The heart centre is the heart of our self, the center of our being. The love found and awakened within our heart is the prime essence of our soul. Many people talk about the soul without any clue what they mean by it. Some think it is an entity distinct from our known self, which is somewhere guiding the person, and which goes somewhere special after death or else continues to reincarnate again and again until karma or lessons are learned. What is most important, though, is not how we think about the soul, but how we come into the soul or how we allow the soul into us. If we are to find the soul we will never find it outside ourself. It can only be found within - somewhere within our experience of being.
In the Vedic teachings our soul is called atman, meaning either divine spark or divine seed that is within each person. This is our essential resonance with Divine Being and the qualities of Divine Being. In the teachings of Atman, there are no bad seeds in human kind; only bad corruptions in the cultivation of the seed. There is only one Divine Being from which all beings are reflections of various kinds. So ultimately, all people are of the same One Being. The soul is the Divine that is present to us, the presence of the Divine. In one sense it is how we realize the Divine Presence, and in another sense it is how the Divine presents Itself to us. What is revealed is decided from above, but dependent on what is below.
Yet each soul is somewhat distinct from other souls, and our own soul is something felt to be personally our own. In essence, though, the soul is just how the Divine Presence is felt or known by each of us, which tends to be somewhat unique for different people. It is how the Greater Spiritual Being of all of us is uniquely and personally known, seen, heard, or felt. This sense of personal contact with the Divine is our hope, our guidance, and our healing. It is where we can each go when our lives get too hectic or troubles disturb us, or when we just seem too lost in our personality delusions and habitual patterns.
In esoteric tantra there are seven types of people. This is based on the science of seven chakras. Each person is a unique mixture of these seven, depending on how much energy is flowing through each of these. Each chakra qualifies energy and consciousness in a unique way; in other words, our self experience is somewhat different, depending on where our energies and consciousness mostly are, or depending on which chakras are most active. Most people's energies and consciousness are mostly in the lower three chakras.
In the tantra our experience of being is primarily found in one of the seven major etheric centres of the body. All experiences necessarily derive from at least one of these seven centres which qualify our experience in some way, esoterically related to one of the seven cosmic rays. So, the soul must be found in one of these seven or in some combination of them. There are no other portals of experience. Some have said the soul is in the heart, others say it is Ajna or cortex of the cerebrum, and others say it is found in the higher head center known in the west as the crown chakra.
The truest answer is that it is found in the heart centre, since this is the center of our being and the balance between heaven and earth, both being sacred polarities of the Divine Reality. The heart is where we feel the soul presence, and where we can most truly feel and know the soul as ourself. The heart is the abode of the soul, its dwelling place, and its embodiment. The heart is the true seat of the soul. The soul lives in the heart. The heart is the very soul of life. The soul can be thought about or envisioned in the head or ajna centre, and the soul may speak to us there, guiding us, or reveal some of its beauty there, but the soul is really in and from the heart.
The Ajna or mind may be able to perceive aspects of the soul or hear its guidance, but the heart is where one is the soul. So when you come from the heart, from the truth and depth of the heart, you come from the soul. This is the truth in its finest simplicity. The heart centre is essentially the love centre, and love is essentially the soul. Our specific love for another or for others, and the specific love we feel from others or our lover, is not the soul essence itself, though these experiences of love are found in the heart. The soul is, rather, the essence of love itself and the wisdom of this love, in its certain ray type of experience. It is really the soul which loves and realizes love, not in a superficial way or a dreamy romantic way, but in an essential way, the soul being the essential inspiration behind all true feelings and realizations of love. The soul inspires and realizes love because the soul is essentially love and the wisdom of this love.
The soul is essentially a love-wisdom, and yet the tantra also understands it in its three-fold nature. One can understand or experience the soul, or any principle in the tantra, in one, two, or three primary ways. This is because every principle or quality or power can be understood as a single form, a polarized form, or a triadic form. The tetradic and pentradic forms, the understanding of the relations of four and five, are also important. The soul is understood as a triadic reality, which means it is a relation of three essential natures and can be experienced in three essential ways.
The first way, and thought to be the most essential experience or understanding of the soul, is love. Love is the first essence of Divine Being. Divine Being is essentially an experience of vast and complete unconditional love and the ecstasy of living unity. Divine Being is essentially Love Being, or Being Love. Love is our atunement with every other life, and our attunement with the One Divine Being. It is the power and wisdom which relates and unites together all creation. And when we experience this power and wisdom of love we begin to understand the other two aspects of the soul, which are power and wisdom.
Power and wisdom are the complimenting polarities of love, all forming the three-fold nature of the soul. We say that the soul is a power because it can and probably will effect our life by inspiring us in some higher way. One can think of this either as the power of the soul-love or as the power of the divine creative source inspiring or strengthening us in some way or another.
One can think of the power of the soul as one's higher spiritual will, our will-to-good, our will-to-love, and our will to make beauty and harmony in our lives and in the world. With intentional inner work and willingness, the soul-power can eventually infuse into our centre of will, as we gradually sacrifice our reactive will to this spiritually creative will, so that our own will becomes a spiritual will or the will of the soul. One could say, though redundant, that without the power aspect of the soul it would have no power in our lives, and it would have no power to infuse our psyche with spiritual love and wisdom.
