Today we will return to a topic that we discussed when referring to the etheric envelope. If you listen to this presentation and wonder “Where have I heard this before”, it means you were paying attention. The word Chakra is Sanskrit and means a wheel or revolving disc. It is used to denote what are often called force centres in a person. There are such Chakra in everybody’s vehicles and they are points of connection at which force flows from one envelope to another. They are also intimately associated with the powers or senses of the various envelopes. Note the difference. Powers are something you generate and then express. Senses are signals received from an external source. So the sense of touch is conveyed from a hand, via the etheric chakra to the emotional envelope, where a sensation is registered. That sensation can not be logged in the physical body itself. This may seem strange, considering what science tells us about our nervous system. But I hope by now you realise that nothing in the physical envelope (49:5-7) can function without prana and prana has to get into the body via a chakra located in the etheric envelope (49:1-4).
The Chakra of the etheric body has been fully described in the presentation of the Etheric envelope. To recap, the etheric Chakras are situated on the surface of the etheric envelope and are usually denoted by the name of the physical organ to which they correspond.
They are: —
1. Base of Spine Chakra.
2. Sacral Chakra.
3. Navel or Solar Plexus Chakra.
4. Heart Chakra.
5. Throat Chakra.
6. Brow Chakra.
7. Crown Chakra.
There are also three lower Chakras, but as these are used only in certain schools of ” black magic;” we are not concerned with them here. What makes them so dangerous is that they focus on involutionary matter, what we call elementary essences. Their objective is to descend into the densest matter possible. Our objective is to evolve out of this dense matter. We have conflicting objectives but we need those pesky elementals to function in our five envelopes of incarnation. To do this we rely on an intermediary devic force to control those elementals for us. They gained this knowledge in the first solar system, while we were elemental essences ourselves.
The emotional Chakras, which are frequently in the interior of the etheric double, are vortices in four dimensions, thus having an extension in a direction quite different from the etheric. Consequently, though they correspond to the etheric Chakras, they don’t necessarily connect, though they are always close by.
The emotional Chakras are given the same names as those in the etheric double, and their functions are as follows:—
1. Base of Spine Chakra.—This is the seat of the Serpent Fire, Kundalini, a force, which exists on all planes and through which the rest of the Chakras are aroused. This is a third ray cosmic energy along with prana.
Originally, the emotional body was almost an inert mass, possessing the vaguest consciousness, with no definite power to do anything and with no clear knowledge of the world surrounding it. The first thing that happened was the awakening of Kundalini at the emotional level. This links in with the evolution of a monad, starting in the Mineral Kingdom. The same process is repeated when the series of human envelopes are constructed at the beginning of an incarnation.
2. Sacral Chakra.— Kundalini then moved to the Sacral Chakra and through it is vitalised the whole emotional body, this Chakra has as one of its functions the absorption of Prana, the Vitality Force, which also exists on all planes. The sex drive is located in this chakra. The chakra begins to play a significant role from the Plant Kingdom onwards. Minerals don’t need to reproduce.
3. Navel Chakra.—The Navel chakra having been vivified, awakens in the emotional body the power of feeling — a sensitivity to all sorts of influences, though without as yet anything like the definite comprehension that comes from seeing and hearing. Why? Because the etheric envelope has to be constructed first and then linked to a sensory unit called a “body”. Vivification of the Navel Chakra enables a person to travel in their emotional body consciously, though with only a vague conception as yet of what they encounter on their journeys. Clairvoyant’s be warded.
4. Heart Chakra.—This Chakra enables the person to comprehend and sympathise with the vibrations of other emotional entities so that they can instinctively understand their feelings. The navel chakra in the emotional body allows you to sense emotions. The heart chakra allows you to understand it.
5. Throat Chakra.—This Chakra confers the power in the emotional world, which corresponds to hearing in the physical world. It seems strange to link your ears to your throat, yet they are via the eustachian tube.
6. Brow Chakra.—This Chakra confers the power to perceive the shape and nature of emotional objects, instead of merely vaguely sensing their presence. Think of this as sticking a clarity filter over your navel chakra.
Associated with this Chakra appears also the power of magnifying, at will, the minutest physical or emotional particle to any desired size, as though it were a microscope. This power enables an occult investigator to perceive and study molecules, atoms, etc. The full control of this faculty, however, belongs to the causal body, so be patient.
The power of magnification is quite distinct from the faculty of functioning on a higher plane, just as the power of an astronomer to observe planets and stars is quite a different thing from the ability to move or function amongst them.
In the Hindu sutras, it is stated that meditation in a certain part of the tongue will confer emotional sight. The statement is a ” blind,” the reference being to the pituitary body, situated just over this part of the tongue.
7. Crown Chakra.—This Chakra rounds off and completes the emotional life, endowing the person with the perfection of their faculties. There appear to be two methods in which the Crown Chakra works.
To reiterate what has been presented before, in one type of person, the sixth and seventh Chakras both converge upon the pituitary body, this body is for this type practically the only direct link between the physical and the higher planes.
In another type of person, however, while the sixth Chakra is still attached to the pituitary body, the seventh Chakra is bent or slanted until its vortex coincides with the pineal gland. In people of this type, the pineal gland is thus vivified and made into a line of communication directly with the mental body, without apparently passing through the intermediate emotional envelope, which it would normally have to do. The confers huge advantages, similar to the “clarity filter” just mentioned, as the emotional envelope is usually a jumbled mess and will distort practically everything.
