https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=MTuDl7o-1bE
So once in a while in a Q&A or in a video I will mention in passing something like subtle bodies. Usually the context where I will mention that is when we talk about angels and the manner in which the Church Fathers describe angels. And so I thought I could maybe give some of my own insight on this question. Now it’s important to understand that my insight is mostly there to help connect the ancient way of thinking with a more contemporary way of thinking because sometimes we look at the ancient way of thinking and we’re such materialists that we struggle to see what it is that the Fathers or the ancients are referring to when they talk about something like subtle bodies. So what do we first of all what are we talking about when we’re talking about subtle bodies? So the idea is that there are some beings and angels are the way that is usually described that do not have corporeal bodies like we they don’t have physical bodies like we do but they’re not also completely spiritual that is they they exist in a kind of intermediary realm in which they have what we could call or what the Church Fathers call subtle bodies. Now the Church Fathers don’t completely agree on this you’ll find obviously different types of descriptions and some of the Fathers tend to oppose materiality and immateriality very clearly and so in that sense they’ll say angels are immaterial but sometimes there’s an intermediary like you talk about let’s say spirit soul and body or mind soul and body it depends how you translate it but sometimes there’s like a triple idea and you have this in between space which is what we could call the space of subtle bodies. Now I’m going to read a little text from you from Saint John Damascene and it’ll help you see why it is that it can cause some confusion all right and so so here’s Saint John Damascene on angels so he says that that God he himself and the maker and creator of the angels he is the maker and the creator of the angels for he brought them out of nothing into being and created them after his own image an incompor in corporeal race a sort of spirit of immaterial fire in the words of the divine David he makes his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire now notice already the problem that we’ve got here now you know we say angels are wind and fire and so the way that we understand wind and fire is that they are material things and so we have lost in some manner the analogy that the ancients used to use about the things which were invisible the things which were ungraspable even in the physical world as ways to signify that which is immaterial in the strict sense that is things that don’t have bodies like ideas like uh you know like virtues like you know the things that activate bodies they themselves are not embodied you could say they they don’t have bodies but and so you can see already the problem so it’s like you know these angels are are made of of wind and fire and so already materialists can read that and think well they are material they do have bodies they’re made of wind and fire but you can see even he makes this effort to say that they are a sort of spirit of immaterial fire right and so he’s using the analogy of the physical world to describe something which is in in corporeal in the strict sense okay and so he later goes on to try to explain this and it’s difficult right because he says the angel’s nature is rational and intelligent and endowed with free will changeable in will for all that is created created is changeable and only that which is uncreated is unchangeable and so the very definition of creation is that it is changeable only god is completely unchangeable all right and then he continues on to describe this saying that they can turn towards goodness or towards evil but they are not susceptible to repentance because the angels are in corporeal all right so here is a good description of something that can confuse someone and so he says talking about angels again seeing that they are minds they are in mental places they are not circumscribed after the fashion of a body for they have not a bodily form by nature nor are they extended in three dimensions but whatever post they may be assigned there they are present after the manner of a mind and energized and cannot be present and energized in various places at the same time and so you know this can cause serious confusion because you could think well that means that angels are you might think that it means that angels are physically located that they have that they’re in certain places in certain time but that’s not what he’s saying he said they are in mental places and they are circumscribed by mental places and so you know the idea you can understand it very simply that you know something you know a mental activator let’s say the angel of a virtue let’s say the angel of hope cannot also be the angel of faith because they are circumscribed by an activating they’re an activating principle for hope for that aspect of reality that is they they’re given a role they have a role in the world to manage certain aspects of reality and they are circumscribed by that role not circumscribed physically in the world but it’s because we’re so not used to thinking that way we struggle to understand what it is that we mean and so you know that’s why many of the the church fathers will talk about the notion that angels have what we call subtle bodies which is that they’re not completely incorporeal in some ways god only is completely incorporeal but that their bodies are not also circumscribed in flesh but they have more fluid bodies more subtle bodies and so it’s difficult again and i and i one of the reasons why i’m talking about this is because i was reading parilandria again and there’s some really wonderful c.s lewis’s book there’s some wonderful insights in that book and also out of a silent out of the silent planet there’s some wonderful insights but some of them can be very in my opinion can be misleading because the perception of these angels is really uses a lot of material but maybe he’s doing it just because he knows the story and there’s no other way to talk about it but he talks about you know beings that are kind of made of light almost in a physical way it seems like that’s what he seems to be describing uh that are you know that are kind of like another dimensions of all that kind of