In Chapter 15 of his book On the Edge of the Etheric, Arthur Findlay summarizes his view of the relationship between the physical body and what he calls the etheric body. This information was conveyed to him by the medium John C. Sloan. Anyone familiar with spiritualist teachings will not find very much that is new here, but it is uncommonly well expressed, and so I am excerpting parts of it.
One thing that occurred to me is that perhaps Findlay's etheric bodies are essentially the same thing as Rupert Sheldrake's morphic fields, and possibly both owe a lot to the Forms (or Ideas) of Platonic philosophy.
Anyway, the excerpt follows.
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Here in this world our bodies are dual; physical, which we can see and touch; etheric, which we cannot sense with our physical organs. These two bodies interpenetrate each other, but the etheric is the permanent, enduring one, the etheric mind being the abode of our memory, personality, and all those qualities which make up our character. Those qualities pertain to the etheric. The mind never grows old, only the brain — the mind's instrument — which becomes impaired as the physical body grows old. Nothing we have learned, no intellectual wealth acquired, is ever lost.
Here we lose, in time, the power of expression; but this is due to the physical instrument ceasing to function with its aforetime precision. When, after the death change, the worn-out garment is laid aside, we stand, clothed in an etheric body, in our new abode. Freed from the limitations of the physical, our faculties are clear and movements more rapid. In the change we lose nothing of value; we are still ourselves in form and feature, in thought and action. Those who have lost arms or legs will have them again, as it was only the physical which was lost, and the same with all the other bodily disabilities. [Findlay's footnote: The individual mind in the etheric world obtains in time such control over the etheric body that bodily deformations can be removed and cured by thought.] The physical is but the covering; it is continually wasting away and being renewed by the blood, which is another proof that there is a permanent structure to which physical matter is attached.
The child who leaves this earth as such grows to manhood or womanhood, and when this stage is reached remains a fully-grown developed man or woman. Old age pertains to the physical, but it is unknown in the etheric. Children in the etheric world are carefully cared for and educated; there they have their schools and colleges; in fact the desire for knowledge is the outstanding desire of all who seek for progress, be they children or adults. And what of the old who die? Do they who live long enough to die with all the disabilities of old age retain those throughout eternity? If we could only comprehend that the etheric body never grows old, but only the physical body, this question would not be asked. When the old and tottering body is cast aside the etheric duplicate stands erect, freed from its outward physical handicap.
The old die old only in the physical sense, but enter the next life young. Age there is not measured in years, as time there differs from ours ….
The man and woman of average intelligence perceives the new environment without much delay, some almost immediately, on the passing of their etheric bodies out of the physical covering, though with others it may take days or weeks, as we measure time.
Our etheric body is in every respect a duplicate of our physical body. This may seem strange at first, and I found it difficult to grasp until I understood the fact that the etheric is the real body on earth, and that from the moment of conception it has gathered round it physical matter, slowing vibration. Otherwise it could not have functioned in the physical world owing to its finer and more rapid vibrations.
The physical body is only a protective covering for the etheric during its passage through the earth life. In reality, our real hands here are etheric hands clothed with a glove of physical matter, and so with all the other parts of the body. Our real brain is the etheric brain, through which the mind functions, and it acts through this whether we are in this world or the next. The mind acts on the etheric brain, and the etheric brain on the material covering which we call the physical brain ….
We are really much greater than we think we are, very much so; our mind as expressed through the physical brain is very limited, and only when freed from the physical do we comprehend its greatness. Our earthly mind we call conscious mind, but it, and what we term the subconscious or subliminal mind, form a complete mind. Our conscious mind directs our activities in this world, but our greater mind functions in the next. We obtain only glimpses of this greater mind in the occasionally observed phenomena of telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience and prevision, and on these occasions the subliminal over-rides the conscious for a limited time and then withdraws.
Some day, as man develops, the subliminal may become more and more a dominating factor, but at this stage of our development its intrusion is sporadic and confined to the few. When we pass on, our earth memories pass with us, but slowly they fade and we are guided and governed by this greater mind which has been with us all our lives building up our bodies, performing its inward functions, and making us what we are, though we know it not.
Excerpt from Chapter 15, "Facts We Ought to Know"; On the Edge of the Etheric, by Arthur Findlay (66th British edition; 1970)