Concluding – for the moment – my mini-series on the Chakras.
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The Star in the Field
“The body … is called the field;
Him who knows it, the sages call “knower of the field”.
Know me also as the Knower of the field in all the fields.”
Bhagavad Gita, transl. Ramana Maharshi
This morning I had a brief dream-flash of Vishnu. It said perhaps “Vishnu and the Tree of Knowledge” … meaning also, Vishnu and the wise Serpent. I saw Brahma Creator being dreamed out of Vishnu’s naval CHAKRA.
Sacred India Tarot – Vishnu dreams Brahma … Copyright 2011 Yogi Impressions Books
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The dreaming Vishnu lies on a serpent – his full length contact with the planetary Kundalini. The serpent has five “waves” and five cobra heads, which like five fingers form a canopy over the god’s head.
Now, Vishnu is the presiding deity around Badrinath – (see The Chakras part 2: the Mountains) – where they honour and release the ancestors. Vishnu is also the eternal prototype of Krishna and of Buddha and of Maitreya – for Whom J.Krishnamurti was trained to be the vehicle. Reflect on the burning sensation which JK – since his youth – endured in his head and spinal nerves, and called “the process“! It is a classic example of the cosmic and the planetary kundalini in the physical body, as they “rub”.
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In his own words:
“In the car on the way to Ojai, again it began, the pressure and the feeling of immense vastness. One was not experiencing this vastness; it was simply there; there was no centre from which, or in which, the experience was taking place. Everything, the cars, the people, the bill-boards, were startlingly clear, and colour was painfully intense. For over an hour it went on, and the head was very bad, the pain right through the head.
“The brain can and must develop; its development will always be from a cause, from a reaction, from violence to non-violence, and so on. The brain has developed from the primitive state, and however refined, intelligent, technical, it will be within the confines of space-time.
“Anonymity is humility; it does not lie in the change of name, cloth, or with the identification with that which may be anonymous – an idea, a heroic act, country and so on. Anonymity is an act of the brain, the conscious anonymity; there’s an anonymity which comes with the awareness of the complete. The complete is never within the field of the brain or idea.
“… Woke up at about two and there was a peculiar pressure and the pain was more acute, more in the centre of the head. It lasted over an hour, and one woke up several times with the intensity of the pressure. Each time there was great expanding ecstasy ; this joy continued…. – Again, sitting in the dentist’s chair waiting, suddenly the pressure began. The brain became very quiet; quivering, fully alive; every sense was alert; the eyes were seeing the bee in the window, the spider, the birds and the violet mountains in the distance. They were seeing, but the brain was not recording them. One could feel the quivering brain, something tremendously alive, vibrant, and so not merely recording. The pressure and the pain were great and the body must have gone off into a doze.
“The strength and the beauty of a tender leaf is its vulnerability to destruction. Like a blade of grass that comes up through the pavement, it has the power that can withstand causal death.
Krishnamurti at Gstaad
“Woke up in the middle of the night, and found the body perfectly still, stretched out on its back motionless … The pressure and the pain were there. The brain and the mind were intensely still. There was no division between them. There was a strange quiet intensity, like two great dynamos working at great speed; there was a peculiar tension in which there was no strain. There was a sense of vastness about the whole thing, and a power without direction and cause, and so no brutality and ruthlessness. And it continued during the morning.
“The ambitious do not know beauty. The feeling of essence is beauty … Woke up in the middle of the night, shouting and groaning …
Orbits – a sense, in 1988, of planes of consciousness touching each other, perhaps from outside our dimension. Convex could be a concavity, and vice versa. The ELOHIM came very close to earth, and still are. Their Presence throws everything into high-relief.
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“… That which is sacred has no attributes. A stone in a temple, an image in a church, is not sacred. Man calls them sacred, something holy to be worshipped out of complicated urges, fears and longings. This “sacredness” is still within the field of thought; it is built up by thought, and in thought there’s nothing new or holy.
“…But there’s a sacredness, untouched by any symbol or word. It is not communicable. It is a fact … It is not possible to be one with a swiftly flowing river. You can never be one with that which has no form, no measure, no quality. It is: that is all. How deeply mature and tender everything has become, and strangely all life is in it; like a new leaf, utterly defenceless.”
“This sacredness has no worshipper, the observer who meditates on it. It’s not in the market to be bought or sold. Like beauty it cannot be seen through its opposite, for it has no opposite.
“That presence is here, filling the room, spilling over the hills, beyond the waters, covering the earth … Yesterday afternoon it was pretty bad, almost unbearable. It went on for several hours … Early this morning, there was a benediction that seemed to cover the earth and fill the room. With it comes an all consuming quietness, a stillness that seems to have within it, all movement.
Orbits (2) – sketch in 1988, of a wooden sculpture I made at art college in 1968. Lower left corner I can just see two figures – an old philosopher (with right hand outstretched) and his bowed companion.
