How do the etheric and physical bodies interact?

[dreamosis]

How do the etheric and physical bodies interact? How does potential etheric energy translate into the body?

From experience I know that energywork, well, works; but that doesn't stop me from wondering how and why.

The major chakras have been frequently associated with endocrine glands, and it seems to be a popular theory that the "first" input into the body from the etheric, if you will, is through the action of glands.

To me it makes more sense that the junction between the etheric and the physical body is at the subatomic level -- that the etheric influences the physical beginning with the body's elementary particles: its quarks, electrons, and photons. (Although there may be stronger points of influence...which correspond spatially to the nexi of energy centers.)

Right now I'm reading QED by Richard Feynman, which is a series of lectures about quantum electrodynamics. It's a half-enjoyable dense literary jaunt and half a brain-numbing slog, but I'm reading it because it occurs to me that regardless of mainstream's science failure to recognize spiritual reality, it still contains principles that can expand my spiritual practice.

One contribution of quantum electrodynamics is the knowledge, at very small scales, nature is not (apparently) deterministic but probabilistic. If we carry this into spiritual practice, like into energywork, then it becomes obvious that techniques are not recipes for desired results -- rather they're actions that may make certain results more probable.

If that's true then the most practical question becomes: What can we do in order to make it more probable that a certain technique will "succeed"? How do we get the etheric and physical bodies to interact more and more beneficially?

In optics, if you want light to travel to one point, you use a lens.

What is the "lens" of energywork? What is the "lens" that focuses the etheric on the body?

[CFTraveler]

I don't think that they 'so much interact', as in are each other.
Think of it like this- your hand is made of cells, the cells are made of molecules, the molecules are made of particles, and the particles are made of manifest energy. The energy is the hand, the difference in perception relies solely on the instrument of perception.

[CFTraveler]

The answer to the question is more complex-It has been experimentally shown that putting your attention on a body part causes the circulation to increase. So, I say, that you don't have to worry about finding the optimal 'way' to make sure it works- if you can feel it working you know it's working- but the fact you are putting attention on it makes it work anyway.

[dreamosis]

Think of it like this- your hand is made of cells, the cells are made of molecules, the molecules are made of particles, and the particles are made of manifest energy. The energy is the hand, the difference in perception relies solely on the instrument of perception.

This is where I've been getting tripped up. You see, my cells are me, in that they contain my DNA -- an amino acid signature, if you will, unique to my physical entity. The molecules comprising my cells are used by me, but aren't unique to me -- no more than "my" atoms are unique to me, or "my" protons or neutrons (or, in the language of the next level down, "my" quarks and electrons).

Furthermore, the body wouldn't survive without a steady in-stream of photons; yet, are the photons me? No, they're only loaned to me by sun.

So once you move mentally from the structure of the cell to the more fundamental, you're already outside of the concept of personalness.

Maybe this indicates that the etheric interacts at that level, or just below it -- in contradiction to what I said in my first post, that the etheric interacts with us subatomically.

A mystery of the body -- or at least something that hasn't been satisfactorily explained to me -- is how DNA of cells arranges new cells in their proper position. That there are instructions for the synthesizing of all tissues in DNA is evident, but what exactly decides where in space each of those tissues will go? (Maybe there is a commonplace physical explanation, but I've never heard of one.)

At the end of the day, being uncertain about the mechanisms here won't stop me from doing energywork. I'm just curious, that's all.

...and the particles are made of manifest energy.

One thing that has my head spinning is knowing that, according to the best physicists today, elementary particles aren't made of anything else. A photon is a photon, an electron is an electron, a quark is a quark, and so forth. A photon has no structure, as it's considered to be composed of nothing else.

Of course, there's String Theory now, which postulates that what are known as elementary particles today are actually composite -- that they're made of "strings." It's become very popular, but it hasn't gained ready acceptance. I like it because it's mind-bogglingly painful to consider a non-thing...That is, if a photon is really elementary and composed of nothing else, as the physical evidence suggests, then philosophically it's not an object or a thing -- rather, it's what builds things.

As I've read QED I've realized that the etheric, whatever it is, cannot be electromagnetic -- at least, it can't be the same type of electromagnetic field that is produced by our cells. For one, if it were, it would be probably have been detected by now; but more importantly, if the etheric were electromagnetic then -- according to physics -- the etheric would be dependent upon photons. Interestingly, clairvoyants have observed that the aura is receptive to sunlight, seeming to expand in it. Maybe it is dependent upon photons.

