Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan - Softcover

Leland, Kurt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0892542195 ISBN 13: 9780892542192

Publisher: Ibis Press, 2016

Synopsis

If you've ever had questions about the inconsistencies between chakra systems or wondered where the names, colors, locations, and other associations came from--you'll find the answers here, along with 24 tables and 28 black-and-white illustrations showing how the Western chakra system developed from the mid-19th through the 20th century, many from rare and forgotten sources.

Based on the teachings of Indian Tantra, the chakras have been used for centuries as focal points for healing, meditation, and achieving a gamut of physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits, from improved health to ultimate enlightenment. Contemporary yoga teachers, energy healers, psychics, and self-help devotees think of the chakra system as thousands of years old. Yet the most common version in use in the West today came together as recently as 1977.

Never before has the story been told of how the Western chakra system developed from its roots in Indian Tantra, through Blavatsky to Leadbeater, Steiner to Alice Bailey, Jung to Joseph Campbell, Ramakrishna to Aurobindo, and Esalen to Shirley MacLaine and Barbara Brennan.

About this title

About the Author

Kurt Leland, an award-winning poet and composer and author of five nonfiction books, has been called one of the world's foremost experts on out-of-body experiences by What Is Enlightenment magazine. He maintains an intuitive counseling practice called 'Spiritual Orienteering' in the Boston area. Orienteering is the art of finding our way through a physical landscape without a map, using only a compass. Spiritual Orienteering expands that definition to include finding our way through the landscapes of our emotional, mental, and spiritual lives.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Rainbow Body

A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan

By Kurt Leland

Ibis Press

Copyright © 2016 Kurt Leland
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-89254-219-2

Contents

List of Illustrations and Plates, 
Acknowledgments, 
Introduction, 
Note on Sanskrit Transliteration, 
Evolution of the Eastern Chakra System: A Chronology, 
Part 1. East Is East and West Is West, 
Chapter 1. The Mysterious Maps of Bipin Behari Shom, 
Chapter 2. The Universe according to Tantra, 
Chapter 3. Reversing Creation: Yoga and the Chakras, 
Chapter 4. The Western Chakra System, 
Part 2. Esoteric Matrix: The Chakra Teachings of H. P. Blavatsky (1879–91), 
Chapter 5. Journey to the West, 
Chapter 6. Madame Blavatsky's Esoteric Instructions, 
Chapter 7. Inner Group Teachings, 
Part 3. Whirling Wheels: Theosophical Clairvoyance (1890s–1920s), 
Chapter 8. Annie Besant and the Higher Planes, 
Chapter 9. The Lotus Petals of Rudolf Steiner, 
Chapter 10. The Law of Breath and the Tree of Life, 
Chapter 11. Chakras of the Apocalypse (James Morgan Pryse), 
Chapter 12. Charles W. Leadbeater and the Serpent Fire, 
Chapter 13. The Duel of Leadbeater and Woodroffe, 
Part 4. Chromotherapy: Science of Rays, Colors, and Glands (1920s–1950s), 
Chapter 14. Alice Bailey and the Seven Rays, 
Chapter 15. Mysterious Glands, 
Chapter 16. The Sikh and the Psychic, 
Chapter 17. Lost Teachings of Cosmic Color, 
Chapter 18. Temples of Radiance, 
Part 5. Scholars and Swamis and Shrinks, Oh My! (1930s–70s), 
Chapter 19. The Serpent's Brood, 
Chapter 20. Kundalini Hot Springs — Esalen Institute, 
Chapter 21. Handbooks to Higher Consciousness, 
Chapter 22. The Birth of the Western Chakra System, 
Part 6. Light-Wheels Roll On (1980s and Beyond), 
Chapter 23. Way of the Dodo — Extinct Systems, 
Chapter 24. The Great Chakra Controversy, 
Chapter 25. The Multidimensional Rainbow Body, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 
About the Author, 

