Hindu scriptures speak of three worlds, fourteen worlds and countless worlds. These are different ways to describe Śiva’s infinite creation. Of the fourteen worlds, seven are counted as rising above the Earth and seven as descending below it. Correspondingly, there are fourteen great nerve centers in the physical body, in the astral body and in the body of the soul. These centers are called chakras in Sanskrit, which means “wheels.” These spinning vortices of energy are actually regions of mind power, each one governing certain aspects of the inner man, and together they are the subtle components of people. When inwardly perceived, they are vividly colorful and can be heard. In fact, they are quite noisy, since color, sound and energy are all the same thing in the inner realms. ¶When awareness flows through any one or more of these regions, the various functions of consciousness operate, such as the functions of memory, reason and willpower. There are six chakras above the mūlādhāra chakra, which is located at the base of the spine. When awareness is flowing through these chakras, consciousness is in the higher nature. There are seven chakras below the mūlādhāra chakra, and when awareness is flowing through them, consciousness is in the lower nature. In this Kali Yuga most people live in the consciousness of the seven force centers below the mūlādhāra chakra. Their beliefs and attitudes strongly reflect the animal nature, the instinctive mind. We want to lift our own consciousness and that of others into the chakras above the mūlādhāra. This brings the mind out of the lower nature into the higher nature. We do this through personal sādhana, prayer, meditation, right thought, speech and action and love for Lord Śiva, who is All in all. ¶The mūlādhāra chakra, the divine seat of Lord Gaṇeśa, is the dividing point between the lower nature and the higher nature. It is the beginning of religion for everyone, entered when consciousness arrives out of the realms below Lord Gaṇeśa’s holy feet. ¶The physical body has a connection to each of the seven higher chakras through plexes of nerves along the spinal cord and in the cranium. As the kuṇḍalinī force of awareness travels along the spine, it enters each of these chakras, energizing them and awakening, in turn, each function. In any one lifetime, man may be predominantly aware in two or three centers, thus setting the pattern for the way he thinks and lives. He develops a comprehension of these seven regions in a natural sequence, the perfection of one leading logically to the next. Thus, though he may not be psychically seeing spinning forces within himself, man nevertheless matures through memory, reason, willpower, cognition, universal love, divine sight and spiritual illumination. ¶It may help, as we examine each of these centers individually, to visualize man as a seven-storied building, with each story being one of the chakras. Awareness travels up and down in the elevator, and as it goes higher and higher, it gains a progressively broader, more comprehensive and beautiful vista. Reaching the top floor, it views the panorama below with total understanding, not only of the landscape below, but also of the relation of the building to other buildings and of each floor to the next. ¶In Sanātana Dharma another analogy is used to portray the chakras—that of a lotus flower. This flower grows in lakes and pools, taking root in the slimy mud below the surface, where no light penetrates. Its stem grows upward toward the light until it breaks the surface into fresh air and sunshine. The energy of the sun then feeds the bud and leaves until the delicate lotus blossom opens. The first chakra is called the root chakra, mūlādhāra. Awareness takes root in the baser instincts of human experience and then travels through the waters of the intellect, becoming more and more refined as it evolves until finally it bursts into the light of the superconscious mind, where it spiritually flowers into the 1,008-petaled lotus chakra at the top of the head. By examining the functions of these seven great force centers, we can clearly cognize our own position on the spiritual path and better understand our fellow man.§
The chakras do not awaken. They are already awakened in everyone. It only seems as if they awaken as we become aware of flowing our energy through them, because energy, willpower and awareness are one and the same thing. To become conscious of the core of energy itself, all we have to do is detach awareness from the realms of reason, memory and aggressive, intellectual will. Then, turning inward, we move from one chakra to another. The physical body changes as these more refined energies flow through it and the inner nerve system, called nāḍīs, inwardly becomes stronger and stronger. The mūlādhāra chakra is the memory center, located at the base of the spine, and is physically associated with the sacral or pelvic nerve plexus. Mūla means “root” and adhāra means “support,” so this is called the root chakra. Its color is red. It governs the realms of time and memory, creating a consciousness of time through the powers of memory. Whenever we go back in our memory patterns, we are using the forces of the mūlādhāra. ¶This chakra is associated also with human qualities of individuality, egoism, materialism and dominance. Man lives mostly in this chakra during the first seven years of life. This center has four “petals” or aspects, one of which governs memories of past lives. The other three contain the compiled memory patterns and interrelated karmas of this life. When this chakra is developed, people are able to travel on the astral plane. It is complete within itself, but when the first two chakras are charged with gross, instinctive impulses and developed through Western education, with its