“The Chakras: What are they really? What do they do? And how do they work?”
By Robert Petrovich, for Cosolargy International
INTRODUCTION
It’s likely that you heard that chakras are swirling centers of light energy, but the approach to the subject of chakras is riddled with questions.
Why? Because the physical sciences can’t say much and personal experience says a lot. But how do you get experience? And why don’t the physical sciences measure up? We’ll explore these questions in later articles.
But to begin, we first have to ask:
What are “chakras” really?
How do we know they exist? That’s a big question in itself. And if they exist, what are they? Are they the organs or energy centers of some kind of subtle energy body? Or are they the energy centers of the physical body and its organs? Or something else?
If they exist, how many are there? 4? 7? 8? 12? 21? 42? 114? More? And what do they look like? The answers to these questions depend upon what you mean when you use the term “chakra.”
Once all these basic questions are cleared up, we will come to the next big question:
What do they do?
This is a tough one. And the answers you usually will get are either very vague, or else they are very specific under the assumption that you have already bought into the ideas you are hearing and just need a few more specifics. But you still have to ask the question and, hopefully, get some answers that you can work with.
Do they energize the physical body and its organs? Do they connect us to a higher dimension or perhaps to more than a single higher dimension? Are they the “organs” of the psychic body that keep that body functioning and alive? When they are strong, do they provide health; and when they are weak, illness?
Once we are convinced that the “chakras” have an important function, we will want to know:
How do they work?
What does it mean when someone says a chakra is either “blocked” or “open”? And of course, we will want to know: What blocks them? And how do you open them? What does it mean when someone tells you a chakra is “strong” or “weak”? Or that a chakra is “dominant”? And what effect does a “dominant” chakra have on all the others, especially the weakest? Beyond that, what does it mean when your chakras are “balanced”?
These are the questions that will be addressed only briefly in this article. More detailed answers will appear in separate articles that deal with specifics.
Now what?
Once you have settled all these questions for yourself, at least tentatively, you should have a good enough grasp of general concepts that you will feel comfortable with taking action. That is to say, you will have enough information to convince you that you really can learn how to energize these energy centers. And then you will be able to experience what they do for you.
You will learn how your life depends on them and how your life is affected by their health. And more importantly, you will learn how they serve as a conduit to your higher existence as a psychic and spiritual being – not to mention how their health on an energetic level can benefit you on the physical level.
BACKGROUND
Recent books and online articles reproduce images of the chakras and describe their qualities as if they are part of a 3000-year-old tradition. But they are not. What you hear repeated over and over again are mostly “facts” from the 1970s. This is how we got there:
From the East …
The term chakra literally and figuratively means “wheel” in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions. The first appearance of the word chakra is within the early Vedas. However, in this case the word doesn’t refer to psychic energy centers, but rather to a chakravartin or spiritual king who turns “the wheel of the heavens.” The later classical Upanishads of Hinduism from the first millennium BCE do mention chakras in the sense of psychospiritual vortices or “wheels of light,” and also the energy-carrying arteries or breath channels (nadi) between them, but these ancient texts do not present psychic-energy chakra theories.
Esoteric concepts about the chakras as physiological and psychic centers emerged in India in the medieval Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions but were not directly related to mainstream yoga. These traditions held that human life simultaneously exists in two parallel dimensions, a physical body and another non-physical energy body called the “subtle body” that consists of energy channels (nadi ) connected by nodes of psychic energy called chakras. Over time, these concepts grew much more elaborate.
In these medieval Eastern systems, each chakra represents a level of conscious being; and there is understood to be points of tension or “knots” between the chakras that need to be overcome or broken through for the energy to rise to the next higher chakra. In addition, each chakra is considered to be polarized, having a male and a female aspect; and when the two polarities are “married,” it is an important step toward overcoming the level of being which that chakra represents and toward approaching the next higher level of being.
The number of chakras varies between various traditions, but they typically range between four and eight. The Nyingmapa Vajrayana Buddhist teachings and the Nath tradition mention eight chakras with the emphasis being on the awakening of the divine energy through these energy centers.
… to the West
There was no direct correlation between the chakras and the physical body before the interaction of East and West. Chakras came to the West through the tradition and practice of yoga – which means “yoke” – a discipline designed to yoke together the individual with the divine. The clairvoyants of the Theosophical Society, beginning with Mme.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, co-founder of the Theosophical Society, played key roles in transmitting these teachings to the West in the 1880s. And in doing so, they also significantly altered the ancient teachings.
Blavatsky and her colleague William Q. Judge wrote relatively little on the subject of chakras. But Blavatsky did claim that she had “improved” the hatha yoga seven-chakra system by being able to see the chakras of others through clairvoyance and by correlating them with the western (diatonic) musical scale, glands, nerve plexuses, and colors.
