The Action of Prana at the Level of the Subtle Body
The Yogis of ancient India took a somewhat different approach toward understanding the physical world than we have seen in the West. Western scientists have generally started from the most external physical forms and from there, systematically moved inward toward more and more subtle understanding. The Yogis quickly recognized that the physical form is the outer, grossest expression and could not possibly be the ultimate cause, and that therefore, something else must be building, creating and operating the outer world and all its forms. The Taittiriya Upanishad, indeed, started from the outer physical and moved toward the vital, mental knowledge and ultimately the spiritual levels of existence, with each one more subtle than the prior, and having a causative action on the former level.
These Yogis, when they looked at the interaction between the subtle inner levels and the gross physical forms, developed a detailed understanding of the principles of action of the vital force, which they called Prana. Sri Aurobindo describes briefly this view:
“This mental or psychical body, which the soul keeps even after death, has also a subtle pranic force in it corresponding to its own subtle nature and substance,–for wherever there is life of any kind, there must be the pranic energy and a substance in which it can work,–and this force is directed through a system of numerous channels, called nadi,–the subtle nervous organisation of the psychic body,–which are gathered up into six (or really seven) centres called technically lotuses or circles, cakra, and which rise in an ascending scale to the summit where there is the thousand-petalled lotus from which all the mental and vital energy flows. Each of these lotuses is the centre and the storing-house of its own particular system of psychological powers, energies and operations,–each system corresponding to a plane of our psychological existence,–and these flow out and return in the stream of the pranic energies as they course through the Nadis.”
With this understanding, the practitioners of Yoga are able to understand how they can open to and utilize the energies flowing through or focused within any of these chakras and apply that energy to spiritual growth and realization, inner mental, emotional and vital development, interactions and relations with the outer world, and physical strength and well-being of the physical body.
Reference: Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Part Two: The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Chapter 28, Rajayoga, pp. 514-515.
- Santosh Krinsky
Institute for Wholistic Education
& Lotus Press, USA
Keywords: Prana, Chakras, Yoga, Vital force, Pranic energy, Spiritual growth, Subtle body
A truly fascinating commentary, Santosh. I'm glad you added the modifier, "Western scientists have 'GENERALLY' started from the most external forms."
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting one day to write a complete history of the development of science not just in the West, but throughout the world, over the past several centuries.
Take just one example, Frederick Myers, who coined the term "subliminal" which Sri Aurobindo borrowed to refer to the inner regions of consciousness. Myers lived in the late 19th century, drew on a vast range of resources (which of course included the Upanishads, Gita and other Indian texts which were very well known in Europe by that time, and already having a tremendous influence on the psychology, evolutionary speculations and physics of the time, particularly on the "founders" of quantum physics).
Myers spoke of a central core of consciousness, which in many ways is strikingly similar to Mother and Sri Aurobindo's description of the psychic being, including the idea of it as a spark of Divinity evolving over lifetimes. Myers spoke of various planes of consciousness (the term "plane" was quite commonly used by European occultists at the time, and was adopted by psychic researchers whose work Myers also drew from), and spoke of the purpose of life on earth as evolving deeper and higher levels and structures of consciousness over eons of evolution.
Most of the psychic researchers were quite familiar with the idea of Chi, Mana, Prana, etc, as the Life Force is called in various cultures of the earth. Myers in particular saw various levels of prana, and a subtler mental consciousness beyond and a still subtler or higher spiritual consciousness beyond that.
This has all been forgotten as a materialistic philosophy quite antithetical to the open, spirit of science took over in the early to mid 20th century. An astonishing development began in the mid to late 1990s, in a significant way influenced by Myers. A group of scientists and philosophers began meeting at Esalen in 1999; most were quite familiar with Mother and Sri Aurobindo's work and were quite familiar with them. An overview of their discussions was published in 2007 as "Irreducible Mind," the main aim of which was to refute the materialist view and lay the ground for a Consciousness based science.
I spoke to them on a regular basis and encouraged them to include a chapter on Sri Aurobindo in their planned follow-up volume. Toward the date of publication, they were almost planning to reject that in favor of a chapter on Whitehead and "process science," but evidently Mother intervened and near the end of "Beyond Physicalism," (published in 2014) they included a quite well-written chapter on Sri Aurobindo.
The upshot of this is in the just the past few years, you can find mainstream scientists proposing a science incorporating all the levels you speak of, almost as though the spirit of the Upanishads, Vedas and Gita, under the increasing influence of the Supramental Force, is bringing about a radical revolution in science greater than that which occurred during the "Copernican" revolution nearly half a millennium ago.
If a sufficient number of individuals commit to living wtihin, to acting, speaking and thinking more and more from the innermost consciousness, humanity may survive this crucial transition as we move from the false to the true subjective age and ultimately to the beginnings of the spiritual age, and the far off glimpse of the supramental age.