ABSTRACT
As a whole, this book has been concerned with the history of subtle-body concepts and with their social contexts in Asian and Western societies. Much of the discussion in Parts One to Three has necessarily treated subtle-body concepts and practices as somewhat ‘exotic’ in nature, as relating to people long ago and far away, although a number of chapters, for example those by Janet Chawla (Chapter 3) and Alejandro Chaoul (Chapter 6), raised the issue of what working with the subtle body might mean in a contemporary context. The chapters of Part Four, which explore the role of the subtle body within contemporary European societies, have necessarily made this question more salient, and the previous three chapters have looked explicitly at the interplay between subtle-body practices and contemporary thought. Ruth Barcan explored in Chapter 12 the attractiveness of subtle-body practices in a wide range of contemporary contexts, academic as well as ‘New Age’. In Chapter 13, Jay Johnston examined a variety of movements in the contemporary humanities which have developed concepts similar to those associated with the subtle body. The willingness of significant contemporary thinkers to take these concepts seriously suggests that in ignoring the subtle body as a relic of obsolete modes of thought, or as a marginal fantasy of occult and New Age writers, we may be missing something of real value.
