Subtle physical plane

Savitri
“The Kingdom of Subtle Matter”

PDF (13 pages)

“All that we slowly piece from gathered parts,

Or by long labour stumblingly evolve,

Is there self-born by its eternal right.”

(Mother:) “It is only the physical body that is limited, but not the subtle physical. The subtle physical penetrates everything and can go everywhere. It is not limited by the body. It is this (the body) that limits.”

(Medhananda:) “It is only in the material world that bodies are so very separate from each other. Already in the subtle physical it is very beautiful because the doors are wide open. Subtle movements play there as if they were in eternity – an eternity that doesn't offer much scope, but from which all hostility is absent. It is harmonious and full of light.”

(Medhananda:) “It is a little like a sleeping child who keeps repeating the same movement in his sleep.”

(Sri Aurobindo:) “It [the vision of a flower] was seen through the physical eyes but by the subtle physical consciousness; in other words there was an imposition of one consciousness upon another. After a certain stage of development, this capacity of living in the ordinary physical consciousness and yet having superadded to it another and more subtle sense, vision, experience becomes quite normal. A little concentration is enough to bring it; or, even, it happens automatically without any concentration.
         As the flower was a subtle physical object, not entirely material in the ordinary sense of the word (though quite substantial and material in its own plane, not an illusion), a camera would not be able to detect it — except in the case of one of those abnormal interventions by which a subtle form has been thrown upon the material plate.”

(Mother:) “Thus when you know someone well and you often see him physically, if you see him in the subtle physical, already there are things which become more marked, more visible, more outstanding, which you had not seen physically, because in the greyness of the material world they had merged with many other things on the same plane. There are characteristics or expressions of character which become outstanding enough to be quite visible, although they had not been physically apparent. When you look at a person physically, there is the complexion, the features, the expression; at the same moment, if you see this face in the subtle physical, you suddenly notice that one part of the face is one colour, another part another colour; that in the eyes there is an expression and a kind of light which were not at all visible; and that the whole has quite a different appearance and, above all, gives a very different feeling, which to our physical eyes would seem rather extravagant, but which to the subtle vision is very expressive and revealing of the character, or even of the influences acting on this person. What I say here is the record of an experience that I had again a few days ago.”

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See also

• Subtle physical being
• Subtle senses
• Loretta reads Savitri:Two.II "The Kingdom of Subtle Matter" part 1
• Sri Aurobindo's departure