CHAKRAS AND KUNDALINI EXPLAINED BY JAMES MORGAN PRYSE

James Morgan Pryse was a disciple of Blavatsky, and in 1910 he published a book entitled: "The Unveiled Apocalypse" where he detailed about the chakras and the kundalini.

And what he wrote I transcribe below adding my comments in purple:

« There are two nervous structures:

-      the cerebro-spinal, consisting of the brain and the spinal cord;

-      and the sympathetic or ganglionic system.

These two structures are virtually distinct yet intimately associated in their ramifications.

The sympathetic system consists of a series of distinct nerve-centres, or ganglia — small masses of vascular neurine — extending on each side of the spinal column from the head to the coccyx.

Some knowledge of these ganglia and the forces associated with them is indispensable in an examination into the esotericism.

THE CHAKRAS

Their occult nature is more fully elucidated in the Upanishads than in any other available ancient works, the teaching therein contained will here be referred to, and their Sanskrit terms employed.

The ganglia are called chakras, "discs," and forty-nine of them are counted, of which the seven principal ones are the following:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

CONARIUM CAVERNOUS PNARYNGEAL CARDIAC EPIGASTRIC PROSTATIC SACRAL

SAHASRARA AJNA VISHUDDHI ANAHATA MANIPURAKA ADHISHTHANA MULADHARA

Of these only the seventh, the conarium or pineal body, need be considered here with particularity.

It is a small conical, dark- grey body situated in the brain immediately behind the extremity of the third ventricle, in a groove between the nates, and above a cavity filled with sabulous matter composed of phosphate and of carbonate of lime.

It is supposed by modem anatomists to be the vestige of an atrophied eye, and hence is termed by them "the unpaired eye."

Though atrophied physically, it is still the organ of spiritual vision when its higher function is restored by the vivifying force of the speirema or paraklete (kundalini), and it is therefore called esoterically "the third eye," the eye of the seer.

When through the action of man's spiritual will, whether by his conscious effort or unconsciously so far as his phrenic mind is concerned, the latent kundalini (speirema), which in the Upanishads is poetically said to lie coiled up like a slumbering serpent, is aroused to activity, it displaces the slow-moving nervous force or neuricity and becomes the agent of the telestic or perfecting work.

As it passes from one ganglion to another its voltage is raised, the ganglia being like so many electric cells coupled for intensity; and moreover in each ganglion, or chakra, it liberates and partakes of the quality peculiar to that centre, and it is then said to "conquer" the chakra. In Sanskrit mystical literature very great stress is laid upon this "conquering of the chakras."

The currents of the kundalini, as also the channels they pursue, are called nadis, "pipes" or "tubes," and the three principal ones are:

• SUSHUMNA — which passes from the terminus of the spinal cord to the top of the cranium, at a point termed the brahmarandra, or "door of Brahma" (in early Christian mysticism, thura lesou, "door of Jesus")

• PINGALA — which corresponds to the right sympathetic; and

• IDA — which corresponds to the left sympathetic.

The force, as specialized in the ganglionic system, becomes the seven tattvas, which in the Apocalypse are called the seven pneumata, "breaths," since they are differentiations of the Great Breath, the "World-Mother," symbolized by the moon.

Concurrent with these seven lunar forces are five solar forces pertaining to the cerebro-spinal system, called the five pranas, "vital airs," or "life-winds," which in the Apocalypse are termed "winds" (anemoi).

The Apocalypse represents these twelve forces, the seven "breaths" and the five "winds," as corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac, of which, therefore, a brief description will here be appropriate.

The zodiac is a belt of the celestial sphere, about seventeen degrees in breadth, containing the twelve constellations which the sun traverses during the year in passing around the ecliptic. Within this zone are confined the apparent motions of the moon and major planets.

The zodiacal circle was divided by the ancients into twelve equal portions called signs, which were designated by the names of the constellations then adjacent to them in the following order:

Aries, the Ram; Taurus, the Bull; Gemini, the Twins; Cancer, the Crab; Leo, the Lion; Virgo, the Virgin; Libra, the Balance; Scorpio, the Scorpion; Sagittarius, the Bowman; Capricornus, the Goat; Aquarius, the Water-bearer; and Pisces, the Fishes.

Owing to the precession of the equinoxes, the signs of the ecliptic are now about one place ahead of the corresponding zodiacal constellations, which constitute the fixed zodiac.

Aside from its astronomical utility, the scheme of the zodiac was employed to symbolize the relations between the macrocosm and the microcosm, each of the twelve signs being made to correspond to one of the twelve greater gods of the ancient pantheon and assigned as the "house" of one of the seven sacred planets.

Each sign, moreover, being said to govern a particular portion of the human body, as shown in the familiar exoteric chart here reproduced.

KUNDALINI

A further explanation will now be given of the action of the "serpent force" (kundalini) in the telestic or perfective work.

This work has to be preceded by the most rigid purificatory discipline, which includes strict celibacy and abstemiousness, and it is possible only for the man or woman who has attained a very high state of mental and physical purity.

To the man who is gross and sensual, or whose mind is sullied by evil thoughts or constricted by bigotry, the holy paraklete (kundalini) does not come; the unpurified person who rashly attempts to invade the adytum of his inner God can arouse only the lower psychic forces of his animal nature, forces which are cruelly destructive and never regenerative.