CHAPTER 1

The Mysterious Maps of Bipin Behari Shom

In India in the late 1840s, two mysterious maps of the human body came into the hands of a young man of Calcutta (now Kolkata). Both showed the outlines of a naked, mustachioed man with upraised arms, palms facing outward. The torso of one displayed a series of six stars with differing numbers of rays — four at the crotch, six at the belly, ten at the base of the breastbone, twelve at the heart, sixteen at the throat, and eight at the forehead. Squiggling spiral lines in the belly connected several of the stars, suggesting to those trained in Western science poorly understood or inadequately rendered intestinal coils. However, those trained in Eastern esoteric science would have recognized these lines as nadi (Sanskrit: "channels"), subtle-body conduits of vital energy running between the cakra (wheels) — centers of this energy whose activation would result in a seven-step process of consciousness expansion leading to enlightenment.

The torso in the other map was replaced by a cryptogram consisting of a table with eleven columns and eight rows. The head, arms, and legs sprouted from this table. Most of the table's eighty-eight slots contained numbers, though a few were empty. The central column contained not only numbers, but also a sequence of eleven images squeezed into eight rows, ranging from a tortoise and a cobra with flaring hood at the bottom, through a series of multirayed stars (or perhaps flowers with differing numbers of petals), to a goose at the forehead and a pair of superposed circles at the crown. A "key" to the numbers, ranging from one to eighty-eight, provided an apparently random list of gods, elements, alphabet letters, behaviors, conditions of human existence, and states of consciousness, as in the following sequence:

11. Religious penance

12. Anger

13. The dreaming state

14. Goodness

15. The vowel a

16. Brahma

17. Pedantry

18. Intelligence

19. The place of the mind

20. Fire

The loss of the original Sanskrit words makes any attempt to decode this cryptogram speculative at best. However, parallelisms between the horizontal rows suggest that the words in the key need to be rearranged in the order of these rows from left to right and bottom to top, possibly resulting in a series of aphorisms on meditative methods of raising ku alini, the "serpent power" coiled at the base of the spine, whose awakening is said to confer godlike spiritual powers on the practitioner and lead to enlightenment.

"Errors" of Hinduism

The name of the young man who discovered and described these two maps of the human body was Bipin Behari Shom. He was a graduate of the Free Church Institution in Calcutta (founded 1843; now Scottish Church College). The institution's founder was Alexander Duff, a Scottish missionary who came to India in 1830 with the intention of establishing an educational institution for Indians, with instruction delivered in English and Bengali instead of the vernacular-only education favored by the contemporary Anglo-Indian government. Though the Christian Bible was part of the curriculum, conversion to Christianity was not a requirement for attendance.

Our young scholar was a Hindu of the Sudra caste, the lowest of the four primary castes in the Hindu social system — the workers. Though educated from boyhood in the Free Church Institution and later employed there as an instructor, he had not converted to Christianity. We know of him because of the prize-winning essay he wrote for a competition sponsored by the Calcutta Review (founded and edited by Duff) on the theme "Physical Errors of Hinduism." This essay, published in 1849, included engravings of the two maps — possibly the first graphic illustrations (as opposed to purely verbal descriptions) of the chakra system in an English publication intended for a nonscholarly Western audience.

Shom's essay attempted to demolish the validity of the Hindu religion on the basis of comparing Western scientific knowledge with literal interpretations of traditional Hindu knowledge on such subjects as "geography, astronomy, chemistry, botany, and physiology." However, the mysterious maps referred to a category of esoteric knowledge expounded in the Tantras, texts "containing rites of a most secret nature, some of which are exceedingly impure, by which a man is said to become a siddha, or supernaturally gifted." The Tantras "are also the great source from which are drawn almost all the mantras by which the different manifestations of Shiva and Shakti are worshiped."

Whereas the Vedas, the foundational texts of Hinduism, are said to be thousands of years old, the Tantras are a relatively recent development, whose written form dates back to about the eighth century CE. Yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein translates the Sanskrit word Tantra as "loom, web." Traditionally, the word meant "that by which knowledge is expanded." Tantric texts "specialize in esoteric or occult matters," including mantra (thought or intention expressed as sound) — sacred Sanskrit syllables, words, or phrases chanted outwardly or inwardly to achieve particular spiritual or magical ends. Tantric masters are called Siddhas ("perfected ones" or "adepts").

