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Cakras/Centres

Conscious centres and sources of all the dynamic powers of our being organising their action through the plexuses and arranged in an ascending series from the lowest physical to the highest mind centre and spiritual centre called the thousand-petalled lotus where ascending Nature, the Serpent Power of the Tantrics, meets the Brahman and is liberated into the Divine Being. These centres are closed or half-closed within us and have to be opened before their full potentiality can be manifested in our physical nature : but once they are opened and completely active, no limit can easily be set to the development of their potencies and the total transformation to be possible.

Technically lotuses or circles, cakra, and which rise in an ascending scale to the summit where there is the thousand-petalled lotus from which all the mental and vital energy flows. Each of these lotuses is the centre and the storing-house of its own particular system of psychological powers, energies and operations,—each system corresponding to a plane of our psychological existence,—and these flow out and return in the stream of the pranic energies as they course through the nāḍīs.

Chakras

The thousand-petalled (head) lotus—Chakra or centre of the higher will and knowledge

The lotus in the forehead—Will, vision, mental dynamism

The lotus in the throat—Expression—external mind

The lotus of the heart—Emotion, dynamic vital feeling (behind the heart is the seat of the psychic being)

The lotus of the navel—Higher vital

The lotus of the abdomen—Lower vital

The lotus at the end of the spine (Muladhara)—Physical consciousness

Call

The soul that is called to this deep and vast change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously towards the awakening; it may reach it through the influence of a religion or the attraction of a philosophy; it may approach it by a slow illumination or leap to it by a sudden touch or shock; it may be pushed or led to it by the pressure of outward circumstances or by an inward necessity, by a single word that breaks the seals of the mind or by long reflection, by the distant example of one who has trod the path or by contact and daily influence. According to the nature and the circumstances the call will come.

Calm

Calm is a still unmoved condition which no disturbance can affect—it is a less negative condition than quiet.

Calm is a positive tranquillity which can exist in spite of superficial disturbances.

Calm is a strong and positive quietude, firm and solid.

Central Being

The phrase “central being” in our Yoga is usually applied to the portion of the Divine in us which supports all the rest and survives through death and birth. This central being has two forms—above, it is the Jivatman, our true being, of which we become aware when the higher self-knowledge comes,—below, it is the psychic being which stands behind mind, body and life. The Jivatman is above the manifestation in life and presides over it; the psychic being stands behind the manifestation in life and supports it.

Chidākāsa/Clairaudience

For the mind in Samadhi, has access to the inner space called sometimes the cidākāśa, to depths of more and more subtle ether which are heavily curtained from the physical sense by the grosser ether of the material universe, and all things sensible, whether in the material world or any other, create reconstituting vibrations, sensible echoes, reproductions, recurrent images of themselves which that subtler ether receives and retains. It is this which explains many of the phenomena of clair-voyance, clair-audience, etc; for these phenomena are only the exceptional admission of the waking mentality into a limited sensitiveness to what might be called the image memory of the subtle ether, by which not only the signs of all things past and present, but even those of things future can be seized; for things future are already accomplished to knowledge and vision on higher[p.502] planes of mind and their images can be reflected upon mind in the present. But these things which are exceptional to the waking mentality, difficult and to be perceived only by the possession of a special power or else after assiduous training, are natural to the dream-state of trance consciousness in which the subliminal mind is free. And that mind can also take cognizance of things on various planes not only by these sensible images, but by a species of thought perception or of thought reception and impression analogous to that phenomenon of consciousness which in modern psychical science has been given the name of telepathy.

Chit

Chit is the pure consciousness—as in Sat Chit Ananda.

Chit eternally possesses its self-bliss; and since Chit is the universal conscious-stuff of being, conscious universal being is also in possession of conscious self-bliss, master of the universal delight of existence.

Chitta

Chitta is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.

The reservoir of past mental impressions, the citta or storehouse of memory.

