Prescott: Four bodies

Four bodies

In The Supreme Adventure, Robert Crookall summarizes a great deal of evidence pointing to the idea that matter, in some sense, is part of the soul's experience throughout nearly all if its journey. Some kind of "body" is necessary, he argues, even at higher levels of development. Specifically he argues for four bodies, initially intertwined. They are:

1. the physical body
   
2. the vehicle of vitality, or the aura, which enshrouds the other bodies and serves as an interface between the physical and the spiritual realms
   
3. the soul body, which shines brightly once the vehicle of vitality has been cast off; and 
   
4. the spirit body, the highest and most sensitive vessel.
   

According to Crookall, most people will experience two life reviews. The first, occurring at the point of death, is unemotional and without moral significance — one's whole life flashes before one's eyes, but with no judgments being rendered. Crookall interprets this experience as the vehicle of vitality imprinting itself on the soul body. The second life review comes after the vehicle of vitality has been discarded, when the soul (now in touch with the higher self) is able to survey the panorama of its earthly life and form mature judgements about it. To distinguish it from the first life review, Crookall calls this one the Judgment. 

Crookall acknowledges that some people have experienced the Judgment at a surprisingly early point in the dying process. Even in his day, before the term "near-death experience" had been coined, there were scattered reports of people who had nearly died but had been revived, a few of whom had reported a life review complete with moral judgment. He says that such reports pertain only to a minority of cases, which still appears to be true; most NDEs do not include the Judgment. In his opinion, NDErs who undergo the Judgment are those whose vehicle of vitality is unusually "loose" to begin with. Mediums, psychics, seers, and people of elevated spiritual awareness are characterized (he thinks) by a looser vehicle of vitality, which accounts for their spiritual or paranormal gifts. Such people may experience the Judgment right away, but others must wait until the soul body has entirely cast off the vehicle of vitality.

More on this from Prescott:

Bodies and soul

...Earthbound spirits. According to Crookall, most spirits remain earthbound at least for a short time, usually three or four days. During this time, even though the physical body has been (at least mostly) cast off, the energy body continues to veil the soul body. As a result, the soul body's perceptions of its environment are distorted by the filtering effect of the energy body. Only a portion of the true environment gets through the filter, while the rest is either distorted or blocked entirely. This condition corresponds to the bardo in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, or the ideas of Limbo and Purgatory in the Abrahamic religions, or the shadowy, ghostly realm of Hades in ancient Greco-Roman religion...

....Apparitions. There are countless reports of apparitions that appear to be mindless or unconscious. Many ghost stories involve a figure repeating the same pointless action over and over, such as climbing a flight of stairs. In other cases, people report seeing an apparition that simply stands there, showing no expression and making no attempt to communicate. Crookall explains some of these as instances in which the energy body has been cast off but persists for a while as a hollow shell. People who are psychically sensitive may find it relatively easy to perceive the energy body (as an apparition or in a dream, etc.) and to mistake it for the soul body.

Life reviews. Mediums have described two separate life reviews. The first takes place immediately upon dying, or even before death has taken place. It is a quick panoramic overview of one's entire life, observed without judgment or even much emotion. The second typically takes place later and involves a subjective reexperiencing of critical life events, sometimes from the perspective of the persons affected by one's own actions. In this second review, which Crookall calls the Judgment, lessons are learned; the person discovers what he did right and what he did wrong, where he took the right path and where he went astray...

It does seem to me an attempt to graft additional ideas onto an existing belief of Dr Robert Crookall. The use of the term 'judgment' always capitalised and preceded by the definite article 'the' is, to my way of thinking, closer to certain types of Christian belief than it is to what we may learn from other sources such as NDE reports. There is also a comment in a book review, which I can't confirm for accuracy, that in The Supreme Adventure there is no mention at all of reincarnation.

I'm not intending to over-emphasise my own viewpoint, only to point out the difficulties of merging ideas from diverse sources, when all seem to have some merit.

What I do like though is the attempt to differentiate between various phenomena, when we nowadays seem to be limited to a single word 'ghost', which has always seemed to me to be a catch-all term for multiple different phenomena.

Whether or not Robert Crookhall's "descriptions" are mostly correct or just partially correct (which is what I personally believe) we're not really going to find out from this side (are we ?)  

"According to Crookall, most spirits remain earthbound at least for a short time, usually three or four days"

This clearly isn't what happens because we have thousands of consistent, reliable testimonies to the contrary (post 1961) although I think some "people" (a small minority) do probably hang around, "lurking", for whatever reason. I like to base my "expectations" on the classic veridical cases and also what people have personally told me, which is very reassuring but I'm certainly not immune to just occasionally wondering if I've got it wrong (very occasionally that is)