CHAKRAS
The brain is not only centred in the head, but the brain goes right down your back through the spinal column. The spinal cord is part of your brain. For the physical system to function, it has to have certain vortexes of energy. Chakra means wheel, and a wheel forever turns. Therefore, it is a vortex forever spinning, spinning, spinning.
‘You have seven hundred chakras. In other words, seven hundred centres from which energies are emitted, but there are seven main ones. You have the Muladhara, Swadhistan, Manipura, Anhata, Vissuda, the Ajna and of course, the Sahasrara which is the sum totality of all the brain cells in your two-and-a-half-pound weight organ called the brain. That is called the Sahasrara.
We know that there is a whole complex of nerves at the navel centre. There is also a very high complex nervous system at the heart area, which is all gathered in a bunch, and likewise at various parts of the body. What we are doing is just discovering the extension of the brain, which contains billions of cells.
The spinal cord is a continuation of the brain with its various nerve centres. Without these nerve centres, you cannot function. The solar plexus has its vortex of energies, and so does the heart area, so does the Muladhara and the Vishuddha and the Svadhishthana. These are energy centres, vortexes in the brain.
Certain parts of the brain, at least ninety-odd percent of the brain, is dormant. The cells are functioning, but they are not totally connected to your consciousness. By spiritual practices, we set those energy centres or chakras at a proper rate of vibration so that the left hemisphere of the brain could work in conjunction with the right hemisphere of the brain through synapses. Neurons are flashing across at such a high vibratory rate that you would be able to cognise things that you have not cognised before, and that is the meaning of awareness. By activating these various vortexes of energy, you are awakening the dormant brain cells.
EVERYTHING IN LIFE IS AN EXPRESSION
With the physical body, we have the subtle body, and the subtle body is just a duplicate of the physical body in a subtle form. All mental illnesses or psychosomatic illnesses stem from the subtle body; the subtle body cannot contain it within itself but has to transmit it, has to express itself.
Everything in life is an expression. Everything in life has to express itself to rid itself of these various energies. It is only by dissipating or throwing off energies that more energies come to you. So, it is always by giving that you are gaining.
When the subtle body functions in harmony, that very harmony is transmitted to the physical body or the waking conscious mind, and that is where cognition occurs. Without the subtle body, you will have no perception whatsoever. All your five senses – seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting – will never function if your subtle body is not working correctly. As in the case of bad hearing, what is affected first is your subtle body.
IN HEALING WE TREAT THE SUBTLE BODY
When we do healing, we treat the subtle body and bring all those energies of the subtle body in a harmonious state, bringing them to the right vibration pitch. Then that, in turn, reflects upon the physical body and rights the wrongs of the physical body. The subtle body is but a continuum of the physical body, and so is the Spiritual Self of man a continuum of the subtle body. It is all but one superimposed one upon the other. This means that there is no separation whatsoever.
When you water a plant, you do not water the branches or the leaves, water the root. You treat the roots – that is where the fertiliser goes. That is where the water goes. Once the root of yourself is strengthened, once your subtle body is strengthened, you will not find ill effects in the grosser counterpart which we know as the physical body.
In healing, we treat the subtle body. As the physical body has its physical nervous system, so has the subtle body its subtle nervous system. By energising that subtle nervous system, by bringing it into greater harmony, you have a feeling of wellbeing. Certain organs of yours could be destroyed, but the feeling of wellbeing can always be maintained by exercising the subtle body. That is why certain chakric practices are prescribed to people wherever they are required.
THE SUBTLE BODY AND THE PHYSICAL BODY WORKS TOGETHER
Do not ever think the physical body is separate from the subtle body. It works in a continuum, and the only time a so-called separation occurs is when you discard the physical body. The physical body is just an instrument, a piece of wood, through which the subtle body or the mental body or you could call it the samskaric body transmits itself. When you like someone or fall in love with someone, you are not falling in love with the physical self. You are falling in love with that subtle body which is transmitting itself through the physical body. Therefore, people who do not understand the ramifications and the subtle body’s complexities concentrate only on the physical body.
What has to be righted there is the subtle body. That is where healing comes in the picture, and to heal is to make whole. That is healing. When you as healers become the channel, and you are taught how to become the channel, then these energies are transferred to you to use wisely without any gain or sense of gain. These energies of the Universal Spirit flow through your subtle body, then through your physical body, and contacts the object or the patient’s physical body and penetrates the subtle body and makes the subtle body function in harmony. The subtle body is the vehicle that leads one to enlightenment where all the chakras are functioning at a much finer level in total harmony.
SPIRITUAL PRACTICES HARMONISES AND HEIGHTENS THE ENERGIES
The subtle bodies of ninety-nine-point 99999 percent of the world’s people are not functioning in harmony, which is why conflicts occur. That is why one samskara is battling against another samskara, and conflicts are produced. Conflicts are expressed in all kinds of relationships and all kinds of communication because it is only the conscious mind that is taken into account in relationships and communication. The conscious mind only recognises the conscious mind of the other. Therefore, you have all your opposites: love, hate; cold, heat. All the opposites occur.
In our spiritual practices, we bring the subtle body in total alignment where all these vortexes of energies function harmoniously, harmoniously to keep the physical body well, and heighten the vibration. When vibrations are heightened to a certain pitch, they merge into the spiritual, the real self of man. Therefore, spiritual masters never care for their physical selves because their subtle bodies are so merged into their spiritual body, their spiritual Universal Self.
Their subtle bodies are vibrating at such a fine rate which is the rate of the real Universal Self. That is called knowing yourself. That is called self-realisation. That is called God-realization. That is called “I and my Father are one.”
GREATER EMPHASIS ON THE SUBTLE BODY
The greater emphasis should be on the connecting link, and the connecting link is the subtle body between the gross physical body and the spiritual body. That is where we put our emphasis, and this is what I lecture to physicians and surgeons about how to tackle the subtle body of man. All cases in a lunatic asylum are because of the subtle body where the various vortexes of energies are not functioning in harmony or combination with each other, thereby creating disharmony.
The subtle body can also be termed the mental body. We want to get rid of the mind because the only thing that stands between you and God is the mind. But we use the mind to reach where we want to reach. It is like in a certain science of medicine where you remove a thorn with a thorn. You use the mind to get rid of itself. You use the various levels of the mind, the higher levels to overcome the grosser levels, which is the repository of all your memories and experiences. When that is reached, there is no yesterday, and there is no tomorrow. Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is but a projection. That is how it works. That is the key. That is the secret. That is the key to stability, and what is required to be stable in human life is your mind—nothing else. You can be the ugliest person in the world, the most deformed person physically, the illest person, but if your mind is stable, then everything is well.
This stability is brought about by the proper rate of the functioning of those vortexes of energy in your mind and transmitted through the brain. We need an awakening of that organ, making those billion cells come alive because we are only using a fraction of those billion cells.
From this, you could measure at what stage of evolution we are, where we are using only a fraction of these billion cells. The more those cells are awakened, the more could the mind flow through it, and the mind, as I have said before, is only one mind. Only one mind, and the individuality you feel are because of how many cells have been awakened within you. When you make the statement that one person is more spiritually developed than the other, and if you have to translate it into physical terms, you study the brain, how many of those cells are awakened? How many of those cells are dormant?
Our spiritual practices are aimed at that. To awaken brain cells, awaken the neurological part of ourselves, open it, open the windows so the air of universal knowledge that is already there can be brought out, transmitted, and transmuted into physical action.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1982 – 10