The 20th-century East-West Fusion
Kurt Leland, in his book Rainbow Body, has compiled an objective, nonjudgmental history of the transfer of chakra theory from the East to the West. His findings on this transfer during the twentieth century tell the story: In 1919 Sir John Woodroffe published The Serpent Power, the first scholarly publication in English on the Hindu tantric chakra system that had influenced Blavatsky when she became aware of it forty years before. He thereby opened the door to a new understanding of the subtler aspects of the human constitution envisaged by teachers of tantra yoga.
C. W. Leadbeater in the first decades of the 1900s wrote rather extensively on the subject and helped to popularize the chakra concept. He created a list of vernacular (non-Sanskrit) names and in 1925 associated each chakra with a gland of the endocrine system. Leadbeater in 1927 was also the one who attributed the seven rainbow colors to the seven chakras in order of the spectrum. Psychological and other attributes – such as layers of the aura, developmental stages, associated diseases, Aristotelian elements, emotions, and states of consciousness – were added later.
From the 1930s to the 1970s, a parallel strand of development in the Western chakra system involved the German Indologists Heinrich Zimmer and Frederic Spiegelberg, the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, and the American mythologist Joseph Campbell. Each interacted with the others under the inspiration of The Serpent Power. Zimmer inspired Campbell to investigate the chakra teachings of the late nineteenth-century Indian saint Sri Ramakrishna. Spiegelberg inspired Michael Murphy, the founder of Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, to investigate the teachings of the early twentieth-century yoga master Sri Aurobindo.
The Esalen Institute produced the human potential movement, an important influence on the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s. At Esalen, the list of chakra qualities that are now familiar to us in the West first emerged from a fusion of the teachings of Ramakrishna and Aurobindo.
Ken Dychtwald, one of the bodyworkers who lived at Esalen during this time, inadvertently became the “father” of the Western chakra system in 1977 when he brought together the list of endocrine glands and the human potential movement’s list of chakra qualities in his book Bodymind: A Synthesis of Eastern and Western Approaches to Self-Awareness, Health, and Personal Growth and the color healers’ list rainbow colors in his related article “Bodymind and the Evolution to Cosmic Consciousness” published in the July-August 1977 issue of Yoga Journal.
In the 1980s writers such as Anodea Judith, in her book Wheels of Life, began consolidating information from various chakra systems to resolve controversies and reinforce the hegemony of the system that is now considered “traditional.”
THE PROBLEMS
East is East and West is West?
The original Eastern teachings on chakras are aimed at spiritual liberation from this world. The New Age Esalen system is aimed at achieving happiness through how one uses their life energy in this world. Current thought on chakras takes for granted the existence of seven chakras, their colors, and their qualities, as if all this were part of the ancient Eastern system.
The chakras are described as being aligned in an ascending column from the base of the spine to the top of the head. New Age practices often associate each of the chakras with a certain color, a physiological function, an aspect of consciousness, a classical element, and other distinguishing characteristics. None of these associations correspond to those used in ancient Indian systems.
The standard New Age chakra correspondences.
It is now generally believed that the chakras are spinning spheres of bioenergetic activity that emanate from the major nerve ganglia branching forward from the spinal column and vitalize the physical body. They are considered to be loci of life energy that flows along energy pathways (“nadi”) whose function is to spin and draw in this energy to keep the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical health of the body in balance. Each of these swirling intersections of vital life forces is supposed to reflect an aspect of consciousness that is essential to our lives. In New Age teachings, the chakras form a “rainbow bridge,” a channel connecting heaven and earth.
Can Chakras Evolve?
Already in the early twentieth century, Rudolf Steiner considered the chakra system to be dynamic and evolving. He suggested that this system has become different for modern people from what it was in ancient times, and that it will, in turn, be radically different in future times. And he gave suggestions on how to develop the chakras through disciplining thoughts, feelings, and will in a sequence of development that begins with the upper chakras and moves down, rather than moving in the opposite direction.
What Do Scientists Say?
As a whole, there currently seems to be no meaningful way to measure chakras scientifically. Although scientific research into the subject of chakras has been meager and sporadic, Margaret Moda in 2022 compiled a review of the research on the anatomical and physiological evidence of the chakras from the 1970s-2020s. She concluded that there is some evidence that chakras emit measurable electromagnetic radiation and that they have possible anatomical correlates
Such research adds to our understanding of the human electromagnetic field and supplies evidence for the chakras.
From an anatomical perspective, the locations of the seven major chakras align closely with the endocrine glands of the body and with the major nerve plexuses of the central nervous system. These bundles of nerves branch off from the spine and connect to other areas of the body. The different nerve plexuses may relate to specific aspects of physical health.