stuff but i think that when we go down that line too much as materialists we lose an understanding of what it is that we can mean by a body of light or a body a subtle body you know it’s like a body of light means that it’s a body that projects meaning onto other bodies it’s a it’s a body a spiritual body that is circumscribed because it’s doing a certain thing but it’s also but it’s projecting light on other bodies it’s making sense of other things and so you can understand uh and so we all like you know you all of us have subtle bodies in that sense all of us also have a physical body but also a subtle body that is waves that we influence the world without being directly physically connected to them and so our very capacity to make meaning is in some ways a form of subtle body so a good example would be you know when you look at uh you know stories of uh fairy tales or kind of fantasy stories where they talk about magicians who act at a distance you know and so you can come up with really elaborate you know weird kind of new age materialist spiritualist ideas about some like subtle substance right with edgar case came up with the idea of ectoplasm which is an actual physical substance by the way which is a subtler physical substance that can make the magician you know act at a distance like all that kind of nonsense but the idea of action at a distance through a subtle body is something that you do every single day and it is quite normal all you need to do to experience it is to i don’t know ask your child to bring you a glass of water and then watch the child bring you a glass of water that is a subtle body that is action at a distance through meaning making through intelligence and not through actual physical uh you know like physically taking your child to the water and then having them bring the water to you you are using your subtle body to affect reality and so that is the best way to kind of understand what subtle bodies are they are related to meaning they’re related to meaning making and they energize the you know like a mind energizes a body they energize bodies to to move according to the role that they play according to the intelligence that they participate in and so that is honestly like they’re just the best way to understand a subtle body so you can think about subtle bodies like try to find example examples of subtle bodies in the world and so a story for example is a subtle body a story uh is a is not encompassed in the world you can’t you know you can write down the story but even the writing down of it is not the story the story is a series of of of uh a series of intelligent points that are brought together in in a coherent whole and that has an effect on people and so if i tell a story i can affect you through my subtle body so that it will change the way that you act i can bring you under my you know under my spell if you will or under my management by using tools of meaning and tools of of intelligent projected projecting right and so that is the kind of the way to understand it so you know you could say something like let’s say uh especially the the notion of angels that often especially the lower angels right so let’s say the angels and the archangels and the and the um the guardian angels you know we in some ways are their bodies you know because they act on us they receive from god and they act on us and then we embody the patterns that they rule over as we as we function the world but it’s it’s a it’s a dangerous way it’s a dangerous to think that that’s the only way to understand it because the higher levels of angels they are they don’t act directly on us they act through other angels on on the bodies and they also act through intelligent means for humans to or to other humans and so very very high angels are so subtle that the type of pattern that they manage is so high that it manages other patterns it’s the best way to understand it and so it’s like one angel has other angels below them and then those angels also act on the world etc etc until you get to the corporeal world which is mannered managed by this hierarchy of of of agency above it a hierarchy of patterns that comes down upon reality and so you could say that all these other levels are in some ways the bodies of the higher beings but they they’re not necessarily corporeal they’re not necessarily physical bodies that extend into three dimensions st john damascene says that they don’t extend in three dimensions you know the the angel of the angel of of hope does not extend in three dimensions it acts through us and it finds you know it finds its anchor through us but the way that it act on us is like a mind energizing the world and so i think i think it’s important and i hope that you can kind of understand and it would be a good example to to think of examples of subtle bodies like for example you know if you if you write books even the internet is very much a participation a subtle body that is the the the type of influence that you have online by writing posts by posting things by you know writing comments these are subtle influences they’re not um they’re not like uh how can i say there’s not like me hitting someone over the head with a baseball bat their action at a distance there’s subtle differences subtle influences that are an extension of my own uh subtle body and so a good way to to understand let’s say the subtle body is a is to understand the notion that my one part of the extension of me one part of the manifestation of me is one which is related to meaning and to uh you know to to meaning making that’s a good way to understand it to spirit in that sense and and what’s also let’s say the last part of what i want to say is that although i’m pushing towards helping you see the difference right to not confuse when the when the holy father says something like uh that the angels are made of uh of immaterial fire to not confuse it with a type of of corporeality you know in a science fiction way that you know they’re they’re there but they’re in another dimension of that kind of nonsense it really is about how minds activate bodies um but it’s not completely disconnected from the analogies that are used and that’s probably what makes it so difficult for us to understand it is that in some ways some of the analogies that we use are proper our proper analogies because they are really direct images of what the incorporeal aspect is representing so let me