The main element of human energy structure is chakral system. Chakras (Sanskrit: Chakra — wheel or disc) are mentioned in the most part of Yoga and Tantra origins, such as «Gheranda Samhita», «Hatha Yoga Pradipika», «Shiva Samhita», «Shat Chakra nirupane», «Yoga Tattva Upanishad», «Amritabindu Upanishad» and many other.
Chakras are also mentioned in Tibetan origins such as in the famous Atlas of Tibetan medicine, in Chinese treatises of Neidan (Sanskrit: neidan — inner elixir). Some elements of chakral system are mentioned in Japanese martial arts (hara, ten-sho), in outlooks of Mesoamerican shamans. These notions are also met in less developed systems (naturally, in simplified version).
The Western world¹ learned about chakras thanks to the proceedings of Arthur Avalon, a European who got into the restricted Indian Tantric School and afterwards has published notions he received. He was the first to publish classical Indian drawings of chakras, which have been redrawn for last 100 years by other authors with all imaginable errors and distortions. He also gave mantras for chakras and their petals, correlated petals with human qualities. Based on his chakral scheme a countless number of schools and interpretations were born, as well as various techniques of work with chakras. Although being an adept of an esoteric school, Avalon made some hay of understanding chakral system, affirming that one can open chakras by «raising Kundalini», while an common person has all chakras closed.
The next step in understanding the chakral system in modern occult tradition was made by Rudolph Steiner, the founder of anthroposophist society. He noticed that chakras don’t open while raising Kundalini, on the contrary: people open their chakras, acquiring some qualities and skills, which creates prerequisites for raising Kundalini. Thanks to Steiner’s observation the concept of chakral system in modern esotericism has broadened. In Steiner’s works he affirms that all people have chakras, but their level of development can differ. Moreover the chakra’s characteristics define our actions, capacities and personality.
At the same time psychology also approached the problem of chakral system.
Wilhelm Reich further acknowledged as a founder of the body psychotherapy has found out that psychological problems lead to muscle blocks, localising as seven «muscle armours», each of them reflecting a certain well-defined group of problems. (I suppose, that even those readers who don’t know about works of Reich have already guessed that position and characteristics of these «armours» amazingly reminded Steiner’s chakral system). This theory was significantly developed by progenies and followers of Reich (A. Lowen, Feldenkreiz), while body-psychotherapy has taken a fare place among other therapeutic systems. The Western world was finding its first clues.
A certain input in understanding the chakral system and its role in studying human body was done by mediums in the period of great interest to the extrasensory capacities in the late 1970s. Mostly independently from the mentioned origins based on their personal experience, mediums noticed that human body has energy centres and a man’s health depends on their state. These centres are located practically in the same place as Avalon’s lotuses.
However no wonder all the systems independently were coming to the same conclusions. Chakras exist in reality and any studying of a human being ultimately leads to similar notions. The connection between emotional states and certain parts of body is also reflected in such metaphors as «to have a clear head», «a thick-headed person», «lump in one’s throat», «a heart withered», «to be a pain in the neck», «a great weight off one’s mind», «a sinking sensation in the pit of one’s stomach», «ants in one’s pants», «a pain in the ass».
Footnotes:
1. General public. Alchemists and representatives of other esoteric systems in Europe has known about chakral system before.↑
is located between eyebrows and relates to the pineal gland. Anatomically relates to the brain, eyes, frontal and maxillary sinuses, nose, and upper teeth.
is located around the throat and relates to the thyroid and parathyroid gland, ears and everything in the larynx, with gullet, trachea, upper bronchus, tongue and cervical vertebra.
is located slightly over the navel and relates to the following organs: stomach, gastrointestinal tract (except the upper gullet), intestines, first of all with the small intestine (colon is more related to the Muladhara), upper kidneys and adrenals (adrenalin is a hormone of Manipura), liver, spleen, vertebra in the Manipura region, pancreas.
is located in genitals, about 4 fingers down the navel. Related to the genitals (male and female), bladder, inferior kidneys, renal pelvises, ureters, uriniferous tubule (for women), lower back (except the sacrum, related to Muladhara), hips.
is located in the sacrum. It relates to the sacrum, prostate, pelvis, colon, rectum.
