The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7

Section Five

THE YOGIC CENTRES

There are, of course, the seven well-known yoga-centres in the human body. They are, beginning from below, (1) the end of the spine, (2) the lower abdomen, (3) the navel, (4) the heart, (5) the throat, (6) between the eyebrows and (7) the crown of the head. But there are others extending from below the spine which are not so well-known. It is true, however, that the centres in the individual being end with the spine; what is below belongs more to the universal nature. There is a centre above and beyond the crown; there is also, on the other side, a centre below and away from under the feet. The yoga-centres are centres of consciousness and energy; they are the sources of the various types and qualities of consciousness and energy—they indicate the many planes of consciousness-energy. There are people who actually feel that their force and strength come from below, as if these stream into them like a spring from under the feet. This region from below the spine-end to the feet is that of the subconscient and what extends further down is the domain of the inconscient. We may distinguish five more centres in this lower or infra-spinal region apart from the spine-end itself (muladhara),

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of centres as twelve—the mystic number for completeness or integrality.

The centre at the bottom of the spine, which is the basis of the individual consciousness is seen as a serpent —a serpent coiled up and asleep, with perhaps just the head sticking up in a very somnolent manner. It represents the normal human consciousness, bottled up, narrow, ignorant, asleep; human energy, too, at this level is obscure and mechanical, extremely limited. The whole energy potential, the consciousness-force is locked up in the physical body consciousness. Now the serpent does not remain asleep forever. It has to wake up, it wakes up. That is to say, man's consciousness awakes, grows and rises upward. The serpent one day shakes its head, lifts it up a little more, begins to sway its hood, as if trying to throw off the sleep and look about. It slowly uncoils itself and rises more and more. It rises and passes through the centres one by one, becomes more and more awake, gathers new light and potency at each centre. Finally, fully awakened, it rises to its full height, erect, straight like a rod, its tail-end at the bottom of the spine and its hood touching the crown of the man's head. The man is then the fully awakened, the perfectly self-conscious man. The movement does not stop there, however; for the serpent presses further on, it strikes with its hood the bottom of the crown and in the end breaks through and passes beyond like a flash of lightning. One need not fear the break through, there is no actual, physical breaking or fracture of the

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skull. Although it is said that once you have gone over and beyond your head, you are not likely to return, you go for good. In other words, the body does not hold together very long after the experience, it drops and dies. And yet it need not be so, it is not the whole truth. For when you have gone beyond, you can come back too, carrying the superconscient light with you. That is to say, the serpent, now luminous,—pure and free energy —can enter the body again, this time with its head down and the tail up. It enters blazing, illumining with its superconscient light the centres one by one, giving man richer and richer consciousness, energy and life, transforming the being more and more. The Light comes down easily enough to the heart region; then the difficulty begins, the regions below gradually become darker and denser and it is hard task for the Light to penetrate as it goes further down. If it succeeds in reaching the bottom of the spine, it has achieved something miraculous. But there is a further progress necessary, if man—and the world with him—is to realise a wholly transformed supraconscient life. In other words, the Light must touch and enter not only the physical stratum of our being but the others too that lie below, the subconscient and inconscient. That has been till now a sealed dungeon, something impossible to approach and tackle.

And yet it is not an impossibility. Not only it is not impossible, we have to make it possible. Not only so, man's destiny demands that it should be inevitable. If man is to be a transformed being, if he is to incarnate

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here below something of the Divine Reality, if his social life on earth is to be the expression of the light and harmony of the Spirit Consciousness, then he has to descend into these nether regions, break open the nethermost as he has done in regard to the uppermost and unite the two.

Here is a curious story about man and his destiny. What is he, the normal man? He is a slave, a bond slave. He may have the illusion that he has ideas and movements, his own, he has even free scope to put them to execution. But it will not take long to discover that it is an illusion, a great deception. His plans do not mature, his efforts beat against an iron wall. The more he observes and sees things squarely he finds that he is bound hand and foot. He is driven by forces and things over which he has no control whatsoever. He is a slave to circumstances; he is checked by the will of others. His own will has no power or scope; it is wholly ineffectual. He feels more and more a great burden pressing upon the back of the head bending it down, a heavy weight lies upon his shoulders. He somehow trudges on like a beast of burden. He has no free choice or will; his wishes and desires are not consulted. He is driven helplessly on.

But the story does not end here. Man can, if he chooses, alter the situation, turn the tables. He has in him the source of freedom—what he vaguely feels in his outer consciousness; there is a centre from where he is capable of reacting and reasserting. It is the centre

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where lies his dharma, the law of his being. It is his soul. If he once comes in contact with that, makes that the base of his life, he is free from that moment. He holds his head erect. He is no longer bent down. The burden of inexorable circumstances weighs no more on him. He has transcended the circumstances, he stands over them, looks over them. He is now the master and they obey him, he has not to obey them.

This consummation is supremely effected when there is the double breaking of the barrier I was speaking about. The first is the piercing of the veil above, when the consciousness rises into the superconscient, takes the human being into the divine being; the second is the rending of the lower veil and the descent of the divine consciousness into the most material, the subconscient and the inconscient, realising the divine life on earth.

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