The Planes of Existence

"Kosmic Physical" Planes of Existence according to Alice Bailey

Many esoteric teachings propound the idea of a series of worlds or hypostases as cosmic ontological gradations in the Great Chain of Being, arranged metaphorically in an "upper and lower" manner.

The idea of a vertical world-axis, a cosmic mountain or tree or pole, is in fact a common archetype, and the theosophical planes are just one particular version or interpretation of that. Another is the Tantric theme of chakras, which are asosciated with an ascending series of states of consciousness, culminating in the Absolute Reality located either at or above the Crown. From this perspective then, the Cosmos can be divided "vertically" into a number of worlds or states or gradations of being.

From the 19th onwards, the term "Planes" has been used by Theosophy, and from there off-shoot esoteric systems (such as Alice Bailey) and the New Age movement, as well as Eastern teachings that have some Western influence (e.g. , Sri Aurobindo and Sant Mat) to describe these gradations. The originator of this popular occult term is H.P. Blavatsky, who in The Secret Doctrine and elsewhere taught a complex cosmology consisting of Planes and subplanes. However the original source of the term is the late Neoplatonist Proclus, who refers to to platos, "breadth", which was the a term direct equivalent of the Theosophical use. e.g. en to psuchiko platei [Dodds, cited in Poortman, Hylic Pluralism, vol II, p.54].

Whilst Blavatsky, Aurobindo, and other teachers sometimes use the term "Plane" to refer even to transcendent divine-absolute realities (e.g. Blavatsky's "Kosmic Planes", the upper three of which represent the ineffable Absolute, and Sri Aurobindo's Upper Hemisphere (parardha) with the three planes of Sachchidananda and a fourth representing the Supermind or Absolute in Manifestation) I would prefer to restrict its use to the "vertical" series of prakritis, and "vertical" subdivisions thereof. The gradations of Absolute and Godhead are instead designated as hypostases

The "Vertical" Cosmological Spirit-Matter Gradation

We thus find established in contemporary esoteric teachings the concept of reality as made up of a number ofPlanes of Existence, arranged in a vertical sequence. This has even enetered everyday langauge - e.g. "the astral plane".

Sri Aurobindo, whose metaphysical and spiritual insights and roadmaps of conscioousness have inspired a lot of my own understanding, refers to this as a vertical or ascending scale of consciousness. However, despite the widespread use of this metaphor, I am reluctant to give too much emphasis to the word "vertical" here. The reason is that the experience of a vertically arranged hierarchy of planes may very well simply be a side-effect of the organisation of the human physical and etheric body. A quadrapedal animal for example has chakras arranged horizontally, and so would experience these planes as horizontally organised. Hence my use of inverted commas when referring to this.

Provisionally, I have retained the term "planes" to describe these gradations, for no other reason than that it is familar to people coming from a western-esoteric or New Age background. An alternative term might be "prakritis", which refers to the fact that this scale of realities is actually a scale of gradations of prakriti, from the most "sattvic" and spiritual to the most "tamasic" and material. Gurdjieff's scale of "hydrogens" in the "ray of creation" is another version of the same thing. Other terms used are "worlds", lokas, etc. The term Octaves - another Gurdjieffian term, adapted from Gurdjieff's incorporation of the musical scale in his ray of creation - is also useful, as it refers to the fact that at each hypostasis, each plane of existence, there is a full complement of subplanes (Theosophy) or resonances, which fractally repeat the whole.

As to be expected, the number of gradations differs according to which esoteric system one consults. In Kabbalah there are four (or in the Lurianic school five) major worlds, whilst Theosophical and, following them, New Age, cosmologies speak of seven "planes of existence"; each of these in turn often subdivided into further planes and hypostases. I originally referred to these ontological divisions or worlds as "Ontocosms" (Being-Universes), but there's enough new jargon as it is. So i decided to stick with the well known Theosophical and New Age term "plane", supplementing it with "world" or "uinverse". Various schemas give four, seven, or ten worlds. I have used here an seven-fold division, which integrates Theon's Tradition, Theosophy and Western Esotericism, Sri Aurobindo's cosmology, and the I Ching trigrams which provide a mathematical arrangement whereby each plane can be associated with a hexagram. But really, there is no reason why this should be preferred to any other option.

And all of this says nothing of the subdivisions, of which there are a great many. In Kabbalah each of the four (or five) worlds is divided into ten sefirot, making 40 or 50 altogether. Madame Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, went one better with seven "kosmic" planes, each divided into 7 further planes (the lowest kosmic plane being made up of seven "prakritic" planes), each of which is divided into seven conventional planes, each of which in turn is made up of seven subplanes. That gives 7⁴ subplanes, or 2,401 altogether, although only the last few series of planes (and occasionally subplanes) are really described at all.

Very similar is the Tradition of Max and Alma Theon, with four worlds (this seems to be based on Kabbalah) of which the lowest or Material World is made up of eight "states"., although only the lower four are really described and considered (the higher four presumably pertaining to transcendent states). Each of these lower four (the higher four not being considered here) is made of four degrees, and each of these in turn consists of four subdegrees, which presumably were in turn sub-divided. According to Mirra this was an excellent descriptive tool, and one could, by working on an undeveloped sub-sub-part of the being eventually break through and access occult or spiritual experiences [I forget the refernce, it may have been one of the early volumes of the Agenda]

The "vertical" series of prakriti as Planes of Existence and Planes of Consciousness should not be confused with the ""Concentric" "inner-outer" (or depth-surface, figure-ground, subliminal-conscious) sequence. Both refer to gradations of prakriti, but they are distinct axiis of being, although they are invariably confused by those traditions that recognise only a single parameter. Self and Non-self is another parameter that is confused - in fact there are a gradation of Selves, just as there is a gradation of Planes, just as there is a gradation of "layers" of subconsciousness ("inner") and of planes or worlds ("vertical"). One reason esotericisma nd occultism has trouble arriving at a consistent Map of Reality of any complexity beyond the basic "perennial philosophy" is because these different parameters keep getting confused (the Theosphical diagram at the upper left of this page is a typical example of this reduction to a single parameter). And this is to say nothing of spiritual states like nirvana and liberation which are usually placed at the top of the hierarchy or holarchy (e.g. Da Free John, Ken Wilber), but as Sri Aurobindo explains is actually a sort of side-movement.

Understanding and Comparing the Planes of Existence

In tabulating different esoteric cosmic teachings, there is always a danger of putting things in a simplistic and procrustean straightjacket (this in fact is one of the shortcomings of indeed any grand synthesis- e.g. Hegel and his triads, Blavatsky and her seven planes, rounds, etc, or Wilber with his linear levels and 4 quadrants). The correspondences given here should therefore not be taken in any way as dogmatic or conclusive. I am not trying to build a fixed and rigid system; indeed any such attempt is doomed to failure.