Chakras exist on the astral, etheric and physical planes. Correlating their localisation with endocrine glands and with the knots of autonomic nervous system (ANS) we can easily see the perfect analogy. This connection is absolute most of all, if you take into account additional chakras (4 for each primary chakra), mentioned in the Atlas of Tibetan Medicine. Physically every chakra is presented by a gland or an ANS node.
Nevertheless people are not just physics. That is why the chakral system is not limited by the particularities of our physical body. Chakra’s characteristics are directly related to the human energy and psyche. As a matter of fact chakras are «a bridge», connecting our physical, etheric and astral bodies.
Endocrine glands
Ganglia of ANS and their correlation with chakras
Figure of chakras from the «Atlas of Tibetan medicine».
The figure is interesting in a way that it marks
not only the essential but also auxiliary chakras.
It should be borne in mind that the Tibetans considered
Chakra is a complicated notion with many parameters. They are often described from just one point of view. For example, saying it’s strong or weak. Actually to describe chakra you need at least ten differ- ent parameters. Some of them are given below.
Chakra’s strength is a volume of energy, initially present in a chakra, while its weakness is the absence of this energy. The energy in chakra determines our desires, and the more energy we have, the stronger our desires are. This fact explains the esoteric principle; if you listen to your real desires, you follow your dharma.
From all above said it is easy to understand that a person with a strong chakra is highly motivated by needs related to this chakra; so we can make a psychological portrait of people with different strong chakras. For instance a person with strong Muladhara works for prosperity, routinely organizes his private space and is never tired of it. He likes it because it corresponds his needs and desires. Wherever he goes, he’ll always put everything around in order — for better for worse. A person with a strong Muladhara doesn’t like discomfort.
For a person with a strong Svadhishthana pleasures are one of the dominating motives. He looks for pleasure in everything, and, if he doesn’t find it, he creates it. A motive of sensual pleasure, including sexual, is dominating for him.
A person with a strong Manipura is motivated by needs in dominating, governing, social recognition and respect. Such people live for their career.
A person with a strong Anahata lives with his feelings. For example, he or she can sacrifice something for love (or hatred which is just another feeling).
A person with a strong Vishuddha is motivated by perception of the World and his need to express himself. He or she is curious, inquisitive and often aesthetic. Vishuddha is also responsible for verbal intellect, i.e. the capacity to express one’s thoughts in words.
A person with a strong Ajna is motivated by existential needs, i.e. a need to form his worldview, to see his place in the world, to under- stand the sense of life.
The upper chakra, Sahasrara and its characteristics are not studied in this book, because its expression has to do with the contact of a man and the Cosmos, Superior Powers and for most people is not so important.
Maturity of chakra. Openness and closeness of chakra #
First of all we should speak not about chakra’s openness, but about its maturity or immaturity. A mature chakra means a person has a lot of experience on it.
The mature Ajna depending on it’s development can allot a person observation skills, logical thinking, erudition, analytical thinking and deep wisdom.
If a person has a mature Vishuddha, he can verbally express his thoughts and feelings — in words or by other meanings.
Having a mature Anahata one knows how to operate with the energy of feelings. He can show his feelings and accepts those of others. He can be outstanding in emotional, sensitive sphere. Usually people with mature Anahata are very artistic.
A person with the mature Manipura is a person with the powerful social intelligence, meaning he’s bellicose, independent, knows how to achieve his goals by socially accepted means, even to the prejudice of others.
A person with the mature Svadhishthana knows how to live with pleasure. He can get pleasure from life and give it to others. His pleasures are well defined, he’s an expert in sophisticated delights and states.
A person with the mature Muladhara easily structures all around. Such people build many things, do repairs and put everything around them in order.
