Thursday, April 7, 2011

What the hell are the Chakras anyway? Part I

The chakras, energy, prana, and the whole 'subtle body' thing can be an extremely vague and confusing set of ideas.  What do we mean when we talk about chakras, chakra opening, chakra balancing, chakra purification, etc?  Do a quick google search and you’ll see the diversity of ideas and the strange convolutions of language that this subject seems to generate.  In one place chakras are “energy centers”, in another they are related to (or even reduced to) glands and nerve plexii (that is the plural for plexus, right?), and in another they are related to the astral body or aural field.  To the hard-minded type, this sort of language can make the whole thing easy to write off as hogwash.  They start looking around for the auras and astral body, and can’t detect a thing.  To the more intuitive-minded, descriptions of the chakras seem to echo an intuited truth that is vaguely perceived, and perhaps with practice perceived directly and “seen” in a vision.  My goal in these two posts (broken up for length) is to try to present my theory about the chakras as clearly as I can. Although the very subtlety of the subject matter makes a certain vagueness unavoidable, I will try to avoid the mystification and obfuscation (intentional or not) that is ubiquitous in this field.

            The chakras are usually described as “energetic centers”, “psychic centers”, or some such “center”.  The word ‘chakra’ (pronounced ‘cha-kra’, not ‘sha-kra’) just means ‘wheel’, but this, psychologically speaking, implies a center.  A wheel is essentially a mandala shape, an organization of images around a single point in the center.  The circumference is the limit which contains the related ideas.  The chakras are often described as moving, spinning, or revolving, implying constant change and flux.  This also relates to the idea of the ‘chitta vritti’ of modification (vritti) of the mind-stuff (chitta), or libido. Vritti implies change, revolution (as in Parvritta Trikonasana, rotated triangle pose), or movement.  We can think of the chittam or libido as an ocean of undifferentiated mental energy, within which are numerous eddies, waves, and whirlpools which are our thoughts.  Some of these harden into habits, hard notions, and complexes. In my last post (on the Ocean of Milk), I briefly touched on the idea that our complexes are ‘knots’ in the libido, or sum total of mental energy.  These knots bind up energy into forms, these forms forming the structure of our individual psyche.  Got picked on in middle school?  That probably effects how you see the world, and creates life-patterns that give form to your conception of yourself and your world.  Had a supportive and stable family situation growing up?  That too creates your way of interacting with the world.  When we identify closely with these patterns, we are limiting the potential ways we understand ourselves and our environment.  There is nothing inherently wrong with this – if it was any other way, we would have no individuality, or even motivations, and the beauty of diversity would be lost, because there could be no action. 
            A totally calm chittam (the yogic state of “chitta vritti nirodha”, cessation of mental change), is a state of potential and not activated, manifest energy.  This is a state of separation from the world, and of identifying with the undifferentiated soul itself rather than the specific persona (as an aggregate of the chitta vrittis).  This, according to the Yoga Sutras, is the goal of yoga.  But should the ultimate goal be to remain therein, absorbed in the ultimate unmanifest reality?  To me, this seems like escapism, and a pathological rejection of the world.  I think the healthier and mature way is presented in such thoughts as “after enlightenment, the laundry.”  Or of the college student who asked the Zen monk “what would you do if one day you were on your way to get some ice cream and you achieved nirvana?” to which the monk replied “I’d probably go enjoy some ice cream.”  In many traditions there is an important grounding, a rooting of even the highest flights of the spirit into the grossest earth.  High meditative states mean nothing if you still going around acting like a jerk to everyone when you’re not meditating.  Ultimately, we live on the earth, not in heaven. 
            Tantra, the religious tradition which developed the chakra system most completely (part of Hinduism, related to but distinct from yoga, Vedanta, etc.), also provides an answer to the ‘unworldliness’ of the more traditional yogic systems.  It does this through the veneration not only of the pure Purusha (soul) freed from its samyoga (bondage) in Prakriti (matter-mind), but by the veneration of the principal of manifestation itself – this stuff that we live in, of which the body, the mind, and everything else is made of.  This is the idea of this  world itself as God.  In the Yoga Sutras, Purusha is the only goal, and Prakriti (the world) is what must be ultimately rejected in order to experience that goal.  In Tantra, Prakriti is called Ma, the Goddess, Shakti (meaning power), and is worshiped equally with her counterpart, or with even more devotion.  Her counterpart is called here Shiva, which we can treat as consciousness, the Self, and the soul.  What is recognized herein is not only that manifest reality is a good thing, but also that the mind-body complex, which is considered Prakriti, or various stages of matter, is the vehicle for enlightenment.  This is far from the idea that the body or mind is a burden, but it also is inclusive of the notion that the mind-body can also act as a prison.  It is therefore neutral, able to be used for animal pleasure, or to scale the heights of the soul.  The body-mind is the cause of bondage, but it is also what is liberated; the soul is already free.
            Sir John Woodruff in his book The Serpent Power sums this positive notion of the world up well:  “One of the cardinal principles of the Shakta-Tantra is to secure by its Sadhana [practice] both Liberation (Mukti) and Enjoyment (Bhukti).  This is possible by the identification of the self when in enjoyment with the soul of the world.”  It is the recognition that all souls are one soul experienced not only in the highest states reached by the renunciate (the unmanifest), but also in the daily experience of the embodied soul (the manifest).   Realization of that, as opposed to merely intellectualizing it, is difficult either way, and with ultimately the same obstacle – the false identification of the self with the characteristic habits of mind, the body, and persona.  If we are ‘this person’ we can never experience the world from any other  than the egotic point of view.  If we learn to loosen the borders of our little self, we get a shift of perspective, and are able to create a new relationship with the contents of our own mind.  To me, this is ultimately what Tantra and the chakra system is all about – a way to gain perspective on, and to ultimately resolve and dissolve, our own complexes and ways of thinking about the contents of our experience.
            In psychology, this is often done by what is called ‘projection’ – this is where psychic content, say unresolved issues, are externalized and overlaid onto an outside object, often a person.  An example:  a woman’s unresolved issues with her father are projected onto her mate.  Women are often said to marry their fathers.  There may be repetitions of similar behavior with all previous boyfriends, etc.  What this really represents is an externalization of a content that can’t easily be assimilated, but when it is outside of us it can represent an opportunity to change the way we look at it, or change the habit – but only when we can reclaim, or reabsorb the projection.  Otherwise, the projection leads us on a merry chase and we replay the same dramas over and over again.  But if the content is separated from the self it can then be reabsorbed into a more stable whole, a higher synthesis.  You may be beginning to see the connection with my previous two posts. 

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