give you an example that’s very simple which is that in the orthodox church we have a practice which is called the jesus prayer and the jesus prayer is a is a prayer that you repeat lord jesus christ son of god have mercy on me a sinner and in the traditional ancient practice the monks would look at their navel or look at their center and then they would breathe in at the first part of the prayer they would breathe out in the second part of the prayer and through that breathing and rhythm they would try to make the prayer enter into their heart and the the prayer would align with their heartbeat so that in some ways their heartbeat was becoming the prayer and so now you have two things going on here on the one hand you have the physical action which is the repetition of the prayer the breathing the standing still the looking at your center right the coordination of the of breathing in spirit and then pushing it down through attention you know like breathing and pushing the breath down into your center with the prayer that’s a physical action that you’re doing but as you’re doing that you are also doing the subtle action which is you know in a more in in a more kind of psychological sense or in a more purely spiritual sense you are trying to make that prayer enter into your center of your being you’re trying to replace all the flighty thoughts all the all the all the kind of distractions that you have in your in your being and replace it with that prayer and so the physical action of doing this practice is aligned with the more you know subtle action of entering the prayer and the thought of lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me a sinner bringing that past your thoughts into your core into the center of your being and in some ways replacing your thoughts replacing all the distraction of the chaos all the passions with that prayer so that it becomes in some ways the basic pattern by which you exist and and and the pattern of the prayer itself that is the pattern by which you should exist which is right an invocation of of Christ right an invocation of the ideal and then a recognition of my of my distance from the ideal right and so it’s like that’s actually the pattern of reality it’s a little it’s a little hero’s journey right it’s like you know you recognize your loss and you come back to the invocation you invoke you recognize your your distance and then you try to remember and come back to Christ so the idea of remembering God through this prayer all these things are all spiritual things that we do they’re all a spiritual practice that we do but they are in line with the analogical physical action that we do and that is what makes the subtle body question the most difficult to understand is that it is not completely disconnected from the spiritual part the analogies are not arbitrary they are they are important and they can sometimes be very strict analogy between the two and so that means that that means some things that might be a little tricky for materialists and modernists to understand that means that means that when someone experiences this age this type of agency this type of subtle being it is possible that they experience them in a way that is very close to or really is a seeing or a hearing or a physical manifestation because the the analogy between the physical manifestation and the spiritual meaning is not completely arbitrary and impossible so what that means is that it is possible to see an angel it is possible to hear you know an an angel all these things are are possible and they don’t take away from the understanding that the way that it happens is through a kind of analogy that is it is pointing towards true in comport in corporealness and true spiritual realities and like i said i know that that last part is the part that might stretch you beyond your limit but if you can’t go there yet if you can’t go all the way there you might as well at least try to understand the first part and that you know understand that some of these things are documented in the sense let me give you an example of an interesting documented case i forget the name of the missionary but there was a missionary who went i think it was in papua new guinea or somewhere in the third world i heard this from from paul vanderkley and then i found the story later that forget where where i saw it though so this missionary is there with these people from another culture like a more traditional culture and the people from the culture uh say you know you know the the goddess is appearing at this place right now the goddess is there and the missionary is like you know whatever and so they like take the the man the missionary to the place where the goddess is appearing and they’re like look the goddess is right there the goddess is there on the beach and everybody can see her but the missionary can’t see her he can’t see the goddess and so you know you could come to two conclusions which is one everybody is delusional everybody is having a delusion okay you can come to another conclusion which is that those people have been trained to let’s say notice subtle patterns in reality through which they’re capable of seeing with their eyes or the eyes of their heart at least they’re able to see the agency manifesting itself in front of them as the the goddess itself uh and so all right so i don’t think i’ve ever put you guys as far as i’m doing now but you know i think that meditate on it think about it and you’ll see that you know if you if you watch the discussion where i’ve talked about with rave kelly where we talked about the possibility of seeing a face in the clouds and that that face could speak to people and that that face could speak to a group of people they could all see it and it would all be in some ways a principality communicating with them and that that is completely possible and that it is not doesn’t contradict a kind of more material causalities it has to do with the capacity to notice subtle patterns that are kind of manifesting themselves in the world so so anyways i think i’ve said enough and i think i’ve kind of pushed you enough feel free to comment and to engage in the discussion if you want to also engage in the discussion on the circle community of the symbolic world that could be fun to do uh and so uh so yeah so i hope you enjoyed this and i hope that it was uh at least a little useful to you and i will talk to you very soon bye bye