The other aspect of the soul is wisdom. The soul carries the vast wisdom of the Divine Being, the wisdom of Love Being, which is often called the Akashic Records, the secret knowledge of Divine Reality, as eternally known by Divine Reality Itself. This vast wisdom is the potential of our higher mind. This wisdom is actually contained within the deep mystery of the heart centre, the centre of love divine. Our love-being, thus, has two complimenting aspects of power and wisdom, besides the experience of love itself. The wisdom aspect is often called our buddhic nature. It is the guiding wisdom of our soul, guiding us to the complete understanding of Divine Reality within creation and within ourself. It leads us to self-knowing and knowing of the various essential principles of this world creation, both self and world inter-related and mirroring the other. This wisdom is the truth which the great masters know and serve, and which all realized beings seek to manifest into world consciousness and creation. Love and wisdom are realities within creation, inspiring creation, but they are not fully conscious in our lives, so our thoughts and actions are often distorted and delusionary in all sorts of odd ways, which is how pain and suffering continues in the world. It is this delusionary and distorted perception of the world and ourselves which is called Maya, the world illusion, meaning that what many people experience as self or world reality is but an illusion from the perspective of divine being, or from the perspective of the soul. Once this illusion is dispelled by the opening of divine consciousness and its inherent wisdom, the self and the world are rightly seen as interconnected and pervaded by love, whereby our mental approach and physical activity in the world is changed from being harmful and wasteful to being beneficial, healing, and in line with the divine love-will wisdom. This is the ancient truth in a nut shell.
First, realize that true spiritual power, or soul power, is essentially the power of love, the power to manifest love or some quality of love. Divine Will is none other than Love-Will. None other makes any sense, and we can see the distortions and sufferings caused by those religious institutions which have spoken of the divine will as some arbitrary authoritarian proclamation, without any sense of its necessary purpose of love which is a natural sense within all of us to judge any opinions of divine will. Once we return to or attune with our natural sense of love, and perceive its guiding wisdom, we will then better understand what is divine will. This divine will, found in the soul of our heart, empowers us to act according to love's wisdom. It is the power of the heart, or love, that is the true spiritual power, inspiring loving and beautiful creative activity.
Yet, this power of love in the heart requires two other major centres for its effectiveness in our creative life. These two other centres are the third from the lowest, the Manipura centre found around the belly area, and the sixth centre called the Ajna, found in the head. The Manipura, or Mani, has three main functions. One is digestion of psychic energies accumulated from our contact with others in the world. The second function is the digestion and accumulation of vital energy from the planet mixed with an accumulation of kundalini power brought up from the lowest basic centre and the sexual centre of one's body. All of these energies are digested and accumulated in the Mani, to be used for our activity in the world. We call the Mani our power centre. The third function is the distribution or use of this accumulated and digested energy. But this requires the function of the Ajna centre to focus or concentrate this power towards some aim or purpose. Such an aim or focus can be a certain spiritual aim or it can be a wasteful or superficial aim.
What we normally think of as our will-power is the working of this mental focusing centre with the body's power centre, the mind focussing on some aim and our power given towards this aim. Thus, our will-power is experienced partly as a power of focussing and concentration and partly as a feeling of forcefully giving or pushing energy toward making the aim manifest. People we think of as authoritarian, pushy, or willful, are successful at working these two centres. But we cannot call this will-power spiritual unless the two centres are linked together in a triangle with the heart centre, and submissive to the soul inspiration of the heart centre. The mind can come up with all sorts of aims and justify any of these with some kind of rational logic, but such aims will be based on Maya or illusion, and will be meaninglessly unconnected to divine purpose and to our true needs and deepest desires, unless the mind is knowing of the soul purposes which are found in the heart wisdom of love. Thus, the heart must lead the mind. The mind must learn from the heart, our central centre of truth. So, for the spiritual triangle of creative power to work in our lives, the Ajna must first focus in the heart and allow the soul wisdom to give aim and direction to the Ajna mind centre, so that it can focus our accumulated power for spiritual expression and divine manifestation. The heart, or Ana centre, gives purpose to life, while the Ajna sees where to go, and the Mani power centre dispenses the vital energy for spiritual expression.
I have spoken about the power aspect of the soul, and now I must speak of the wisdom aspect, though, as we can see, wisdom is essentially related to the true sense of spiritual creative power, as is the experience of love as its foundation. We can also relate this triad of the soul, reflecting the spiritual triad of Divine Being, to the tantric dieties of Shiva, Vishnu, and Sarasvati, respectively as the spiritual beings of power, love, and wisdom, though the power aspect can be viewed as a love relation between Shiva as mental power and Shakti as body power.
Love has three primary aspects. Power (also intention), Intimacy (also connection), and Wisdom (also understanding). First let us gain an ability to recognize the intention of love, that is, the intention or desire to love and care for others, as well as ourself. Next, we can recognize the expressed qualities of love, such as tenderness, sensitivity, devotion, and healing. Each of these is a certain quality of energy in expression. For instance, love expressed through feeling and sensitivity carries forth a certain healing for the loved one, a healing which primarily effects the emotional centre but which subsequently effects the physical body as well. The third aspect of love is the wisdom of love. Love has its own refined wisdom or intelligence. This is the wisdom of Sophia, the spiritual truth within.
