Hi all
Does anyone know any names for occupying space outside your body mind, so e.g. you are your body mind but you are also occupying the room or other space around you? I want to read more about it. I know theres astral travel but that’s solely leaving your body from what i know of this term.
Don’t know of any one-word names for this, offhand. To understand the phenomena, the best guides I know of are a little over a century old. The “respectable” Theosophists Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater wrote a number of books on the “inner” i.e. subtle planes and how they work and how we experience them. My personal favorite is Besant’s “The Ancient Wisdom” – provided you skip the unreadable introduction and first Chapter. After that, if you don’t mind the Victorian diction, it’s a good overall intro to the subject that will (I think) clarify what you describe.
That’s my take. I am curious if anyone knows of any good, contemporary explanations for these subtle planes and our subtle bodies on/in them.
Hi Karen, thank you! I will look them up and “The Ancient Wisdom” by Annie Besant. I’m a big fan of Victorian diction. 
George Eliot and Jane Austen.
I think generally subtle energy realms or subtle energy fields are pretty well-accepted terms.
Here are a couple of links to Wilber’s theories:
AND
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Thanks @LaWanna. I’ve read much of Ken’s work on the different states before. I realised that what i was describing fits with the non-dual state - as Ken describes it in Religion of Tomorrow, if im rememebring rightly, as being both the one observing the deer and the deer all at once, so i realise non-dual state experiences are the phenomena reading more of are what i need to feel freer
Hi there. The words that come to me in relation to how I understand your query about this ability or phenomenon are omnipresence or omnipresent and bi location.
Hi Julia, I practice a kind of bodywork called Biodynamic Craniosacral Work that speaks to your question with precision. We view the body as very malleable, and work with four different qualities of body. The first one we call the tissue body (which is how most people think of the body: within the skin). The second one is the fluid body and it could be the one you name above – actually the healthy organism, which extends beyond the skin and is clearly felt as a kind of tensile, viscous substance. The third one is the vast, dispersed potency body, which you could call spirit or the universal body. The last one is the non-physical dimension. (And in my lineage we add a 5th, but it’s not a quality of body so much as the non-dual level of perception). I’m just dashing this off because I’m excited by your question 
There aren’t a lot of resources about this approach for people who aren’t clinicians, but I teach people from varied backgrounds so I know it’s deeply meaningful beyond clinical practice to establish ourselves in all the qualities of body. I’m curious about how you came to the question! (PS I actually have a book-length manuscript about these qualities of body and am in the midst of submitting it to publishers.)
Hi @sunyalila
Thank you, these are really helpful terms for me. I’ll look them up in relation to what im describing. Isn’t having terms for phenomena so helpful to be able to find other people’s experiences of phenomena we experience, have heard spoken of etc
Hi @WilberFan
Thanks for your reponse. This is fascinating.
What youve described is super helpful for me, thank you, and i’ll look into this further. Please post about when your book is published too. Congrats on writing a book! And good luck with it.
The description of the tensile, viscous substance does fit somewhat, although for me it’s more freeing rather than causing tension and i guess it has some constancy of air as well in a way, but also solid. And it can travel very far distances it feels. It’s like, i know its imaginary in a way but i can also feel it.
I’ve been struggling to try and be just contained in my own body for a long time because i thought that might help me be more in the ‘real world’. I first heard someone else talk about this phenomena to try to do when meditating if youre feeling anxious, to let your energy spread out into your surroundings. And a friend of mine described that this is actually what grounding is, to let yourself as a spirit move into nature rather than only grounding in your own body. I also realised that this is what Ken Wilber describes when he speaks of awareness of awareness. It’s an awareness of the whole awareness 
, not just being contained in yourself. Also, he describes the feeling of feeling yourself as being the whole world that starts to happen, in Integral Theory, with the paramind of the Indigo structure stage. I wonder if this can happen with states only too.
The person who suggested this meditation technique was Nathan Glyde. Looking up his meditations and teachings might be helpful for you and anyone else in this thread/reading https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/836/
It’s strange though because allowing my energy to expand is actually helping me feel more ‘real world’ in that i’m in touch with my surroundings again, but actually more so than i used to be when i was only observing them
Hi @Julia248, I just love your inquiry and appreciate you communicating about it! And thank you for the supportive words about my book, I’ll definitely let you know when there is some news about that.
Here are a few thoughts in response to what you wrote. Again, written on the fly, so I hope I will be clear.
When I used the word “tensile,” I didn’t mean that it causes tension. To the contrary, it’s very, very relaxing. I didn’t realize that was jargon until I saw how you took it. Tensile in this context means that it’s not mushy…it’s a kind of engaged and alive and supported feeling, like a hammock slung between supports instead of slack on the ground. It’s actually the medium of aliveness itself (that is a phrase from a dream teacher, Robert Bosnak, but it fits well here). It’s a life force in the body, and like you say it has a solidity and a freedom. I can tell from your descriptions that you’re feeling something real! And it seems to correlate with the healthy organism that I feel too – what I previously called the fluid body.
When you say “I know it’s imaginary but I can also feel it.” That word imaginary is tricky. Do you think you might mean “imaginal”? In other words, it’s a precise and accurate dimension that underlies the physical but is invisible to the “ordinary” eye?
My favorite part of what you shared is the discussion around anxiety and grounding in the body. This is something I talk about a lot with my clients and students. (And your friend is very wise because it’s fairly unusual to come to this insight.) Many people talk about grounding as confining oneself within the head or the body…But you’ll find that when you come deeply into the core of the body, it simultaneously allows you to go out to infinity. Not in some woo-woo way, but just in a very practical, straightforward way.
