When we withdraw our consciousness from the drama and stimulation of the mundane and illusory aspects of the world, we have the opportunity to enter into a world, that previously, we were unconscious of. It’s the world of the subtle. It is an inner garden of subtle lights, subtle sounds, and subtle scents. It is a world of energy and inspiration. It is a world where the heart becomes full of restlessness for union with the Divine Presence. This restlessness transforms what was felt as the Divine Presence into the Divine Beloved.
As long as people are caught up in the allurements of life and attached to how things have to be in order to be happy, this subtle world is latent and therefore most people don’t even suspect its existence. But it exists within every single person, and it is waiting patiently, lifetimes even, to unfold.
This subtle world is the beginning of the inner spiritual path that leads eventually to the Infinite Knowledge, Infinite Power, and Infinite Bliss Self-Realization. This is a level of being where consciousness is no longer burdened by the happenings and affairs of the world, but is being drawn into deeper and deeper levels of being, to a level of existence from which there is no return.
You could call this state an inner garden, free from the weeds of desires and demands of the gross world, where love, for the first time, has a chance to flourish. The life of limitation and suffering that is characteristic of the material world is replaced by freedom, joy, bliss, and infinite energy.
When does this inner world manifest? It’s manifestation is a gradual process that begins when we become disillusioned with the gross world, when we begin to discern the false from the real, when we let go of our attachments and demands, when we start to find more satisfaction in giving rather than receiving, and in loving, rather than being loved. It begins to manifest when we start to identify with formlessness, consciousness, and Being, rather than with a physical body that is doomed to perish.
In essence, the subtle world is where the wheat is separated from the chaff, where consciousness and inner experience are used to differentiate the false from the real. It is where the mental impressions that make up the false self begin the process of unwinding.
Like the gardener waiting for his plants to grow and blossom, the Divine Presence (Divine Beloved) watches over the soul in the subtle world, protecting it from the weeds (desires and attachments of the gross world) that might strangle its growth.
It is the Divine Presence that guides the soul in this inner world. It sees to it that it gets the right amount of inner nourishment, that it doesn’t get lost, and that it keeps heading towards the final goal, the final conquest of unconsciousness by consciousness, of darkness by light, of ignorance by knowledge.
If you, like I do, look at the gross world as a world of finite imagination, you will be able to see that the subtle world is a world of infinite imagination. That is, in the gross world we imagine that we are finite beings, with physical bodies. We differentiate ourselves from other people by identifying each other with labels such as smart or stupid, rich or poor, beautiful or ugly. Whatever the label, that is what we take ourselves to be. No more or no less.
But in the subtle world, we begin a process of infinite imagination in the sense that we know we are more than a physical body. Whatever label you give someone in the subtle world, they know that they are more than that. And this knowledge is a form of freedom and creativity. This knowledge turns life into an adventure of the spirit, a life that is truly worth living.