values and foibles which contradict Hindu dharma, they can create together a very strong odic force which, when propelled by the worldly will of the third chakra toward outer success and power, can dominate the mind and make it nearly impossible for awareness to function in the higher force centers, so great is the material magnetism. Men living fully in these lower three chakras therefore say that God is above them, not knowing that “above” is their own head and they are living “below,” near the base of the spine. ¶You have seen many people living totally in the past—it’s their only reality. They are always reminiscing: “When I was a boy, we used to… Why, I remember when… It wasn’t like this a few years ago…” On and on they go, living a recollected personal history and usually unaware that they have a present to be enjoyed and a future to be created. On and on they go, giving their life force energies to the task of perpetuating the past. The mūlādhāra forces are not negative forces. Used and governed positively by the higher centers, the powers of time, memory and sex are transmuted into the very fuel that propels awareness along the spinal climb and into the head. Similarly, the mature lotus blossom cannot in wisdom criticize the muddy roots far below which, after all, sustain its very life. ¶The center of man’s reasoning faculties lies in the second, or hypogastric, plexus, below the navel. It is termed svādhishṭhāna, which in Sanskrit means “one’s own place.” Its color is reddish orange. Once the ability to remember has been established, the natural consequence is reason, and from reason evolves the intellect. Reason and intellect work through this chakra. We open naturally into this chakra between the ages of seven and thirteen, when we want to know why the sky is blue and the “whys” of everything. If very little memory exists, very little intellect is present. In other words, reason is the manipulation of memorized information. We categorize it, edit it, rearrange it and store the results. That is the essence of the limited capacity of reason. Therefore, this center controls the mūlādhāra, and in fact, each progressively “higher” center controls all preceding centers. That is the law. In thinking, solving problems, analyzing people or situations, we are functioning in the domain of svādhishṭhāna. ¶This center has six “petals” or aspects and can therefore express itself in six distinct ways: diplomacy, sensitivity, cleverness, doubt, anxiety and procrastination. These aspects or personae would seem very real to people living predominantly in this chakra. They would research, explore and wonder, “Why? Why? Why?” They would propose theories and then formulate reasonable explanations. They would form a rigid intellectual mind based on opinionated knowledge and accumulated memory, reinforced by habit patterns of the instinctive mind. §
It is in the svādhishṭhāna chakra that the majority of people live, think, worry and travel on the astral plane. If they are functioning solely in the reasoning capacity of the mind, devoting their life’s energies to its perpetuation in the libraries of the world, then they would take the intellect very seriously, for they naturally see the material world as extremely real, extremely permanent. With their security and self-esteem founded in reason, they study, read, discuss, accumulate vast storehouses of fact and rearrange the opinions and conclusions of others. When guided by the higher chakras and not totally entangled in ramifications of intellect, the powers of svādhishṭhāna are a potent tool in bringing intuitive knowledge into practical manifestation. Reason does not conflict with intuition. It simply comes more slowly, more cumbersomely, to the same conclusions. Nevertheless, the intellect, in its refined evolution, can harness and direct the base instincts in man. ¶Within the third center, called the maṇipūra chakra, are the forces of willpower. Maṇi means “gem,” and pūra means “city,” so maṇipūra signifies the “jewelled city.” Its color is yellow. It is represented in the central nervous system by the solar plexus, where all nerves in the body merge to form what has been termed man’s “second brain.” This is significant, for depending on how the energy is flowing, the forces of will from this chakra add power either to worldly consciousness through the first two centers or to spiritual consciousness through the fourth and fifth centers. In Hindu mysticism, this dual function of willpower is conveyed in its ten “petals” or aspects, five which control and stabilize the odic or material forces of memory and reason, and five which control the actinic or spiritual forces of understanding and love. Therefore, the maṇipūra energies are actinodic in composition, while mūlādhāra and svādhishṭhāna are purely odic force structures. When awareness functions within the realms of memory, reason and aggressive willpower, men and women are basically instinctive in nature. They are quick to react and retaliate, quick to have their feelings hurt and quick to pursue the conquest of others, while fearing their own defeat. Success and failure are the motivating desires behind their need to express power and possess influence. Consequently, their life is seeded with suffering, with ups and downs. They look for a way out of suffering and yet enjoy suffering when it comes. They are physically very hard working and generally not interested in developing the intellect unless it can help them achieve some material gain. In these states of consciousness, the ego rises to its greatest prominence, and emotional experiences are extremely intense. If, on the other hand, the willpower has been directed toward higher awakening, awareness is propelled into deeper dimensions. Gains and losses of material possessions and power no longer magnetize their awareness, and they are freed to explore higher centers of their being. Inwardly directed, the willpower gives resolute strength to these aspirants, strength to discipline the outer nature and to practice sādhana. §
