth, this complex blue and white speckled egg, is alive, and its life processes vary constantly as it spins. Its colors change with the seasons, its cloud layers whirl and circulate in rhythmic cycles. Not surprisingly, an Italian chemist, Giorgio Piccardi, has discovered that the speed of the chemical reactions varies according to a number of planetary situations.

Uncountable numbers of organic events occur each second on earth, conditioned by celestial events within the body ofthe solar system. Everything is in relationship, everything flows in cyclic adaptation according to its nature and place in the universe. Organic events such as the metabolism of plankton in the oceans, the migration of salmon, the growth of forests, the annual migration of caribou and innumerable other events all are influenced by cyclic forces completely enmeshed in a flowing whole that is intricately balanced.