That said, it seems that there are two main types of "maps" that esoteric cosmologists tend to use. Both have the Absolute at one pole, and matter at the other, it is the way the intermediate levels are described that differs.

The first approach maps the levels or hypostases in terms of realities that can be understood in psychological terms. In the middle (more or less) is (the rational or verbal) mind; above that are levels of higher intuition and superconsciousness, while below one finds the layers representing the irrational psyche and the life-force or vitality. Perhaps the earliest example of this arrangement is are the five self levels of the Taittiriya Upanishad, with the series "food" (body), prana (vitality), manas (mind), vijnana (gnosis), and ananda (bliss, representing Brahman, the Absolute). This had a big influence on later Vedanta, although the interpretations of, say, Shankara and Sri Aurobindo, are light years apart regarding this.

A very similar series is found in the classical West in Middle Platonism, the Corpus Hermetica (matter - vital spirit (pneuma) - psyche - divine mind (nous)), and Neoplatonism (matter (hyle) - irrational, rational, and noetic psyche - nous - Absolute). One might say that the psyche is the same as the manas, and the nous as the vijnana (or the noetic psyche as the Shankaran vijnana kosha).

These two streams met in the Theosophy of Blavatsky and the integral philosophy of Sri Aurobindo

The second approach understands the hypostases in terms of abstract (to us in the physical consciousness) visionary realities that have no easy everyday correspondences, and hence are hard to equate with each other, since we don't really know (unless we have had the same visionary experiences) what the authors are talking about. Also, it often happens (because of this) that successive writers in the same tradition (e.g. Gnostic, Sufi, Kabbalistic) use the same jargon to designate what certainly seem to be quite different realities.

Here then we have a series of visionary angelological or divine worlds or universes, each higher of which emanates the one below it, until we are left with the objective physical as the most "dense" reality, the congealing of consciousness (the Tantrics use the example of milk that forms curd (ref Arthur Avalon/John Woodroffe ref xxxx)), Light becoming form (Suhrawardi, Luria, etc)

Esoteric cosmologists of the visionary sort may assert that these worlds, universes, or pleromas (nice term suggested by Corbin (ref xxxx), adopted from Gnosticism) can be recognised by the particular colours (Theon) or light and sounds (Sabda Surat Yoga / Sant Mat), or magical beings (Hermetic Kabbalah - e.g. Golden Dawn) native to each. Perhaps such an experiential phenomenological approachcan lay the foundation for a truely universal and empircal esoteric science.

Fortunately it is possible to combine these two approaches, and to see the levels or bands of the former as referring to the microcosmic equivalent of the pleromas or universes of the latter (indeed such equivalence plays an important part in Lurianic Kabbalah (e.g. Jacob's Ladder and the ascent of the Soul) and is specifically mentioned by Mirra Alfassa/The Mother (ref xxxx) and in post-Blavatsky theosophical diagrams of C.W. Leadbeater and Alice Bailey (example of the latter at the top of this page), as well as the psychological terminology Theon (who was Mirra's teacher in occultism) used for the lower four cosmic levels.

This gives (Theon, Leadbeater, Mirra, New Age) the equivalence of the emotional or desire nature (called the Nervous by Theon and the Vital by Mirra) with the "Astral Plane", and therefore the rational psyche or mind with the next universe up, and the life force principle or prana with an "Etheric plane" that is lies between the physical and the Astral (re this latter see Steiner - Occult Science and elsewhere - and the Leadbeater and Bailey cosmic diagrams). In this was one can equate the visionary universe with specific psychological strata (in addition to phenomena native to that universe)

However, things are not that simple. The Kabbalists, and following them Theon and Blavatsky (and from her the whole Theosophical and ex-Theosophical (Steiner, Bailey) tradition), understand reality as in a sense "fractal", in that each plane or universe or division of reality itself contains a full complement of planes, and so on. (Gurdjieff also said the same thing, according to Ouspensky (In Search of the Miraculous), he provbably also got it from Blavatsky ). So, the implication is (and this is especially evident in Theon's diagram and Blavatsky's concept of "kosmic planes"), much more so than in the later theosophical and post-theosophical diagrams) that the psychological attributes may correspond to lower recursions rather than the original larger universes in themselves.

Thus, it is easier to understand those sub-planes or bands that are "closer to" the objective physical, and make up our ordinary surface being (what Sri Aurobindo calls the Outer Being), then it is to understand the larger and more visionary, pure supraphysical realities. This should be taken into consideration when drawing up any tabulation or map of universes or pleromas or levels opr worlds of occult consciosunses and super-cosnciosunses.

Tabulation of Planes of Existence

The following represents a suggested overview of the primary universes or self-manifest modes of the Supreme that constitute the "vertical" or prakritic planes axis of the Cosmos. This is however only one dimension, and these gradations or hypostases should also be considered in terms of the "concentric" levels of being. To collapse the spectrum of being to a single ontocline or paraneter is misleading.

In defining these levels or gradations I have borrowed from Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Tantra, Sufism, Kabbalah, the Theons, and especially from Sri Aurobindoan concepts. If I rely upon the latter a lot, it is only because in his Life Divine and Letters on Yoga he presents such a clear and comprehensive overview of the spectrum of realities. Even so it is important to remeber that Sri Aurobindo was concerned to lay out a practical path and technique to divinization, and for this reason the states of consciousness in his yoga of ascent refer to states actualised in the physical body and physical mind, and the metaphysical planes and hypostases (which are actual states or dimensions of existence in themselves, as distinct universes) were often more described less thoroughly. Certainly he does not shy away from referring to these, and in fact is one of the very few Indian teachers who does (perhaps due to his incorporating Theosophical and Theonist ideas), but he does not distinguish between these states when actualised in the physical consciousness, and the states as they exist as autonomous supra-physical hypostases. However there is a distinction, if only in terms of "octaves" or "resonances", and Sri Aurobindo's descriptions (as phenomenological exemplars or "type specimens" of consciousness so to speak) is primarily concerning the phsyical embodiment, integration, and union, of these higher states.