It is different from the practical intelligence which calculates the most efficient means to attaining some aim. This is known in Tantric Buddhism as the wisdom of skillful means, the kind of intelligence that is good at getting things done efficiently and well. This is considered a masculine quality or principle of mind, in relation to the feminine wisdom principle. It corresponds to the god Mercury and to the practical-minded goddess Artemis. In tantra this skillful intelligence is personified in the male tantric adept, the hero, Vira, who has mastered himself and is able to hold himself firm and enduring for completing the tantric ritual.
In complimentary opposite to this wisdom of skillful means is the wisdom of spiritual love. This is the realization of truth in its essence. It is not a know-how-to wisdom but a know-what-is wisdom. The Goddess of Love-Wisdom is spiritual knowledge, or Truth Itself. She awakens in you the truth of your being and the truth of existence. In this wisdom we realize the purpose of life and the source of life. This is its dual understanding. We realize, in this wisdom, the purpose of our life. It is known with certainty in the integrity of our being. It is the truth of our being, which is being true to ourself. You might consider, with total inner sincerity, what is your true heart's desire. What do you most really want? Even if you cannot define this in one idea or aim, you can at least discover a few basic aims or greatest desires. This knowing is your wisdom within, and the knowing has to be in complete sincerity, most true in the knowing heart.
Also, Love-Wisdom is the realization of the very source of our being. Do you not wish to know this source? Who or what is the source of your inspiration? Naming it or giving some intellectual answer will be found to be unfulfilling, not getting to the real truth of being. The realization of this wisdom must be direct in experience. You must realize the inspiration as an experience itself. You must know who you are at your deepest source, the most inner center expressing as you. This knowing, this certainty of experience, this realization of your self-essence is the wisdom from which all other wisdom comes. If we can just experience this, deep in our essence, through meditation or practices releasing that which clouds us, then we have realized the great wisdom-knowing of our true self, which is the essence of the Self-Knowing Wisdom of the One and Only Being, your true self and inspiration. This is the spiritual wisdom of Self-Realization. More shall not be said. Discover yourself yourself.
As said, the soul's home is in the heart, and this is where all three aspects of the soul are found. Our usual tendency is to think that wisdom is found in the head and power found somewhere else as well. Wisdom is usually associated with the head or the mind. This is partly true. Wisdom is known in the head centre, and some have claimed that wisdom is found in the Ajna centre, but this is only true if such 'wisdom' has come from the heart. As already stated, the mental centre divorced from the heart could come up with all sorts of concocted thoughts of truth, derived or justified by any manner of logic, but this would not be true wisdom unless the foundation of knowing is from the heart of the love-wisdom soul. The focusing and thinking mind, as powers of the Ajna, must find the foundation of truth within the heart, and then wisdom is found in the head. The heart is the centre where mind and body perfectly meet.
The mind is the dimension of ideas and thought, as well as consciousness, and as such in itself is without need of the physical dimension, just as dream objects can be experienced without any necessary physical substance. This is not to argue with those who say that the physical brain and body is required for any mental experience, for that is true in regards to our personal experience, but ideas, thoughts, and consciousness are collective and transpersonal realities existing in a mental dimension regardless whether or not certain bodies experience them. In tantra spirituality the spiritual dieties and the ideas and desires of the world psyche exist in a mental dimension, and are ready for incarnation, whether or not these are manifest in physical form or acknowledged by our personal brain.
But getting back to wisdom, the heart is the meeting place of mind and body dimensions, the lower three centres being of the physical personal body and the higher three being of the transpersonal mind. This is not to imply that the higher centres are not really found in the body or that they have no body relation. What is meant is that their essential energies or qualities are mental, while the essential energies of the lower three are physical. The source of the higher three is of the collective mind dimension, while the source of the lower three is one's personal body and its unique connection to the earth. Yet, the higher three centres are influenced by the body and the lower three centres, since the higher centres themselves are in the body, though the body is not the source of their energies. The lower centres are influenced by the mind and the higher centres, unless there is no connection whatsoever and the person is a sorry state indeed.
The heart centre is the meeting place for mind and body, so we can say there is mind in the heart or the heart has mind. We also say the heart has feelings or feelings exist in and from the heart, and these feelings are felt as physical emotions in the body. Feelings of joy or sadness, as felt to come from the heart, are not merely thoughts or understandings, but are feeling sensations of the body. And these physical body feelings relate somehow with a kind of mental perception or understanding of things. Feelings are always connected with some idea or belief or perception of the mind about ourself or about our relation with others.
Joy or sadness is not just something we are thinking about, not just thoughts floating in our head, nor are they ideas; they are real physical feelings of the body and flow through the body. The feelings of joy or sadness may result from thinking or from the mind focused on some image or memory, but the feelings themselves express throughout the body.
