The Ghost in the Machine

Edward Muzika

I am writing an introduction to a path to enlightenment by means of becoming aware of one’s Subtle Body processes.

The Subtle Body inaccurately can be said to be located within one’s physical body.  This is only true because one first tends to perceive Subtle Body processes by “looking inwards,” by imaginatively turning one’s external visual seeing inwards, at the third eye center located near the middle of the four head , or downwards towards the heart, or even further downwards towards the gut.  

At first almost everyone sees nothing just darkness but with persistence, one begins to be able to visually see within what appears to be the inner darkness of one’s body.  What has happened, is that you are beginning to perceive with an alternative imaginative visual sense, the inner workings of the Subtle Body, especially its energies, how they flow, have direction and intensity.

You might say the essential character of the Subtle Body consist of four components: an inner light called the light of consciousness, which illuminate an inner “space,” or Void, and “energies,” of many different sorts that flow in and around the Subtle Body because these energies are at first perceived to be within the physical body, and lastly, FEELING all these energies, emotions, tactile sensations, in movement, such as walking, or breathing.

Growing acquaintance with the inner body will result in the realization at some point that you are not the physical body, but instead are this feeling body within which feels energies, emotions, experiences thoughts, perceives inner lights, and which feels the body, its tensions and pleasures, but most significantly, you become aware of all the various energy patterns within the Subtle Body that are only loosely associated with the physical body’s nervous complexes.

One could say that when one enters one’s Subtle Body, you are entering into an area of fantasy, of images, sensations, bliss, energies, sexuality, feeling of the physical organs, seeing inner light, witnessing thoughts, feeling moods and emotions.  In a sense the whole process becomes like a very deep and nonverbal psychotherapy because you are experiencing emotions and energies that flow and morph into each other in very complex ways and patterns, but there is nothing “real about any of these processes as they are not manifest objectively in the world for all to see.  They are subjective in similar to fantasy processes, and fantasy processes can be used to awaken one’s awareness To Subtle Body processes.

The Subtle Body and deeper levels are whole new world to a person who was only aware of their minds and their physical bodies, and to a lesser degree of emotions.  A whole new world is opened up of ever-changing space and flows of energies and emotions within the space.  In this space is felt to be far more real than your physical body, because you begin to see and understand the physical body is merely perceived and made real by the Subtle Body and its connection to the physical body.

At this point, what you had called real before, your external world, your home, your spouse, politics, your career can begin to seem unreal in comparison to the aliveness and intense presence of one’s experience of one’s own subtle body.  The external world can begin to feel like a dream in comparison to the new dynamic reality of the inner energetic processes and bliss.  Hence Ramana and Robert Adams saying that the world is like a dream in comparison to the depths you are now plumbing within.

Now, there are many ways to gain entrance to the Subtle Body.  Traditional methods involve breathing exercises called pranayama, combined with visualization’s and focusing one’s attention on various places within the physical body where supposedly Subtle Body Complexes or Chakras are located, and then imagining energies and lights traveling between or within a Chakra.  This is the traditional way, and I might say the most boring way, and a way that is or can be filled with danger for those who do not have an ever present teacher.  Kundalini awakenings can be quite frightening because of the experiences one is subject to, none of which appear to be under one’s own control, therefore inducing fear of insanity her death.

However, I have a very different way.  I get people to be able to experience their Subtle Bodies and their energies by having them open their heart towards me as I open my heart towards them.  It is a Subtle Body process wherein one feels like one’s heart and beingness are opening to another person.  One feels very vulnerable, very open, very accepting, and very loving.  This causes in some cases, a similar spontaneous opening to the person being addressed, whether face-to-face, online, in Satsang, or by some other connection such as a phone or even in an email.

Now, there are two powerful complexes in the Subtle Body that almost automatically respond to such a heart opening: the heart center in the other, and the sexual center in the other, because they are the two most powerful centers normally available to uninitiated people, and their energies can be closely related.  Where there is an opening in one, there is often an opening in the other simultaneously or shortly thereafter.  But neither appear real in the sense of being objective for everyone to see.  These are purely subjective, even though they appear to the person more powerful in real than anything in the external world while they are being experienced.

I want to make one thing very clear.  The work I do can be called a complete fantasy process by using words, images, metaphors, tone of voice, to induce openings in the other person or in many attendees at Satsang.  It is a process remotely similar to hypnosis, but only in the sense that there is a conscious and unconscious process of locking the Subtle Body of two people together in a kind of resonance.  I become a broadcaster, they become the receiver, and by resonance they feel a heart opening and often similarly a sexual opening, which is reflected back to me and I react to it, and often there is a building of these energies in each person.  Other openings come later.  The heart center and the sexual center are only two of the myriad of inner experiences of energies, bliss, openings, the Void, utter silence, and the sense of being alive itself, which Nisargadatta called “I am.”

One’s identity shifts from being a physical body, to being a Subtle Body, then dropping further and identifying oneself as Void or emptiness or nothingness, and lastly, all of these are dropped and one recognizes that he or she is that to which all these appearances appear, all of these bodies appear in awareness, your awareness, and this awareness, like life itself, is a universal phenomena.  Everyone has awareness, everyone is life, and you begin to take on this identification.  But the identification is mediated by exploring one’s Subtle Body, the complexes of energies and bliss, of silence and Void within that so few people know.