The neophyte who has acquired the "purifying virtues" before entering upon the systematic course of introspective meditation by which the spiritual forces are awakened, must also as a necessary preliminary gain almost complete mastery of his thoughts, with the ability to focus his mind undeviatingly upon a single detached idea or abstract concept, excluding from the mental field all associated ideas and irrelevant notions.

If successful in this mystic meditation, he eventually obtains the power of arousing the speirema, or paraklete (kundalini), and can thereby at will enter into the state of manteia, the sacred trance of seership.

The four mantic states are not psychic trances or somnambulic conditions; they pertain to the noetic, spiritual nature; and in every stage of the manteia complete consciousness and self-command are retained, whereas the psychic trances rarely transcend the animalistic phrenic nature, and are usually accompanied by unconsciousness or semi-consciousness.

Proficiency in the noetic contemplation, with the arousing of the speirema (kundalini) and the conquest of the life-centres (chakras), leads to knowledge of spiritual realities (the science of which constitutes the Gnosis), and the acquirement of certain mystic powers, and it culminates in emancipation from physical existence through the "birth from above" when the deathless solar body has been fully formed.

This telestic work requires the unremitting effort of many years, not in one life only but carried on through a series of incarnations until the final result is achieved.

But almost in its initial stages the consciousness of the aspirant becomes disengaged from the mortal phrenic mind and centred in the immortal noetic mind, so that from incarnation to incarnation his memory carries over, more or less clearly according to the degree he has attained, the knowledge acquired; and with this unbroken memory and certainty of knowledge he is in truth immortal even before his final liberation from the cycle of reincarnation (Samsara).

In arousing the kundalini by conscious effort in meditation, the sushumna, though it is the all-important force, is ignored, and the mind is concentrated upon the two side-currents; for the sushumna can not be energized alone, and it does not start into activity until the ida and the pingala have preceded it, forming a positive and a negative current along the spinal cord.

These two currents, on reaching the sixth chakra, situated back of -the nasal passages, radiate to the right and left, along the line of the eyebrows; then the sushumna, starting at the base of the spinal cord, proceeds along the spinal marrow, its passage through each section thereof corresponding to a sympathetic ganglion being accompanied by a violent shock, or rushing sensation, due to the accession of force — increased “voltage” — until it reaches the conarium, and thence passes outward through the brahmarandra, the three currents thus forming a cross in the brain.

In the initial stage the seven psychic colors are seen, and when the sushumna impinges upon the brain there follows the lofty consciousness of the seer, whose mystic "third eye" now becomes, as it has been poetically expressed, "a window into space." In the next stage, as the brain-centres are successively "raised from the dead" by the serpent-force (kundalini), the seven "spiritual sounds" are heard in the tense and vibrant aura of the seer.

In the succeeding stage, sight and hearing become blended into a single sense, by which colors are heard, and sounds are seen — or, to word it differently, color and sound become one, and are perceived by a sense that is neither sight nor hearing but both.

Similarly, the psychic senses of taste and smell become unified; and next the two senses thus reduced from the four are merged in the interior, intimate sense of touch, which in turn vanishes into the epistemonic faculty, the gnostic power of the seer — exalted above all sense-perception — to cognize eternal realities.

This is the sacred trance called in Sanskrit Samadhi, and in Greek manteia; and in the ancient literature of both these languages four such trances are spoken of.

These stages of seership, however, are but the beginning of the telestic labor, the culmination of which is, as already explained, rebirth in the imperishable solar body. As the Apocalypse has for its sole theme this spiritual rebirth, it should now be apparent why that book has ever been unintelligible to the conventional theologian, and has never yielded its secrets to the mere man of letters.

The light of the Logos, which in energizing becomes what may be described as living, conscious electricity, of incredible voltage and hardly comparable to the form of electricity known to the physicist.

(This "living and conscious electricity" is what in esotericism is known as "Cosmic Kundalini" or "Electric Fire", and which the manifestation to a much smaller degree is the kundalini that humans handle.)

This is the "good serpent" of ancient symbology; and, taken with the pneumatic ovum, it was also represented in the familiar symbol of the egg and the serpent.

It is called in the Sanskrit writings kundalini, the annular or ring-form force, and in the Greek speirema, the serpent-coil.

It is this force which, in the telestic work, or cycle of initiation, weaves from the primal substance of the auric ovum, upon the ideal form or archetype it contains, and conforming thereto, the immortal Augoeides, or solar body {soma heliakon) , so called because in its visible appearance it is self-luminous like the sun, and has a golden radiance. Its aureola displays a filmy opalescence. This solar body is of atomic, non-molecular substance.

(I suspect that the solar body must be the "body of light" that the great initiates create when they are liberated from the cycle of reincarnations, and this body of light they form it from matter, transforming his physical body into "conscious energy." And from what James Pryse mentions, kundalini is required to achieve that transformation.)

The psychic, or lunar, body, through which the Nous acts in the psychic world, is molecular in structure, but of far finer substance than the elements composing the gross physical form, to whose organism it closely corresponds, having organs of sight, hearing, and the rest. »

(Chapter 2 - The path of power)

OBSERVATIONS

There are two details in which I do not agree with James Pryse:

1. The first is that Blavatsky said that we have 56 chakras (7 in the head and 49 in the body).
2. And the second is that the Third Eye is related with Ajna, not with Sahasrara.

But outside of that, I am impressed by the great knowledge that James Pryse possessed, and more considering that he wrote his book in 1910, when there was practically still no information about the chakras and kundalini in the West.