With the spiritual will aroused, awareness flows quite naturally into the anāhata chakra, the heart center, governing the faculties of direct cognition or comprehension. Connected to the cardiac plexus, this chakra is often referred to as “the lotus of the heart.” Its twelve “petals” imply that the faculty of cognition can be expressed in twelve distinct ways or through as many masks or personae. Its color is a smoky green. Man usually awakens into this region of cognition around age twenty-one to twenty-six. Life for seekers in this chakra is different than for others. It is in anāhata, literally “unstruck sound,” that the aspirant attains his mountaintop consciousness. Instead of viewing life in its partial segments, like seeing just the side of the mountain, he raises his consciousness to a pinnacle from which an objective and comprehensive cognition of the entirety is the natural conclusion. Uninvolved in the seemingly fractured parts, he is able to look through it all and understand—as though he were looking into a box and seeing the inside, the outside, the top and the bottom, all at the same time. It looks transparent to him and he is able to encompass the totality in one instantaneous flash of direct cognition. He knows in that split second all there is to know about a subject, and yet would find it difficult to verbalize that vast knowing. Various highly endowed psychics are prone to utilize this force center, for such spiritual powers as healing are manifested here. ¶People with the anāhata chakra awakened are generally well-balanced, content and self-contained. More often than not, their intellect is highly developed and their reasoning keen. The subtle refinement of their nature makes them extremely intuitive, and what is left of the base instincts and emotions is easily resolved through their powers of intellect. It is important that the serious aspirant gain enough control of his forces and karmas to remain stabilized at the heart center. This should be home base to him, and he should rarely or never fall below anāhata in consciousness. Only after years of sādhana and transmutation of the sexual fluids can this be attained, but it must be attained and awareness must settle here firmly before further unfoldment is sought. ¶Universal or divine love is the faculty expressed by the next center, called the viśuddha chakra. This center is associated with the pharyngeal plexus in the throat and possesses sixteen “petals” or attributes. Whereas the first two centers are predominantly odic force in nature and the third and fourth are mixtures of odic force and a little actinic force, viśuddha is almost a purely actinic force structure. On a percentage scale, we could say that the energies here are eighty percent actinic and only twenty percent odic. Whenever people feel filled with inexpressible love and devotion to all mankind, all creatures, large and small, they are vibrating within viśuddha. In this state there is no consciousness of a physical body, no consciousness of being a person with emotions, no consciousness of thoughts. They are just being the light or being fully aware of themselves as actinic force flowing through all form. They see light throughout the entirety of their body, even if standing in a darkened room. This light is produced in the ājñā chakra above through the friction occurring between the odic and actinic forces and perceived through the divine sight of the third eye. The sense of “I,” of ego, is dissolved in the intensity of this inner light, and a great bliss permeates the nerve system as the truth of the oneness of the universe is fully and powerfully realized. Viśuddha means “sheer purity.” This center is associated with blue, the color of divine love. ¶The jñānī who has awakened this center is able for the first time to withdraw awareness totally into the spine, into the sushumṇā current. Now he begins experiencing the real spiritual being. Even at this point he may hold a concept of himself as an outer being, as distinct from the inner being he seeks. But as he becomes stronger and stronger in his new-found love, he realizes that the inner being is nothing but the reality of himself. And as he watches as the outer being fades, he realizes that it was born in time and memory patterns, put together through the forces of reason, and sustained for a limited period through the forces of will. The outer shell dissolves and he lives in the blissful inner consciousness that knows only light, love and immortality.§
The sixth force center is ājñā, or the third eye. Ājñā chakra means “command center” and grants direct experience of the Divine, not through any knowledge passed on by others, which would be like the knowledge found in books. Magnetized to the cavernous plexus and to the pineal gland and located between the brows, the ājñā chakra governs the superconscious faculties of divine sight within man. Its color is lavender. Of its two “petals” or facets one is the ability to look down, all the way down, to the seven talas, or states of mind, below the mūlādhāra and the other is the ability to perceive the higher, spiritual states of consciousness, all the way up to the seven chakras above the sahasrāra. Thus, ājñā looks into both worlds: the odic astral world, or Antarloka, and the actinic spiritual world, or Śivaloka. It, therefore, is the connecting link, allowing the jñānī to relate the highest consciousness to the lowest, in a unified vision. This center opens fully to the conscious use of man after many experiences of nirvikalpa