❂Chakras & Subtle Body

The maps of the energy body, drawn on a seated figure you can touch: the Tantric chakras (each lotus shown with its petal letters and seed syllable in Sanskrit, in the colours of the text or the modern rainbow, which is marked as a later addition), four other teachings of the chakras (the four Buddhist wheels of the Hevajra Tantra, Leadbeater's centres, Steiner's lotus flowers and the Sufi laṭāʾif) with a table that sets them side by side and the history of the Western system, the Golden Dawn's Middle Pillar, the Chinese dantian, and the five sheaths of the Upaniṣad one within another. Watch a light travel through the centres, or set the three core maps side by side at the same heights. Practise by sounding a centre with the breath while its lotus breathes, circulating the fountain of light or the microcosmic orbit, breathing through the left and right channels, or sensing each centre gently from the feet up and back down (nothing is fine). Tap the figure to be quizzed, or build the body by dragging each name to its place, and see over time whether your experience follows either map, both, or neither. The figure now sits cross-legged with previews on hover; watch the kuṇḍalinī rise from her three and a half coils through the three knots, with the gods, śaktis and liṅgas of each chakra; see the five vital winds move in the body; set the sephiroth on the body as the Zohar does; and compare the layers of the person in Vedānta, Kabbalah and ancient Egypt. The fifty letters of the Sanskrit alphabet are shown as one garland running through the six lotuses. Raise the light by hand along the central channel, or bring it down the Middle Pillar, and loosen the three knots by holding still; hum against a drone as you sound a centre; and mark anywhere on the figure where you feel something, to see over time where your own marks gather.