Color Meditation
This is a simple visualization for healing and cleansing the chakras, and developing the ability of the inner eye to create and perceive color.
Begin in a meditation position, preferably seated. Ground and center your energy.
When you are sufficiently grounded, imagine a bright disk of white light, floating directly above your head, from which you can draw each color.
Let the first color be red, pulling it down through your crown chakra, down through your whole spinal column and filling up the first chakra with a vibrant red color. Hold that color in your first chakra for a few moments. Notice how your body feels with this color. Does it like it? Does it feel energized or uncomfortable?
Next, return to the area above the crown chakra and pull orange light out of the white disk. Run it down through your body, noticing what effect this color has on you. Bring it down to your second chakra, and fill your belly with a vibrant, orange color.
Return to the crown and find a golden yellow light to pull through the body down to the third chakra. Imagine a warm golden glow coming out of your body at the solar plexus, with rays streaming through each part of your body, filling and warming it. As the third chakra has to do with energy distribution throughout the body, these rays are important for spreading the sense of inner fire.
Now we come to the heart, and the color green. Feel this color wash over you, bringing with it a sense of love and affinity for the world around you. See it as a warm emerald glow around your heart.
Next, we reach into our white disk for the color blue, pulling it down into the throat chakra. Allow it to soothe your throat as well as relax your arms and shoulders. Feel the blue rays extend all around your throat, communicating with all that is around you.
Next, we come to the third eye itself, usually seen as a deep indigo blue. Feel the coolness of this color as it bathes your third eye. Allow it to wash any foreign images away, cleansing and soothing your inner screen.
FIGURE 7.3
Palming the Eyes.
And lastly, the crown chakra is seen as a bright vibrant violet color. Feel this violet light streaming into your crown chakra, energizing and balancing each of the chakras.
Check all of the chakras to see if they are retaining their colors. Take a glimpse of your whole body and see if you can "see" it as a continuous rainbow. As you check over your body, notice which colors are the strongest or brightest. Notice how the different colors felt-which ones were more nourishing or energizing. The colors that felt the most welcome probably represent energies that you need most at this time. The colors that felt the least welcome represent areas that you typcially avoid or where there may be difficulty. Pale or washed-out colors represent weak areas; strong colors, places of strength and solidity. Play internally with the colors until they feel balanced to you. This helps to balance the aura as well.
Photo Blink
This exercise is a simple way to get a sense of someone's aura if you normally don't see auras. It also helps to improve visual observation.
Place the person you want to look at directly opposite you, about six to ten feet away. Close your eyes and clear your mental screen. Wait until you feel grounded and centered, with no particular thoughts or images running through your mind.
Very quickly open and close your eyes once-the opposite of a blink-so that you get only a quick glimpse of the person in front of you, making a sort of frozen "photographic" image imprinted in your mind. Hold that image and examine it. What characteristics do you notice? Do you see an afterimage or a glow around the body? Do certain colors or body positions stand out? As the image fades, quickly open and close your eyes again to strengthen it. See how much detail you can decipher in this "afterimage." Which parts fade first, and which characteristics linger? All these things tell you about the strengths and weaknesses of that person's aura.
Meditation
The most useful exercise for strengthening the third eye is simple meditation, focusing the attention on the center of the head or the point between the eyebrows. Visualizations of colors or shapes can be added, or you can simply focus on clearing the mind screen until it is clean and blank.
Once the screen is blank, visualizations can be willed in answer to questions you may have. If you want to know about someone's health, for example, visualize a picture of their body shape, and allow black or white to show areas of health and disease. Be creative in finding a visual metaphor for your question. The limits of this system are only the limits of your imagination, and the more we open this center, the more we expand our imagination!
Another way to perceive how we feel about a certain decision is to phrase the question so that it can be answered with a simple yes or no. Then make a visualization to represent each answer-put yes on one side of your screen, no on the other. Then imagine a gauge with a needle pointing straight up, and on the count of three, let the needle point to the answer most appropriate. Don't control the needle-let it go where it will. You may be surprised!