Very Provisional Table of Planes of Existence

Universe and Plane		Samkhyan Gunas	I Ching trigram (metaphoric symbolic only)	Neoplatonism (varies)	Sufism (varies)	Kabbalah (varies)	Theon (tentative - pending closer research)	Theosophy (generic)	Sri Aurobindo
Divine		S a t t w a		Nous (divided into sublevels - e.g. Being, Life and Nous)	Jabarut*	Atzilut**	--	Free Intelligence	Adi/ Divine/ Logoic*	Overmind
Enlightened Spiritual Mind	Divine-Intuitive					Beriah**	Spirit	Anupadaka*	Intuition
	Illumined Intuitive						Light	Atmic*	Illumined Mind
	Spiritual Intuitive						Essence	Buddhic*	Higher Mind
Ideational Mind				Rational Soul, Noetic Soul, etc	Malakut*	Yetzirah**	Mind	Manasic	Mental
Affective	Higher Affective	R a j a s					Soul	Kama/ Astral	Vital
	Lower Affective			Irrational Soul	Mithal*	Asiyah**	Nervo
Universe of Material Form	Higher planes	T a m a s		Nature Nutritive / Vegetative Soul			Physical	Linga Sthula / Etheric	Subtle Physical
	Kosmic Physical			Body	Mulk*	Malkut of Asiyah**		--	Dense Physical	Physical(Terrestrial evolution)
	Hylic			Hyle	--	Klippot/ "Husks" (not evil)**	--	--	Inconscient	--

notes:

*more likely to be be inner (concentric dimension) rather than higher (vertical dimension)

**these regions in the cartography of spiritual worlds are described ambiguously enough as to be equally able to be mapped against the both the concentric and the vertical ontoclines.

These successive universes or "kosmic planes" (as listed above in the left-most column) can be described in more detail as follows:

Divine or Cosmic Consciousness: The first stage of this metaphysically vertical parameter, the Divine Universe, the upper World of Atzilut, the plane of Active or Free Intelligence or Logos or Overmind Intuition, includes the Divine Worlds, Cosmic Gods and Godheads; intermediate between the Infinite Noetic Godhead (Logos) and the Manifest Temporal Cosmos. Neither eternal, infinite or transcendent, or finite and dualistic, this important Plane stands between the two. Here is where the One Light of the Logos or Transcendent Nous becomes a prism of many radiances, archetypes, gods, sefirot, lights... These in turn supervise the creation below. In Kabbalah this is best described as the World of Atzilut (Divine Emanation), although Sri Aurobindo uses the termOvermind, and Theon Free Intelligence. Moving up from lower finite existence, this plane or universe is experienced as a place of profound and subtle cosmic and esoteric mysteries and gnosis hinting at the Unfolding of the Logos [c.f. Gnosticism, Lurianic Kabbalah, etc], in which there is no distinction between oneself and the cosmos [Sri Aurobindo]. This iuniverse constitutes the union (in the conentric parameter) of the Causal and Supracausal (the more "outer" hypostases have alreday been subsumed),

Enlightened Spiritual Mind and Gnosis: The next Universe down from the Divine Pole of existence is the region of pure Enlightened mind, a series of Spiritual Worlds of emanated hierarchies. These are the spiritual hierarchies that emanate from and are the expression and aspects of the Divine world, the ideational Gods and archetypal or divine-Angelic hierarchies. There is no Outer or "Gross" Being equivalent to this hypostasis, only Inner-Subtle, causal, and beyond (in the sense of even more "innermost"). In Kabbalah this is the Archangelic Universe, or the World of Beriah (Creation). According to Sant Mat and to Theon there are several universes here, pure spiritual ontocosms beyond the abstract mental plane. This is equivalent to Sri Aurobindo's Higher Mind level (which he locates above the "void region" above the head). Moving up from lower finite existence, this ontocosm, to which corresponds in part the Sahasrara or Crown chakra above the head, confers the option of Liberation from rebirth, should one choose that. Sri Aurobindo refers to three levels or gradations of spiritual mind - from lower to higher this is the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, and Intuitive Mind (the latter intermediate between Mind and Overmind (Divine or Cosmic Consciousness). Moving up from lower finite existence, these universes are experienced as a great Enlightenment, and humans who have attained this state are seen as great saints, avatars and buddhas.

Spiritual Mind or Pure Intellect: The next Universe down, the Plane of Pure Mind or pure intellect, is the region of pure Creative Ideas. This includes the archetypal or Higher Angelic hierarchies from which originate the gnostic idea-forms that filter down into the angelic ideational planes.  The hierarchies of this Universe still have a greater demiurgic or Creative power than the Affective hierarchies below them. These are the spiritual hierarchies that emanate from and are the expression and aspects of the Enlightened Mind worlds, including spiritual archetypes which filter down and eventually manifest in the Physical universe. In Kabbalah this is the Angelic Universe, or the World of Beriah (Creation) of Kabbalah, as well as perhaps the upper part of the world ofYetzirah (Formation) (although these worlds can equally be identified with the Inner-Subtle being). It includes the highest faculties normally active in even the developed individual, and the higher unconscious in part, as well as many regions beyond normal human consciousness. The Ajna chakra (and one might also assume the Nirvana or "lower" crown chakra) is associated here (i.e. due to the fractal nature of reality, this universe corresponds to the ajna etc (just as other universe correspond to their chakras - the spiritual-gnostic to the crown, the "Physical" or Form universe to the muladhara), but the chakras still (in my understanding pertain to the subtle or inner Form universe). It includes the highest faculties normally active in even the developed individual, and the higher unconscious in part. Sri Aurobindo refers to this as the lowest of the four levels or gradations of mind - the pure Thinking Mind, or simply Mind or Mental plane. This is in its own realm pure and unsullied by ignorance; it is only the Mind mixed with the lower levels that leads to delusion and doubt, and the limitations of the outer or "gross" surface consciousness.

Universe of Affectivity: (Pure Psychic Universe(s)). The psychic or affective reality, is, like all the planes or universes, a vast region, with many subdivisions. Most often it is divided into two. The higher levels are heaven regiosn of pure spiritual emotion or Affectivity, can be called the Angelic Universe, being in part equivalent to the Kabbalistic Yetzirah and spiritualist celestial realms, and a region of pure Love and Compassion. It includes the Spiritual and Spiritual-Psychic World; the highest faculties normally active in a person; the higher unconscious in part. This is the lowest of the spiritual heaven realms or "pure universes", and is represented by the Anahata or Heart chakra, wherein dwells the Higher Self (hence Max Theon identifies this region with the Soul degree). The lower subdivisions correspond to various psychic and occult planes of existence. Many of the higher psychic experiences, revelations, religious experiences, and so on, come from here. This is a region of great desires and passions, and a snare for the gullible and unwary, who mistake the half-luminous denizens of this Plane for an ascended master or superme deity. In western esotericism such as Theosophy and Hermeticism, this is or includes the Astral plane. Theon uses the term Nervo or Nervous. The Psychic and Imaginal also provide the blueprints for the Physical universe.