Likewise, the feelings of divine or human love, found within the heart centre, may be opened or set off by some kind of mental focus, imagery, or discovery, but the feeling of love itself comes from the heart and is felt physically through the body. Thus, though we can think about love or contemplate on that idea or visualize our interconnectiveness with all life, we still can only really experience love as a feeling, and this feeling is both physical and mental. It is necessarily felt in the body, and as such can only be experienced in physical incarnation, and it is also necessarily known or realized, in the mind, and as such requires mind for its realization. The mind recognizes love and the body feels it. The heart both recognizes and feels love, and thus we say that the heart is the connection of mind and body, possessing the virtues of both understanding and sensation. Because of this we can actually feel the truth.
Truth is not disconnected from the body, for the body can feel the truth, so knowledge of the truth can be checked and verified by the body. Our modern culture has tended to disassociate the truth from the body, and thus, various sick forms of authoritarian control were able to be imposed on the people, who were implicitly taught that the mind disassociated from the body had to be the judge of truth.
The body was suppressed, not only because of its feared uncontrolled passions, but also because the authoritarian rule could not withstand judgement by the body of their supposed truth. The feeling body would know what is true or not true, verifing this by its physical feelings, or asking within the body for truth, such that truth could be known or verified by any living body. So the authoritarian patriarchy fearfully and cunningly suppressed the body from what they called the truth, so to manipulate people to believe certain distorted ideas of spiritual truth without checking this with their own inner feelings or heart-felt knowing. The mind, without the body or without the heart, is easy prey to suggestibility and authoritarian control, for it can then only verify the truth by some kind of mental logic which can be easily presented to justify all sorts of stupidities and absurdities. But the body would know better, for the body cannot be so easily fooled as can the mind in isolation. And thus we say in the tantra that people should only do what feels right in the heart and good in the body.
It is really through the heart that we know the truth. The heart is always the final test for truth because we cannot lie to ourselves without feeling it in the heart. When a possible truth is presented to us or considered in our minds we know this as truth by its recognition in the heart. The heart is true to our experience. The heart is sincere if the mind does not get in the way. The mind can distort experience, can distort the truth, because thought must use a process to derive the truth, a process of some logic, and this logic can deceive and distort the real truth.
The tantra is suspicious of this thinking apparatus, called manas, and its practices are often to quiet, empty, or clear the mind thinking thoughts. Of course, the manas has its instrumental use in practical calculations and plans, and thoughts necessarily clothe the naked truth for communication purposes. But we need to practice using our manas with conscious intention, consciously applying thought, logic, and our figuring ability with directed precision and at appropriate times, and not passively allow thoughts, mental chatter, and worry to dominate our experience or dominate the truth-knowing of our heart - which can only be known in a quiet, serene mental atmoshere.
The other important use of the mind is to do with the power of concentration and mental focus. This is the power of the ajna, the power centre of controlled mental focus within the head. The ajna does not know the truth but it is used to introspectively focus the mind or attention on thought-ideas or on feelings and sensations in the body. Through this instrumental means of the ajna the consciousness makes discoveries which are stored in its memory, called chit. All experiences of the mind-consciousness, either from thinking or perceiving, are recorded in chit as a kind of some total of all that we've ever thought or experienced in oneself or in the world. But neither the ajna nor the chit can know what thoughts are true and what are false, because one is just the power and receiver of the focussing while the other is just the recording or memory of this. Even the direct perceiving of one's feelings and of the world found through the senses will not, in itself, know the meaning or value of these experiences. It is only the heart which can know truth and value, because only the heart gives us a substantial feeling or sensation of something being true or valued.
Thinking can't know the truth; only the heart will recognize it and tell the truth. In the tantra the ability to know the truth, to know value, and to make the most valued choice is called buddhi. Some have said that buddhi is in the mind, somewhere in the head, and some have said it is in the heart. But both beliefs are correct when not separated.
Buddhi wisdom is found in the heart and in the head or mind. It is found in the right relation between the head and the heart. When the head and the heart work together, each complimenting the function of the other, then buddhi consciousness comes alive. But we need to know the right function of each. The mind does not know the truth. It may discover the truth like a beam of light upon an object would be `discovering' that object, that is, the mind gives light to things. It sees. The ajna directs the light or awareness on something, a thought or thing.
The ajna is the power of that focus. It is the focussing. And it is the place of receiving the object or thought in focus. We all have the power to hold steady, in ajna focus, any imagined or inwardly perceived object or thought/word/symbol. This power of focussing, and the power of light-consciousness behind it, is certainly necessary to buddhic wisdom, but in itself it is not enough, for understanding requires more than just a flashlight and a screen to project images. Understanding and wisdom also require more than the ability to make images and more than the ability to just compare perceptions and thoughts with previous ones found in chit.
The wisdom understanding of buddhi requires more than just the mind, with all its abilities, can offer. The mind must give what it has to the heart, so that the heart can recognize what is true and what is value. The heart must be allowed and given the opportunity to tell the truth. The heart knows, because the heart is our feeling connection to truth and purpose in life. Our love-heart is essentially connected, through sympathetic vibration, to the Love and Love-Wisdom of God or Goddess, the One Being Truth. The heart will know, because it will vibrationally respond to what is true. Only the truth, and only what is of true value in relation to our purpose in life, will resonate within us, within the heart of knowing. The mind can think all sorts of things or accumulate all sorts of so-called knowledge. It can mull over all this or logically relate ideas together in the most genious of ways. But the mind, by itself without the heart, cannot possible know what is true. It cannot possibly aquire wisdom, without receiving that wisdom from the heart.