samādhi, Self Realization, resulting in total transformation, have been attained, although visionary insights and, particularly, inner light experiences are possible earlier. ¶The composition of this chakra is so refined, being primarily of actinic force, that a conscious knowledge of the soul as a scintillating body of pure energy or white light is its constant manifestation. From here man peers deeply into the mind substance, seeing simultaneously into the past, the present and the future—deeper into evolutionary phases of creation, preservation and destruction. He is able to travel consciously in his inner body, to enter any region of the mind without barrier and to reduce through his samyama, contemplation, all form to its constituent parts. ¶It is not recommended on the classical Hindu yoga path for one to sit and concentrate on this force center, as the psychic abilities of the pineal gland can be prematurely awakened over which control is not possible, creating an unnecessary karmic sidetrack for the aspirant. Visions are not to be sought. They themselves are merely illusions of a higher nature around which a spiritual ego can grow which only serves to inhibit the final step on the path, that of the Truth beyond all form, beyond the mind itself. Therefore, the pituitary gland, which controls the next and final center, should be awakened first. This master gland is located about an inch forward and upward of the left ear, near the center of the cranium. At that point one can inwardly focus awareness and see a clear white light. This light is the best point of concentration, for it will lead awareness within itself and to the ultimate goal without undue ramification. ¶The sahasrāra, or crown chakra, is the “thousand spoked” wheel, also known as sahasradala padma, “thousand-petaled lotus.” Actually, according to the ancient mystics, it has 1,008 aspects or attributes of the soul body. However, these personae are transparent—a crystal clear white light, ever present, shining through the circumference of the golden body which is polarized here and which seems to build and grow after many experiences of sustained nirvikalpa samādhi, manifesting a total inner and outer transformation. ¶The crown center is the accumulation of all other force centers in the body, as well as the controlling or balancing aspect of all other sheaths or aspects of man. It is a world within a world within itself. When the yogī travels in high states of contemplation, when he is propelled into vast inner space, he is simply aware of this center in himself. In such deep states, even the experience of light would not necessarily occur, since light is only present when a residue of darkness is kept, or since light is the friction of pure actinic force meeting and penetrating the magnetic forces. In the sahasrāra, the jñānī dissolves even blissful visions of light and is immersed in pure space, pure awareness, pure being. ¶Once this pure state is stabilized, awareness itself dissolves and only the Self remains. This experience is described in many ways: as the death of the ego; as the awareness leaving the mind form through the “door of Brahman,” the Brahmarandhra, at the top of the head; and as the inexplicable merger of the ātman, or soul, with Śiva, or God. From another perspective, it is the merger of the forces of the pituitary with the forces of the pineal. Great inner striving, great sādhana and tapas, first activate the pituitary gland—a small, master gland found near the hypothalamus which regulates many human functions, including growth, sexuality and endocrine secretions. It is inwardly seen as a small white light and referred to as “the pearl of great price.” When the pituitary is fully activated, it begins to stimulate the pineal gland, situated at the roof of the thalamic region of the brain and influencing maturation of consciousness expansion. The pineal is inwardly viewed as a beautiful blue sapphire. For man to attain his final, final, final realization, the forces of these two glands have to merge. Symbolically, this is the completion of the circle, the serpent devouring its own tail. For those who have attained this process, it can be observed quite closely through the faculty of divine sight. §
This is the story of man’s evolution through the mind, from the gross to the refined, from darkness into light, from a consciousness of death to immortality. He follows a natural pattern that is built right in the nerve system itself: memory, reason, will, direct cognition, inner light perceptions of the soul, which awaken a universal love of all mankind; psychic perceptions through divine sight; and the heavenly refinement of being in the thousand-petaled lotus. ¶During each age throughout history, one or another of the planets or chakras has come into power. Remember when the Greek God Cronus was in supreme power? He is the God of time. Mass consciousness came into memory, or the mūlādhāra chakra, with its new-found concern for time, for a past and a future, dates and records. Next the mass consciousness came into the svādhishṭhāna and its powers of reason. Reason was a God in the Golden Age of Greece. Discourse, debate and logic all became instruments of power and influence. If it wasn’t reasonable, it wasn’t true. Next the chakra of will came into power. Man conquered nations, waged wars, developed efficient weapons. Crusades were fought and kingdoms established during the period. Our world was experiencing force over force. Direct cognition, the anāhata chakra, came into power when man opened the doors of science within his own mind. He cognized the laws of the physical universe: mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy and biology. Then he unfolded the mind sciences by penetrating into his subconscious mind, into the chakras