Universe of Material Form: (Gross and Subtle Physical) The most manifest universe, the plane of Form or Matter, can also be divided into one or more upper or more subtle spiritual and a lower or dense subdivision. These are referred to in Adya Theosophical, Anthroposophical, and some New Age thought as the Etheric and the Physical. The Etheric region represents the interface between the Psychic (and more subtle realities) and the Physical proper. It also includes many refined and subtle states of existence that have little relation to our world, or only irrupt into the known universe occasionally, as UFOs and other anomalous (Fortean) phenomena. In even more subtle dimensions of the physical one finds the physical Astral region, and beyond that Steiner's Spiritual Heirarchies. In the subtle physical also there is what in esoteric Islam is widely called the Imaginal Realm, the Barzakh or the Intermediate World, in which "bodies are spiritualitised and spirits corporalised". In western esotericism such as Theosophy and Hermeticism, this is or includes the Astral plane. Theon uses the term Nervo or Nervous (perhaps equivalent to "etheric" - nadis etc?). The Etheric and Imaginal also provide the blueprints for the Physical universe. Below this of course is the dense physical plane is the material universe, the lower part of the World of Asiyah, which includes physical consciousness, the mundane mind, higher states of consciousness, and also the very restricted state of consciousness in inanimate matter going all the way down to the inconscience of "formless" matter (only formless when expreinced subjectively) or hyle; source of physical laws, and theatre for the soul's evolution, crucible of self-transformation, and the working out of the Divine Plan.

These four (or seven or eight or nine or however many) Universes or Planes can also be classified into a group of lower ones, corresponding to the Eastern (Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist) idea of samsaraor embodied transmigratory existence, and a group of higher planes of divine consciousness, which can be referred to as the Higher Spiritual worlds. Note that these higher worlds are not the same as Nirvana or Moksha, although if you attain this state you are certainly in the condition described as self-realised or enlightened. But Nirvana is release from all existence - higher and lower, enlightened and ignorant. Nirvana, Moksha, or Mukti (Liberation) is a state of non-being, a return to the Supreme (or rather, a realisation that you always were the Supreme). But in realising that you lose your embodied existence. You are no longer a part of the evolution of the cosmos to the state of Divinization (or Supramentalisation, in Sri Aurobindo's term). Ultimately it is a matter of choice whether one seeks Nirvana or Supramentalisation (by choice I mean the choice of one's Higher Self, not of the ego or finite personality)

So there are the three Samsaric Worlds or Planes - Gross and Subtle Matter (Form), Affective, and pure Mind or Spiritual-Ideational (or five or six according to Buddhism (see wheel of rebirth), but they do not use an equivalent classification to the one used here), and four Higher Spiritual worlds, which are noetic. It might be that in some traditions of Sant Mat / Radhasoami cosmology there are referred to as saguna (with form - the lower three) and nirguna (formless, the higher two), although I tend now to think that Sant Mat, like Gnosticism, pertains primarily to the "concentric" dimension of consciousness.

The dividing line between Samsaric and Noetic might correspond to what Sri Aurobindo calls the "void region" above the head; this in other words is the Shunya or Clear Light of Tibetan Buddhism. Below it, you are caught in samasara and karma, above it you have fully integrated gnosis, although there is still the karma from past actions, and the evolutionary impetus of the Higher Self.

Further, these planes and subplanes can in turn be grouped into further categories, as follows:

• Divine Manifestation and Revelation:
  • The Divine
  • Enlightenment-Intuition
• Higher Spiritual Awakening:
  • Illumination
  • Higher Mind Intuition
• Creative and Spiritual Awareness and Spiritual-Psychic existence
  • Spiritual Mind or Pure Intellect
  • Higher Affective/Psychic/Heaven (Spiritual Emotion or Pure Affectivity)
• Material and Lower Psychic Expression:
  • Lower Affective/"Lower Astral"
  • Higher Physical (Etheric, Imaginal, Astral-Physical, etc)
  • Lower or Dense Physical
  • Hylic / Inconscient

So far we have discussed grouping the planes into larger categories. But each of these worlds can also be divided into further subworlds.  There are in addition other parameters as well as the ontological series of worlds. All of which contributes to a foundation or framework for a unified Esoteric Science

And just as the Universes of Physical, Astral, Affective, Ideational, etc exist as the Macrocosm, the cosmic or objective reality as a whole, so they also have their correlates in the Microcosm, the individual evolving entity (whether human, animal, plant, or whatever).  So we have a psychology of three primary grades of consciousness, which constitute the individualisation of the entity in that particular Universe; an Occult Psychology in other words.  In Kabbalistic terminology these can be referred to as the nefesh (in Kabbalah the psychological faculties of the World of Asiyah (the Physical and Imaginal), and one of several terms for the "soul"), the ruah (the psychospiritual faculties corresponding to Yetzirah, the Psychic World), and the neshamah (the soul-principle of Beriah, the Ideational World), although - because of the confusion between the various parameters of being in many esoteric traditions - these terms can equally (or even more persuiasively) also be applied to the "concentric" axis of consciousness.

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Speculations Toward a Precise Model of Morphic Fields

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Gentle Reader Beware: This post presents some fairly out-there ideas about the nature of memory and the relationship between the mind and the universe!  If you're a hard-core psi skeptic or a die-hard materialist you may as well move on and save yourself some annoyance ;-) …

On the other hand, if you're intrigued by new potential ways of connecting known science with the "paranormal", and open to wacky new ways of conceptualizing the universe, please read on !! …

Rupert Sheldrake, Morphic Fields and Psi

In summer 2012, when Ruiting and I were in the UK for the AGI-12 conference at Oxford, we had the pleasure of stopping by the London home of maverick scientist Rupert Sheldrake for a meal and a chat.  (It was a beautiful British-style home with the look of having been host to a lifetime of deep thinking.  The walls were covered floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves containing all manner of interesting books.   We also met Rupert's very personable wife, who is not a scientist but shares her husband's interest in trans-materialist models of the universe.)

I have been fascinated by Sheldrake's idea since reading his book "A New Science of Life" in the 1980s.  His idea of a "morphic field" -- a pattern-field, coupled with yet in some ways distinct from the material world we see around us, shaping and shaped by the patterns observable in matter -- struck me at first sight as intriguing and plausible.  The mathematician in me found Sheldrake's descriptions of the morphic field idea a bit fuzzy, but then I feel that way about an awful lot of biology.  At very least it has always seemed to me an intriguing direction for research.

It also occurred to me, when I first encountered his ideas, that morphic fields could provide some sort of foundation for explaining telepathy. The basic idea of the morphic field is simply that there is a "pattern  memory field" in the universe, which records any pattern that occurs anywhere, and then reinforces the occurrence of that pattern elsewhere.   I reflected on the phenomenon of twin telepathy and it seemed very "morphic field" ish in nature.

