you will feel a warmth and tingling in your hands as the negative psychic tension begins to flow out of them. If you feel nothing, ask again with greater sincerity. Listen to your own voice as you ask, and see if you believe that it is sincere. After the process has gone on for a few minutes shake your hands, make a fist, and the flow will stop.
Fig. 6. Surrendering negativity
AN HOLISTIC VIEW
Over the course of time some traditions have emphasized working more with specific chakras and less with their interconnections. This is unfortunate. If the various channels cannot communicate, they will not be able to fulfill their underlying purpose. The chakras and the network that encloses them are part of a whole that cannot be understood, and cannot function properly, outside the context of the system that constitutes their frame of reference. This holistic orientation is often portrayed by showing sacred individuals and divinities with auras around their bodies and haloes surrounding their heads. If this type of symbolism occurred in only one or two traditions, it could be viewed as coincidental. But it is too pervasive to be an accident. A simpler explanation is that holy persons become that way precisely because a higher level of cosmic energy flows through them. It is this experience that religious art seeks to reproduce, utilizing a combination of psychic sight and traditional representation.
Students of the human energy field attest to the fact that all people have auras—colored emanations that are radiated as part of the life process of the individual. The frequency and intensity of the colors symbolize the level of energy transformation that is occurring. Dark brown is less desirable than shining orange. A person in whom the subtle body is fully functioning has greatly accelerated the transformation process within him. This is expressed as an expanded and purified energy field around the physical body. It is no accident that the aura of holy people is drawn in gold, which is rare, pure and radiant.
Sacred pictures may leave one with the impression that the particular saint was born with a halo or attained it in a moment of great illumination. This is misleading. The light that is shown was created as the overflow of a gradual process of development, in much the same way that the size of a tree trunk expresses a continuous growth process over many seasons. Religious artists have been telling us throughout history that the subtle body exists, and that the truest expression of the sacred in human experience is the quality of light radiated by the individual.
According to a number of mystical systems, the subtle body is one of a series of progressively more refined human manifestations. Although the terminology varies and the cross-comparisons are sometimes confusing, the recurrence of these conceptions suggests a more universal model of spiritual development. In Mahayana Buddhism the Buddha is viewed as having three bodies: "Nirmanakaya " (body of transformation), "Sambhogakaya" (body of enjoyment) and "Dharmakaya" (body of reality). In Hinduism the gross, subtle, and causal bodies offer a partial correspondence. The crucial consideration in the present context is that in order to get to the higher bodies, and the level of awareness and function that they incorporate, you must activate and utilize the energy body. In this sense it constitutes a crucial intervening link in the inner development of the individual.
In many systems the importance of the energy body is underplayed. Others seem to totally ignore it. In religions and mystical paths emphasizing love, whether Christian, Moslem or Hindu, the approach seems completely focused on devotion accompanied by obedience. One can interpret this approach as cultivating the heart chakra, but if this is being done, it is certainly an indirect approach.
Other ways emphasize mind control. Examples of this orientation are found in the Kabbala, Raja Yoga, Zen Buddhism, and various tantric visualization practices. These systems focus on efforts to control, guide, or eliminate thoughts. Here again, these methods may relate indirectly to opening the chakras in the head, but little or no mention is made of them.
Often a little creative detective work reveals aspects of subtle body functioning in approaches that have nothing direct to say about them. Several modern examples can be given. The late Hindu teacher J. Krishnamurti went to great lengths to avoid most traditional approaches and rejected most familiar teachers and teachings. His major emphasis was on cultivating awareness outside the context of any tradition. He did not acknowledge the subtle body. Nevertheless, it is interesting to read in his own diary2 of a period of intense and painful energy flow in his head and spine going on intermittently for 40 years as the accompaniment of various spiritual experiences. This description is quite similar to accounts of the arousal of kundalini, which is certainly a vital aspect of subtle body practices.
Fig. 7. The nimbus in Christ
Fig. 8. The aura in a Buddhist diety
Another example is the Hindu saint Sri Ramana Maharishi, who focused on the question "Who am I?" as the most direct path to enlightenment. In explaining the values of his system a major disciple, Sri Sadhu Om3 has recently explained that the "I" on awakening in the morning shoots from the heart center to the brain, and from there through the various energy channels which distribute the sense of identity throughout the body. In this description the chakra system is being recognized, even though it is generally underplayed or ignored in the Maharishi's method in order to emphasize the importance of one's identity as the major point of concentration.
One way to interpret the preceding is to conclude that the individual is influenced by the tradition within which he has been nourished and will interpret his experiences in that light. If part of that background includes a system incorporating the subtle body concept, then his experiences will find ways to support it. If the emphasis is on sudden transformation and revelation, it may be minimized. But if the subtle body is real, and the experiences of the individual are also real, then the two must relate, even if one must search to find the connection.
In the succeeding chapters of Part I, various models of the subtle body are described, analyzed, and compared. Some of the material may strike the reader as strange or even dubious. But the crucial question is always whether it can be experienced. If it can, then its importance is potentially very great. If not, the most elaborate conceptions will evaporate like mist and need not concern us further.
CHAPTER TWO
THE HINDU TRADITION
The origins of the Hindu tradition are hard to trace, but the high points of its history are relatively easy to identify. Starting about 3,500 years ago when the Aryans invaded Northern India, a new wave of influence was imposed upon the indigenous Dravidian culture, which had previously worshipped the earth and the feminine as the embodiment of creative energy. The Aryan influence, in contrast, was masculine and deified the sun. The two cultures were directly contradictory. But Hindus have specialized over the years in absorbing almost any influence and, in the process, creating a unique cultural synthesis, particularly in relation to philosophical and spiritual matters.
The major literary achievements of early Indian society, such as the Vedas—including the Samhitas and Brahmanas (of which the Upanishads are the most famous), the Sutras, and such classical epics as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata—stand on their own merits even today. But however high their literary and philosophical content may be, they have little to say about the subtle body. There are, however, interesting exceptions. For example in the Chandogya Upanishad it is said:
One hundred & one are the channels of the heart.
