Chapter 115Undated 1958

There are subtle bodies and subtle worlds that correspond to these bodies; it is what the psychological method calls ‘states of consciousness,’ but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult process consists in becoming aware of these various inner states of being, or subtle bodies, and of mastering them sufficiently to be able to make one come out of the other, successively. For there is a whole hierarchy of increasing subtleties – or decreasing, depending upon the direction – and the occult process consists in making a more subtle body come out from a denser body, and so forth, right to the most ethereal regions. You go out through successive exteriorizations into more and more subtle bodies or worlds. Each time it is rather like passing into another dimension. In fact, the fourth dimension of the physicists is only the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge.

To give another comparison, it could be said that the physical body is at the center – it is the most material and the most condensed, as well as the smallest – and the more subtle inner bodies increasingly overlap the limits of this central physical body; they pass through it and extend further and further out, like water evaporating from a porous vase which creates a kind of steam all around it. And the more subtle it is, the more its extension tends to fuse with that of the universe: you finally become universal. It is an entirely concrete process that makes the invisible worlds an objective experience and even allows you to act in those worlds.

When you are exteriorized during sleep and conscious in the vital world, you can live a vital life as conscious as the physical life. I have known people who had this capacity and who were so intensely interested in their experiences in the vital world that they returned only with regret to their bodies. If you are conscious and master of yourself in the vital world and if you possess a certain power there, the circumstances are marvelous, infinitely more varied and more beautiful than in the physical world.

Suppose, for example, that you are very tired and need to rest. If you know how to exteriorize yourself and consciously enter into the vital world, you will find there a region like a miraculous virgin forest with all the splendors of a rich and harmonious vegetation, magnificent mirrors of water and an atmosphere so filled with this living, vibrant vitality of the plants!

There is such a life there, such a beauty, so much richness and plenitude that you awaken full of force and with an absolutely wonderful feeling of energy, even if you remain there but a minute.

And it is so objective, so concrete! I have taken people there, without telling them what it was all about, and they were able to describe the place exactly as I myself would.

There are regions like that – not very many, but some. On the other hand, there are many unpleasant places in the vital world where it is better not to