Note: The ability to visualize successfully depends on constant use, like a muscle. Get in the habit of imagining a face before you answer the telephone; retrace all your steps of getting to work in the morning as if you were watching from the outside; reconstruct memories of your childhood bedroom, playmates, or first sweetheart. Visualize a task completed before you begin it and find out if it makes the doing easier; visualize larger numbers in your check register; visualize meeting someone new.
Visualization is active dreaming. The more we do it, the more vivid and capable our mind's creations. The opportunities for practice are endless. Once it becomes a habit, it develops naturally.
ENDNOTES
1. Leadbeater postulates 96 petals for the brow chakra, which is two times the sum of all the lower petals or 2 x (4 + 6 +10+ 12+16) = 96. C. W. Leadbeater, The Chakras, 14.
2. Encyclopedia Americana, s.v., "pineal gland."
3. Jacob Lieberman, Light, Medicine of the Future, (Sante Fe, NM : Bear & Co., 1991), 32.
4. Ibid. It keeps sexual characteristics from maturing too soon.
5. Arthur C., Guyton, Textbook of Medical Physiology, 884.
6. Jacob Lieberman, Light, Medicine of the Future, (Sante Fe, NM: Bear & Co., 1991), 32.
7. Alan E Lewis, and Dallas Clouatre, Ph.D. Melatonin and Biological Clock, 7-8.
8. Ibid., 16.
9. John N. Ott, Health and Light.
10. Alan E. Lewis and Dallas Clouatre, Ph.D. Melatonin and the Biological Clock, 23.
11. Stephanie Sonnleitner, Ph.D., personal conversation.
12. There are hypothetical subatomic particles called tachyons which are believed to travel faster than light speed, but are unable to slow down to the speed of light.
13. Pablo Picasso, Conversations avec Picasso, in Cahiers d'Art, vol. 10, no 10 Paris, 1935. Translated in Picasso, Fifty Years of his Art by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., 1946.
14. John N. Ott, "Color and Light: Their Effects on Plants, Animals, and People," Journal of Biosocial Research 7, part 1, 1985.
15. John N. Ott, Health and Light, 70 if.
16. K. Martinek and I.V. Berezin, "Artificial Light-Sensitive Enzymatic Systems as Chemical Amplifiers of Weak Light Signals," Photochemistry and Biology 29 (March 1979), 637-650. (as quoted by Jacob Lieberman, Light, Medicine of the Future, 9).
17. Kate W. Baldwin, M.D., F.A.C.S., "The Atlantic Medical Journal," April, 1927, as quoted in The Ancient Art of Color Therapy, by Linda Clark, 18-19.
18. Edward W. Babbitt, The Principles of Light and Color, 40.
19. Linda Clark, The Ancient Art of Color Therapy, 112.
20. Valerie Hunt, Ph.D., " A Study of Structural Integration from Neuromuscular, Energy Field, and Emotional Approaches." now published in Wheels of Light: A Study of the Chakras, Rosalyn Bruyere, (Sierra Madre, CA: Bon Productions, 1989), 197 if.
21. Jacob Lieberman, O.D., Ph.D., Light, Medicine of the Future, (Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Co., 1991), 189.
22.
Valerie Hunt, op. cit., 197 if.
23. As quoted in The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes, Ken Wilbur, ed., 25.
24. Karl Pribram, "Interview: Omni Magazine, October, 1982, 170.
25. Ibid., 172.
26. "The Enfolding-Unfolding Universe: A Conversation with David Bohm" conducted by Renee Weber in The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes, Ken Wilbur, ed., 44-104.