where he had previously been. With man’s looking into his own mind, psychology, metaphysics and the mind religions were born. ¶Now, in our present time, the mass consciousness is coming into viśuddha—the forces of universal love. The forerunners of this emerging Sat Yuga, popularly called the New Age, are not worshiping reason as the great thing of the mind or trying to take over another’s possessions through the use of force. They are not worshiping science or psychology or the mind religions as the great panacea. They are looking inward and worshiping the light, the Divinity within their own body, within their own spine, within their own head, and they are going in and in and in and in, into a deep spiritual quest which is based on direct experience, on compassion for all things in creation. ¶As the forces of the viśuddha chakra come into prominence in the New Age, it does not mean that the other centers of consciousness have stopped working. But it does mean that this new one coming into prominence is claiming the energy within the mass consciousness. When this center of divine love gains a little more power, everything will come into an exquisite balance. There will be a natural hierarchy of people based on the awakening of their soul, just as previous ages established hierarchies founded on power or intellectual acumen. With that one needed balance, everything on the Earth will quiet down, because the viśuddha chakra is of the new age of universal love in which everyone sees eye to eye, and if they do not, there will always be someone there to be the peacemaker. Look back through history and you will see how these planetary influences, these great mind strata of thought, have molded the development of human society. §
The same cyclical pattern of development in human history is evident even more clearly in the growth of the individual. In the seven cycles of a man’s life, beginning at the time of his birth, his awareness automatically flows through one of these chakras and then the next one, then the next and then the next, provided he lives a pure life, following Sanātana Dharma under the guidance of a satguru. ¶In reality, most people never make it into the higher four chakras, but instead regress back time and again into the chakras of reason, instinctive will, memory, anger, fear and jealousy. Nevertheless, the natural, ideal pattern is as follows. From one to seven years of age man is in the mūlādhāra chakra. He is learning the basics of movement, language and society—absorbing it all into an active memory. The patterns of his subconscious are established primarily in these early years. From seven to fourteen he is in the svādhishṭhāna chakra. He reasons, questions and asks, “Why? Why? Why?” He wants to know how things work. He refines his ability to think for himself. Between fourteen and twenty-one he comes into his willpower. He does not want to be told what to do by anyone. His personality gets strong, his likes and dislikes solidify. He is on his way now, an individual answerable to no one. Generally, about this time he wants to run away from home and express himself. From twenty-one to twenty-eight he begins assuming responsibilities and gaining a new perspective of himself and the world. Theoretically, he should be in anāhata, the chakra of cognition, but a lot of people never make it. They are still in the bull-in-the-china-shop consciousness, crashing their way through the world in the expression of will, asking why, reasoning things out and recording it in memory patterns which they go over year after year after year. ¶But if awareness is mature and full, having incarnated many, many times, he goes on at twenty-one to twenty-eight into the anāhata chakra. Here he begins to understand what it’s all about. He comprehends his fellow men, their relationships, the world about him. He seeks inwardly for more profound insight. The chakra is stabilized and smoothly spinning once he has raised his family and performed his social duty and, though he may yet continue in business, he would find the energies withdrawing naturally into his chest. It is only the renunciate, the maṭhavāsi, the sannyāsin, who from twenty-eight to thirty-five or before, depending on the strictness of his satguru, comes into the viśuddha chakra, into inner-light experiences, assuming a spiritual responsibility for himself and for others. This awakening soul appreciates people, loves them. His heart and mind broadly encompass all of humanity. He is less interested in what people do and more in what they are. It is here that, having withdrawn from the world, the world begins to renounce him. Then, from thirty-five to forty-two, or before, he perfects his sādhanas and lives in the ājñā chakra, experiencing the body of the soul, that body of light, awareness traveling within naturally at that time, withdrawing from mundane affairs of the conscious mind. From forty-two through forty-nine he is getting established in the sahasrāra chakra in a very natural way, having met all of the responsibilities through life. ¶This is the exacting path a devotee would follow under the training of a satguru. Ideally, and traditionally, the young man should come under the training of a guru at about fourteen years of age, when he is just coming into the maṇipūra area of will. At this point, the will is malleable and can be directed into the channels of the inner climb, rather than directed toward the outer world, though he may work or study in the outer world, too. But his motivation is inner. Carefully guided, awareness flows through each of these force centers, and at fifty years of age, he is fully trained and mentally prepared to take on intense spiritual responsibilities of his sampradāya and soar even more deeply inward in a very, very natural way.§