So the heart is the real seat of the buddhi wisdom, the mind its instrument. Both the heart and the mind must unite together, must make union together, the mind giving its light and focussing ability to the heart, and the heart giving its sincere honesty and feelings of truth to the mind. The mind's role is searching for truth and goodness in the world of experience, and giving what it receives to the heart for Her enjoyment or wise discrimination, and for understanding of what is true and what is good or of value. Both give to the other. Both relate. And through their loving and cooperative relation, wisdom develops and wisdom prevails. And through their loving and cooperative to the other. Both relate.
Wisdom within the heart centre, or within the soul, needs the Ajna centre to view it. The Ajna is the focuser, and this has three functional aspects. One is to focus light or consciousness onto something, or on an etheric centre, and thereby receptively perceive or record what is found. The second potential function is to mentally work with certain ideas or discovered truths, with the purpose of relating them logically or coherently together, a kind of understanding of the meanings and relations of the impressions given by the higher mind. This is called the considering of ideas or making mental sense of things. The third potential function is to focus some idea or thought somewhere else, into some other centre of the body or some place in the world. This known as mental projection.
For instance, the Ajna, as the focusing light of the mind, can focus in the heart, either receiving its wisdom truth, or showing the heart wisdom an idea or image for it to understand or verify the value. The heart and mind must develop a special relation and a kind of attunement with each other, yet the heart is the true mother of wisdom while the Ajna is one of its servants.
To project ideas and thoughts the focused projection needs a certain decisive and energizing vibration which it gains from the throat centre, the Vishuddha. The Vishuddha is used for projecting what we want to express by supplying a certain power, vibration, or sound to the focus of Ajna and the inspirational heart purpose, hopefully, behind it.
The throat and Ajna centres can work together, but this work is spiritual only if related to the heart. This triangle is also used to judge the quality, value or truth of any idea, vision, perception, or aim. Here, the Vishuddha function is to taste whatever is presented and appreciate its special quality and value. The heart is still the knower and judge of truth and value, but the Vishuddha has the ability to discriminate, by a kind of aesthetic taste, the particular quality of an experience or what is given to it by mind.
Thus, the Vishuddha has two main functions. One is to project or energize some thought or idea, giving it a particular vibration that will carry it forward into manifestation or into some other mind or body. This vibration, its kind and its degree of power, is dependent on the quality and power of its decision. A key here is decision, which we might even say is another function, but it is still related to the function of projection and manifestation. The Vishuddha empowers the thought, idea, or aim with its decision and affirmation. Using the Vishuddha in this way in relation to the Ajna and heart, connecting that triangle, is one of the secrets of mental telepathy, distant healing, and successful manifestation. Some magicians use certain sounds of power, but other methods are possible as well, and firm decision or decisive affirmation from the Vishuddha, along with a concentration of focus or visualization or words of meaning thought from the Ajna, may be the most powerful method of all. Such work should be done with care and love, though, else any negative vibrations will eventually return to the sender.
The other main function of the Vishuddha is an aesthetic sense of appreciation. It is known as the centre for appreciation. We love and deeply understand another from the heart centre, but we appreciate another, or nature, from the Vishuddha. It's like when you witness great beauty you might feel a tingle around the throat or get a bit of emotion there. The Vishuddha is where we taste and swallow things. It can discriminate various tastes, flavors, or kinds of phenomena, whether of physical nature or mental ideas. It is also the centre where we digest higher impressions and visions of beauty and harmony, just as the Manipura centre digests lower psychic impressions. In all of this it is an appreciating digestive centre.
In order to understand the significance of this we must understand the three-fold functions of the Crown centre. The major function of the Crown is as a receiving centre for various rays of cosmic energy entering the earth from planetary, solar, and galactic star sources.
These energies are essentially energies of consciousness, that is, various qualifications of the One Consciousness, or various Rays of the One Knowing Light. The various cosmic qualities or wisdoms of the One Universal Being may come into us through the Crown as energies or powers of consciousness. Yet the essence of all these potential Rays is Light Itself, the Great White Light, or also known as the Great White Spirit. Occultists have called this the Solar Light, and we can correlate this with the Great Sun God.
Christian mystics called this the Father Above. It is also the blazing, blissful Light of Shiva, possessing the power of creation and destruction, for it can create us anew by its realization, as well as destroy who we thought we were. In the tantra the Crown is the place where Shiva is realized, and here is found the highest form of spiritual realization.
But by saying this is 'highest' we do not necessarily imply that it is `best' or `more correct'. The tantra says there are three major forms of realization, though some schools qualify seven forms, which include these. The highest form of realization, found in the Crown, is the realization of transcendence in the Spiritual Light of Pure Consciousness.
For many this the supreme goal of the spiritual path, but the true tantra sees it only as one of the three realizations to continually integrate together in life. Another major form of realization is called the central realization, found within the Heart Centre, which is the realization of the Divine Love Presence, as the central nature of our True Being. Some regard this as the supreme goal of the spiritual path. And, the other major form of realization, found within the sacral centre, is the sexual realization or the awakening of our sexual body. Of course, this is usually not regarded as a major spiritual realization. Sexual awakening is usually regarded as natural, not all that special, and often something to be transcended. But the tantra views sexual energy as one of the most significant essences of the personal body. In one sense, it is vital energy pleasurized, or feeling the erotic pleasure of the vital energy. And yes, it is natural.
