This small essay is an initial attempt to bring to language the “lived, first-personal, experiential characteristics” of the 7 Theosophical principles of our being based on the idea that these are “subjective, introspectivley available features.” (1)
One prerequisite for doing so is to resist the use of any metaphorical or explanatory concepts, which is the major line of contention between metaphysics and descriptive psychology in the spirit of phenomenology. The use of third-person examples is acceptable as long as they can be empathetically entered and made into hypothetical first-person experiences.
Below are the names of the principles in both English and Sanskrit followed by descriptions and examples.
I) Physical (Rupa): our experience of our physical body as a physical body will show in experiences like bumping into something, when you feel the weight and pure physicality of the body, when you realize it is a physical thing among other physical things and is subject to the laws of physical causality.
II) Vital principle (Prana): our experience of our vitality, or lack thereof, will show itself in the way the physical body comes along when we go about our business. Is it nimble, fresh, rested, dynamic, or limp, fatigued and sluggish? The same would apply to our emotional and mental bodies too, or, more accurately, it is the integrated complex of our physical-emotional-mental bodies that we experience as vital or not.
III) Etheric Double (Linga sharira): our experience of the prototypical double of our physical body would be accessible when we would have an unambiguous experience of a phantom limb in the case we lost a physical part of our body, but still experience its (phantom) reality.
IV) Lower Mental Body (Kama Rupa): our experience of our lower mental-desire body is maybe most accessible for reflection in the moment when a physical intention arises and is not yet fulfilled. It’s then that we can feel explicitly the pull of a lower, projected mental-emotional body image towards its physical object for fulfillment. For example, Janet feels the temptation to keep the excessive change she received in order to pay her rent.
V) Upper Mental Body (Manas): our experience of our higher mental-desire body is maybe most accessible for reflection in the moment when a spiritual intention arises and is not yet fulfilled. It’s then that we can feel explicitly the pull of a higher, projected mental-emotional body image towards its spiritual object for fulfillment. Janet feels the obligation to return the excessive change she received for the sake of honesty and justice.
VI) The Spiritual Soul (Budhi): our experience of our higher spiritual being is maybe most accessible for reflection when conscience announces itself as a still voice calling us to self-transcendentally take care of situations of moral ambiguity when we find ourselves in unprecedented limit-situations and all our Manasic maxims and principles fail to lead us to a right decision. This might then lead to a new caring perceptive intuition of a situation and the appropriate actions implied. Janet, torn between principled obligation and ego-centered temptation, has–triggered by her call of conscience–a new intuition of the situation as involving not just herself and the cashier, but also the wider network of relations involved that are directly or indirectly affected by her decision, and therefore resolves, unambiguously, to return the excess change. Mary has had such insights already and appropriated them into her being and therefore returned the excessive change spontaneously, virtuously, without second thoughts.
VII) The Divine Self (Atma): our experience of our divine self is maybe most accessible for reflection just at the beginning and end of an experience when, first, our whole being is integrally (physical, vital, emotional, mental, intuitive, etc.) and self-transcendentally involved in a meditative action of intense spiritual significance and then the grace of consciousness-being-bliss overcomes us, uninvited, all-encompassing and for a timeless moment. This might happen in different settings. To me it happened a few times during work and while hiking in the mountains. Because of the overwhelming, intense and complete nature of the experience it will be probably quite impossible for consciousness to find the attitude and space to reflect upon itself during the height of it. But because of its intensity it will linger or sets itself in memory and then reflection can set in.
The above is an initial experiential grounding of the 7 Theosophical principles in reflective experience and made ready for a future phenomenology of Theosophy, or maybe better-stated–and paraphrasing Kant–a phenomenological prolegomena for any future Theosophy. Phenomena to be explored would be the interconnected nature of our physical-vital-emotional-mental experiences and bring out its essential structures and dynamics.
(1). John J. Drummond ”Moral phenomenology and moral intentionality” in Phenomenology and Cognitive Science (2008): 7:35-49. The examples of Janet and Mary were taken from this article, though slightly adapted to the article. Because the article is of a technical philosophical nature I can only recommend it to those with some philosophical training. For a more accessible text see “Phenomenology of Practice” by Max van Manen in Phenomenology & Practice (2007) 1: 11-30.
