Many seekers want a future of wealth, family and friends and they want the very highest spiritual illumination, too. This is their spiritual pride setting an unrealistic pattern. We must remember that after one renounces the world, with his entering the higher chakras—viśuddha, ājñā and sahasrāra—the world renounces the individual. If married, he no longer can fulfill his purusha dharma, his family duties. He can no longer hold employment that offers benefits for longevity. His perspective of the world and advancement in it has been changed forever. As a ship floats aimlessly on the ocean without a rudder, so does the unprepared soul meander who has forced his way, uninvited through initiation, into the realm of the saints and sages of Sanātana Dharma. This is why householders and all who have not properly prepared themselves, been well schooled and tested by a competent preceptor, should not go too deeply into rāja or kuṇḍalinī yoga practices.
If they are prone to anger, jealousy, contempt and retaliation, they should abstain from any of the yogas of japa or exploratory meditation. These will only intensify and prāṇanize the lower chakras that give rise to demonic forces. Rather, they should perform the always healing vāsanā daha tantra and confine themselves to karma yoga, such as cleaning in and around the temple and picking flowers for the pūjās. These simple acts of charyā are recommended, but should be not extended to intense worship.
Then, and only then, their life will be in perspective with the philosophy of Sanātana Dharma and begin to become one with Śiva’s perfect universe. Brahmadvara, the door to the seven chakras below the mūlādhāra, will then be sealed off as their experiential patterns settle into the traditional perspective of how life should be and each individual should behave within it.
The use of drugs is another foreboding danger, for certain stimulants set in motion the kuṇḍalinī simultaneously into higher and lower regions. For instance, when the user of drugs, like an intruder, forces his way into the experience of the oneness of the universe, the totality of now-ness and all-being, by touching into the fourth chakra, anāhata, simultaneously every other center below the anāhata is stimulated, meaning svādhishṭhāna and the first, third, fifth and seventh below the base of the spine—the centers of reason, fear, jealousy, selfishness and malice. Noticeable mood swings of those who rely on drugs hamper the person throughout life. Only severe prāyaśchitta, penance, can set the course toward spiritual healing.
As it is said, “What goes up must come down.” This is especially true with the kuṇḍalinī śakti moving through either of the other of the two wrong channels, where it can produce “dis-ease”—discomfort, physically, emotionally, intellectually and astrally—that no doctor’s effort can fathom the cause of or effect a cure. At various junctures, as it rises, the kuṇḍalinī śakti, or serpent power, attacks the organs in the vicinity of the chakra it is passing through, biting and poisoning them on the astral level. As it climbs, each one of the astral organs is hurt and felt as a physical ailment. This often reflects as a symptomatic problem in the kidneys, then stomach problems and later heart problems and thyroid difficulties. At each juncture, the doctor would be perplexed by the ailment, unable to find a medical cause, then doubly perplexed when that problem leaves and the next one arises. Though treatments and multiple tests are more than often given, the source of the problems is usually undetected.
A devotee going through this experience often challenges the will of his satguru, whereupon he is left to his own devices, as it lies beyond even the guru’s ability to help or guide him further. For the rule is: the guru takes nine steps toward the seeker for each humble, cooperative, eager step the devotee takes toward him. When the devotee balks, begins to argue and challenge the guru’s will, this is the guru’s signal to withdraw, a mystical sign that his ninth step had been taken. Should he take the tenth, he enters without a welcome, and tangles when steps eleven and twelve are taken. To withdraw then would cause an unwanted karma of hurt, pain and anguish. So, the wisdom of the ancients is “For every one step taken toward the guru, the guru takes nine toward the devotee.”
Then Śrī Śrī Śrī Viśvaguru Mahā-Mahārāj-ji steps in and takes over, and the failed aspirant either is corrected by the forces of circumstance to give up spiritual pursuits for financial or other reasons, or he spins off the spiritual path into Viśvaguru’s āśrama, called Bhogabhūmi, place of pleasure (another name for Earth). It is the biggest āśrama of all. Here followers learn by their own mistakes and make fresh new karmas to be experienced in yet another life.
To avoid these problems, and worse, the kuṇḍalinī śakti has to be brought down all the way—slowly, not abruptly, lest the person become suicidal—all the way to the base, to the mūlādhāra chakra, and then redirected up the proper channel. As pride comes before a fall, the fall of the spiritual pride is again another hurt, a final bite from the serpent, and as the poison flows through all organs, temporary physical, mental and emotional suffering is the consequence.
There are three channels through which the spiritual energies of the kuṇḍalinī can rise. The one recommended is the sushumṇā. The other two are to be avoided. When the kuṇḍalinī śakti flows outside of the sushumṇā nāḍī into and through the iḍā nāḍī on the left side of the spine, which corresponds to the left sympathetic nerve system, it is fragmented into other smaller and more sensitive nerve currents connected to the organs of the physical body. It produces heat within this formerly cool nāḍī network. The person becomes overly emotional, feminine in nature, talks a lot, often has hurt feelings, cries at the least provocation and engages in other emotional behavior patterns that center around the personal I-ness. Such persons always want to help others, but rarely actually do. This heat, though astral, is felt in the physical body in the solar plexus. When provoked, the person angers and is always quick to defend the personal ego in saving face. Similarly, when the serpent power flows up through the piṅgalā nāḍī and into the sympathetic nerve network on the right side of the body, the person becomes overly intellectual, very masculine in nature, talks little, has steel nerves and patterns centering around the conquest of others through intellectual debate. He is prone to long silences, holding in emotions, and to secret patterns of behavior to stimulate or satisfy base desires. In other words, he is not open, smiling, friendly, companionable. In either case, the kuṇḍalinī śakti rising through the iḍā or piṅgalā can move upward only to the viśuddha chakra and no farther. This is the impasse.