Yet love and consciousness are natural too, but these spiritual realizations of which we speak are not the usual experiences. They could be regular or consistent in our lives, but they usually aren't. The spiritual realization of pure consciousness and the spiritual realization of divine love are not the usual. If you think I'm talking about some kind of usual consciousness or usual love, then you probably haven't a clue to what I'm really talking about. The spiritual realization and experience is special, not ordinary, though after awhile it can become regular in one's life. The spiritual consciousness is vast and complete, and so is the divine love. So is the sacred sexualness, which fills the whole body and vibrates it in total ecstasy. The sacred sexual realization is not the usual sexual experience but an extraordinary experience of sexual feeling or awakening, of which most people haven't a clue. It is a huge awakening of one's sexual essence, pervading the whole body with pleasure, and not just the genitals. Those who have had such experience know the difference between this and ordinary sexual experiences.
The Crown centre is essentially in the dimension of spiritual mind, yet it maintains a thread in the physical brain and connects with the Ajna. Through the Crown a greater and wider consciousness presents itself in the body, or in the Ajna, filling the whole head with brilliant and vast Light. The Ajna can be in a relaxed, receptive focus and open up to the Crown and the descending energies of consciousness passing through it, and then possibly distribute that consciousness to the other centres.
Yet, if it surrenders completely to the Crown, raising to the Crown, or allowing the Crown consciousness to fill the head with Light, then the two centres become as one and the whole head becomes a vast light of consciousness. This is known as the heavenly consciousness or enlightenment. When the Crown is opened consciousness transcends ordinary time and space and matter, and the oneness of existence is realized. When this occurs the head feels to be blown away, the body transcended, and one finds oneself nowhere and yet everywhere, in a mystical bliss at-one with the universe. We find ourself removed from the body limitation and out of the head.
Thus, the Crown is the portal from the body to the vast cosmos surrounding us. Yet, our goal is not to just go out of the body and into the vastness, but to open the Crown portal, by raising into it or through it, and then allow this wider and greater consciousness to descend into the other centres, especially the Ajna and Heart centres. In this way, that greater atuned consciousness, carrying special spiritual energies and inspirations, can make contact in the body and be grounded or preserved therein. Our goal is to connect with the higher Mind Consciousness and preserve or develop this connection in the body itself, via the other centres, and thus we bring into manifestation more and more of this greater Consciousness and its qualities of energy. This is the spiritual evolutionary work of which initiates and masters are involved. And this is not just a descent of spiritual consciousness into individual bodies or persons, but it actually brings this Enlightenment into the earth and the collective psyche of humanity, releasing and making available greater evolutionary energies for future lives to unfold.
Through the Crown we can receive contact with various forms of cosmic consciousness or Spiritual Beings subsisting in the dimension of Spiritual Mind. The Crown is our connection with the Great Mind Consciousness of Divine Being. It is, for us, the greater Mind of which our consciousness is part of. Thus, it is known as our higher mind, and it is the source of cosmic intuition and evernew spiritual inspiration. This cosmic energy of consciousness and renewing inspiration can descend through us to heal and enlighten the other centres.
The Crown is our connection or communication access to various spiritual beings available to us for guidance, spiritual and healing. The Crown is a telepathic access centre, from where consciousness can travel to other portions of the universe or to other beings of the universe. Or, these energies and beings can communicate themselves to us.
Whether we view this communication as a traveling out or a coming in does not really matter, for they are merely polar ways of experiencing the same contact. The communication, or inner visual experience, uses the imagination and our language of mind. This imagination is not just unreal fantasy. It reflects what is real, more or less, in the best way possible for our understanding and spiritual growth.
Yet, the beings or deities or energies contacted are not necessarily identical to our images, nor is their communication necessarily identical to how we hear it through our known language. So, we should value this spiritual imagination, though realize its limitations and not be attached to any glamour in our experience. The potential problem with such cosmic receptivity and communication is in the possible glamour of it all. If people want far-out experiences they will soon find them, but one should seek out experience for its meaningful value in life, for the value of greater understanding and personal transformation, and not for the glamour of it all.
At times one could be open to such experiences, but these are not the ultimate aim of a spiritual path. The truth and value of such experiences can only be finally known in the heart of our inherent wisdom. The higher mind of the Crown can receive various experiences and guidances, which are actually viewed and interpreted through the Ajna centre, but they can only be truly verified within the Heart centre.
The Heart is the ultimate knower of truth. Through the connected Head centre we can receive spiritual guidance and intuition, yet through the wisdom Heart centre we can realize and verify truth. Receiving cosmic guidance is like listening to any supposed teacher or teaching, and one shouldn't just accept everything that is given. Whatever we hear or view through the mind should be held in the heart for verification. The heart knows the truth, but what is inherently known is not necessarily yet revealed or recognized. This is why we need teachers and teaching guidance, for this inner inherent knowing to be sparked. So there is value in listening and hearing what others have to share with us. Yet the value of this is in its resonance with our own inherent knowing. If what we hear or see does not resonate as truth within us, then we should leave it be and go on pursuing what is true and of value. This complementation of the inner heart with outside guidance protects us from false guidance and unimportant glamour.