I found this device online recently -- an Experimental Life Energy Meter:

http://www.heliognosis.com/

(It's based on Wilhelm Reich's work.)

It works by detecting interference in a "displacement current" rather than by detecting interference in an electric current like a normal EM detector. Supposedly it isn't sensitive to EM sources like radios, but only to living EM sources. I'm not an electrician or a physicist by any means, but the way I understand it is that it detects longitudinal EM waves as opposed to transverse EM waves.

More later...

[CFTraveler]

Very interesting. Look up Yamabushi's theory of the aura/etheric body as a Meissner field. It's not an EM field, it's a light/soundwave field.

[dreamosis]

Thanks!

Yes, that the aura is apparently receptive to light is very telling. Of course, it's possible that clairvoyants who see the aura expanding in sunlight might be slightly off. It could be that the aura isn't responding to visible light (sunlight), but to photons at other non-visible frequencies -- and it just seems like the aura is responding to sunlight because, while standing in sunlight, you're also exposed to other, non-visible light.

This also brings up, for me, the question of whether the physical eyes can detect auras. Perhaps they can, but they simply aren't optimally "designed" for it in an evolutionary sense. If our eyes can still see in ultralow light, why wouldn't they be able to detect the low glow of a "biophotonic" field?

Or, is it, a matter of "building a resonance" between your physical eyes and the eyes of the energy field?

[CFTraveler]

That could be. When I could see auras as a child (I lost the ability a few years after puberty, possibly up to my late teens) It wasn't that I was seeing them, as in that when I was having a very deep and meaningful conversation with someone they would appear to manifest in front of my eyes- in retrospect the resonance theory could explain it.
Some people have mentioned that we see auras with the pineal gland- I suppose it's also possible that there is a visual response by the brain to 'inform' the signal coming from the pineal gland, provided that's how it works.

[dreamosis]

I've had that too -- I've had auras manifest at a point that I feel both very grounded and in tune with someone else. Some of my most intense empathic experiences follow that pattern too.

[Minyan]

Yes maybe the etheric body does interact with the tiny particles physical body by probalistic means.


Something about quantum physics, the double slit experiment (Not to say that I have done this):

The double slit experiment has a plate with two thin slits in it, beside each other and however far apart. If waves on the surface of water pass through a slit then there is "diffraction", where it spreads out as it emerges on the other side.

diffract.jpg
Figure 1: Diffraction

Light does this as well, it acts like a wave. The longer the photon's wavelength, and the narrower the slit, the more diffraction there is. If there are two slits, then the waves interfere with one another. If they are "in phase" they combine into something brighter with "constructive interference", and if they are "out of phase" then they dimmen each other with "destructive interference" (Thinking about that now actually I'd be interested in knowing how destructive interference works from a conservation of energy perspective).


Figure 2: In phase and out of phase

This interference leaves a pattern on a surface the light hits. The double slit experiment has been done with electrons as well, so electrons act like waves too. It has also been done with a buckminster fullerine (buckyball), which is a ball made of 60 carbon atoms, and with an even bigger molecule (I remember the number 230).


Figure 3: Double slit experiment

You also get this interference pattern when only one particle at a time is sent at the plate with the two slits, as though it were passing through both slits at the same time and interfering with itself. If you put a detector at the slits to detect which slit the particle is going through, you no longer get the interference pattern. It is thought that when it is not observed in what state a particle is, it is in a superstate of all possibilities, with different states having different probabilities. There is a tiny chance of a person turning into a fish. If the superstate is observed, you get the "collapse of the wave function", and it assumes a state.
It's thought that when the particle is sent at the plate with the slits, and it's not observed where it is, it is in a superstate of the different possibilities, and these superstates are interfering with one another, producing a pattern as if it were a stream of photons or waves on the surface of water.

(Speculative thing that I have second thoughts on removed)

So this is like what dreamosis was saying - the etheric body influencing the body probabilistically on a small scale, and interacting with the electrostatic interaction.

(Speculative things that I have second thoughts on removed)

[olyris]

Figure 2: In phase and out of phase

Meditation, prayer, and dance... to reference the above.