And then as you say, if your consciousness is sufficiently wide, “it’s an awareness of the whole awareness…not just being contained in yourself.” And since you’re relaxing into a much wider, transpersonal awareness, then the anxiety that was confined within the narrow structure of the body, can be held in a vast container, so it disperses and isn’t experienced so intensely. And actually, the degree of surrender required to let go into the wider container, means that you’re contacting something beyond the personal mind, something wise and free and healthy and whole, and so it also harmonizes the anxiety and you’ll tend to feel much better.
Please ask for clarification and continue to share your personal experience, I really appreciate hearing from you.
He looks great! He has many meditations, I’d love to know which one(s) you found helpful.
This does not surprise me at all. (The instructions tell me to reply in a single post, sorry about this string of replies.)
I heard this advice on a retreat I was on, which has recordings here - from page 9-8. It was called ‘The Freedom of the Awakened Heart’. I’m not sure which recording, if any, the advice is on. There were also Q and As. But it was said as an option for meditation, rather than there being a lot of info about how to expand your energy, how it works etc, from what I remember
I think we are describing two things: one being the energy field of the body, and i dont think this is imaginary as such, just because the mind and body are so connected in any case, and so if that is imaginary then everything subtle, e.g. our emotions could be said to be imaginary - and that’s far too far in the reductionistic direction. I think it’s a case of our measurement techniques as a species not being developed enough yet for these these phenomena to be measurable scientifically. Perhaps they never will be, yet even if that were the case i would never think of these things as unreal, and the same with emotions.
But the other aspect which im describing, and i dont know whether you experience this, is that i feel i literally am everything around me. I can feel what it is to be a bird and have the air moving around me and see the sky, and to be a tree standing firm and still, while also being a leaf falling… and up until recently i was trying to stop it and just be in my body, yet now im allowing it i feel i can be myself too as well as everything else. Before my energy wasnt really involved, yet now it is, similar to how it was when i was a teenager when i was present, but now it’s like I’m starting to be able to be both myself and everything else - still not there yet though…
But it’s not like i think i literally am everything - i know it’s imaginary in some sense. It’s not like i can tell what the bird or other people are actually thinking and feeling etc.
I love this explanation.
#Edit
Adding as an edit to this reply as we cant post more than 3 times - supposed to put everythinf in one post, as you say.
I realised that in Integral Theory this seems like what can happen with fractures or legions in the magenta and/or red structures:
It seems like what i might have been experiencing was on account of a red shadow issue - an invasion of subtle experience because of a power allergy, and what I am working towards is integrating red and power to enable balance.
Revision is a school of therapy that incorporates different therapeutic approaches with the pre-ego-trans model from Ken Wilber and they do online therapy, for anyone wanting therapy around both state and structure combo phenomena issues and and so on and so forth 
"https://www.re-vision.org.uk/training-introduction/bacp-accredited-counselling-training/
“The theoretical approach pioneered at Re-Vision uses a circular re-visioning of the pre-ego-trans model from the work of Ken Wilber as a framework to integrate concepts from Jungian, Gestalt, relational, psychodynamic, neuroscience, body psychotherapy and family systems theory as well as developmental and archetypal psychology and ecopsychology. Through this, we combine a spiritual perspective with down-to-earth high quality therapeutic skills. Spirit without soul has no containing vessel and soul without spirit loses direction and becomes self-absorbed. A functional, mature, and not overly heroic ego is necessary to manifest spiritual and soulful longings in the world. The Re-Vision approach aims to marry soul and spirit – soul’s delight in the detail of everyday life with the spirit’s awareness of the bigger picture of which we are a connected part”
Hi Julia248, sorry for the lag in replying. I was engrossed in teaching an extended workshop about material that relates to your questions
I definitely feel this too! When we go into the Stillness that centers our body, it’s the same Stillness that centers everybody else (and everything else). I wouldn’t say it’s imaginary. It’s actually the basis of the clinical work I do. It is healing, and profound, and connecting, and clarifying. In your description of being the bird and the tree, you are expressing a mature state of Stillness and embodiment. It’s not that you’re making up what it’s like to be the bird. It’s also not a narcissistic thing (“I” am huge, “I” am everything") – because we are equally nothing and everything.
You also say:
“up until recently i was trying to stop it and just be in my body, yet now im allowing it i feel i can be myself too as well as everything else. Before my energy wasnt really involved, yet now it is”
I’m really glad you aren’t trying to stop it. It’s essential to, as you say, “be yourself too as well as everything else.” If you EXCLUDE yourself, then it leads to dissociation. I emphasize a balance of grounding and expansion. You have to settle in your body first, and then the disidentification with your form can come from a disposition of being settled and well-regulated.
In a previous post you say:
I realised that what i was describing fits with the non-dual state - as Ken describes it in Religion of Tomorrow, if im rememebring rightly, as being both the one observing the deer and the deer all at once, so i realise non-dual state experiences are the phenomena reading more of are what i need to feel freer
I haven’t read Religion of Tomorrow. But in our original exchange we spoke about the non-dual level of perception. And you referred to a meditation about “The Freedom of the Awakened Heart.” So I thought I would add here that the basis of my work is non-dual perception from a particular spot at the back of the heart, from which perception is most free and awake, and from which it is possible to experience the co-existence of form and emptiness…which in this conversation we are calling BODY and AWARENESS.
Well, this all seems clear as mud. But because I have not responded to you in weeks, I’m going to go ahead and press “send.” I really appreciate you being in touch. And thank you for the book excerpts. I’m no authority on the colors, but from my perspective you’re being a bit too hard on yourself because the phenomena you describe are associated with a nuanced stage of perception and a nondual level of awareness.