Staying connected in the heart also attracts to us the highest spiritual guidance. It lead us to the highest and attracts the highest to us. So, by connecting the Crown, the Ajna, and the truthful Heart in a meditative triangle we can make protective contact with higher guidances. Our greatest, most important guidance comes from what we might call our group soul, sometimes called the Oversoul. This is essentially a greater wisdom consciousness of which we are united. Esoterically, it is the Master who is sent to teach us. This Master, who has gone beyond sexual distinction through a higher initiation, has, in effect, chosen us for his guidance and the creative service on earth to which he projects spiritual power and wisdom. There are many Masters, each having evolved a particular sattva presence and conscious synthesis of divine qualities, and these Masters each consciously work in service to the evolving children and disciples of the spiritual journey. They have telepathic connection to each other, but they each see a particular phase of human need to serve, according to the particular qualities synthesized within them. Each gathers together a growing group of disciples, from those spiritual aspirants who acquire the ability to receive guidance and who show a willing desire to serve the spiritual evolution of life. We make contact with our Master, or Oversoul, through contact in that group. In other words, we come in inner contact with a greater group of evolving spiritual beings like ourself, who are already receiving guidance from the Master and who already work with the Master. We don't have to see who is in this group. It is recognized through the intuitive sense or as a feeling of being part of a larger group, whoever they might be. In this way, we of the group help hold each other in the Master's ashram, and we grow together in understanding and developing ways of service, and the Master can then teach us and help initiate us all together. Just remember you are not alone. If you can open up receptively to being part of a greater spiritual group, then you'll find a group energy already awaiting your arrival, your awakening. This group energy is inspired by the Master, so once you are in it the Master can inspire you and even begin to emerge through you as a greater consciousness, love, wisdom, and creative power. Of course, this is a portion of the One Divine Conscious Being Itself, of which the Master emerges from or is enfolded within, so we could just as well view all guidance and transformative group energies as emerging from the One Divine Being, the greater spiritual whole of which we more or less reflect. Our greater, greater group of which we spiritually belong is, of course, all spiritually conscious beings and the whole of the Divine Being Itself. Yet still, we may experience our particular group within the whole group and our particular Master within the One Divine Being. This completes our esoteric teaching for the time being.
Remember, though, that the Head can receive new teachings and guidances, which help us view ourself and reality in new ways, and lead us with new suggestions for spiritual expression; yet, the Heart is the real knower of truth. The Heart is the one who knows the truth and so recognizes the truth. It is here in the Heart where we connect with the heart of the group and the heart of the Master, which is required for that guidance to be truly reflected in the mind.
We find, through the Heart centre, our spiritual presence as it has so far developed, or as it has so far been purified. New creative energies come through the Crown and are assimilated into our being-presence through the heart. Our spiritual presence is also purified by pure realization in the Crown.
The polarity of self-wholeness is expressed through two energy centres, one to the left and one to the right side of the central heart centre. The general heart centre, called the Anahata and resonating to the sacred sound of Ana, is a triadic centre, having a left, right and middle aspect. The middle, central aspect is the central essence of being, where from wholeness unfolds and is finally revealed. It is said that the whole universe is contained in the very centre of the Heart. Yet this wholeness is simultaneously polarized into two complimenting aspects, revealed through the energy centres to the left and right of the central Heart. The left heart centre contains and reveals the female spiritual energy, which we can simply generalize as unconditional love and sympathetic sensitivity. It is also felt to be the receptively appreciative aspect of Love. These spiritual qualities are known and felt through this left centre, which is also called the left hand of Divine Being, or the left Throne where the divine goddess sits in Her Great Compassion. The right heart centre contains and reveals the male spiritual energy, which can simply be generalized as the strength of self-integrity and the determined will-to-be. It is also felt to be the actively expressive aspect of Love. This is also known as the right hand of Divine Being or the right Throne, where sits the divine god in His Purposeful Intent. The left and right centres, or the goddess and god, hold hands and embrace in the middle space between, where they make love and union together, and from this union, or from the very center of their love embrace, wholeness emerges. Unity is realized in the very center of the love embrace or in the centre which encompasses the left and right lovers. All of this is contained and potentially revealed through the being of man and woman, and if you consciously sense these areas of the energy body, if only for a moment, you will realize the truth of this by your own experience.
In the energy system of the body, the Heart Centre is representative and distributive of the Love-Wisdom qualities of the Great Mother Earth. The Head Centre, as a fusion of the Ajna and Crown, as the Cosmic Energies descend through the Crown and fill the Ajna, is representative and distributive of the quality of Directed Will from the Solar Logos, as it comes known to us through the Higher Intuition.
The Heart, therefore, is the Mother aspect of Divinity, known also as the Earth Wisdom or Nature Wisdom. This is our Wisdom Within. The Heart is the home of the Planetary Being. It is where we find the Planetary Presence, the Planetary Soul within.