More recently, Damien Broderick and I have co-edited a book called "The Evidence for Psi", to appear early next year, published by McFarland Press.   In the book we have gathered together various chapters summarizing  empirical data regarding psi phenomena, attempting to broadly summarize the empirical case that psi is a real phenomenon.  Sheldrake contributed a chapter to our book, summarizing experiments he did on email and telephone telepathy.  I had previously read  Sheldrake's description of his experimental work on dogs anticipating when their owners will get home, and been impressed by his careful and practical methodology.

While "Evidence for Psi" is still awaiting release, I'll point readers interested in the existing corpus of evidence regarding the existence of psi phenomena to my Psi Page, which contains links to a couple prior books I recommend on the topic.   "Evidence for Psi" contains a more up-to-date and systematic overview of the evidence, but it's not out quite yet.

Damien and I are also planning to edit a sequel book on "The Physics of Psi", covering various theories of how psi works.   I've proposed my own sketchy theory in a 2010 essay, which proposed a certain extension to quantum physics that seems to have potential to explain psi phenomena.  I actually have more recent and detailed thoughts these lines, which I'll hint at toward the end of this monster blog post ... but will not enlarge on completely here as it's a long story -- of course I'll lay these ideas out in a chapter of "The Physics of Psi" when the time comes!

While researching possible extensions to quantum theory that might help explain psi, I noticed a paper by famous physicist Lee Smolin presenting an idea called the "Precedence Principle", which struck me as remarkably similar to Sheldrake's morphic field theory.   I discussed this similarity in aprevious blog post.

During our visit to Rupert's house, he gave us a gift to take with us -- a copy of his book "Science Set Free".   Being a really nice guy as well as a brilliantly creative thinker, I'm sure Rupert will not be too annoyed at me for repaying his kind gift by writing this blog post, which criticizes some of his ideas while building on others! 

I skimmed the book shortly after receiving it, but only recently started reading through it more carefully.   The overall theme is a call for scientists to look beyond a traditional materialistic approach, and open their minds to the possibility that the universe is richer, more complex, and more holistic than materialist thinking suggests.   Morphic fields are mentioned here and there, as one kind of scientific hypothesis going beyond traditional materialism and potentially explaining certain data.

All this was also the topic of Sheldrake's controversial TEDx talk a couple years back, which was removed from the TEDx archive, apparently due to the controversial nature of Sheldrake's work in general.  For a lengthy online discussion of this incident, see this page….  As I said in my contribution to that discussion, I don't think they were right to remove his video from their archive.  I've heard far more out-there TEDx talks than Rupert's, so it's obviously not the contents of his talk that caused its removal -- it's his general reputation, which someone apparently decided would sully TED's reputation in some circles they values.   Urrrgh.   I generally think TED is great, but I don't like this decision at all.

In general I'm supportive of Rupert's call for science to be more open-minded, and to look beyond traditional materialist approaches.   To me, science is centrally about a process of arriving at agreement among a community of minds regarding which observations should be accepted as collectively valid, and which explanations should be accepted as simpler.  Nothing in this scientific process requires the assumption that matter is more primary than consciousness (for example).  Nor are the notions of a "morphic field", or of precognition or ESP etc., "unscientific" in nature.

The main problem with the morphic field theory as Sheldrake lays it out is, in my view, its imprecision.   From the view of science as a community process of agreeing which observations are collectively valid and which explanations are simple, an issue with Sheldrake's "morphic field" view is that it's not simple at all to figure out how to apply it to a given context.   Different scientists might well come up with very different, and perhaps mutually incompatible, ways of using it to explain a given set of observations, or predict future observations in a given context.  This fuzziness is a kind of complexity, which makes my personal scientific Occam's Razor heuristic uneasy.

For now, what I want to talk about are some of Rupert Sheldrake's comments on memory, in "Science Set Free."   This will segue into some wild-ass quasi-mathematical speculations on how one might go about formalizing the morphic field idea in a more rigorous way than has been done so far.

Memory Traces versus Morphic Fields

In Chapter 7 of "Science Set Free", Sheldrake contrasts two different theories of human memory -- the "trace theory", which holds that memories are embodies as traces in organisms' brains; and the morphic resonance theory, which holds that memories are contained in a morphic field.  Of course the trace theory is the standard understanding in modern neuroscience.   On the other hand, he quotes the neuroscientist Karl Pribram as supporting an alternative understanding,

"Pribram … thought of the brain as a 'waveform analyzer' rather than a storage system, comparing it to a radio receiver that picked up waveforms from the 'implicate order', rendering them explicate.   This aspect of his thinking was influenced by the quantum physicist David Bohm, who suggested that the entire universe is holographic, in the sense that wholeness is enfolded into every part.

According to Bohm, the observable or manifest world is the explicate or unfolded order, which emerges from the implicate or enfolded order.  Bohm thought that the implicate order contains a kind of memory.  What happens in one place is 'introjected' or 'injected' into the implicate order, which is potentially present elsewhere; thereafter when the implicate order unfolds into the explicate order, this memory affects what happens, giving the process very similar properties to morphic resonance.   In Bohm's words, each moment will 'contain a projection of the re-injection of the previous moments, which is a kind of memory; so that would result in a general replication of past forms' "

When I briefly spoke with Karl Pribram on these matters in 2006 (when at my invitation he spoke at the AGI-06 workshop in Bethesda, the initial iteration of the AGI conference series), he seemed a lot less definitive than Sheldrake on the "brain as antenna" versus "brain as storehouse of memories" issue, but on the whole the story he told me was similar to Sheldrake's summary.   Pribram was trying to view the brain as a quantum-mechanical system in a state of macroscopic quantum coherence (perhaps related to coherent states in water megamolecules in the brain, as conjectured by his Japanese collaborators Jibu and Yasue), and then to look at perception as involving some sort of quantum coupling between the brain and environment.

I actually like the "implicate order" idea; and Bohm's late-life book "Thought as a System" had a huge impact on me.   The first version of my attempt to formalize a theory of psi phenomena --  Morphic Pilot Theory -- was inspired by both morphic fields and Bohm's pilot wave theory of quantum mechanics (though the end part of this blog post presents some ways in which I'm recently trying to go beyond the particulars of that formulation).

However, I really can't buy into Sheldrake's rejection of the massive corpus of neurobiological evidence in favor of what he calls the "trace theory."   There is just a massive amount of evidence that, in a fairly strong sense, an awful lot of memories ARE actually stored "in the brain."

As just one among many examples, I recently looked through the literature on "concept neurons" -- neurons that fire when a person sees a certain face (say, Jennifer Aniston, in the common example).   But there are hundreds of other examples where neuroscientists have figured out which neurons or neuronal subnetworks become active when a given memory is recalled….   The idea that the brain is more like a radio receiver (receiving signals from the morphic field) than a storehouse of information, seems to me deeply flawed.

