control should be effected is to place the Chitta (mind) on Sattā (existence) of Paramātmā in these Chakras. The Chitta should be taken to each of these three lowest centers and controlled, whereby these passions which have their respective places at those centers are controlled. Whenever, therefore, the senses (Indriya) get out of control, fix the Chitta (mind) on the Paramātmā in the particular Chakra.”
[To give the above an English turn of thought: if, say, anger is to be controlled, carry the mind to the navel, and there meditate upon the existence of the Supreme One (Paramātmā) in this center, not merely as the Supreme without the body and within the body, but as embodied in that particular part of it; for that is Its manifestation. The result is that the passionate activity of this center is subdued; for its functioning is attuned to the state of the Ātmā which informs it, and both the body and mind attain the peace of the Ātmā on which the self is centered.{90}]
“Having thus controlled the senses, the Gāyatrī Sādhanā commences, not at the lowest, but at the highest, of the six centers—namely, the Ājnā between the eyebrows. There is no necessity for the difficult and painful process of piercing the Chakras from below.{91} Fix the mind on the Lord (Īshvara) in the highest center. For the ether (Ākāsha) there is the existence (Sattā) of the Supreme Ātmā. There and in the two lower centers (Vishuddha and Anāhata) enjoyment is had with Īshvara. The union between Jīva and Prakriti is called Honey (Madhu) in the Upanishads. By Sādhanā of the Ājnā center (Chakra) purity of being (Bhāvashuddhi) is attained, and purity of speech follows on the attainment of such Bhāva. Yoga with the Supreme Devatā who is all-knowing is had here. He who is freed from all disturbing conditions of body and mind reaches the state which is beyond the Gunas (Gunātīta), which is that of the Supreme Brahman.”
We may conclude these two criticisms with the true Indian saying somewhat inconsistently quoted in the first: “To dispute the religion (Dharma) of another is the mark of a narrow mind. O Lord! O Great Magician! with whatsoever faith or feeling we call on Thee Thou art pleased.”
Whatsoever difference there has been, or may be, as to forms and methods, whether in Upāsanā or Yoga, yet all Indian worshippers of the ancient type seek a common end in unity with Light of Consciousness, which is beyond the regions of Sun, Moon, and Fire.
Recently some attention has been given to the subject in Western literature of an occult kind. Generally its authors and others have purported to give what they understood to be the Hindu theory of the matter, but with considerable inaccuracies. These are not limited to works of the character mentioned. Thus, to take but two instances of these respective classes, we find in a well-known Sanskrit dictionary{92} that the Chakras are defined to be “circles or depressions (sic) of the body for mystical or chiromantic purposes,” and their location has in almost every particular been wrongly given. The Mūlādhāra is inaccurately described as being “above the pubis.” Nor is the Svādhishthāna the umbilical region. Anāhata is not the root of the nose, but is the spinal center in the region of the heart; Vishuddha is not “the hollow between the frontal sinuses,” but is the spinal center in the region of the throat. Ājnā is not the fontanelle or union of the coronal and sagittal sutures, which are said to be the Brahmarandhra,{93} but is in the position allotted to the third eye, or Jnānachakshu. Others, avoiding such gross errors, are not free from lesser inaccuracies. Thus, an author who, I am informed, had considerable knowledge of things occult, speaks of the Sushumnā as a “force” which “cannot be energized until Idā and Pinggalā have preceded it,” which “passes to the accompaniment of violent shock through each section of the spinal marrow,” and which on the awakening of the sacral plexus passes along the spinal cord and impinges on the brain, with the result that the neophyte finds “himself to be an unembodied soul alone in the black abyss of empty space, struggling against dread and terror unutterable.” He also writes that the “current” of Kundalinī is called Nādī; that the Sushumnā extends as a nerve to the Brahmarandhra; that the Tattvas are seven in number; and other matters which are inaccurate. The Sushumnā is not a “force,”{94} and does not pass and impinge upon anything, but is the outer of the three Nādīs, which form the conduit for the force which is the arousing of the Devī called Kundalinī, which force is not itself a Nādī, but passes through the innermost, or Chitrinī Nādī, which terminates at the twelve-petalled lotus below the Sahasrāra, from which ascent is made to the Brahmarandhra. It would be easy to point out other mistakes in writers who have referred to the subject. It will be more profitable if I make as correct a statement as my knowledge admits of this mode of Yoga. But I desire to add that some modern Indian writers have also helped to diffuse erroneous notions about the Chakras by describing them from what is merely a materialistic or physiological standpoint. To do so is not merely to misrepresent the case, but to give it away; for physiology does not know the Chakras as they exist in themselves—that is, as centers of consciousness—and of its activity as Prānavāyu Sūkshma or subtle vital force; though it does deal with the gross body which is related to them. Those who appeal to physiology only are like to return non-suited.
We may here notice the account of a well-known “Theosophical” author{95} regarding what he calls the “Force centers” and the “Serpent Fire,” of which he writes that he has had personal experience. Though Mr. Leadbeater also refers to the Yoga Shāstra, it may perhaps exclude error if we here point out that his account does not profess to be a representation of the teaching of the Indian Yogīs (whose competence for their own Yoga the author somewhat disparages), but that it is the Author’s own original explanation (fortified, as he conceives, by certain portions of Indian teaching) of the personal experience which (he writes) he himself has had. This experience appears to consist in the conscious arousing of the “Serpent Fire,” with the enhanced “astral” and mental vision which he believes has shown him what he tells us. The centers, or Chakras, of the human body are by Mr. Leadbeater described to be vortices of “etheric” matter{96} into which rush from the “astral”{97} world, and at right angles to the plane of the whirling disc, the sevenfold force of the Logos bringing “divine life” into the physical body. Though all these seven forces operate on all the centers, in each of them one form of the force is greatly predominant. These inrushing forces are alleged to set up on the surface of the “etheric double”95 secondary forces at right angles to themselves. The primary force on entrance into the vortex radiates again in straight lines, but at right angles. The number of these radiations of the primal force is said to determine the number of “petals”94 (as the Hindus call them) which the “Lotus” or vortex exhibits. The secondary force rushing round the vortex produces the appearance of the petals of a flower, or, “perhaps more accurately, saucers or shallow vases of wavy iridescent glass.” In this way—that is, by the supposition of an etheric vortex subject to an incoming force of the Logos—both the “Lotuses” described in the Hindu books and the number of their petals is accounted for by the author, who substitutes for the Svādhishthāna center a six-petalled lotus at the spleen,{98} and corrects the number of petals of the lotus in the head, which he says is not a thousand, as the books of this Yoga say, “but exactly 960.”{99} The “etheric” center which keeps alive the physical vehicle is said to correspond with an “astral” center of four dimensions, but between them is a closely woven sheath or web composed of a single compressed layer of physical atoms, which prevents a premature opening up of communication between the planes. There is a way, it is said, in which these may be properly opened or developed so as to bring more through this channel from the higher planes than ordinarily passes thereby. Each of these “astral” centers has certain functions: At the navel, a simple power of feeling; at the spleen, “conscious travel” in the astral body; at the heart, “a power to comprehend and sympathize with the vibrations of other astral entities”; at the throat, power of hearing on the astral plane; between the eyebrows, “astral sight”; at the “top of the head,” perfection of all faculties of the astral life.{100} These centers are therefore said to take the place to some extent of sense organs for the astral body. In the first center, “at the base of the spine,” is the “serpent fire,” or Kundalinī, which exists in seven layers or seven degrees of force.{101} This is the manifestation in etheric matter, on the physical plane, of one of the great world forces, one of the powers of the Logos of which vitality and
