2025 #2: Who are You?
A deeply spiritual man from 2500 years ago!
Dear Friend
So far as I am concerned, there is a truism and yardstick by which to ‘measure’ our life, and you can come at it from both directions:
the more you know and understand who you are, the healthier, happier and more harmonious your life will become, and the more you pursue health, harmony and happiness, the more you will learn who you are.
I argue that the root cause of all humanity’s woes—and there are many—is a crazy and seemingly self-inflicted ignorance of who we are. This Letter and next week’s Letter begin addressing the reality of who you are, in a two-parter to get our year off to a reflective start.
You will recall from the first Letter of this new year (2025 #1), (which is also the year of the snake in China, did you know that?!) that each week I will bring you extracts from one or more books, and some reflective tasks or questions to bring you a more meaningful and educational reading experience. If you have not read that Letter, then do rectify this, as in it I outline the whole format and framework for this year’s Letters. I will of course be adding my own thoughts.
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Today’s main book extract comes from The Chakra Handbook: From basic understanding to practical application, written by Shalila Sharomon and Bodo J. Baginski. It’s a book first published in Germany in 1988, and then published in the USA in 1991.
So, after last week’s opening Letter of 2025 outlining the new format and content, here is the first Letter proper of the year, the second year of these Letters. And what better way to start than asking the question that has taxed the mental faculties of human beings for centuries or millennia:
Who are you?!
Well, we’ll do more than ask the question, we will explore possible answers. For me I do have the answer, and in this week’s Letter, and in next week’s, I will share my understandings with you. It was my discovery of who I am—and therefore who we all are—to my complete satisfaction and understanding, with no more doubt, that finally led me to writing the book I’d always wanted to write.
(Bear in mind I have spent thousands of hours contemplating this, and everything else to do with being human!)
But there’s a really important point to make about everything I write here: I am sharing my answers to this #1 question asked by philosophers, truth seekers, and all curious souls, but each of us must arrive at our own understanding.
Knowledge is not enough, for knowledge is something passed on second, third or hundredth hand; an understanding for oneself, arrived at through one’s own thinking and reflecting, is essential. You cannot be told by somebody else who you are, but somebody else can definitely help you get there. I am that somebody else right now, and I hope I can be a five star navigator and smooth catalyst for you!
It’s my contention that our hugely conflicted world—a human world that is in perpetual civil war (human fighting human; forget flags and beliefs, we are all human beings)—is the consequence of mainstream humanity not knowing who they are. Conflict, hatred, cruelty, fear, resentment, and all those other negative energies we see in human beings, become a thing of the past when we discover the nature of who we are, which will also teach you how the whole web of life works. This is the reward for taking on the journey of self-inquiry. This is serious treasure to discover for the seeker and finder!
What I suggest you do, as you read through this Letter, is to apply what you’re reading to your own life’s experiences, and to your own pre-existing understandings about yourself and about life. This is always the best route for all, it’s just that what you come across along the way will be unique to you. My tasks and questions will help guide you in your reflections.
You will need to create for yourself a distraction-free space, and the time, to do your reading and reflecting. I really recommend you try and pick a regular slot of time to spend with each week’s Letter.
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Now, in the spirit of the new format, I have what is called a ‘Pre-Reading Task' for you to do before you start reading. The purpose is to get you thinking about the topic or issue before you read it, and to raise your awareness of what you already think, know or understand, and to be conscious of what you don’t know or are unsure about. This all makes for a more meaningful reading activity, and you will learn much more.
If you are with a friend or two to do this task, then compare and share your ideas and thoughts in a discussion. If you are on your own, then get out your notebook and write your ideas down in that.
(I also really do strongly recommend you get one if you haven’t already, and make it your ‘2025 Letters notebook’, so all your thoughts get recorded down in one place - easy to refer back to, and an excellent learning resource.)
Pre-Reading Task
Do this first, and then continue on with the reading.
Who are you? What are you? Why are you here? What is the purpose of life for human beings? What is your purpose in life?
What does ‘being healthy’ mean in practice? Who or what is it that needs to be healthy?
The book extracts
So the following extracts are from the opening pages of The Chakra Handbook. If you don’t really know anything about the chakras, then I encourage you to find out. They give us ancient understandings (from India) of who we are and how life works for the human being.
In essence there are seven main chakras, and they are energy centres within specific areas of your body and being. The particular book I’m quoting from is an excellent book and I really do recommend it, assuming you can find a copy.
NB I am faithfully reproducing exactly what is typed in the book; bear in mind it’s a translated work from German, so if there are any grammatical issues, they are not mine! Also, please note that I’m reproducing various bits of text, and what you read is not one continuous piece of writing in the original book.
