There are seven major chakras (boundless energy centers) in our body. There are also a number of minor chakras, but these seven are the major ones that are responsible for our physical and mental well-being. These seven major chakras deeply influence our physical, emotional and mental activities. They have great power. They are energy centers and if they are kept in a cleansed and energized condition, they can cause us to live an ecstatic and healthy life.
Dis-ease is only an imbalance in any one of these chakras, because our body and mind are rooted in our inner consciousness. Keeping these chakras in a healthy state, we can see a transformation happening in us at the mental and physical levels.
Let me tell you a small story:
After World War I, a biplane was abandoned near a remote tribal settlement in Asia. The tribal people had never seen an aircraft in all their lives. There was a lot of excitement and commotion about it and a big crowd gathered around it. They wondered what it might be and each one started giving some suggestion about it. They finally concluded that since it had wheels, it must be a bullock cart! News spread in the village about the new bullock cart. There was a lot of celebration in the village and the biplane was taken around the settlement yoked to bullocks, and it served as a bullock cart.
Some weeks later, a young tribal boy who had returned from the city where he was studying, saw the biplane. He got into it and looked around. He saw all the gears and mechanisms in it. He fiddled with the switches and levers. Suddenly, the engine came to life! He managed to taxi the plane on the ground for a short distance and the villagers were shocked at what they saw. The boy had seen tractors being used and declared to the people that the biplane was not a bullock cart but some kind of tractor.
There was great celebration once again and the biplane started being used as a tractor!
Six months passed by and a retired army officer came to the village. He saw the biplane being used as a tractor and was shocked! He told the villagers that it was not a tractor and that the plane could actually fly.
They refused to believe him because the only things they had ever seen flying were birds! The army officer got into the aircraft, flew it for a short while and landed.
The villagers were wonderstruck. Then they understood its true potential.
Understand: man is a wonderful mechanism meant to fly. But we don’t know our true potentiality. We have a very limited view of ourselves. Most of us operate only as a bullock cart, at the instinct level, surrendering to our emotions.
When we associate ourselves with mostly external things like a home, a car, a profession, and other basic things, we use our bodies as a bullock cart. We just operate at the instinct level and remain with an over-loaded unconscious mind.
When we additionally move into art, creativity, philosophy and such things involving not just the mind but the heart also, we use our bodies as a tractor. We will find a certain fulfillment in ourselves. A poet who has given birth to a poem will be happier than a woman who has given birth to a child. In the case of the latter, the womb is centered in the stomach whereas in the former it is centered in the heart, and so the fulfillment. These people will be able to operate at the intellectual level.
Finally, the man who enters into spirituality and develops a thirst for true knowledge and realizes that he is the ultimate existential energy in physical form, uses his body as an aircraft! Enlightened masters use their bodies as an aircraft. They are so ecstatic all the time. They rise beyond all the miseries of the bullock cart and tractor and just fly! They operate at the intuitive level.
What should we do to become an aircraft? What was the difference between the villagers and the army officer? The aircraft remained the same. Nothing was added to it or removed from it. No physical changes were made in it. Then what was the difference?
Knowledge. The knowledge of the mechanism of the aircraft. The villagers did not know that the device had such a mechanism that could be operated in a way that it could fly, whereas the army officer knew about it, that’s all. The technique with which they handled the aircraft made it first a bullock cart, then a tractor and then finally an aircraft.
Just like this, there are mechanisms or gears inside us, called the chakras, which are boundless energy centers. Each of them is associated with a particular emotion within us. If we understand how to handle the emotion properly, we can function as an aircraft.
When we understand the science behind some of our basic emotions, we can become aware of our present deep unconscious state. Then we can free ourselves from the load of the unconscious and start moving to the higher dimensions of our being.
enithyananda 