In the physical body, as we know, there are specialised organs for each sense, the eye for seeing, the ear for hearing, and so on. In the emotional body, however, this is not the case. The particles of the emotional body are constantly flowing and swirling about like those of boiling water; consequently, there are no special particles, which remain continuously in any of the Chakras. On the contrary, all the particles of the emotional body pass through each of the Chakras.
Each Chakra has the function of awakening a certain power of response in the particles which flow through it; one Chakra has the power of sight, another that of hearing, and so on. In this way, the monad, focused in their envelopes of incarnation, is aiding in the involution of elemental essences. They help us to function in the lower quaternary and we help them descend into matter; fair deal. Anyone’s emotional sense is not, strictly speaking, localised or confined to any particular part of the emotional body. It is rather the whole of the particles of the emotional body, which possess the power of response. A person, therefore, who has developed emotional sight, uses any part of the matter of their emotional body in order to see and so can see equally well objects in front, behind, above, below, or to either side. This is the case with all the other senses. In other words, the emotional senses are equally active in all parts of the body. I hope this makes clearer how our emotional bodies can pull off this remarkable trick.
It is not easy to describe how thoughts are communicated emotionally. Sound in the ordinary sense of the word is not possible in the emotional world. It is not possible even in the higher part of the physical world (49:1-4). It would also not be correct to say that the language of the emotional world is thought-transference: the most that could be said is that it is the transference of thoughts formulated in a particular way. Remember, in these planes, emotions are no longer experienced through our five physical senses. They are elementals that float around and can be expelled from an envelope and targeted to a specific location.
In the mental world, a thought is instantaneously transmitted to the mind of another without any form of words. Therefore, in the mental world language does not matter. But emotional communications lie, as it were, halfway between the thought-transference of the mental world and the concrete speech of the physical, and it is still necessary to formulate the thought in words. For this exchange, it is therefore necessary that the two parties should have a language in common. I wonder if they have Google Translate on the Emotional Plane?
The emotional and etheric Chakras are in very close correspondence; but between them and interpenetrating them in a manner, which is not readily describable, there is a sheath or web of closely woven texture, composed of a single layer of physical atoms, which are densely compressed and permeated by a special form of Prana. We have spoken of this before but it is worth reiterating. The divine life, which normally descends from the emotional body to the physical, is so attuned as to pass through this shield with perfect ease, but it is an absolute barrier to all the forces, which cannot use the atomic matter of both planes. This last point is significant because it is easy to lose sight of the fact that moving from one plane of matter to another is a physical process. We achieve this by having envelopes on all the planes we can function in and then we transfer the focus of our monad from one envelope to another, but we need those envelopes in place before we can do this. The web is a natural protection to prevent a premature opening up of communication between the planes, a development, which could lead to nothing but injury.
It is this, which normally prevents clear recollection of the sleep-life and which also causes momentary unconsciousness, which always occurs at death. But for this provision, the ordinary person could be approached by an emotional entity and put under the influence of forces with which they could not possibly cope. They would be liable to constant obsession by emotional entities desirous of seizing their vehicles. We know this web can be damaged by emotional shocks or abuse of certain stimulants, such as cigarettes and drugs. These constituents rush through the Chakras in the opposite direction to that for which they are intended and in doing this repeatedly, they seriously injure and finally destroy the delicate web.
This deterioration or destruction may take place in two ways, according to the type of person concerned and to the proportion of the constituents in their etheric and emotional bodies. In one type of person, the rush of volatilising matter burns away the web and therefore leaves the door open to all sorts of irregular forces and evil influences. Those affected in this way go mad. In the other type of person, the volatile constituents, in flowing through, somehow harden the atom so that its pulsation is to a large extent checked and crippled. It is no longer capable of being vitalised by the particular type of Prana, which welds it into a web. This results in a kind of ossification of the web, so that instead of too much coming through from one plane to another, we have very little of any kind coming through. Such subjects tend towards a general deadening of their faculties, resulting in gross materialism, brutality and animalism, according to Arthur Powell. They lose their finer feelings and the power to control themselves. Drugs are a major trigger for this.
All impressions, which pass from one plane to the other are intended to come only through the atomic sub-planes, but when the deadening process takes place it infects not only other atomic matter, but even matter of the second and third sub-planes of each envelope, so that the only communication between the emotional and the etheric is from the lower sub-planes, upon which only unpleasant and evil influences are to be found.
The consciousness of the ordinary person cannot use pure atomic matter, either of the physical (49:1) or emotional (48:1) subplanes. There is no possibility of conscious communication at will between the two planes. The proper way to obtain it is to purify the vehicles until the atomic matter in both is fully vivified, so that all communications between the two may pass by that road. This only effectively occurs when a monad takes the (i4), not even the (i3) gets you there fully. You need to become a 2nd-Self first. In that case, the web retains to the fullest degree its position and activity and yet is no longer a barrier to the perfected communication between the two envelopes. It still continues to prevent close contact with the lower and undesirable sub-planes. This is enough for initiates, having taken the (i3) to maintain a continuity of consciousness between all their envelopes, even if they are not using the atomic plane specifically.
A third way in which the web may be injured is through the process, known in spiritualistic parlance as “sitting for development”. It is quite possible, in fact very common, for a person to have their emotional chakras well developed so that they are able to function freely on the emotional plane and yet they may recollect nothing of their emotional plane activities when they return to waking consciousness. We will deal with this phenomenon and its explanation more appropriately in the presentation on Dreams.
See you in the next presentation.