Here some caveats about phenomenology (Ph) and my writings:
Ph is founded upon, and only possible through, the reflexive grasp of consciousness upon itself. As consciousness is always already embedded in its own unique historical life-world, reflection will only find one’s own life-world in all its riches of situated spatial and temporal relations: being physically behind my computer, at my desk, engaged in a little project of explicating anew Ph to myself, my Theosophical friends as well as to a wider audience beyond ourselves. Meanwhile there are other things calling my attention: my left foot, seated in lotus, is falling asleep and I have to pack my belongings to put them in storage. I feel the pressure of the scarcity of time and other responsibilities come to the fore like sending out another little piece on the economy, doing p.r. for an upcoming class, invite my friends in ascended master groups to participate in sessions of white magical mantra yoga, and much more. I perceive a deficiency of being and the call of my conscience tells me to be resolute and see all the interconnected projects within the context of the whole of humanity and its present historical situation of being on the brink of economic catastrophe and escalating military conflicts, all machinated and further to be exploited by the dugpas, for whom humanity is merely a pack of enslavable sleepwalkers. From this vantage point explicating Ph to two or three fellow Theosophists seems futile. But that will not do, so, for the time being, that is ‘now,’ I will fall back on my previous stated position that Ph has enormous relevance for Theosophy and just throw down the challenge for philosophically minded Theosophists to suspend their metaphysical constructs for a while and go through a philosophical awakening in the spirit of phenomenology. This forcefield has been building up steadily since 1901 when Husserl published his “Logical Investigations” and should be reasonably accessible for college-degreed people and will provide a tremendous pay-off. That’s it, for a while. Adios.
I’d like to suggest Atma is not only present in the highest transcendental experiences but in all our experience. It is the aware presence that is the necessary component in every moment. If you were not present and aware, what experience would you have.
[...] a comment » We usually invoke the principle of the etheric field to explain phantom limbs in people that have lost that [...]
Dear Ed,
Yes, I’d agree. Atma is not only a ‘peak experience’ but also the possibility condition of any experience whatsoever as it provides the awareness component to the intentional structure of consciousness. And, as Sartre showed, the intrinsic structure of awareness is that it is implicitly, pre-thematically and pre-reflectively aware that it is aware. Later thematization and reflection will restructure and/or cover up this original ‘double’ structure of awareness. Maybe only in peak experiences this originary structure will get released, or re-instated or liberated again in its free, originary, intense form as Sat-cit-ananda. So Atma is both origin and ultimate.
Dear Chris,
Interesting case. First I thought it was about a case of someone having three arms, but it’s actually about the experience of a phantom arm related to a still attached, but paralyzed arm. (See article)
The French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty made use of the phantom phenomenon to make some points about his phenomenology of the ‘lived body’ or ‘intentional body,’ which comes very close to the etheric double, and as your article mentioned, could give some clues about out-of-body experiences. (BTW, I’m lately working on the idea to bring the idea of Fohat, the connecting link between mind and matter, into reflective experience by re-interpreting Fohat as the ideation that comes with empty, non-fulfilled intentionality.)
From a web page dedicated to the philosopher:
For Merleau-Ponty, consciousness is not just something that goes on in our heads. Rather, our intentional consciousness is experienced in and through our bodies. With his concept of the lived body, Merleau-Ponty overcomes Descartes’ mind-body dualism without resorting to physiological reductionism. Recall that for Descartes the body is a machine and the mind is what runs the machine. For Merleau-Ponty the body is not a machine, but a living organism by which we body-forth our possibilities in the world. The current of a person’s intentional existence is lived through the body. We are our bodies, and consciousness is not just locked up inside the head. In his later thought, Merleau-Ponty talked of the body as “flesh,” made of the same flesh of the world, and it is because the flesh of the body is of the flesh of the world that we can know and understand the world (see The Visible and the Invisible).
To demonstrate this concept of the lived body, Merleau-Ponty uses the example of the phantom limb. A phantom limb would not be possible if our bodies were just machines. If a part of the machine was severed from the rest of the machine, it would simply go without using the limb. Yet, people who have a limb amputated still feel the limb, and they are still called to use the limb in situations that call for its use, even though it is no longer there. In this same sense, the whole lived body is an intentional body, which is lived through in relation to possibilities in the world. Even when the limb is gone, the possibilities for its use remain, but are unable to be taken up as a project in the world. This is why the phantom limb phenomenon is so awe-ful; the arm is gone, and yet the person still feels the call to use it.