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“The process was particularly intense yesterday afternoon. In the car waiting, one was almost oblivious of what was going on around one. The intensity increased and it was almost unbearable, so that one was forced to lie down. Fortunately there was someone in the room. The room became full with that benediction … It was the centre of all creation; it was a purifying seriousness that cleansed the brain of every thought and feeling; its seriousness was as lightning which destroys and burns up; the profundity of it was not measurable, it was there immovable, impenetrable, a solidity that was as light as the heavens. It was in the eyes, in the breath. It was in the eyes, and the eyes could see.
“… Through the back of the head, rushing forward as an arrow with that peculiar sound as it flies through the air, was a force, a movement that came from nowhere, and was going nowhere. And there was a sense of vast stability and a ‘dignity’ that could not be approached. And an austerity that no thought could formulate, but with it a purity of infinite gentleness. All these are merely words and so they can never represent the real; the symbol is never the real and the symbol is without value. All the morning the process was on, and a cup that had no height and no depth seemed to be full to the overflowing.
“… like a knife thrust into a soft earth, there was that benediction with its power and strength. It came as does lightning, and was gone as quickly … a stream rushing out of the rocks, out of the earth … an aspen tree and its leaves are trembling in the breeze, and without that dance life is not.
Krishnamurti’s Notebook,1961 (Gollancz 1977)
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I have quoted this at much greater length than intended, because as I skim the pages, I pick up the Presence of Vishnu, and of Siva. These are names for the nose on my face – the vast empty, the zip of fire and water in the thunder cloud, the … Chakra.
Here is Vishnu, Sustainer of the Dharma or Laws of Creation. Note the Kundalini up his back, and cobra hood! Vishnu is … obviously … the Lord of the Chakras.
Sacred India Tarot Vishnu Magus – copyright 2011 Yogi Impressions Books
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K is a surprise entrance here – I have not posted about him for six months or more. He arrived through the Vishnu archetype, because he was trained since boyhood to be Buddha Maitreya’s vehicle, in that lineage. The current of the Un-named god in his spine and head, expresses the Chakra.
Sacred India Tarot 8 of Arrows – copyright 2011 Yogi Impressions Books
Here, in the Mahabharat, King Bhishma surrenders to Krishna, who carries/spins an enormous blue cosmic Chakra: the Vishnu lineage or galaxy. (In the finished card I drew a palm tree and three stars in Bhishma’s blank shield.) This is, as Rohit Arya says, an “end of Karma” card – an 8 of the suit.
J.Krishnamurti was groomed by the theosophists as a vehicle for Maitreya who was of that lineage – Buddha, Krishna, the blue ones. He cut it away, but it stayed inside his nervous system and nadis. He spoke often as the medium, and did not remember afterwards what “the Speaker” had said. The intensity with which he lived, enquired and spoke, did not leave ‘a recording’ in his conscious memory, because it was ongoing, moment to moment.
This has a Rahu resonance – J.K. yet conveyed the flavour of the gods, as profound psychological verities in his teaching. Rejecting Vedanta – cutting away the conditioned images – cutting the fence – he offered the utmost Transparency which is Brahman. Not many could follow him there, without the pilgrim’s prop and staff he cast away. It is ironic that his name translates to “Image of Krishna” – the murti, or sacred object. For him, the sacred has no object. Any object stands in the way of the sacred. K invited us passionately, to live unobstructedly. But the eternal Snows are in his words, and their teeming archetypes.
Orbits (3) – dandelion chakra
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Masters of their Interior Stars – by Paul Foster Case
“(An adept’s) different organism gives him another kind of vision. His unfoldment has made him able to deal successfully with situations and events which baffle the understanding of ordinary men and women. He is skillful where most persons are inept. Yet there is plenty for him to do, and plenty to learn.
“He knows how to set about solving his problems, and has behind him a record of successes which gives him confidence. He approaches his problems with joy. His work is not labour, but in the truest and best sense of the word, recreation.
“He belongs to that small minority described as BAALI HA-ShMIM, masters of the heavens. They must not be confused with ordinary exoteric astrologers. For besides knowing and interpreting the influences of external celestial forces, they have become masters of their interior Stars. This mastery is one consequence of the meditation symbolized in Tarot by Key 17.”
(NB – Key 17 The Star, contains the arcana of Chakra study.)
“The nature of the experience of such persons … is truly UNSPEAKABLE. Yet in this, it doesn’t differ from your own experience. One of the most valuable results of silent meditation is that it makes us realise that we live our whole existence at a level of activity which cannot be put into words. All that we say about our experience consists of arbitrary verbal symbols, representing our mental abstractions from an inexpressible field of living experience – that is, all we say which makes sense.
“We are unhappily, able to speak and write strings of perfectly meaningless verbal symbols. We hypnotise ourselves and others with these noises, and entangle ourselves in nets of misunderstanding. Quarrels between persons and nations are more often due to this misuse of language, than to any real clash of human interests … “
Paul Foster Case
My problem precisely. I am writing about Chakras, but I am not a Yogi. I try to tackle relationships but get bogged down in things we said to each other.
