5 Subtle Body Centers and Their Sacred Impulses
In this article, I am bringing awareness to one way the enlightenment drive manifests in the human body – through five subtle centers and their sacred impulses that the Diamond Approach refers to as the “lataif.”
These subtle centers are also part of Sufi spiritual knowledge and other teachings, though not necessarily referred to as the lataif in all traditions.
Sacred Impulse & Enlightenment Drive
The particular maturation of the soul that fosters true practice involves the awakening of a fourth drive, the enlightenment drive. Although similar to the instinctual drives, with similar energies and intelligence, the enlightenment drive is not completely biological. Its aim is not a physical one; rather, it is about the quality of inner experience. We may recognize the enlightenment drive as the religious drive, the longing for God or divine union, the desire for enlightenment or truth, or the love of discovering the secrets of existence, what life is all about. – A. H. Almaas, Runaway Realization: Living a Life of Ceaseless Discovery , ch. 2
These five subtle centers and their sacred impulses are connected to five essential qualities necessary for the awakening and maturation of the soul. Each center’s associated essential aspect is in turn, connected to ego structures, personality sectors, and psychodynamic issues related to the loss of awareness and activation of the respective center and essential aspect.
Individual consciousness is considered to be a spiritual organ of perception. The human body has five senses (some say 8 or 9), considered to be organs of perception for this world. The five lataif are also organs of perception – lenses into reality.
Each center and its essential quality has a sacred impulse associated with it. These impulses are elements of the enlightenment drive, similar in how colors of light are part of clear light.
One useful way to view the higher faculties associated with the lataif is through the Five Sacred Impulses, parallel to Gurdjieff’s notion of the Three Sacred Impulses. This table highlights only some of the important higher faculties. The Five Sacred Impulses reflect particular capacities available to the soul as a result of the presence of the five lataif. – Spacecruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey
What do you wish for?
The relationship of the enlightenment drive to the five sacred impulses is more than just longing, or desire, or wishing for enlightenment, liberation, home, wholeness, etc. The enlightenment drive is the evolutionary force of consciousness, including the action and inaction resulting from the wishing.
In other words, wishing without real action rarely results in change, transcendence, or transformation.
What we all wish for ultimately is to simply and authentically be. This wish to be ourselves is the true motivation for inquiry. And this impulse, this motivation, is actually an expression of one of the aspects of Essence—the Yellow latifa. As they are needed, the other lataif arise to support this movement in our soul. So, for example, one needs the strength and capacity to engage in one’s spiritual work (the Red latifa), the will to persevere in the face of difficulties, attachments, and conditioning (the White latifa), the perceptual expansion necessary to perceive and understand what one is experiencing (the Black latifa), and the sensitivity to recognize and rest in one’s own true nature (the Green latifa). These fundamental capacities of the soul, which are called the five sacred impulses—I wish, I can, I will, I perceive, and I am—are associated with the lataif. Spacecruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey, ch. 16
Lord of the Rings
One ring to bind them all… Our body breathes and moves and thinks and digests and… We can artificially separate these individually for discourse, but they can’t be separated from the body, nor can they, in actuality, be separated from each other.
The spice must flow…
If our blood isn’t circulating, we probably won’t be able to move our arms and legs, likewise with air and brain activity. The essential qualities are similar but multidimensional as well. Essential qualities are aspects of essence, which has fundamental awareness, dynamism, knowing, love, and stillness.
The totality of the soul is a microcosm of all of reality, the unity of Being. The Diamond Guidance is a microcosm of the characteristic of the knowingness of God, the macrocosm of reality. But remember, on the level of true reality, the five characteristics are inseparable. The five facets are all intertwined and happening at the same time. We have described them separately in order to reflect on them, but they are all one reality. Consequently, the Diamond Guidance reflects all the five facets: awareness, oneness, dynamism, openness, and knowingness. However, the most important one, the most central one it reflects, is knowingness. – A. H. Almaas, Spacecruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey, ch. 3
This specific manifestation of true nature, Diamond Guidance, functions as an “operational hub” for the intelligence, functioning and synthesis of the soul’s transformation. Exploring “guidance” is recommended as it’s not like an inner voice or God telling you to take the next right turn.
The Diamond Guidance is an essential presence made out of diamonds, in which all the aspects combine together as one beautiful, colorful, luminous vehicle—not unlike a spaceship—in a precise, delineated form. And since each aspect manifests here as the understanding of the aspect itself, the structure that combines all of these diamonds into one presence operates as the vehicle for understanding in general. This vehicle then functions as guidance on the diamond level. This is a direct description, not a metaphor, of what the Diamond Guidance is. – Spacecruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey, ch. 13
Drill bits, condensation & evaporation
Are we born with blank slates, or do we arrive with baggage and blessings? No matter, being raised by human beings brings us to adulthood with a smorgasbord of issues, ignorance, and beliefs – all of which need to be explored and understood to, not only, improve the quality of our external lives, but also to support the soul’s transcendence.
The Diamond Approach uses open and open-ended inquiry as a precise methodology to “drill” into and through psychodynamic barriers and issues. In the beginning, there is often a catharsis as part of the process. Inquiry, understanding, and the freeing of bound-up energy patterns result in the dissolution of ego structures, beliefs, attitudes, and other impingements on our organs of perception.
Letting go of ego identifications on a profound level is possible only after the activation of certain essential aspects, primarily those of the five lataif (subtle energy centers in the body) and the aspect of true value. The lataif aspects—strength, will, compassion, enjoyment and intuition—provide the true support of essence which makes it possible to see through ego supports and not compulsively pursue them. The emergence of the aspect of value, for instance, which is the true existential value of Being, makes it possible to see through the ego mechanisms of seeking self-esteem and to become less dependent on them. – The Pearl Beyond Price: Integration of Personality into Being: An Object Relations Approach, ch. 4
The five sacred impulses each have a unique quality or taste of dynamism, which, when experienced in our normal world, influence our behavior in supportive and distorted ways as they pass through the filter of ego identification and history.
Closer to home, each is experienced as different flavors of pure potentiality and possibility, which brings us back to the dance between emptiness and revelation.
As we step on the spiritual path, awareness of and activation of these five subtle centers and their sacred impulses brings the spiritual traveler unbelievable insight, knowledge, and support for optimally engaging their process of unfoldment.
Coupled with an understanding of the Theory of Holes and How to Use Psychological Inquiry in support of spiritual transformation, it provides a practical, profound, and powerful methodology for the possibility of wishes coming true.