Sheldrake says

"The brain may be more like a television set than a hard drive recorder.   What you see on TV depends on the resonant tuning of the set to invisible fields.  No one can find out today what programs you watched yesterday by analyzing the wires and transistors in your TV set for traces of yesterday's programs."

While I salute the innovative, maverick thinking underlying this hypothesis, I definitely can't agree.  I very strongly suspect that you COULD tell what TV program a person watched yesterday, by analyzing their brain's connectome.  We can't carry out this exact feat yet,but I bet it will be possible before too long.  We can already tell what a person is looking at via reading out information from their visual cortex, for example.

The main point I want to make here, though, is that one doesn't have to view the trace theory of memory and (some form of) the morphic field theory of memory as contradictory.

The brain, IMO, is plainly not much like a radio receiver or antenna -- it does contain specific neurons, specific subnetworks and specific dynamical patterns that correlate closely with specific memories of various sorts.   Neuroscience data says this and we have to listen.

However, this doesn't rule out the possibility that some sort of "morphic field" could also exist, and could also play a role in memory.

Pattern Completion and Morphic Fields

It seems to me that a better analogy than a radio receiver, would be pattern completion in attractor neural networks.

In a Hopfield neural net, one "trains" the network by exposing it to a bunch of memories (each one of which is a pattern of activity across the network, in which some neurons are active and others are not).   Then, once the network is trained, if one exposes the network to PART of some memory, the nonlinear dynamics of activation flowing through the neural net will cause the whole memory to emerge in the network.   The following figure illustrates this in some simple examples.

Figure illustrating neural net based pattern completion, borrowed from [Ritter, H., Martinetz, Th., Schulten, K. (1992): Neural Computation and Self-organizing Maps. Addison Wesley,].  (a) The Hopfield net consists of 20 x 20 neuroids, which can show two states, illustrated by a dot or a black square, respectively. The weights are chosen to store 20 different patterns; one is represented by the face, the other 19 by different random dot patterns. (b) After providing only a part of the face pattern as input (left), in the next iteration cycle the essential elements of the final pattern can already be recognized (center), and the pattern is completed two cycles later (right). (c) In this example, the complete pattern was used as input, but was disturbed by noise beforehand (left). Again, after one iteration cycle the errors are nearly corrected (center), and the pattern is complete after the second iteration (right) 

What does this have to do with morphic fields? 

My suggestion is that, potentially, the trace of a memory in an organism's brain, could be considered as a PART of the totality of that memory in the universe.  The nonlinear dynamics of the universe could be such that: When the PART of a memory existing in an organism's brain is activated, then via a pattern-completion type dynamic, the rest of the memory is activated.

Furthermore, if some memory is activated in the broader universe, then the nonlinear dynamics coupling the rest of the universe with the organism's brain, could cause a portion of that memory to form within the organism's brain.

In the analogy I'm suggesting here, the analogue of the whole Hopfield neural network in which the overall memory would be activated, would be some form of "morphic field."

In this hypothetical model, the portion of the "universal nonlinear dynamical system" that resides in an organism's brain is not behaving much like an antenna.  It's not just tuning into channels and receiving what is broadcast on them.  Rather, in this model, the brain stores its own memory-fragments and has its own complex dynamics for generating them, modifying them, revising them, and so forth.  But these memory-fragments are nonlinearly coupled with broader memory patterns that exist in a nonlinear-dynamical field that goes beyond the individual organism's rain and body.

In sum, the idea I'm proposing is that

• a morphic field may be modeled as a nonlinear self-organizing network, including material entities like brains and bodies as a portion
• memories may be viewed as patterns spread across large portions of a morphic field
• the portion of a memory that is resident in an organism's brain as a "memory trace" may be viewed as a "memory fragment" from a morphic field perspective; and may   trigger a broader memory to emerge across the morphic field via "pattern completion" type dynamics
• the emergence of a broader memory across the morphic field, may cause certain memory-fragments to emerge in an organism's brain

This seems a consistent, coherent way to have both morphic fields AND standard neurobiological memory traces.

I'm not claiming to have empirical evidence for this (admittedly out-there and eccentric) perspective on memory.  Nor am I claiming that this constitutes a precise, rigorous, testable hypothesis.   It doesn't.  All I'm trying to do in this post is articulate a conceptual approach that makes the morphic field hypothesis consistent with the almost inarguably strong observation that neural memory traces are real and are powerfully explanatory regarding many aspects of human memory. 

Morphic Fields and Psi, Once Again

Ah -- OK but, what aspects of memory would one need to invoke these broader-memory morphic fields to explain?

It's possible that morphic fields play a small but nontrivial role in a wide variety of memory phenomena, across the board.  This would fit in with Jim Carpenter's theories in his book First Sight, which argues that weak psi phenomena underlie our intuitive understandings of everyday situations.

And it's also possible that one thing distinguishing psi phenomena from ordinary cognition, is a heavy reliance on the morphic-field components of memories.

To turn these vague conceptual notions into really useful scientific theories, would require a more rigorous theory of how morphic fields work.  I have some thoughts along those lines but will save a full, detailed exposition of these for another time.  For now I'll just give a little hint...

How Might One Model Morphic Fields?

OK, now I'm going to go even further "out there", alongside with getting a bit more technical...

A model of morphic fields has to exist within some model of the universe overall.

Existing standard physics models don't seem to leave any natural place for morphic fields.  However, existing standard physics models are also known to be inadequate to explain known physical data in a coherent, self-consistent way (as e.g. general relativity and quantum field theory haven't yet been unified into a single theory).   This certainly gives some justification for looking beyond the standard physics approaches, in searching for a world-model that is conceptually compatible with morphic fields.

The basic ideas I'll outline here could actually be elaborated within many different approaches to theoretical physics.  However, they are easiest and most natural to elaborate in the context of discrete models of the universe -- so that's the route I'll take here.   Discrete models of the universe have been around a while, e.g. the Feynman Checkerboard and its descendants.

One of the more interesting discrete approaches to foundational physics is Causal Sets.  Basically, in causal set theory, "spacetime" is replaced by a network of nodes interconnected by directed edges.   A directed edge indicates an atomic flow of causality.

I suspect it may be interesting to extend the causal set approach into what I call a "causal web" -- in which directed hyperlinks span triples of nodes.  A hyperlink pointing from (A,B) to C indicates a flow of causality from the pair (A,B) to C.   Local field values at A and local field values at B then combine to yield local field values at C.   This combination may be represented as multiplication in some algebra, so one can write F_C(t+1) = F_A(t) * F_B(t), where t refers to a sort of "meta-time" or "implicate time", distinct from the time axis that forms part of the spacetime continuum we see.