While there is no compelling scientific evidence supporting the role of chakras in health and well-being, a number of practices that people use to balance or unblock chakras do have confirmed health benefits. From the perspective of Western medicine, many therapies that target chakras can be relaxing, and activating the relaxation response generally benefits health, particularly for people who are often stressed. A sense of spiritual well-being may also impact mental or physical health.
In the realm of chakra theory, it is believed that each chakra spins or vibrates at a certain frequency. This concept bears a striking resemblance to the scientific understanding of neural oscillations, or brainwaves, which also oscillate at different frequencies. These frequencies are known to change based on our mental and emotional state, much like the spinning of chakras is believed to do.
The shapes associated with each chakra also present an intriguing connection to frequencies.
When certain frequencies are played through a medium like water or sand, they create specific patterns known as cymatic shapes. The shapes associated with each chakra bear a striking resemblance to these cymatic shapes, suggesting a potential link between the chakra frequencies and the frequencies that create these patterns.
The scientific evidence behind chakras is still a topic of ongoing research. However, some studies have been conducted on related practices such as Reiki, which is based on the concept of energy flow through chakras. However, it’s important to note that while Reiki is based on the concept of energy flow through chakras, these are not direct studies on chakras themselves. More research is needed to investigate the science behind chakras directly.
Does Practice Make Perfect?
As with any topic, don’t believe everything you hear. Just as all the data on chakras you will find online or in books does not have the same value, neither does all the data on the practices needed to strengthen them and keep them healthy have equal value. The commonly recommended practices can and do help. But only optimal practice gains optimal results.
It is a common belief that techniques such as yoga, breathing, bioenergetics, physical exercises, meditation, and visualization can influence our chakras, our health, and our lives. The potential benefits of strengthening our chakras and encouraging their health through disciplined spiritual practice are great. But we have to know what we are doing, what these energies are, and where these energies come from to achieve optimal results.
What Can We Agree On?
In contemporary India, true knowledge of the chakras is still considered secret knowledge accessible only to monastic devotees. Tantric scholars and kundalini gurus often draw a distinction between the chakras witnessed through kundalini experiences and the Westernized model of the chakras as a personal growth system. And there are many who say that chakras, as vortices of the subtle body, have nothing to do with the physical body or the central ganglia emanating from the spinal column and that spiritual awakening is not experienced by the body.
What Are We Forgetting?
There is another problem bigger than figuring out the history of how chakra concepts came to the Western world and how to develop the chakras through practical techniques. We must consider that whatever has made it into the contemporary Western concept of the chakras and its association of corresponding colors, musical tones, sound frequencies, and psychological qualities is only what has been made public in writing or in lectures.
We are able to trace published statements related to the number and function of the chakras or energy centers of the human body to medieval Vedic tradition and the use of the word chakras to identify heavenly forces to the third millennium BCE. But these are only statements in books. Secret oral traditions have existed in all cultures before the existence of books, and these have not come down to us whole.
It is important not to underestimate the ancients and their knowledge of spiritual matters. We must consider what may have been known and practiced by Holy Orders at various times and places – secretly. In spiritual matters, there has always been knowledge made known to the public and other, deeper knowledge known only to initiates who have dedicated themselves to the spiritual practice. And there is good reason for this: the protection of this knowledge so that it does not get into the wrong hands. Spiritual and psychic energies are powerful and can be misused by those who are self-serving and unethical. In ancient times, as in contemporary times, there have been Light Schools and Dark Schools.
THE SOLUTION
What Needs to be Done
A few things need to be done to address these problems, and a few things need to be understood. In the contemporary East-West fusion, the discussion of color bodies, rainbow bodies, psychic bodies, and spiritual bodies does not yet include the ancient spiritual teachings of China on the Golden or Diamond Body. Nor does it consider the teachings of the ancient mystery schools of the West and the Middle East. This needs to be done, so that all can recognize the universality of these teachings.
We need to establish a consummate Western version of the chakra system that has the same goal as the Eastern systems: transcendence to God-consciousness.
We need to understand how the chakras can be transformed, the multidimensional nature of chakras, their relation to what is called the soul, and their ultra-dimensional origin out of the higher spiritual body.
We need to learn how to use solar techniques, chromotherapy (color therapy), heliotherapy (solar therapy), diet, and spiritual attunement to strengthen and transform the chakras and establish an optimal lifestyle and practice.
We need to learn to distinguish the various levels of being and consciousness associated with the chakras and the higher spiritual centers through personal experience.
Finally, we need to keep tabs on what the physical sciences say about chakras – what the sciences can perceive and measure (as well as the limits of science) and what mathematics can theorize about the nature, qualities, and functions of the chakras – in order to compile common “scientific” evidence for their existence.