It can be that a person has a strong, but immature chakra.
Let’s take for example, Svadhishthana. One can have a strong Svadhishthana with a lot of energy in it, but all the scope of his sensual delights is to eat, to drink and to sleep… In this case we say that chakra is strong, but immature.
The same with strong, but immature Manipura. It makes a person have tendency to dominate, but it’s expressed in primitive forms: to beat someone, to humiliate, to scare. A person with such Manipura doesn’t understand that there are subtler ways to dominate, more sophisticated forms of managing people, and, consequently, cannot use these means.
A person with a strong, but immature Anahata is overwhelmed with feelings, but he doesn’t know what they are, he cannot neither ex- press nor define his state.
A strong, but immature Vishuddha give rise to «inventors» of perpetual motion machines, amateur art activists and so on.
Thus every centre isn’t just a drawing or a lotus on our backbone opening when Kundalini passes by. It is a well-defined set of psychic functions, expressing in everyday life like skills, abilities, capacities and qualities. Hence it is obvious that a person with mature chakras is more complete, than the one who has some unopened chakras.
The most usual, clear and natural combination is a weak and immature chakra. Such person hardly expresses himself on this chakra. Quite positive is a situation when a chakra is strong, but immature. Then he has a lot of energy and can afford himself to make mistakes and make some new experience. If he makes it his aim, he can develop his chakra. At that time he’ll have less energy in it, because by the cut and try method he’ll stumble many times and pay with his energy for new experience.
The more mature is chakra, the less energy you have to apply to achieve your goals related to this chakra.
Let’s take the example of Vishuddha. Everyone needs a certain number of words to explain his thought to other people. The less this chakra is developed, the more words you need. One can explain for hours, another needs just a few words and bright images. Not only comprehensiveness, but also capacious ness of the speech is growing with Vishuddha’s development. For example, Patanjali’s «Sutra Yoga» is just four pages that can be interpreted and reinterpreted, because it is laconic. Information is so to say compact. Short phrases contain many meanings and nuances.
If a mature person «emanates» his energy of Svadhishthana, people around fall into a «high» state. If one uses energy of Manipura, others start feeling anxiety and fear. You can hardly approach such a person without a trepidation, and even a thought of attacking him scares you (for real). The more mature is chakra, the less energy a person needs having more ways to achieve his goals.
The openness of chakra is the ability to emanate energy directly, escaping any action. So a person with the open Vishuddha doesn’t need words to explain. You come to ask him a question and suddenly you realise that you already know the answer. The ability to transmit your state and to express your feelings without speaking is a sign of an open Anahata and so on.
The openness of chakra is the attribute of yogin state. We call yogin a person who has opened all 7 chakras and is capable to emanate energy from each of them with no action.
Of course all the described states are siddhas — extra capacities, beyond «normal» or better to say usual human’s abilities. The capacity to manage outer etheric or astral field of any chakra is a siddha. Opening any chakra we get a certain set of siddhas, while, if you don’t have certain siddhas, it means your respective chakra is closed.
It’s important to understand that not only those, who do occult practices can have siddhas. Common people often have some of these siddhas and very powerful ones, but they ignore their energy side. Realisation in society directly depends on siddhas he has. For example, can a person become a chief, if he doesn’t make employees tremble by his only look? Does a doctor always understand why he makes such a diagnosis? Why one musician deeply affects listeners to tears, while another plays the same music just doing an accurate technique? The answer to these questions lies in the ability to work with energy.
Sometimes people use their siddhas unconsciously. Some do it semiconsciously. They know what to do, which state to take in order to make things happen, but there is a certain difference between a common person with some siddhas and an esoteric. A person in the society realises his skills, i.e. uses what he already has. The one who practices esotericism or yoga has a wider task. He tries not just to realise his abilities (which is also very important), but also to work out new capacities and skills to crucially change something in his life or in himself. This is what is called the work on opening our chakral system.