27. Ibid., 139. This is also similar to Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphogenetic fields.
28. Mike Samuels, Seeing with the Mind's Eye, xviii.
29. Ibid., 57-59.
30. Satprem, Sri Aurobindo, or the Adventures of Consciousness.
31. Marion Zimmer Bradley, personal conversation.
RECOMMENDED READING FOR CHAKRA SIX
Clark, Linda. The Ancient Art of Color Therapy. NY: Pocket Books, 1975.
Friedlander, John and Gloria Hemsher. Basic Psychic Development. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1998.
Gawain, Shakti. Creative Visualization. CA: Whatever Publishing, 1978.
Lieberman, Jacob, O.D., Ph.D. Light, Medicine of the Future. Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Co., 1991.
Samuels and Samuels. Seeing With the Mind's Eye. NY: Random House, 1976.
Wallace, Amy and Bill Henkin. The Psychic Healing Book. Wingbow Press, 1981.
Wilber, Ken, ed. The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes. Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1982.
CHAKRA SEVEN
Consciousness
Thought
Information
Knowing
Understanding
Transcendence
Immanence
Meditation
Chapter 8
CHAKRA
SEVEN:
THOUGHT
OPENING MEDITATION
And now, at the end of the journey, you are almost home.
There is but one step left-the biggest and the smallest of them all.
It is the biggest for it takes us the farthest.
It is the smallest because we are already there.
There is one more door to open-and it contains the key to all that lies beyond
You hold that key, but you cannot see it. It is not a thing, it is not a way.
It is a mystery.
Allow yourself to review the places you have gone ...
Remembering the touch of flesh to Earth, the flow of movement and power, the song of love in your heart, the memories imprinted in your mind...
Who is it that remembers?
Who has traveled on this journey?
Is it your body? Then what has guided you? What is it that has grown? Through what have you traveled?
Who now would hold that key that can't be seen, the key that cannot lock?
The answer to this is the key itself.
All wisdom is within you. Nothing is beyond you. The kingdom is before you, within you, around you. It is in your mind, which is but one mind in a sea of many; connected, contained, intelligent, divine.
It is the seat of the gods, the pattern of creation, the immensity of the infinite, the endless unfolding petals of the lotus, fully blooming and connected all the way to Earth.
We find it in our thoughts.
Beyond form, beyond sound, beyond light, beyond space, beyond time,
Our thoughts flow.
Below, behind, above, around and through our thoughts flow.
Within, without, before and after, our thoughts flow.
Droplets in an endless sea, the song of mind is infinite.
We have come full circle and the pattern is complete.
We are the thoughts that make the pattern,
And we are the pattern that makes the thoughts.
From whence do our thoughts arise?
Where do they go when they rest?
And who is it that perceives them?
Deep within ourselves we find a place to open up our mind.
Through starry heavens ever climbing, matter's solid threads unbinding.
Out beyond far Heaven's veil, the Father rules the starlit trail.
In patterns bright, perceived by sight, our thoughts turn over day through night, Through our thinking, ever linking, winding, weaving, wisdom's webs,
Ancient patterns, flows and ebbs.
Auspicious Shiva, Lord of Sleep, your meditations bring us deep
To ancient wisdom found within, a sacred place where we begin
And ending, here we shall return; reconnected we have learned
To know divinity inside and bring it forth with honored pride.
The key within our minds we hold, to mysteries we shall unfold;
Gateway to the worlds beyond,
In sacred space and peace we bond.
CHAKRA SEVEN SYMBOLS AND CORRESPONDENCES
THE THOUSAND-PETALED LOTUS
The universe is just the way we think it is-and that's why.
-John Woods'
At last we culminate the sevenfold journey, climbing to the thousandpetaled lotus blooming at the top of the head. Here we find the infinitely profound seat of cosmic consciousness known as the seventh or crown chakra. This chakra connects us to divine intelligence and the source of all manifestation. It is the means through which we reach understanding and find meaning. As the final goal of our liberating current, it is the place of ultimate liberation.