Communion

A constant inner communion is the joy to be made close and permanent and unfailing. This communion is not to be confined to an exceptional nearness and adoration when we retire quite into ourselves away from our normal preoccupations, nor is it to be sought by a putting away of our human activities. All our thoughts, impulses, feelings, actions have to be referred to him for his sanction or disallowance, or if we cannot yet reach this point, to be offered to him in our sacrifice of aspiration, so that he may more and more descend into us and be present in them all and pervade them with all his will and power, his light and knowledge, his love and delight. In the end all our thoughts, feelings, impulses, actions will begin to proceed from him and change into some divine seed and form of themselves; in our whole inner living we shall have grown conscious of ourselves as a part of his being till between the existence of the Divine whom we adore and our own lives there is no longer any division.

Conscience

What is usually called “conscience” is a mental formation based on the idea of good and evil, a moral entity or rather an element of goodwill which tries to keep the individual on what is commonly known as the straight path. This element acts as a defence against the hostile forces which can quite easily take possession of one who has disregarded the advice of his conscience. But all this is a mental approximation of the Truth. It is not the Truth itself.

Consciousness

The faculty of being aware of anything through identification. The Divine Consciousness is not only aware but knows and effects. To be aware of a vibration, for instance, does not mean that you know everything about it.

Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces.

Consciousness is usually identified with mind, but mental consciousness is only the human range. There are ranges of consciousness above and below the human range, with which the normal human has no contact and they seem to it unconscious, -supramental or overmental and submental ranges.

Consecration

Consecration is a process by which one trains the consciousness to give itself to the Divine.

Consecration becomes in its fullness a devoting of all our being to the Divine; therefore also of all our thoughts and our works.

Consecration is the consummation, when the Light has illuminated all the parts of your being, with a central will acting on the feelings, impulses, thoughts, emotions, activities, directing them always towards the Divine and when you move no more from darkness to light or from falsehood to truth or from misery to happiness but from light to more light, from truth to greater truth, from happiness to increasing happiness.

Contradictions

Every man is full of contradictions because he is one person, no doubt, but made up of different personalities. So long as one does not aim at unity in a single dominant intention, like that of seeking and self-dedication to the Divine, they get on somehow together, alternating or quarrelling or muddling through or else one taking the lead and compelling the others to take a. minor part - but once you try to unite them in one aim, then the trouble becomes evident.

Conversion

A turning of the being away from lower things towards the Divine.

When the psychic being is awake, it begins to take hold of the rest of the being, to influence it and change it so that all may become the true expression of the inner soul. It is this change that is called the inner conversion. There can be no conversion without the awakening of the psychic being.

Cosmic Consciousness

The cosmic consciousness is that of the universe, of the cosmic spirit and cosmic Nature with all the beings and forces within it. All that is as much conscious as a whole as the individual separately is, though in a different way. The consciousness of the individual is part of this, but a part feeling itself as a separate being. Yet all the time most of what he is comes into him from the cosmic consciousness.

Cosmic Force

This cosmic Force is a Power that works under the conditions of the Ignorance.

Our nature must house the cosmic Force but not in its lower aspect or in its rajasic or sattwic movement; it must serve the universal Will, but in the light of a greater liberating knowledge. There must be no egoism of any kind in the attitude of the instrument, even when we are fully conscious of the greatness of the Force within us. Every man is knowingly or unknowingly the instrument of a universal Power and, apart from the inner Presence, there is no such essential difference between one action and another, one kind of instrumentation and another as would warrant the folly of an egoistic pride.

Cosmic Ignorance

There is no ignorance that is not part of the Cosmic Ignorance, only in the individual it becomes a limited formation and movement, while the Cosmic Ignorance is the whole movement of world-consciousness separated from the supreme Truth and acting in an inferior motion in which the Truth is perverted, diminished, mixed and clouded with falsehood and error.

Cosmic Truth

The cosmic Truth is the view on things of a cosmic Consciousness in which things are seen in their true essence and their true relation to the Divine and to each other.

The cosmic Truth is the truth of things as they are at present expressed in the universe. The Divine Truth is independent of the universe, above it and originates it.

Crown

The crown is the place of passage between the body-consciousness with all it contains of mind and life and the higher being above the body. It is there that the two consciousnesses begin to meet. The crown centre open removes the difficulty of the lid between the ordinary mind and the higher consciousness above.The centre of communication direct between the individual being and the infinite Consciousness above.