Reading Task
As you read through the extracts and my additional comments, you may like to make a note of any thoughts that are triggered in you, and then at the end you will find a Post-Reading Task asking you to reflect upon the reading content in relation to your own life, experiences and understandings.
At some point in life, nearly every human being asks him or herself the question, '“Who am I?”, “Which powers work through me?”, “What are the capabilities still hidden in my innermost being??, and “How can I realise my full potential for happiness and creativity?”
Most people consider the material world, and the physical body to be the only reality that exists, as only these things can be discerned with the physical senses, and grasped by the rational mind. In viewing a human being, however, the sensitised eye can perceive numerous energy structures, energy movements and shapes and colours within and around the physical body.
Should you be someone who only accepts the material body as reality, please consider what happens to the energy, the vital force which lends life to the physical body and provides it with sensations and means of expression when that body dies. A law of physics states that energy is never lost in the universe, it is merely transformed. The power at work behind the body’s material appearance with all its functions and capabilities consists of a complex energy system without which the physical body could not exist. This system of energy consists of three basic components:
The subtle bodies, or energy bodies
The chakras, or energy centers
The nadis, or energy channels
[Philip’s note: the book tells us that there are 4 energy bodies, 7 main chakras, and thousands of nadis.]
In this system, the nadis represent a kind of subtle network of arteries. The term nadi (pronounced nade-eye) is Sanskrit and means a pipe, vessel or vein. The function of a nadi is to transport prana, or vital energy, throughout man's subtle energy system.
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The chakras, on the other hand, act as receivers, transformers and distributors of the various forms of prana. Through the nadis the chakras take up vital energy from man's subtle energy bodies, his surroundings, the cosmos and the basis of all manifestation, and transform them into frequencies needed by the various areas of the physical or subtle bodies for their sustenance and development. Beyond this they give off energy into their surroundings. By means of this energy system the human being is therefore in a state of continual exchange with the powers at work at diverse levels of the environment, the universe, and Creation.
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As a rule there are said to be four energy bodies:
The ethereal body
The emotional or astral body
The mental body
The spiritual or causative body
Each of these bodies possesses its own fundamental vibrational frequency. The ethereal body, which is closest to the physical body, vibrates with the lowest frequency. The astral and mental bodies have higher frequencies and the spiritual body has the highest frequency of all.
Each of these bodies resembles a dance of energies within its individual frequency range, and as the human being advances in development, the respective frequencies rise accordingly. These bodies are the bearers of consciousness at their levels of vibration. When their vibrational frequency rises, they provide the human being with higher forms of vital energy, sensations and awareness.
The various energy bodies are not separate from one another. They pervade each other while continuing to vibrate in their individual frequency range and someone possessing the capability of seeing them can differentiate between them if his vision is attuned to the specific sphere. If he wants to see the astral body, he will have to tune his vision to the astral sphere; if he wants to see the mental body, he will have to tune his vision to the mental fear; and so on.
The opening chapter goes on to describe each of the four energy bodies, which I will sum up briefly now.
The ethereal body resembles the physical body in shape and dimension. It carries the powers that shape our physical body and all physical sensation. It is not strictly speaking the actual physical body, rather it is an ‘aura’, as all the bodies are.
The ethereal body is also a mediator between the physical body and the higher energy bodies (astral, mental, spiritual). It transfers information gained from the physical senses to the astral and mental bodies, and does this in the reverse direction too. In this way we see how the energy of the physical body impacts on our mind and soul, and how the activities of the mind and soul impact on our actual body.
I will explore this more with you next week when I bring you extracts from my own book. I think this is a key understanding to grasp.
The astral body (emotional body) is the carrier of your feelings, emotions and character traits. The authors tell us that in a less developed person the astral body ‘moves about chaotically and in all directions’. By contrast, the more developed you are in terms of your feelings, tendencies and character traits, the ‘brighter and clearer the astral body’ will be.
All changes in your emotions will be radiated outwards. Your astral body will contain your fundamental character traits, and it will also mirror all momentary and fleeting emotions. This energy body ‘stores all our unresolved emotions, conscious and unconscious fears and aggressions as well as feelings of loneliness, rejection and a lack of self-confidence’.
You subconsciously transmit these out into the world! This leads to the ‘principle of mutual attraction’ whereby the energies we transmit outwards will attract the same energies back to us. This means that ‘we are frequently confronted with precisely the people and circumstances that mirror what we are consciously avoiding or want to be rid of, or what we fear. In this way our environment serves as a mirror which shows us all the elements we have banned from our consciousness into our subconscious.’