The misdirection of the kuṇḍalinī happens most often to the less disciplined, those more eager for attainments on the fast track, those not under the watchful eye of the satguru. Nevertheless, the novice feels a dynamic awakening of power. This heat, produced by the kuṇḍalinī śakti flowing through either of these two nāḍīs of the sympathetic nerve system, can and often does produce jerking in the body, spine and neck.
More often than not, the jerking body, twisting neck and the “I now know it all” attitude are taken for a highly spiritual experience and even validated as such by certain teachers. But it is as if we were driving on a rocky road, thinking it to be a smooth highway. It is an unusual experience, to be sure, building the personal ego into something it was never intended to be. When this happens to a devotee, the wise guru or swāmī recommends that all spiritual practices be immediately stopped. Japa should be stopped. All prāṇāyāma except the simplest regulation of the breath should be stopped. Reading scripture should be stopped, worship of all kinds should be stopped. Anything other than wholesome, humbling karma yoga, such as cleaning bathrooms, should be stopped. Growing food should be encouraged. Bare feet on the ground and at the same time hands in the dirt is the best way to bring the rampant kuṇḍalinī down to the mūlādhāra chakra. Once it is down, it can be directed up through the right current, but only when the devotee does not have conflicting patterns in his life.
Unlike the subtle movement of the divine serpent power through its proper channel, the sushumṇā nāḍī within the spine, its misdirection may reflect a dramatic change in the nature, turning the once humble student into an ego giant, either overly emotional and self-centered or intellectually argumentative; both types are not self-reflective in any way. From a perhaps once shy person, we now have a “Come to me, I will fix you, repair you, inspire you, for I am aware,” or worse, “I am enlightened.” Once the spiritual ego has taken over, some even claim to have attained more than their teacher. They don’t need a teacher anymore. For them, the guru is on the inside, and their heated discussions, emotional outbursts and challenging positions eventually take their toll on their own being.
In mystic cosmology, the seven lokas, or upper worlds, correspond to the seven higher chakras. The seven talas, or lower worlds, correspond to the chakras below the base of the spine. Man is thus a microcosm of the universe, or macrocosm. The spine is the axis of his being, as Mount Meru is the axis of the world, and the fourteen chakras are portals into the fourteen worlds, or regions of consciousness. The actinodic life force within the sushumṇā current runs up and down the spine and becomes very powerful when the iḍā and piṅgalā, or the odic forces, are balanced. Then man becomes completely actinodic. He doesn’t feel, in a sense, that he has a body at that particular time. He feels he is just a being suspended in space, and during those times his anāhata and viśuddha chakras are spinning and vibrating. When, through the practice of very intense, sustained states of contemplation, he merges into pure states of superconsciousness, the iḍā and the piṅgalā form a circle. They meet, and the pituitary and the pineal glands at the top of the head also merge their energies. This produces deep samādhi. The pituitary gland awakens first and through its action stimulates the pineal. The pineal shoots a spark into the pituitary, and the door of Brahman, the Brahmarandhra, is opened, never to close. I once saw the sahasrāra on a long stem above my head when I was in New York in 1953 or ’54.
The sushumṇā force also merges, and the kuṇḍalinī, which is at this time playing up and down the spine like a thermometer, as the fire-heat body of man, rises to the top of the head, and man then goes beyond consciousness and becomes the Self and has his total Self Realization, nirvikalpa samādhi.
The iḍā nāḍī is pink in color. It flows down, is predominantly on the left side of the body and is feminine-passive in nature. The piṅgalā nāḍī is blue in color. It flows up, is predominantly on the right side of the body and is masculine-aggressive in nature. These nerve currents are psychic tubes, shall we say, through which prāṇa flows from the central source, Śiva. The prāṇa is flowing down through the iḍā and up through the piṅgalā, but in a figure eight. The sushumṇā nāḍī is in a straight line from the base of the spine to the top of the head. The iḍā and piṅgalā spiral around the sushumṇā and cross at the third chakra, the maṇipūra, and at the fifth chakra, the viśuddha, and meet at the sahasrāra. This means that there is a greater balance of the iḍā and the piṅgalā in man’s will center, the maṇipūra chakra, and in his universal love center, the viśuddha chakra, and of course at the great saṅga center, the meeting place of the three rivers, the sahasrāra chakra.
The sushumṇā nāḍī, flowing upward, is the channel for the kuṇḍalinī śakti, which is white. It is the cool energy, as white contains all colors. When the kuṇḍalinī rises, which happens almost imperceptibly under the guru’s watchful eye, consciousness slowly expands. The novice only knows of the subtle yet powerful spiritual unfoldment when looking back to the time the practices were begun. Now he sees how life was then and how now his soul’s humility has overtaken the external ego.
Through breathing exercises, meditation and the practice of haṭha yoga, the iḍā and the piṅgalā, the aggressive and passive odic forces, are balanced. When they are balanced, the chakras spin all at the same velocity. When the chakras spin at the same velocity, they no longer bind awareness to the odic world; man’s awareness then is automatically released, and he becomes conscious of the actinodic and actinic worlds.
Those chakras at the crossing of the iḍā and piṅgalā are the more physical of the chakras, whereas those it skips are energized by the sushumṇā itself. When the yogī is really centered within, the iḍā and piṅgalā then blend together in a straight line and merge into the sushumṇā, energizing all seven chakras, and in the older soul slowly, very slowly, slowly begin to energize the seven chakras above the sahasrāra. When this happens, he no longer thinks but sees and observes from the ājñā chakra between the eyes. He is totally consciously alive, or superconscious. It is only when his iḍā and piṅgalā begin functioning normally again that he then begins to think about what he saw.
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.
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 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.