April 15, 2008: The 6th and 7th Chakras – The Journey's End

In October of 1932 in Zurich, Carl Jung gave four lectures on yoga and kundalini. When he got to the fifth chakra he said, “we are already out of breath – literally so – we are beyond the air we breathe; we are reaching, say, into the remote future of mankind, or of ourselves.” He was certain that most of our work is in the third and fourth chakras. And it would seem that the ancient yogis were in agreement. We still have a lot to do in the lower chakras. When Jung got around to talking about the crown chakra he was even less interested in the value of interpreting it: “To speak about the lotus of the thousand petals above,” he said, “is quite superfluous because that is merely a philosophical concept with no substance to us whatever; it is beyond any possible experience…It is without practical value for us.”
But the yogis would disagree with this assertion. On a purely psychological level, the upper chakras are not terribly interesting. There aren’t any great personality issues to overcome, but these chakras are the reason that meditation works. It is through them that we move into our greatest potential as human beings – to merge with the Divine and understand it as ourselves.
The Sanskrit word for the Sixth Chakra is Ajna (pronounced ah-gya) which means “The Command Center.” Like the sahasrara above it, it is beyond the five elements and therefore beyond the confines of shape, color or sound vibration which occur only in the manifest universe – not in the spiritual universe. In the sixth chakra our ego and our psyche disappear and we are absorbed into the universal mind. The ajna has only two petals – as if it were going to fly away – and it does, into the ocean of effulgent light that is the Divine.
Now the brain has two lobes, there is some indication that the wings of the sixth chakra relate to the potential of these two lobes. We have often heard that all knowledge is within us – that the brain only uses a fraction of it’s potential. Here the yogis have touched this reality in the symbolism of the sixth chakra – one petals represents all knowledge of the physical universe and the other all knowledge of the spiritual universe.
The hands come together and lift the thumbs up to touch this chakra in the ancient Indian greeting, “Namaskar” before bringing the thumbs down to the heart. While it’s easy to understand why you would want to greet someone from the heart, to touch the third eye sanctifies the gestures by connecting to the infinite wisdom of the Divine within.
Accordingly, this chakra is the place of concentration, deep understanding and intuition. Meditation practices will strengthen and develop awareness in this chakra.
The seventh chakra, the sahasrara, is beyond even the effulgence of the sixth chakra. It vibrates off the body, just above the crown of the head and is called the 1000 petaled lotus. If we take the lower six chakras with their 50 petals and multiply that number by both an internal expression and an external expression, we have 100. If we multiply 100 by the 10 motor and sensory organs, we get 1000. In other words, there are 20 ways our body-minds can express each of the 50 vrittis in each chakra. This is the meaning of the 1000 petals. The sahasrara is our deepest connection to the spiritual plane, when we have awakened this center, we have gone beyond any ego, and even beyond any connection to the Divine ocean of the sixth chakra. It is beyond words, beyond description and beyond experience. The seven chakra is the pinnacle of the journey. It is here that we come home to ourselves and our human potential.