Powerful stuff eh! But it gets worse! They state that our unresolved feelings in our astral body want to stay alive, or even increase if they can. What this means in practice is that if we harbour anger, then we will encounter angry people time and again, and this will in turn make us ever angrier.
It’s abundantly clear from this that we will do very well to discover what our own unresolved issues are, and to fix them. That is the purpose of self-inquiry and spiritual self-growth, and the basis for all that we will be exploring this year. It very much forms the core of all the workshops and learning courses that I will be offering this year. It is the foundation of my book.
The mental body houses and produce all our thoughts, ideas, and our rational and intuitive perceptions. The best way for me to sum up what they are saying is that our physical body and senses bring us sensory information from the world around us (I usually refer to this as the external environment) which is then transferred from our ethereal body to our astral body. The astral body translates the incoming sensory information into feelings and passes them onto the mental body, which in turn reacts by ‘formulating corresponding verbal thoughts’.
The authors state that through the influence of the unresolved emotion patterns held in the astral body, the information coming into us from the external environment is ‘frequently distorted and thinking becomes biased. Repetitive thought patterns arise which are used by us to evaluate happenings in our world. This means that the rational mind can practically be never unbiased and neutral, although it claims this of itself’.
The trouble is that these biased thoughts and evaluations of our world suppress our intuitive and rational intelligences. However, when one resolves all of this, and moves to the higher frequency of our innate human intelligence, then our mental body mirrors the spiritual body, and ‘the person realizes the wisdom and holistic cognition of the Higher Self in his life’.
The spiritual body (also often called the causative body) has the highest vibrational frequency of all the energy bodies. Access to this body comes through development of the seven chakras, and you’ll need to read the book or find a good source of information on the chakras to learn more - no way does space permit here! It is through this body that we experience inner unity with all life, and it connects us to the divine being, the ‘omnipresent basis of Creation from which all manifestation comes forth’.
They also write that it is only through your spiritual body that you can recognise and find the goal of your being and the purpose of your life. I agree with this based on my experience. I will also say that when we view life spiritually, we lose the bias of our astra and mental bodies.
I am personally dedicated to helping others ascend to spiritual living, and the ecosystem I have built will enable this for all who are interested in making the most out of their life, and being the very best version of themselves. Unless we are poverty-stricken and always seeking out our next meal, I cannot see any reason to not want to be at the top of our intelligence and ability to enjoy life.
One way of knowing that you are in the spiritual sphere of existence is that all hatred, resentment, and any kind of thoughts of wishing to do harm on those we feel have slighted or harmed us, have disappeared. We also no longer measure life by what we think is right or wrong, good or bad. Life just is: what happens happens, what is is. We focus on understanding ourselves and our world, not blaming others or ourselves for things that go wrong or are ‘bad’.
Much more on this throughout 2025, and we will return to this topic next week in Part 2. We will focus mostly on the mind, because I view my mind as the centre of the universe. My perspective and understanding is that absolutely every last thing about my life is processed, produced and understood by my mind. Understanding your mind is the key to taking up residence in the kingdom of heaven, and no need to die first…!
Post-Reading Task
As you read about the four energy bodies, and think about them now, how do they make sense to you based on your own past experiences and contemplations? Does the way a human being is ‘divided’ into four different bodies help you understand yourself better? How and why?
What unresolved emotions do you hold in your astral body? Or, what repetitive thought patterns of a negative nature do you experience in your mental body? Reflecting on either leads to the other, so tackle this self-inquiry from both directions. How do you think you can get them resolved so that they no longer cause you strife?
Here are the questions I asked you to think about before reading: Who are you? What are you? Why are you here? What is the purpose of life for human beings? What is your purpose in life? What does ‘being healthy’ mean in practice? Who or what is it that needs to be healthy? Revisit these questions in light of what you have read about the four energy bodies, and see what you think now.
Did you feel that the extracts were overly theoretical, or an excellent basis for better understanding yourself in a practical manner? How so?
In advance of next week’s content, and based on the extracts above, what can you say about the common terms, ‘subconscious mind’ and ‘conscious mind’? What do you understand by them?
I will be sharing my own thoughts to most of these questions, especially the first one, in next week’s Letter. I will be reproducing some extracts from my book; after all, I spent eight years writing it, in an effort to communicate in layman’s terms, and without confusion or theoretical guff stuff, who we are and how you can discover everything for yourself.
Until next week then, adios, adieu!
PS My plans for the A Spiritual Revolution Club which will be up and running in the first quarter of 2025, will be to make these ‘task-based reading learning experiences’ come alive, where you will get into discussions in small groups each month. This will give you the opportunity for a really deep dive into all the issues and matters that we face in our lives with like-minded souls, and from which increased understanding leads to greater joy and freedom in your life.