Figuring out the right way to represent electromagnetic and quark fields this way is an interesting line of research, which I've been playing with occasionally in recent weeks.   Gravitation, on the other hand, I would suggest to represent more statistically, as an "entropic force" of a sort arising emergently from dynamics on the causal web.   I'll write another post about that later.

(More broadly, I think one could show that continuous field theories, within fairly broad conditions, can be emulated by causal webs within arbitrarily small errors.    Conceptually, causal webs are a bit like discrete reaction-diffusion equations; and it's known that discrete reaction-diffusion equations can be mapped into discrete quantum field theories.)

The main point I want to explore here is how one might get some sort of morphic field to emerge from this sort of framework.  Namely: One could potentially do so by positing a field, living at the nodes in the causal web, which is acausal in nature, and propagates symmetrically, flowing both directions along directed links.  This would be a "pattern field."   

Imagine running hypergraph pattern mining software - like, say, OpenCog's Pattern Miner -- on a causal web.  This would result in a large index, indicating which patterns occur how often in the web.  Atoms and molecules would emerge as pretty frequent patterns, for example; as would radioactive decay events.  Spatial, temporal and spatiotemporal patterns would be definable in this way.

Each node in the causal web can then be associated with a "pattern set" indicating the frequent patterns that it belongs to, indexed by their frequency (and perhaps by other quantities, such as their surprisingness), and retaining information regarding what slot in the pattern the current node fits into.

One can then view these pattern sets as comprising additional nodes and links, to be added to the web.  Two nodes that are part of the same pattern, even if distant spatiotemporally, would then be linked together by the nodes and links comprising the pattern.  These are non-causal links, representing commonality of pattern, independent of spatiotemporal causality.

Given this framework, we can introduce an additional dynamic: a variant of what philosopher Charles Peirce called "the tendency to take habits."   Namely, we can posit that: Patterns that have a highsurprisingness value are more likely to persist in the causal web. 

By "surprisingness value" I mean here that the pattern is more probable than one would infer from looking at its component parts.  As a first hypothesis one can use the I-surprisingness as defined in OpenCog's pattern mining framework.

Among other things, this implies that: When one instance of pattern P is linked with an instance of pattern Q, this increases the odds that another instance of pattern P is linked with some instance of pattern Q.

Or, a little differently, this "Surprising Multiverse" theory could be viewed as a variation of the Jungian notion of "synchronicity" -- which basically posits that meaningful combinations of events may occur surprisingly often, due to some sort of acausal connecting principle.  (As an aside, I actually first learned about Synchronicity from the Police album way back when -- thanks, Sting!)

Viewed in quantum-theoretic terms, this is a statement about the amplitude (complex probability) distribution over possible causal webs (or more properly, actually: over possible histories of causal webs, where a causal web history is defined as a series of causal-web states so that each one is consistent with the previous and subsequent according to causal web dynamics....  If a causal web is deterministic then each causal web corresponds with just one causal web history, but we don't need to assume this.)   It is a statement that causal web histories with more surprising patterns, should be weighted higher when doing Feynman sums used to determine what happens in the world.

How does a pattern completion type dynamic happen, then, in this perspective?  Suppose that, in a particular part of the causal web, a certain pattern emerges.  The existence of this pattern influences the surprisingness values of other pattern-instances, situated other places in the web.  It thus influences the weightings of Feynman sums occurring all around the web, thus influencing the probabilities of various events.

We thus have a non-local, acausal connecting principle: the surprising-pattern-based weighting of possible causal web histories in Feynman sums.  The "morphic field" is then modeled, not exactly as a "field", but as a multiverse-wide , ongoing dynamic re-weighting of possible universes according to the surprisingness of the patterns they contain (noting that the surprisingness of a universe changes over time as it evolves).   (And note also that nothing is literally represented as a "field" in the causal web approach; fields are replaced in this model by discrete dynamics on hypergraphs representing pre-geometric structures below the level of spacetime.)

For example, suppose one identical twin falls in love with a brown-haired dentist.  There are possible universes (causal web histories) in which both twins fall in love with brown-haired dentists, and others in which only one does, and the other falls in love with a green-haired chiropodist or whatever.  The universes in which both twins fall in love with brown-haired dentists will have an additional surprising pattern as compared to the other universes, and hence will be weighted slightly higher.

Or, suppose a woman's brain remembers what she watched on TV last night.  Again, it will be more surprising, probabilistically, if others know this as well -- so the universes in which others do, will be weighted slightly higher.

Now, there are many different ways to measure surprisingness, so that this approach to more formally specifying the morphic field hypothesis must be considered a research direction rather than a definite theory.  All I'm suggesting here is that it's an interesting direction.

When digging into the details of these ideas, an important thing to think about is: Surprising to whom?  Based on whose expectations?  Surprising to the universe?  Or surprising to some particular observer?  In the relational interpretation of quantum theory, all observations occur relative to some observer -- so this is probably the best way to think about it.

The decline effect -- in which psi experiments start to decay in effectiveness after some time has passed -- begins to seem perhaps conceptually explicable in this framework.   Once a psi phenomenon has been demonstrated enough times, to a given class of observers, it fails to be surprising to them, so it fails to be weighted higher in the relevant Feynman sums and doesn't happen anymore.   (Indeed this is extremely hand-wavy, but as I already emphasized, I'm just trying to point in an interesting direction!)

It's also worth noting that one could also extend the sum over causal webs that are inconsistent in terms of temporal direction.  That is, causal webs containing circular arrow structures.  What would likely happen in this case is that, as you add up the amplitudes of all the different causal webs, the causally inconsistent ones tend to cancel each other out, and the overall sum is dominated by the causally consistent ones.  However, this wouldn't be guaranteed to happen, and the surprise bias could in some cases intersect interestingly with this phenomenon, enabling circularly-causal webs to "occasionally" dominate the amplitude sum.

Anyway, I've certainly raised more questions than I've answered here.   But perhaps I've convinced some tiny fraction of readers that there is some hope, by modifying existing (admittedly somewhat radical) physics models, to come up with a coherent formal model of morphic fields.  Getting back to issues of memory, my feeling is that such a formal model is likely to yield a "pattern completion" type theory of morphic memory, rather than a "television receiver" type theory.

In Praise of Wild Wacky Weirdness ... and Data

I've spun out some wacky ideas here, and probably weirded out a lot of readers, but so it goes!   One of the messages of Sheldrake's book "Science Set Free" that I really like is (paraphrasing): Open your mind and rethink every issue from first principles.  Just try to understand, and don't worry so much about agreeing with prevailing points of view; after all, prevailing points of view have been proved wrong many times throughout history.  The ideas given here are presented very much in that spirit.

