When we think of the subtle realm, we are likely to think of a place, one that is filled with all kinds of beings: elementals, nature spirits, fairies, thought-forms, disincarnate humans, spirits, angels, devas, and so on. It is all that and more, for sure: a vast ecology of energy and light. Further, because it is invisible and intangible to our physical senses, we may think of it (if and when we think of it at all) as a reality separate and divorced from our own.
Certainly, much of the subtle realm is so different in nature from the physical world that it might as well be a separate reality. But Earth’s oceans are an environment very different from what we find on land, filled with strange and exotic creatures that live in their depths. Yet, we consider both land and sea as part of one planet. The same is true for the physical and subtle realms. For all their differences, which can be significant, they are still part of a single, whole Earth.
For me, the reality that the subtle realms are integrally part of the wholeness of the world is the foundational reason for engaging with them. There can be other benefits, of course, such as gaining allies, information, insights, collaboration, and the like. But when all is said and done, developing a connection with the subtle dimensions is, for me, a way of going beyond being fragmented, both in my self and in my relationship with the world.
Acknowledging The Invisible
The first step is to acknowledge that the subtle dimensions exist, and that we are immersed in a subtle environment as well as a physical one. After all, you can’t engage with something you don’t believe exists. This is a simple step, yet it can be a difficult one to take. We are trained in our culture to ascribe reality to what we can physically see and touch. Yet, doctors and nurses deal with invisibles all the time, recognizing that the environment is filled with microbes, bacteria, viruses, etc. If they are going to protect themselves and their patients, they can’t afford to ignore what they can’t see or touch.
The issue here is not so much one of belief — I’m sure most of the readers of this journal believe in the reality of the subtle realms — but of wishing that our subtle experiences matched the criteria of physical reality, i.e. that we can see, hear, and feel them the way we do with things in the material world around us. We are so used to the reality our senses show us that adjusting to a “trans-sensory” or “meta-sensory” domain takes some practice. We may have to say to ourselves, “I trust the subtle world is there, even though I can’t see or hear it.” Trust opens our heart, which widens our receptivity, and also helps take us out of our mind and into our body.
The body is key here. I think the focus given to psychic abilities often overlooks this. We read or talk about clairvoyance (inner sight), or clairaudience (inner hearing) or even clairsentience (inner knowing). But such psychic sight, hearing, or knowing are all centered in the head, the subtle equivalents of our eyes and ears and brain. They can easily become mental operations which, like so many mental activities, are divorced from the body itself.
Our minds tend to live in the past and the future. Our bodies always live in what is happening now. And it is in the now that the subtle energies and influences are active around us. If we want to attune to them, we have to bring our minds into sync with our bodies, and pay attention to what is happening in the present.
When it comes to subtle attunement, our bodies are already there. It is our minds that are usually the Johnnys-come-lately to the party. Filled with our thoughts, our fears, our hopes; filled with attitudes, opinions, beliefs; filled with memories and plans, our minds are generally not quiet or still enough to listen and pay attention to what our bodies are sensing. Further, our physical body accepts the reality of the subtle world around it because it experiences it directly. It can tense up when in the presence of unpleasant or even harmful subtle energies; it can relax when surrounded with positive and loving energies. It is our mind that wonders about the reality of subtle phenomena and has a hard time accepting or adjusting to what is invisible to it.
Acknowledging Life
One way I get around this challenge is that I don’t think about trying to attune to subtle energies or subtle beings. Rather, I think about engaging with life. I don’t have to see into the microbial world to know that it is all around me, that everything I see and touch is swarming with bacterial life. Similarly, I don’t have to clairvoyantly see techno-elementals, nature spirits, house spirits, and other subtle organisms to know they are around me. I have to be open to attuning to the presence of life. Instead of thinking of the subtle realms as places inhabited by non-physical beings (although they are), I think of them as expanded dimensions and manifestations of life.
I work with intelligences and presences living in the subtle realms. Yet, when I get up in the morning, I don’t start my day thinking about these realms or about being in contact with them. Instead, I start my day thinking about all the life that surrounds me. When I swing my legs out of bed and plant my feet on the floor, I am aware that everything around me, above me, and under me is alive energetically.
This is not a psychic awareness. I’m not clairvoyantly seeing techno-elementals or subtle beings or spirits of any kind. I’m seeing a nightstand, a lamp, slippers on the floor, the floor itself, and so on, but I am also feeling the life that these things embody and represent. It would be easy to miss this, to ignore it, just as it’s easy to ignore the microbial world until it smacks us in the face with an illness. But if I pay attention, I realize that the life in my body recognizes and responds to the life in the world around me.
To be fair, I’ve had an awareness of this living energy or presence within and emanating from everything in the world all my life. I can’t remember I time when I did not have it. But it’s also true that I chose to pay attention to this and to accept this awareness, even at times when people around me, especially when I was in university taking science classes, tried to convince me the world was only made of non-living matter and nothing else. I could have lost this awareness simply by ignoring it and ceasing to believe in it.
This is a somatic awareness, which can be amplified by my mind when I pay attention and align my thoughts to it. The body’s knowing and resonance to life comes first. When I swing my legs out of bed and plant my feet on the floor, my mind’s knowing that there is life all around me actually follows and is informed by my body’s knowing. The life in my body resonates to the life in the room. It’s such a subtle thing, so easy to overlook and ignore in the hustle and bustle of getting on with my day. It doesn’t take long for my mind to fill up with thoughts of all the things I want to do or have to do in the hours ahead of me.
A simple way to start attuning to the life around you is to say to yourself, “I am surrounded by life. I am part of a living universe.” Then, acknowledge that this is so. A further step that I use in addition to this acknowledgement is to hold an appreciation and love for this presence of life around me.
Note that in this process, you are not looking for some particular form of life to manifest. You’re not expecting some subtle being or some specific subtle energy to make itself known. This could happen, of course, but it’s not the objective of your attention.
This is where I find my body an indispensable ally. My body is alive. It is life incarnate. If I’m looking to feel my aliveness, I don’t find it in my mind, in thoughts about being alive or reflections on what life is like. I feel it in the beat of my heart, the flow of my blood, the presence of my body. It’s this life in my body that resonates with the life in the world around me, both seen and unseen. By appreciating my life, I attune to life; by attuning to life, I can come into touch with the subtle life that fills the subtle environment.
Again, I’m not trying to resonate with a specific lifeform or organism, but with Life itself.
We take incarnation into the sphere of Earth for many reasons, but I believe that at the core of all of them, we are each here as an agent of life, to foster, nourish, and expand the expression of life both within ourselves and in the world — in Gaia — around us.
From Beyond The Border: Contact and Communion with the Subtle Realms by David Spangler (Lorian Press, 2026) https://www.etsy.com/shop/LorianPress?etsrc=sdt. Excerpted with permission of the publisher.
Between 2011 and 2022, visionary spiritual teacher and author David Spangler published 44 issues of the quarterly esoteric journal “Views From The Borderland.” It gave him an opportunity to share “field notes” of engaging with the non-physical realms of spirit. Beyond The Border is a collection of those timeless essays. David is co-founder of The Lorian Association. https://lorian.org
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