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Master R playing the violin, 2003
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However, here I enjoyed a moment of direct, non verbal experience: (29 March 1991) – and it stays for ever true. One of my paths to peace is through contemplating the beauty and balance of simple numbers. It focuses and opens the point within:
“They must become not intellectual but living concepts. The livingness unfolds the mystery of FIVE, the number of Life. Here is an exercise of space: The All-Space, cosmic without end or beginning, which is awareness, expands beyond the body-form because … why? I dive into the creation of interior space, like a pioneer.
“Couldn’t every thought arising during a concentration, which tries to sleep me and pull its important woolly habit over my eyes, be pressed into service? The movement may be used, undressed, as a key to penetrate that inner and infinite Circle whose centre everywhere is not circumscribed.
“Strangely, into the sphere go straight lines of attention to … I wake; are those obscuring motorways a joy to be and to hold?
“No! Then to question them, unwordedly, is the creation of an un-thought inward, which yet is boundlessly alive outward, through objects, feelings, galaxies, everything.
“Tsim tsum … the pregnant void.
4 compass directions plus up, down, all radiate simultaneously outward with the inward enquiry which is their Sun. A Star.
Imagine not a mere six directions, but the numberless points of the sphere, inward as outward: the vibrant soft stillness of Who? is everywhere. Hu … a Hebrew name of God.
Gallery of images from “Arcanum Five” (2011)
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Test it always – see how it feels, and hear the in-formation which is real to me, how does it look? Look inward, feel its space and dimension, direct sight to the centre of knowing which has no end. To the Answering Service!
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The Tube – Douglas Harding’s paper bag experiment. “Look carefully. On present evidence only, how many faces are there, from your end of the bag? One or two?”
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It develops from this mantra … which I held inwardly, a week or so ago; it hummed.
This is how it looks and feels. It is called a mandorla. It was a multiple mandorla – three or five “circle” curves or planes met : the focus of encounter, an encounter of planes, an interior gyroscope in my solar plexus spine: a setting.
It feels like a HOOK. It is a hook – one which joins, or one which catches fish. It pierces the soft interior of my spinal stem, steadfastly. It is a hook, a fountain and a snake; it is everlasting.
When annoyed with anyone or anything (which is frequent), try practising my inner pioneer of space. Use the same energy-particles of the annoyance, to collapse the thought-form into radiance.
Huh! Tall order! It’s funny how my mind LIKES to be annoyed, agitated and blind, in dreams and so forth – like that poor cat in Barclays Bank I once dreamt about, whose owner dragged her about and didn’t let her sit, so she wouldn’t get into mischief. I said to the cat’s owner – I think – that I thought the cat might behave much better if she was kind to it and gave it some peace and quiet.
ZAIN is the Seventh letter of Alephbeis: its Tarot is 6, The Lovers. In Number Seven, all directional points meet at their Sabbath, or resting place. The warrior puts his spear in the ground. The true warrior exerts gentle control over … the thought process. S/he is the needle through whose eye must pass the camel – i.e. the whole of the subconscious!
Not as difficult as it sounds: the third letter of the Alephbeis (in Tarot, it represents Arcanum Two, the Priestess) is GIMEL, which means Camel. In Hebrew the GOMEL CHESED means an act of kindness: the camel will carry a traveller very far in the thirsty desert.
“4” centres the Seven – the four of matter. To each side of this 4, are three digits, the supernal Triad. “3” centres the Five. To each side there are two, the Binary poles.
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The Chariot’s letter is the 8th, CHETh, meaning an enclosure, fence or field. Its path is Binah Gevurah on the Tree.
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cube, tetrahedrons, temple
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The meaning of FIVE
Is that today – an almost tangible and quite definite sensation – a door, the needles’ eye into Jerusalem, stands open somewhere within my backbone, to an odyssey of infinite depth. I never died. I never will. It finds its own, each time I am born. It always will.
I suppose this is what leads to joy.
It ‘s quite strange. The ground along the street to Waitrose, is a cushion to walk. I have a cold in my head, which doesn’t matter. I have a boundless universe inside.
… never mind the beautiful patterns of numbers around it …
and all I can say or know is: it is THERE,
the yield, the ever-ever, within,
there is no death
and no confinement, just
the path that is rich, mid spine
like love, I suppose
travelling to greet the world, the portals of heaven
stand open within
the matter.
Oh, I suppose it’s probably a Chakra!
But who cares? This is life.
It doesn’t introspect.
Life is.
1991
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grasses at twilight, north mimms
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The Song of the River is Timeless
for it has no end
the song of the rain is timeless
for it has no end
the song of the wind is timeless
for it has no end
no beginning
the song of the buds coming through bare winter boughs
and bursting imperceptibly into leaf
is timeless
for it has no end
the song of a train or truck
passing by is timeless
for its end and beginning
are not known
the song of a bird
is timeless
for it sings
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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.
This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.
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All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/
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