In this podcast we look at the significance and development of the chakras, otherwise known as psychic centres. Our presenter Tanya Solberg covers not only what they look like, and how they affect our physical body, but also what their true significance is in our own spiritual development.
This podcast is based upon a lecture given by Dr King, and the full lecture is available from our shop.
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The psychic centres or chakras
We not only inhabit a physical body, but also a psychic body known as the aura. This is an energy body composed of spiritual or etheric matter that extends several inches beyond the physical body, and contains within it psychic centres or chakras. There are seven major chakras in the body, and hundreds of minor chakras.
The function of the psychic centres
The aura and chakras are the etheric counterpart of the physical body; and the health of the physical body is reflected in the etheric body, and vice versa.
Chakras are vortices of energy that act as flood gates in our etheric structure to send out and receive psychic and mental energy. The energy that we are subconsciously drawing into ourselves through the chakras is called prana, also known as ki or universal life forces.
We exist in a sea of this energy, called prana, which is radiated through the Sun and makes all life possible. All matter, and indeed all life, on Earth is made up of pranas intermingled together in one way or another.
To remain healthy, we take prana into our body through what we eat and drink, and also what we breathe. Our chakras are operating 24 hours a day, drawing prana into our subtle nervous systems and literally feeding our body with energy.
If our chakras are not working well, then the amount of prana being brought into the body is reduced, and this can lead to illness. Properly functioning chakras lead to better health, but there is also another aspect beyond the physical body that is effected by the chakras.
Developing the psychic centres
By developing these chakras we can enhance our psychic abilities. Yoga, service and healing are all ways to achieve this, but one of the most important ways is through yoga breathing which helps to channel as much prana through the subtle nervous system as possible.
A whole new world of information or activity is open to anyone who has developed these psychic centres. When they are opened, balanced and tuned, your psychic senses become developed so that you can see auras, can tap into all levels of mind and all planes of existence, and by so doing have the capacity to do much good in the world.
In the ordinary person, the chakras are partially closed and they are not particularly bright or glowing. In the Master they are fully activated and glowing brightly, just like orbs of multi-coloured light, or like centres in which multi-coloured lights move around at a tremendous speed.
The main reason why we are on Earth is to learn to control these energies within ourselves. When we can control these energies perfectly then we will begin to control matter, and when we can do that we no longer need to stay in this class room called Earth and can move on to another classroom. You can find out more about this in Dr King’s book The Nine Freedoms or listen to our free podcast series on The Nine Freedoms.
Kundalini
The key to fully opening and activating these chakras rests with an energy called kundalini, also known as the serpent power. This is a primordial force which lies semi-dormant in the chakra at the base of the spine – it animates it and makes all functions possible. To attain the true states of enlightenment, meditation and samadhi we must learn to control this energy and raise it consciously through a channel within the spine called sushumna.
In doing so, each psychic centre begins to truly function as it was meant to, but this is extremely difficult, and even dangerous. Dr George King taught that the best, and safest, way to raise this power is through giving service to others, healing, prayer, mantra and helping others. If you combine this with practices such as pranayama, hatha yoga, affirmations and visualisations such as those in his book, Realise Your Inner Potential, then the kundalini will rise slowly but safely in balance and harmony.
Cosmic consciousness
In his book The Nine Freedoms, Dr King beautifully recounted his own experience of a full rise in the power of kundalini from the base of the spine centre to the crown chakra. Here is a very brief extract from it:
His consciousness reached outwards—holding and gradually came the realization of oneness. No longer was he a Light in the wilderness as he had been before, but now he was an essential part, an intimate part, an inter-related part of all things. His consciousness soared above the environment, above the city in which his cold body sat immobile, around the city, around all things and all people and all environments.
Soaring upwards and outwards, he was now in the full and complete realization that he was Life, which was manifesting in countless different ways in order to gain the experience necessary, the control demanded over matter itself. Here, in such an elevated state as this, came a deeper realization than ever before, of the interrelationship of all things, of the Life of all things.
Dr King said in his lecture that having raised kundalini you had a choice – to stay in the ecstatic bliss of meditation and experience the true fruits of wisdom, or in your compassion for all of humanity, lower the kundalini and give help, teaching and service to humanity to help raise others to their own enlightenment.