I do want to make clear that very strong sexual feelings are set off in this process spontaneously, without any physical sex taking place at all, and often even without a thought of sex.  One’s body begins convulse in full-body orgasms not connected to one’s sexual center.  Orgasms can feel originating in many parts of the body, or the entire body.  But these orgasms are really not attached to sexuality itself in the physical body.  They are kind of earthquakes of energy that show that the body, both the physical and the Subtle, are waking up to subtleties of deepening perception to which the person had been previously unaware.  The strong sexual earthquakes are kind of ways that God entices us as physical beings to become aware of the Subtle Body within.  There, orgasms, especially female orgasms, are more a measure for them of the perfection of that moment of being alive.  Sometimes orgasms feel like that at that moment, they are feeling or perceiving or hearing truth, and the orgasm is experienced within the subtle body as the perception of truth or perfection in the moment.

The physical orgasms one has in physical sex our almost nothing like the spiritual orgasms one has opening the spiritual body, yet the term orgasm, as well as sexual centers, immediately convey or cast the most prurient shadow over this whole process of becoming alive to your deeper self.  Some people will just read this or hear this and want to puke because it sounds dirty in some way or goes against their grain of speaking of spirituality and sexuality in the same paragraph.  Or is one swami put it, some people go bad shit crazy when speaking of spirituality and sex in the same breath.

Opening of the sexual center in the Subtle Body, leads to sharing the intensity of that Subtle Body sexuality to the entirety of the Subtle Body, such that all of the energies within the Subtle Body become coordinated, balanced and one pointed only after sexual energies have been transmuted into total body energy balancing.

Again, the entire methodology is based on fantasy, imaginatively seeing within one’s physical body, feeling openings in various parts of the physical body, which are really openings in one’s Subtle Body, in the heart complex, the sexual complex, the gut complex called Hara by the Japanese.  When the third eye complex opens, above and behind the physical eyes, by imaginatively turning one’s vision inwards, results in the perception of inner light, the light of consciousness, where in the movements of energies are seen as colored flows or streams within and between various complexes in the Subtle Body.

The natural result of the opening of the Subtle Body is the arising of bliss, at first very lightly, and it is felt like low current electricity, but does not have the stark feeling of electric shock, but as far more gentle and somewhat more pleasurable.  At first it is like one’s leg waking up after being asleep, but more pleasurable. 

Over a period of days, weeks or months, the intensity of the bliss grows until sometimes one is so enthralled by the intensity of bliss one cannot even move for fear of destroying the state.  Living in these energies, manipulating them, feeling them to become ever more subtle and refined, and teased apart by one’s own awareness, is the most lovely process of self-exploration imaginable, especially as it is rewarded by an ever increasing opening of deeper and deeper levels of self and leaving behind the mundane world altogether, and sinking into the ecstasies of light, power, bliss within.

Yet, for all intents and purposes, for Westerners, it can be presented as being a fantasy process only, and that no physical contact is necessary and is really not possible.  I know some teachers use touch for Shaktipat, but it is not necessary.  A teacher can radiate his internal field and allow those who can to feel it in him, and by resonance, in their own selves.  Some spontaneously begin to feel orgasms at this time others heart openings, and others feel both.  This is the beginning result of a fantasy process of speaking, tone of voice, words used, images used, metaphors brought out, as well as speaking from an open heart.

One of the most amazing things one discovers through this process is that everything is made out of these energies.  The physical body is not as it seems before the subtle body is open.  We only perceive the physical body within as tactile sensations in the sense data from the physical organs.  Gradually these are seen or understood as being another form of energy that can be transmuted by the explorer/practitioner.

Also, emotions are another form of energies.  You might say that emotions are unstable packages of these energies which when teased open through awareness dissolve into bliss.  For the explorer who has developed one pointedness and persistence, every emotion, positive and negative, when perceived and brought into one’s sense of one’s heart and held there, can be seen to dissolve into the bliss body of the subtle body having been transmuted out of the so-called emotional body and transmuted.  The same can be done for sexual feelings, for emotions such as fear, for depression, for grief and sadness, and even for jealousy.  As such, it becomes a very advanced psychotherapy, but it is not successful unless the practitioner has become one pointed and very subtle in their observing of these emotions and can stabilize and rest in them.  This takes time and practice.

My ultimate aim is to make this method of opening others to the Subtle Body, to energies, etc., is to help them realize that there are so many levels of you, your life, that are more real than your body, and that altogether, we can call them divine, making you an incarnation of God even while occupying and using a human body.  You, as life and consciousness, are divine.  You as an incarnation are able to realize the God within who is you, and who is beyond life and death, and who is you.  Also, you have that divine power to awaken the divinity in others after you recognize it in your own self, and can help others to couple this way, and divine incarnation of god and goddess, Shiva and Shakti and rest in eternal bliss, and you do it in a natural way, through love, devotion, and surrender to your Beloved, and both of you equally awaken to the divine through resonance.