The physical heart is essential for the circulation of blood which is the carrier of vital energy to the rejuvenating cells and is the means for waste toxins to be eliminated. The heart is the organ of blood, and blood is life. The heart does what is needed for life without any outside guidance or manipulation. It has its own natural intelligence. Likewise, the Heart Centre is the energy centre of Life Intelligence. It is the Centre where is found the natural intelligence, or intelligence of Mother Nature. This kind of intelligence is spontaneous and instinctive in its essence. Nature just knows what to do.
She knows how to grow, and She knows how to adapt to change in order to grow. She naturally grows from seeds of inner intelligence, just as any tree naturally grows out of the intelligence of its original seed. Likewise, we each can know in our Heart what is true and needed. This is our natural intelligence. Now also the Heart feels. It feels sympathy and it feels love, and it feels other associated emotions as well. In essence, the Heart is the Centre of realising and distributing divine love energy. So as well as being the Centre of natural intelligence, it is the Centre of love. These are the two great aspects of the Great Mother or Planetary Goddess, that is, Natural Creative Intelligence and Natural Love. The blending of these is Love-Wisdom or the wisdom of love. The third great quality of the Mother Spirit, or Earth Being, is life vitality. This vitality, sometimes experienced as enthusiasm, is also found in the Heart Centre, and of course in the physical heart as well.
Yet it actually comes up from the lower vital centres, and its original source is in the vital energy of the earth itself. This vital life energy thus comes up from the earth into our own energy body and centres. In the tantra it is called the Heat from below, and it vitalises the various functions and qualities of the energy centres.
So we have this Mother aspect of divinity in the Heart, and in the Head we have what we could call the Father aspect. This the Directed Will of the Solar Logos. This, too, is an intelligence, but from the perspective of our natural instinctive intelligence it appears to come from outside of nature and descends into us from the Cosmos above. It is the Spirit Above. Thus, it is often referred to as the Higher Intelligence and Will, or the Higher Intuition of Divine Will. It is a cosmic evolutionary impulse, and it manifests as an intelligent will to creatively transform nature into greater forms of beauty and magnificance. This is the cosmic intelligence which guides and directs the evolutionary course of the planet and humanity. It is known as the Light from Above, and it awakens us to a higher purpose in life. It gives us a certain sense of evolutionary and creative purpose, which is the sense that we have more to do here than just be. It gives us a certain kind of creative energy or inspiration to make our lives more than what it now is. It opens us up to new potentials, known through the higher intuition and imagination. So it is through the Head Centre, receiving the Light from Above, that we realize and are inspired by the evolutionary Will of the Solar God, the Creative Father. The great western religions had partly come into this realisation, and thus worshiped the transcendental Godhead, but unfortunately they began to suppress and devalue the Mother aspect of divinity, the Nature within and inherent in earth. This was not the mistake of Zoraster, Jesus or Mohammet, because they each taught respect for the Mother Nature and the divinity within, but it was the authoritarian establishment of these religions which became imbalanced. In the tantra these two great aspects of divine intelligence and creativity, the Father and the Mother, are allowed to come into relationship and unite in the synthesising life of the human being. The human being is thus the third aspect of divinity, the reconciling creative intelligence. Its place of realisation and distribution is through the Throat Centre, though of course all the human centres must blend together for this creative synthesis. The Throat Centre, being between the Heart and the Head, is the natural point of mediation, and from here our distinctively human creativity issues forth.
From here the human word goes forth, expressing itself in the world, and creatve thought moves forth into manifestation. This Centre is often referred to as the Creative Centre, where from the divine child, born from the union of the Father and Mother, expresses the synthesis. Thus, we have the higher triad of the Head, the Heart and the Throat. But again, back the Heart Centre, we find here a central blending point of two major kinds of divine energy.
Life is essentially made of heat and light, or we could say that heat and light are two aspects of life. Heat is actually a transformation of light into useful, vital energy. The light originally comes from the sun and is transformed and stored in the planet as heat or cellular vitality. This heat, then, rises from the earth to vitalise our energy bodies. It is an etheric heat, known also as kundalini, which vitalises the energy centres. It rises from below and is stored and distributed by the three lower centres. The Heart, then, receives its heat, its vitality and enthusiam, from below, and thus in the Heart we have a feeling sense of love and joy. The heat makes this a feeling kind of energy. We feel the heat and vitality of love. Now, light itself is descending into us from above, through the Head, and this light awakens the Heart's Love-Wisdom. The heat from below gives feeling to the Heart, while the light from above gives consciousness or knowing to the Heart.
Love awakens by the light and feels by the heat. Thus, the Heart is a synthesis of heat and light, of feeling love and knowing love, and from the perspective of the earth below and the greater cosmos above it is a sun in itself, warm and bright.
Two other realizations are connected with the lower centres. One
is the realization of the etheric body or the subtle energy pervading
the whole body, and the other is the realization of prana or breath
as the vitalizing agent for the physical and etheric body.
Another
realization, connected with the throat Chakra, is the realization of
beauty in creation, and another connected with the Ajna centre is the
realization of intuitive imagination. We can talk about these
later.
So, these are the three major spirtual realizations of
the tantra, and they correspond to the realizations of Shiva, Vishnu,
and Shakti, or the pure blissful consciousness, the all-embracing
compassionate love, and the pleasurized energetic body.