Another key message of Sheldrake's book, however, is (paraphrasing again): Do pay attention to data.  Look at data very carefully.  Design your own experiments to explore your hypotheses, gather your own data, and study it.   This is one of the next important steps in exploring the ideas presented here.  How could this sort of formalized morphic field explain the various data collected in "The Evidence for Psi", for example?

The journey continues...

The above comes from the

The Multiverse According to Ben

http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.hk/2014/10/is-physics-information-geometry-on.html

Chakras and the Channels of Energy

	Inside every human being there is a network of nerves and sensory organs that interprets the outside physical world. At the same time, within us resides a subtle system of channels (nadis) and centers of energy (chakras) which look after our physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual being. Each of the seven chakras has several spiritual qualities. These qualities are intact within us, and even though they might not always be manifest, they can never be destroyed. When the Kundalini is awakened, these qualities start manifesting spontaneously and express themselves in our life. Thus, through regular meditation, we become automatically very dynamic, creative, confident and at the same time very humble, loving and compassionate. It is a process which starts to develop by itself when the Kundalini rises and starts to nourish our chakras. Mooladhara Chakra The first chakra is situated below the sacrum bone in which resides the Kundalini, and its main aspect is the innocence. Innocence is the quality by which we experience pure, childlike joy, without the limitations of prejudice or conditionings. Innocence gives us dignity, balance, and a tremendous sense of direction and purpose in life. It is nothing but simplicity, purity and joy. It is the inner wisdom that is ever present in the little children, and gets sometimes clouded by our modern lifestyles. But it is a quality which exists eternally within us and cannot be destroyed, waiting to be manifest as pure joy when the Kundalini rises. Swadishthan Chakra The second chakra is the chakra of creativity, pure attention and pure knowledge. It is the one which connects us to the inner source of inspiration, and enables us to experience the beauty around us. The pure knowledge given by this chakra is not mental, but it is direct perception of the Reality, that can be felt in our palms and indicates our subtle blockages. Also this is the center of pure, steady attention and power of concentration. On the physical level it looks after our liver, kidneys, and the lower abdomen. When we think too much, this center gets drained of energy and diseases like diabetes or blood cancer can occur when this chakra goes completely out of balance. Nabhi Chakra The third chakra is the one that gives us the sense of generosity, complete satisfaction and contentment. On the left side, the main quality of this center is peace - clearing this chakra can relieve stress and tensions. On the right side, it looks after our liver which is the organ of our attention and power of concentration. When enlightened by the Kundalini, the Nabhi chakra gives us our spiritual ascent, righteousness and inner sense of morality, and complete balance at all levels in our life. The Void Surrounding the second and the third chakra is the Void which stands for the principle of mastery (guru principle) within us. In many spiritual traditions, this area is the "ocean of illusions" that needs to be crossed with the help of a spiritual guide. When the Kundalini is awakened and passes through the Void, this principle of mastery is established within us. Thus, as Shri Mataji says, in Sahaja Yoga you become your own guru, your own spiritual guide since you can feel on your fingertips all your subtle problems and have the power to cure them using your own Kundalini. Moreover, establishing this center helps us get rid of all our habits, laziness, gross attachments, and everything that enslaves us in a way or another: we become our own master. Following false "gurus" who are more interested in power tricks or your purse can damage very much the Void area. But after Self Realization, everything can be cured through the purifying power of the Kundalini in meditation. The Heart Chakra or Anahat Chakra The fourth chakra, the chakra of the heart, is the place where resides our Spirit, our true Self, which is eternally pure and unaffected by anything, like a shining diamond hidden within us which witnesses all our actions. After Self Realization, our attention becomes for the first time connected to our Spirit and we gradually become aware of it. Our misidentifications with our ego or conditionings drop and we start becoming identified with our Spirit, which is our true nature. On the physical level, this chakra looks after our heart and lungs - if affected it can cause asthma or various heart conditions. It is from our heart that the compassion and love manifests, and also the heart chakra is the one that gives us the sense of responsibility and pure behaviour towards others. The heart chakra manifests in the center (at the level of the sternum bone) as complete security and confidence. All our worries, doubts and fears are destroyed when the heart chakra is fully enlightened by the Kundalini. Vishuddhi Chakra The fifth chakra is the chakra of diplomacy, of pure relationships with others, and of playful detachment. It removes all our guilts and remorses when it is opened by the Kundalini, and gives us a kind and compassionate voice. The tendencies to dominate others or to feel dominated by others, the feelings of superiority or inferiority and all jealousies are removed when this chakra is nourished by the Kundalini. Also, the Vishuddhi is the chakra which gives us the connection with the whole, enabling us to feel our oneness and the fact that we are all part and parcel of the whole. The Agnya Chakra The sixth chakra is the chakra of forgiveness and compassion. Forgiveness is the power to let go of anger, hatred and resentment and to discover, in humility, the nobility and generosity of the Spirit. It is the one that dissolves all our ego, conditionings, habits, false ideas of racialism, and all our misidentifications. It is the narrow gate which opens the way for our consciousness to ascend to its final destination, which is the seventh center. Roving eyes, watching impure things, or self-centeredness damage this chakra. Watching the sky, earth or nature can help cleanse it. The Sahasrara Chakra The seventh center integrates all the chakras with their respective qualities. It is the last milestone of the evolution of human awareness. Nowadays, we are at a level which corresponds to this chakra, and our consciousness is able to easily enter into this new realm of perception, which is beyond our limited mind and concepts, and which becomes absolute at the level of the Sahasrara.This chakra gives us the direct, absolute perception of Reality on our central nervous system. This is precisely what is achieved by Self Realization, through the spontaneous awakening of the Kundalini given by Sahaja Yoga. A word about the three channels of energy. The left channel (blue) corresponds to our past, emotions, desires, affectivity. Its termination is the superego, which is the storehouse of all our memories, habits and conditionings. The right channel (yellow) corresponds to our actions and planning, to our physical and mental activity. Its termination is the ego, which gives us the idea of I-ness, the sense that we are separate from the world. The central channel is the channel of ascent, it is the power which sustains our evolution and guides us, consciously or unconsciously, towards the higher awareness of the Sahasrara (seventh chakra). The workings of Self Realization and subtle aspects of the chakras and channels are too extensive to be explained here. They are part of a knowledge which is not only to be studied at the mental level, but to be experienced directly. This new level of consciousness can be achieved after Self Realization, through the regular practice of Sahaja Yoga meditation techniques that are taught, always free of charge, in over 75 countries around the world. Go to our Worldwide Contacts List to find the closest center to you. Home   |  Sahaja Yoga Locations Worldwide
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