Siva, the "Destroyer," is one of the three main Gods of Hinduism. In the tantric tradition, Sakti is one of many names for his consort. One form of religious practice based on Tantra involves rituals that partake of five things forbidden to orthodox Hindus: drinking wine; eating meat, fish, and parched grain; and engaging in extramarital sexual intercourse — in which the participants are said to enact the union of Siva and Sakti. These are the "exceedingly impure" secret rites mentioned by Shom. They are traditionally referred to as the "left-hand path" (vama-marga), which is sometimes associated with sorcery. Forms of Tantra that avoid such excesses are referred to as the "right-hand path" (daksina-marga).

As Shom told the tale, the mysterious maps came to him in the following way: A wealthy Brahmin (highest caste; the teachers) by the name of Gunga Gobinda Singha, who lived near the city of Murshidabad in what is now West Bengal, "spent the greater part of his fortune in making researches into the Hindu Shastras [text-books]." He exhausted the knowledge of the local pandits (Brahmin experts on Hindu texts and traditions). So he moved to Nadia, a town some seventy miles away, where there was an ancient and renowned Sanskrit college. There, his teachers enabled him "to drink deep at the foundation of Sanskrit lore." Not satisfied, Singha "invited several pandits from the upper provinces" — the foothills of the Himalayas. They were "known by the name of Daudus," and the maps came from them.

Shom was probably referring to Dadus, followers of a sixteenth-century Hindu saint, Dadu Dayal (1544–1603), an ecstatic poet. David Lorenzen links Dadu to the influence of the monastic Nath tradition of Hindu Tantra — within which hatha (forceful) yoga developed. The form of yoga taught today in popular Western yoga classes evolved from principles of hatha yoga.

According to Shom:

The pandits of our country are for the most part either ignorant of this department of Hinduism altogether or they observe that secrecy which its doctrines require of them. Hence, we have been enabled to do nothing more than to collect the leading points of two great theories of the human frame from the two annexed maps, with the assistance of a learned pandit. These theories, as exemplified by the maps, are as famous for their novelty as for their extravagance.

At the death of Singha, these maps "fell into the hands of a native gentleman of our quarter [of Calcutta] ... who gave them to us for inspection." Before publishing the maps in the Calcutta Review, Shom was assured of their scarcity by several Sanskrit scholars, who were "startled at the sight." They exclaimed, "We have never seen such things before — better keep them to yourself, and do not show them to the public." Because Shom was of a lower caste, he was told not to try to pronounce the incantations (mantras) associated with the maps — a right reserved for Brahmins.

What are the "two theories of the human frame" to which Shom refers? With sarcasm, perhaps born equally of personal scorn toward elitist Brahmin pandits for their condescension and of the religious scorn of his Scots mentor toward Hinduism, Shom replied:

Do they treat of the bones, muscles, arteries, veins, nerves, and ligaments? Do they describe the several organs of the human body, external and internal, such as the eye, the ear, the nose, the lungs, the stomach, the liver, the intestines, et cetera? No! These are commonplace things, and therefore they are left to the observation of the vulgar. The tantric theory on which the well-known yoga called Shat-chakra-bheda [Piercing of the six wheels] is founded, supposes the existence of six main internal organs called chakras or padmas [lotuses], all having a general resemblance to that famous flower, the lotus.

Thus was the notion of the chakras first introduced by a native Indian to the English-speaking world. Shom could scarcely conceal his disdain: "With regard to the chakras or padmas, it should be remarked that they are even to this day believed really to exist within the body of every individual. What then are we to think of those who could believe such absurdities?" Furthermore, "even when we show them by actual dissection the nonexistence of the imaginary chakras in the human body, they will rather have recourse to excuses revolting to common sense than acknowledge the evidence of their own eyes." Even worse, "They say, with a shamelessness unparalleled, that these padmas exist as long as a man lives, but disappear the moment he dies." Never mind that tantric teachings located the chakras in a subtle body surrounding the physical body like an invisible sheath. This subtle body could not be dissected, therefore it had no existence for Western science.