Like a king whose crown signifies order in the kingdom, the crown chakra represents the ruling principle of life-the place where the underlying order and meaning of all things is ultimately perceived. It is the pervading consciousness that thinks, reasons, and gives form and focus to our activities. It is the true essence of being as the awareness that dwells within. In the unconscious, it is the wisdom of the body. In the conscious mind, it is the intellect and our belief systems. In the superconscious, it is awareness of the divine.
In Sanskrit, the crown chakra is called Sahasrara, meaning thousandfold, referring to the infinite unfolding petals of the lotus. What brief glimpses I have been privileged to have of this chakra reveal a pattern of such magnitude, complexity, and beauty, that it is almost overwhelming. Its petals bloom in fractal-like patterns upon patterns, infinitely embedded in each other, drooping down like a sunflower to drop the nectar of understanding into the awareness of being. Each perfect petal is a monad of intelligence, which together form the gestalt of an overarching divine intelligence-sensitive, aware, responsive, and infinite. Its field is delicate, the slightest thought will ripple through the petals like wind in a field of grass. The shining jewels deep in the lotus shine forth only in a state of ultimate stillness. To witness this miracle is profound.
When we reach this level, the seed of our soul has sprouted from its roots in the earth, and grown upward through the elements of water, fire, air, sound, and light, and now to the source of all-consciousness itself, experienced through the element of thought. Each level brings us new degrees of freedom and awareness. Now the crown chakra blossoms forth with infinite awareness, its thousand petals like antennae, reaching to higher dimensions.
It is this chakra that yoga philosophy has deemed to be the seat of enlightenment. Its ultimate state of consciousness is beyond reason, beyond the senses, and beyond the limits of the world around us. Yoga practice advises withdrawing the senses (pratyahara) in order achieve the mental stillness necessary to perceive this ultimate state. Tantric philosophy, on the other hand, regards the senses as a gateway to awakening consciousness. Chakra theory tells us that it is both-a stimulation of intelligence to give us information, and a withdrawal to the interior where information is sifted into ultimate knowledge. Our thousand-petaled lotus must keep its roots in the Earth to maintain its blossom.
The element of this chakra is thought, a fundamentally distinct and unmeasurable entity that is the first and barest manifestation of the greater field of consciousness around us. Accordingly, the function of Sahasrara is knowing-just as other chakras are related to seeing, speaking, loving, doing, feeling, or having. It is through
the crown chakra that we reach into the infinite body of information and run it through our other chakras to bring it to recognition and manifestation.
The seventh chakra relates to what we experience as the mind, especially the awareness that makes use of the mind. The mind is a stage for the play of consciousness, and can bring us comedy or tragedy, excitement or boredom. We are the privileged audience that gets to watch the play, although sometimes we identify so completely with the characters on stage (with our thoughts) that we forget it is only a play.
Through watching this play of thoughts, our mind assimilates experience into meaning and constructs our belief systems. These beliefs are the master programs from which we construct our reality. (In this way, the crown chakra is the master chakra, and relates to the master gland of the endocrine system, the pituitary.)
Physiologically, the crown chakra relates to the brain, especially the higher brain, or cerebral cortex. Our amazing human brain contains some thirteen billion interconnected nerve cells, capable of making more connections among themselves than the number of stars in the entire universe.' This is a remarkable statement. Our brains, as instruments of awareness, are virtually limitless. Yet there are 100 million sensory receptors within the body, and ten trillion synapses in the nervous system, making the mind 100,000 times more sensitive to its internal environment than to its external one.4 So it is truly from a place within that we receive and assimilate most of our knowledge.
From within, we access a dimension that has no locality in time and space. If we postulate that each chakra represents a dimension of smaller and faster vibration, we hypothetically reach a plane in the crown chakra where we have a wave of infinite speed and no wavelength, allowing it to be everywhere at once. In this way, ultimate states of consciousness are described as omnipresent-by reducing the world to a pattern system occupying no physical dimension, we have infinite storage capacity for its symbols. In other words, we carry the whole world inside our heads.
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