My mother use to talk to me about the “Silver Cord” and how it was the thread that gave us life and when it was severed, life was over. On the one hand, it was interesting to know the mechanics of life but for a child, there was also a fear of what would happen if this cord snapped. Mercifully, this is not possible. The cord is infinitely elastic and the only agent that can detach it is your guardian angel. Once detached, it can not be re-attached. This does not mean you can not sever this link, either deliberately by your own actions or by the reckless actions of others. In these cases, it is the physical organism that is made unserviceable and so the cord detaches. Life can no longer be sustained in the biological organic suit we call our bodies.
Now to a few technicalities that one comes to learn as more information comes to light. The Sutratma, as far as Humanity is concerned, is dual in nature. There is the principle thread that we have been discussing. This cord is anchored in the heart. The other thread, which is the physical manifestation of consciousness is anchored in the head. You already know this but it is a good idea to reiterate this knowledge. In each subsequent incarnation, a human monad has to recreate itself. This involves both the Life and Consciousness threads. This has often been represented in esoterics as a spider’s web. The strands of the web have to be woven. Do we do this? No, it is the devas that do it but we take all the credit! The completed web allows us to not only gain knowledge of life through our experiences but our life is sustained as well. Eating just supports our borrowed organic reality suit, it is the Sutratma that feeds us life itself. So, we have the two basic threads, the Silver Cord and the Consciousness Thread, but there are also three others we need to create, making a total of five energies we need to channel into our envelopes to function as a viable unit on Earth.
The other three threads are anchored in the solar plexus, the head and the heart. As we evolve, our emotional and mental envelopes begin to function as a unit. Our causal envelope is always connected to our five envelopes of incarnation, the lower causal, the mental, the emotional, the etheric and the physical. However, there comes a time when this connection becomes a conscious one, rather than an unconscious one. When this happens, the two basic soul-induced threads, and the three persona-manufactured threads, are carried into the throat chakra. This is a big deal because when it occurs, the monad becomes a conscious creator on the physical plane. These connections are just the major ones. New lines can be activated at will and form a network that encompasses our bodies. Understanding this etheric wiring in our bodies is crucial for any further spiritual development.
So that is the basics of what you need to know about the Science of the Antahkarana. But let us take this further and try to visualise the connections that are being made and how this bridging process occurs. The first connection is from the physical body to the etheric envelope. This is an extension of the connection between the heart and the spleen. As has been discussed, the physical body and the etheric envelope should be considered as a single unit. This unit then needs to connect to the next envelope, which is the emotional body. This thread emanates from and is anchored in the solar plexus. This is why clairvoyants gain their “psychic” vision through this channel and not the Third Eye, as is often mistakenly assumed. To make this connection with the next envelope in our Russian Doll series, we use “aspiration” as the key to unlocking this channel. This channel extends even further and is anchored in the causal lotus, in the love petal, to be precise. Onwards and upwards to the mental sheath. Here one terminus is anchored in the head and the other is anchored in the knowledge petal of the causal lotus. To make energy flow along this thread takes an act of will.
If you think about what mystics get up to in their caves, they are “aspiring” to unite with God. What does this tell us? Firstly, they need to get a life. However, sitting there, they are forging an emotional link. So the bliss they report they have been experiencing is an emotional bliss, which may well be very soothing but is a complete fantasy nonetheless. What Lars terms advanced Humanity, is in the process of linking the three lower aspects, physical-etheric, emotional and mental. This is called the persona and it is linked with the casual envelope. This is situated on the 2nd triad and we call it the soul. How is this being done? Through meditation, discipline, service and directed attention. When this connection is finally achieved, a definite relationship is established between the Will petal of the causal lotus and the head and heart centres. This produces a synthesis in consciousness. It is manifested through the Antahkarana, descending from the casual envelope. The life principle does the same and is embodied in the sutratma. The process of integrating these three units, through a process of interlinking and interrelations, strengthens the bridge we keep talking about. This process continues until the (i3) is taken. You end up with a bundle of threads that are so interconnected that the casual envelope, the soul and the expression of itself in the 1st triad, the persona, are now expressed as a unified whole. The next step in the journey of the disciple is to blend and fuse these energies to an ever greater extent, building up to what will eventually be the next initiation, the (i4).
Let us review what has just been elucidated. The soul is anchored in the body at two locations. There is the Life Thread, a thread which transports energy from the Source to all monads, wherever they are located. This is often called the spiritual aspect and is anchored in the heart. Now think about what the heart does from a physical perspective. It is the organ that pumps blood around the body and that blood carries oxygen, which fuels every cell. At a physical level, that life energy is mirrored by the actions of the oxygen molecule. Science thinks that the heart is an independent organ that originates its activities through a nerve centre located within it. What esoterics tells us is that this structure is just the physical manifestation of a life force that is carried from the Ante-Verse and ends up giving us life and making us “whole”.
We then come to the second connection, a second thread of energy, which we linked to our consciousness aspect. This consciousness is related to the faculty of our soul or causal envelope. That faculty we call knowledge, is linked to a specific petal in the causal lotus. Guess what that petal actually is? It is one of our 13 solar devas. We are so wrapped up in our abilities that we think of this structure, the knowledge petal, as something that is part of us. It is not. It is part of a deva. The knowledge we think is ours is not ours either. Knowledge does not emanate from the casual world at all. It originates from the Unity World (46), called by Laurency the Essential World. Our knowledge is not stored in the knowledge petal but in the structures, made up of elemental essences that we call our memories. This is what is stored in our causal envelope. This is the knowledge we have gained through countless incarnations. This is what we are seeking to reunite with, so that we get the complete picture of our passage through the 4th Kingdom of Nature, to date. As an initiate, there is more knowledge to add and more wisdom gained as that knowledge is activated, on the physical plane (49), through acts of service in one field of endeavour or another. This thread is anchored in our head centre, not the crown chakra but what is known as the “cave” in our head. The thread passes through the crown to get to the cave. If the blood is the medium by which life is carried to the body, then response mechanisms activated in our brain and the pathways along our nervous system induce awareness throughout the body.
We can conclude here by acknowledging that the two factors of knowledge and life or intelligence and living energy, are what is conveyed by the Antahkarana and the Sutratma. These are two poles that make up the framework of an incarnated human monad. But there is more. Poles are all well and good but what about the middle ground? How do you integrate these two energies? This is done by finding and expressing balance through love, which is the lower aspect of unity Unity found in World 46. How do we do this special connection? Through group relationships; not living as an island.
In the next presentation, we will look at the nature of the Antahkarana.