. . . . continued from previous issue
The Current of Consciousness
Are there special procedures, processes, connections, which consciousness follows in running our personalities? The universal consciousness principle may be compared, for our purpose here, to a current into which, through many sockets, various electric appliances are plugged. The same one current supplies cooling power to the cooler, heating power to the heater, helps a radio to tune into sound waves, and the TV to gather and project visual images. So also is the consciousness principle (the primary force from which all other energies are derived, whose variations on the theme they all are) connected into all living beings, supplying to each its/his/her power for will, knowledge, and action.
In human beings this primary consciousness becomes operative through a system of psychophysiological centers. So far we have been traveling along the finest current. Now we begin to look from the opposite, the grosser end called the physical body. This body with all its cells, as we said earlier, is run by prana; the prana is directed by the mind and the mind is guided by consciousness. There are areas in our human personality where these various energies are joined together in close consonance, resonating to each other’s vibrations, deriving the power from consciousness which, however, is absolute in itself and resonates to no other. In these specific areas the vibration passes from consciousness into the mind/prana/body system—and from these areas the energy is distributed into the rest of the personality. These are the psychophysiological centers which are plugged into the current of consciousness, and they respond to its universal rhythms.
Take, for example, our breathing process. What is the origin of breath which, when looked at physically, is nothing but a series of pockets of air trapped into certain cavities? What turns that air into flowing breath? Rhythm of the movement of certain organs. What moves the organs? The prana. What causes the prana to vibrate so that the organs linked to its specific areas should thus move rhythmically? The mind, of course. The mind is moved by consciousness. Again, look at it differently. The universal consciousness, which makes the world dance by its power, sends a tiniest spark of its thrill through the mind into our psychophysiological centers in such locations as the navel, cardiac center, throat, and the pineal area. The thrill creates a pulsation in the prana system which in turn creates certain rhythmic movements in the organs connected therewith. The rhythm is synchronized, coordinated because it originates in the same single original thrill. Through this process, air, which would otherwise remain trapped in the cavities (as in a dead body) begins to flow as a smooth stream, and we say that the child has begun to breathe! On the other hand, when the thrill of consciousness is withdrawn, the breath simply becomes trapped air, and the doctor says that the person is dead. He who understands the source of the thrill knows that the rhythm of his breath responds to the same vibration which produces pulsations in the hearts of suns. It is thus that the yogis give to some of their breathing exercises names such as “piercing through the sun,” Surya-Vedhana.
The Chakra System
We need to elaborate further on the way consciousness becomes operative in the personality. It is not subject to limitations of space, time, dimensions, personalities in its full universal identification. It is sent forth into our being which is made of lower and denser frequencies, like a straight beam of light penetrating through a rocky cave. Because the lower frequency energies vibrate in a time space reference, creating a physical body, a physical locus has to be assumed in us for that light which transcends all loci. So the yogis say that this immense, intense energy beam of consciousness, the kundalini, is located in us in a channel extending from the base of the spine up to and engulfing the entire brain region. Though nonphysical (and therefore not tangible), it is experienced by the yogis in deep meditation as an unceasing flash of rod-like lightning shining with a light like that of ten thousand suns, yet as slim as though it were a ten thousandth of a hair’s breadth in width.
to be continued . . .
