Nahui ollin, the Four States of Perception and theFive Bodies
These figuresrepresent the four forces that sustain the universe, whose interactions resultin the perennial movement. Time comes from this interaction. Where do theseforces come from, however? They come from the subtle worlds, where the physicaland material universe comes to an end. They come from the mysterious world ofthe nahual, our consciousness of the sleep and spiritual state.
These figuresencapsulate the highest form of knowledge of human nature ever achieved bypre-Columbian civilizations: how four energy bodies in movement (tonal, teyolia, nahual and ihiyotl,which will be discussed shortly) can give rise to a physical body (tonacayo)that is never the same, which is constantly self-renewing, and which changesand moves forward from moment to moment. In this physical dimension,traditionally these four subtle bodies are referred to as ‘eggs' in the Aztec tradition and as burbuja (‘bubble') in the Andean tradition, and more generally as ‘aura' (seeFigure below).
These bodies arevehicles through which we can explore realities located well beyond the limitsof the physical world. Their eternal movement is like a cosmic dance, whichinvents us and then reinvents us, which creates us and makes us continueonwards. The interactions among these four energy bodies create both thephysical body (tonacayo) as well as these four perceptual states:
waking state: this state is characterized by sensations stemming from physical perceptions, when we are present to everything that is going on;
dream state while awake: in its movement, this state is characterized by ‘light', ‘medium' and ‘strong' variations. Light movements refer to when thoughts take us away from the present moment, medium movements correspond to the moment we enter into meditation or become involved in visualizations, and strong movements to when we enter into a deep state of trance and we begin to perceive the subtle worlds;
sleep state: when our consciousness finds itself in an imageless state of dream, in which it penetrates only into the darkness of the moyocoyani, ‘the prime essence of being' in the ancient Nahuatl language, and also called amomati, ‘the empty mind';
sleep state with dreams: namely the existence that we experience through our nahual in the Temictli, ‘the place of dreams'; this has an influence on the creation of our tonal, the physical reality which we experience through the tonacayo, the ‘physical body'.
These are the fourcommon states of perception, which we are all familiar with; later we willdiscuss the non-ordinary state of ensoñación, or dreaming while awake.Human beings are made up of these four ordinary states and of the following five bodies(tonacayo,ihiyotl,teyolia,tonal,nahual):
tonacayo, or physical body;
ihiyotl, the ‘essence' or ‘divine breath', the life force that comes from the subtle worlds and keeps matter alive. This energy comes into contact with us via the liver, an organ to which we must pay special attention in that, according to this tradition, it is from here that Miquiztli, ‘the force of death', having previously found its way in via the navel, extracts the ihiyotl; this is not a highly evolved, or sophisticated type of death, but incidentally it is the most common. Together with our nahual, the ihiyotl is the body, or vehicle, with which we move about both in the heavens and in the underworlds;
teyolia, ‘the energy around the heart', which protects the journey of our hummingbird, the journey of our soul: the memory and the number of all the lives that we have spent both in a physical as well as in a non-physical body (we can actually exist in the nahual without being present in the tonal). The Mexica tradition explains that if at death we exit the body via the liver, we are then forced to come back either as humans (namely in the case of an ordinary, less evolved type of death), or to proceed to the underworlds.
If we are unable to‘blossom' in life (meaning, if we areunable to discover and master the secrets of the flower that represents theuniverse), we will die exiting the body via the liver and we will have anotheropportunity to be born on the following day (or under the following glyph), andso on and so forth, until the cycle is completed.
Unfortunately,however, the teyolia energy is not infinite: for instance, if people experiencea great deal of suffering in their lives, they can use up much more energy ofthis type than in three or four peaceful lives. Once the whole energy of the teyoliabody has been completely used up, if we have not yet been able to ‘blossom', and have not learned at the very least how to die by exiting through the heart — which still does not constitute the highest place throughwhich we could exit the physical body — we will not have any further opportunity tocome back as humans, and will be forced to progress to the underworlds (i.e.the worlds that lie below), where everything is much more difficult andpainful.
This is why allpractitioners of this tradition, both in the past and nowadays, try their bestto ‘blossom' in this life, as nobody knows the amount ofenergy that they have left in their teyolia, and whether they may have one more opportunity to experience a human life.
The above does notmean that we only live up to a maximum of 20 human lives, as this cycle can berepeated: it all depends on the amount of energy that we are left with. And itgoes without saying that the tradition also teaches us how to preserve ourenergy and gather more, which would naturally be channelled towards an attempt to ‘blossom'.
And then:tonal nahual