Based on meditation practices Phillip Moffitt learned twenty years ago from Himalayan yoga master Sri Swami Balyogi Premvarni, this beautifully illustrated book is a guide to exploring the nature of mind and gaining a better understanding of experiences that arise during meditation. The Nine Bodies teachings map out a journey that starts with consciousness that arises in the physical body and is directly observable, and then travels through ever more subtle levels of consciousness to that which is not manifest and is only potential, and therefore has to be inferred. The book includes a series of mysterious illustrations that Balyogi created during his time of intense Samadhi explorations. Each illustration is a rich composition of symbols that express aspects of inner experiences that are almost impossible to express with language. Moffitt provides detailed interpretations of all the illustrations along with precise meditation instructions.

Balyogi’s revelations and visions about the structure of consciousness and how non-specific energetic potential manifests in both the mind and the body reveal that there are multiple, interactive levels or bodies of being within each of us. Balyogi gradually realized that all our experience is composed of nine such bodies and that exploring these nine bodies yields insights into the nature of body and mind, which in turn brings happiness, joy, bliss, and the peacefulness and stillness of realizing emptiness. Moffitt makes these teachings available for meditation students from all spiritual traditions to use as gateways for exploring the nature of mind and as additional means for tracking and classifying meditative experiences. Students of yoga will also find value in the teachings of the Nine Bodies as they provide a means for contextualizing and connecting with yogic teachings on chakras, koshas, gunas, and the Three Bodies.