Shom's impression of the second map was that it had something to do with "anatomy and phrenology," a popular nineteenth-century practice of reading people's character by noting the location of bumps on their heads — except the torso was the object of examination in this case. This map was a demonstration of what he called a second "great theory" about the human body, that

the seats of all mental faculties, passions, and feelings are within the great trunk of the body; and that each of the faculties and passions has its respective material organ [i.e., chakra], by which its function is carried on — so that the brain, which is the real seat of all the mental functions, is altogether put out of the question.

Well, perhaps not entirely — ever since the publication of these maps more than a century and a half ago, the brains of Easterners and Westerners alike have been exercised in attempting to decipher the meaning of tantric teachings about the chakras. The maps themselves were forgotten, replaced by others of a similar nature brought to the attention of Western esotericists and scholars decades later. As ancient texts explaining the theory and practice of activating the chakras came to light and were translated into modern languages, these teachings were gradually disseminated throughout the world. The result was a proliferation of scholarly studies, psychological speculations, mythological interpretations, clairvoyant investigations, channeled explanations, and myriad applications, from promoting physical vitality and health to achieving psychic powers and transcendental states of consciousness. The notion of the chakra system had begun its journey from the ancient East to the modern West.

East and West

The British colonial poet Rudyard Kipling famously wrote that "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet." In discussions of spiritual belief and practice, the terms East and West, usually referring to Asia versus Europe and America, have a long but suspect history. In India, this history reflects in part the contact of indigenous (especially Hindu) philosophy and religion with European rational philosophy and Christian religion (in the form of proselytizing Catholic and Protestant missions). It also reflects European (especially English) colonialism and racism — exploitative attempts to civilize the "savages" of a so-called darker race while draining their home of its wealth.

Yet, aside from issues of historicity, the distinction between East and West has an intuitive appeal, similar to that between Aristotelian and Platonic thinking. The former mode of thought, based on sensory observation of particulars and deductive reasoning, leads to rational thinking that foregrounds an empirical world of concrete facts; the latter, based on mental contemplation of generalities and inductive reasoning, leads to mystical thinking that foregrounds a theoretical world of abstract ideals. Aristotelian thinking set the stage for the Western tendency to prioritize the so-called objective world, observable by the five senses and measurable by mathematics and the instruments of science, over the so-called subjective world of feelings, thoughts, and states of consciousness. However, Hindu thinking prioritizes states of consciousness, seeing them as steps in a process of discerning ultimate truth, while calling the objective world an illusion.

For the purposes of this book, I make a distinction between an indigenous "Eastern" chakra system that originated in India about a thousand years ago and a highly modified "Western" chakra system that developed from the former over a period of roughly a century, beginning around 1880 — and that is now so divergent from its roots that it might as well have been invented without them. Yet the stages of this development may have served deep cultural and spiritual needs, despite the apparently justifiable accusation of cultural misappropriation.

I feel emboldened to retain the opposable categories of East and West by remarks made some years ago by Sudhir Kakar, an Indian writer trained as a Western psychoanalyst. Kakar became interested in exploring traditional methods of healing psychological and spiritual ills in various parts of India in the 1980s — before accusations of colonial thinking and cultural misappropriation became as shrill as they are now in American academia. The result was Shamans, Mystics and Doctors — a wonderful mix of philosophical and psychological speculation and soul-searching with anthropological research and personal memoir. In concluding his book, Kakar makes a distinction between Eastern and Western thinking that seems not only plausible, but also usable, without favoring one over the other as colonial thinking does so blithely:

Human freedom in the traditional Indian context ... seems to imply an increase in the potential to experience different inner states while limiting action in the outer world to stereotypes and unquestioning adaptation. The Indian emphasis has been on the pursuit of an inner differentiation while keeping the outer world constant. In contrast, the notion of freedom in the West is related to an increase in the potential for acting in the outer world and enlarging the sphere of choices, while keeping the inner state constant to that of a rational, waking consciousness from which other modes of inner experience have been excluded as deviations.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Ibis Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0892542195
• ISBN 13: 9780892542192
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 500