The Mental Body is one key concept of some of the esoteric tradition brought to the west*, which will prove very valuable an idea for anyone who wants to study the mind.

Here I just want to give a few considerations of my own understanding, to give this valuable knowledge out to the reader of this writing.

This diagram shows pictorial the idea of a mental body (which may be taken at least as a useful idea),… containing gross and subtle material….Gross thoughts weave into it gross material, subtle thoughts weave into it subtle material….

Gross material in the mental body vibrates in resonance with gross forms of material exterior to oneself, subtle material in the mental body vibrates with subtle matter…that why a person with a mental body containing mostly subtle matter can see f.ex. many variations and subtleties in f.ex. some picture of an artist, or he can gain a very deep understanding of something just by being told a small stanza of something, while a person possessing a mental body made primarily of coarse matter will only perceive the words, without getting much meaning from it. If the mental body of a person contains only very coarse material that person will experience the outside world as a continuous threat and danger. If on the other hand a persons mental body contains only the most refined substances, the very coarse aspects of ordinary existence ceases to exist and he lives so to say in heaven on earth.

If we want to change our state of being, we have to build into our minds a permanent structure, which is build from true knowledge… acquired through introspection, setting up a permanent aim, self-knowledge and dhamma knowledge (understanding of certain laws of reality). Yet if there is even one false factor in our structure, if it has become part of the fundament… the change of being can never be fully completed and one has undergo great suffering again in order to get out such a factor from the foundation of one’s being…perhaps having to tear down the whole structure.

…that why a person should not shun pain and suffering but should learn to make use of it for the purpose of his purification.

In the beginning of ones spiritual development it is encouraged to spend much time to just soften (melt) the content of the mental body, and to just observe and dissect what is there, categorising it in line with a religious/developmental system. This is (to some extent) done to find out what is real and what is only imagined within ourselves/ what is wholesome and what is unwholesome…

Dawning of knowledge

As indicated by the thin lines, with the beginning of true knowledge (of course it will be similar with false knowledge, but I might treat that at another time) …the mind will start putting things into categories (like baskets)…thus having a way of memorising and ordering the conditions of his life…

Following this, these categories in time will start developing their own structure and order.

…if these categories and structures are regularly cross-checked with reality…the person will develop in an harmonious manner…but if the structure develops a life of its own (perhaps through what in Buddhism is called papanca)…becoming ever further divorced from reality…the person will start becoming inwardly fractured …gradually loosing elasticity…decay will set in…and sooner or later death…

…which means in this case …the loss of memory…death on the mental plane…disappearance of the capacity for growth

Possession of several different aims can still make up a harmonious character, but will not be powerful enough for becoming fully enlightened.

Inner Structure and outer Harmony

Inner structure and harmony produces harmony all around

A mind, which is thus well ordered, can leap to a sphere beyond thought,…first to a sphere beyond mere thoughts regarding the sensual world and later to a sphere transcending ordinary thought altogether…the sphere of seer-ship

(Peace does not mean having no mental content, but having mental content which is encompassing the NOW)