Esoteric Insights to End of Life: The Role of the Subtle Body During the Dying Process

by Rev. Katherine James, Ph.D.

Since 1989 the practice of Reiki, acupressure, and spiritual healing, seminary education, and observations as a hospice chaplain, have provided knowledge of the role of the subtle body during the dying process. While caring for the dying, sensitivity to the life force has increased within this practitioner. While holding a dying person’s hand or anointing a dying patient, intuition frequently guides the touch and the diminishing life force can be assessed.

What medical science knows about the body’s function can be put into the framework of a larger dynamic energy system. Richard Gerber in his work,  A Practical Guide to Vibrational Medicine,  refers to an evolving viewpoint that takes into account many forms and frequencies of vibrating energy, such as emotions, consciousness, and the life force of the soul, that contribute to a multidimensional human energy system. The new vibrational model sees human consciousness as not merely a by-product of electrical and chemical processing in the human brain, but a kind of energy itself. Emotions are not just the result of neurochemical reactions in the limbic system or the emotional centers of the brain, but are also influenced by a greater, spiritual energy field that encompasses and influences the entire physical body. Reactions to life are recorded not only in the biochemical patterns of memory storage in the brain but also in the non-physical bodies and the seven major life-energy centers of the subtle body. In this energetic perspective the body is energized and motivated by the forces of the soul. It is this newly emerging vibrational model of human functioning that assists in recognizing the influence of the human soul in various stages of dying.

According to the Eastern understanding, the universal life-force essential to our physical and spiritual development flows through the top of the head, down the spine, and through the chakras, nurturing our bodies. It also flows upward through the chakras, communicating individual insight and a conscious sense of universal interconnectedness. They may be considered an emotional and spiritual feedback system between the soul and the conscious personality.

During the dying process, the subtle body usually departs from the body beginning with the base chakra, rising upward, and leaving the body via the higher chakras. Since the chakras correlate with basic states of consciousness, it appears they have a profound effect upon the dying process as the soul begins its withdrawal from the body. As the life force begins to diminish within the body of a terminally-ill person, the subtle body begins to separate from the physical body, and the energy of the soul withdraws up the spine from each of the seven chakras. This process stimulates each chakra to respond in a specific display of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual characteristics.

Frequently patients in the last few days of life seem to be conscious of both the physical and spiritual worlds simultaneously. Often they have profound experiences that assist them in healing that which needs to be healed in preparation for their deaths. During this time the dying person’s consciousness is steadily withdrawing into the subtle body, preparatory to the complete separation from the physical body. Sometimes the collective, attractive power of the physical body is so strong that it may increase pain, emotional suffering, and spiritual distress, or prolong the dying process for weeks.

This hospice chaplain has observed that energy medicine, or vibrational therapies, such as Reiki, Healing Touch, acupuncture, Zero Balancing, music thanatology, aromatherapy, and others assist in promoting a more peaceful transition by raising the vibrational frequency of the physical body so that it vibrates in resonance with the subtle body.  At that time the separation of the subtle body from the physical body is facilitated so that the release of the subtle body from the physical body at the moment of death can occur with the least amount of distress, thus resulting in a more serene death. 

As a result, occurrences of spiritual distress, terminal agitation, dreams and nightmares, hallucinations, bedside apparitions, visions, calling out to the unseen, last requests, and the symbolic language of dying patients can be assessed; appropriate spiritual care provided; and the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual pain of dying be diminished. Such knowledge can prove advantageous not only to terminally ill patients, but also to all those profoundly concerned, including primary care providers, family members, and others involved with the patient’s well-being.

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