Dive into the Higher Chakras - 02.18.10

Student Question: Today in the study group we discussed how the more you go into the chakras, there is a loss of the sense of identity. So why, if there is a loss of identity, does the person not awaken if he/she is in any of the chakras? And the other question is that, you mentioned that a person can awaken any time, but how does that work in relation to the chakra map? If a person is in the lower three chakras, can that person awaken at any moment?

“The awakening is the shift to the higher chakra,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “It is possible, but it requires the desire to do so. That’s what’s missing.” It is not difficult to reach liberation “cause it’s our natural state. The truth is we’re already there, but it’s covered over by these other veils.” And to answer the other question, Shunyamurti explains that a chakra is not an ego state; there is no identity in the chakra, but there is an “assemblage point” in between two chakras where we structure our lives. We gravitate towards the chakras because “most people don’t like having a sense of ego because there are burdens . . . so people want to get out of the egoic state. Now, they could go to chakra seven, just as easily as they go to chakra one, two, or three, but in this culture we’ve been trained, ‘have a glass of beer,’ instead of meditate and reach bliss. Or have a sexual encounter in which you lose yourself temporarily, or have become berserk, become enraged, that’s always enjoyable to most people. . . . The problem is that all of the lower three chakras have negative consequences, and when you do come back into the assemblage point you think, ‘Oh my God what did I just do?’ and then you’ve created more negative karma that you have to work out.” And, as Shunyamurti reminds us, “You can choose any of them. It’s not as if one is really more difficult than the other, it’s only a matter of where you want to dive in.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 18, 2010.