What people struggle with most when they think or talk about chakras is that “spiritual” subjects are often considered impractical or inaccessible. People will come to understand and value their spiritual natures only when it becomes practical for them to do so. We propose to show how and why understanding the chakras and applying spiritual practices to strengthen them is practical and accessible to all.
How to do It
We can begin to solve the problem by first cleaning up the verbal situation.
The Sanskrit terms – muladhara, svadhishthana, manipura, anahata, vishuddha, ajna, sahasrara – carry a lot of baggage, not only ancient conceptions but also oft-repeated misconceptions. And the modern terms – root, sacral, navel, heart, throat, third-eye, crown – have been stuck like labels on the physical body. We can avoid the Sanskrit names assigned to them as well as the modern terms commonly used to refer to them and even the word chakra itself. Instead, for clarity, we can refer to these centers or gateways of life force energy simply as “force centers” or “color bodies.”
Also, for the purpose of keeping things clear, we can avoid the use of the traditional descriptions of the seven chakras unless or until we have something to base these descriptions on besides statements in medieval books.
There needs to be a new perspective on the subject.
Man is not solely a physical being; he has a psychic as well as a spiritual body, but the latter two and their attributes, the psychic and spiritual faculties, are not usually experienced to any practical degree by the average individual who does not follow a system of development.
The force fields enveloping the physical organism are not the product of the components of the physical body, but are separate electromagnetic “bodies” with independent “nervous systems” which react to energy radiations. This relationship makes the human organism an electrical phenomenon as well as a chemical and physical one.
We must also consider the physical organism to be secondary to the electromagnetic one. There is every reason to believe that the force fields are the source of life and may have the potential to survive death of the physical organism. The metaphysical question of immortality is bound up with these fields, for they are interrelated with an ultra-dimensional Light body.
Man is a photo-complex. Photosensitization of the force fields and the effects of ionization on the physical organism through irradiation by sunlight can result in therapeutic benefits. The net result is an expanded state of being through development of the psychic attributes.
The force fields or color bodies affect the biophysical organism because they are interrelated with it, though they are representative of a more refined “cosmic” body, which requires electromagnetic nourishment (not chemical nourishment) directly from the source of all life on the planet – the sun. With the intake of solar energy via the techniques of the System, the organism is regenerated on the electromagnetic level as opposed to chemical regeneration from food and oxygen intake.
We use an alternate framework to make things more intellectually accessible and meaningful. The eight centers correspond to nerve plexuses and organs in the physical body and to psychic forces.
The eight minor force centers of the psychic body overlaid by cymatic images of the diatonic C Major scale.
We also see the eight centers as “minor” forces centers, the bifurcations of four “major” force centers that have their origin in spiritual dimensions; the bifurcation resulting from the fact that spiritual forces are polarized in this dimension of space and time.
The psychic body comprised of force fields may be considered an “intermediate” body that acts as a communications medium or link between the physical mind/body and higher energies, forces, and information that are part of dimensions outside of space and time. The psychic body acts as a “vehicle,” like a radio or TV set, through which energy-carrying information is processed and “assimilated” by the mind/body. In an advanced stage of development, the force fields constitute a cosmic/solar body.
CONCLUSION
The history of the recent East-West fusion of ideas and concepts on chakras illustrates that more clarity on their nature, function, and purpose is needed in order to begin a spiritual practice to energize them and put them in harmony with the divine.
We have left a lot of questions unanswered. These we will be addressing in future papers and blog posts.
We need to understand how the chakras can be transformed, the multidimensional nature of chakras, their relation to what is called the soul, and their ultra-dimensional origin out of the higher spiritual body.
Man is not solely a physical being; he has a psychic as well as a spiritual body, but the latter two and their attributes, the psychic and spiritual faculties, are not usually experienced to any practical degree by the average individual who does not follow a system of development.
Contemporary methods of activating and regenerating the chakras or “Wheels of Life” through the techniques of yoga work only with one’s personal, inherent life energy, will, and power. The System of Cosolargy puts you in direct access to the source of the life energy of this world – the sun – to feed your energy body and thereby increase your personal power from an inexhaustible energy source.
The System of Cosolargy provides step-by-step instructions on how to revive your higher being and participate directly and consciously in the workings of the cosmos in order to transcend to God consciousness.
With the intake of solar energy via the techniques of the System, the organism is regenerated on the electromagnetic level. In an advanced stage of development, the force fields constitute a cosmic/solar body. The emphasis is on the awakening of divine energy through these energy centers.
The practice of the System of Cosolargy embodies what needs to be done and involves emotional health, physical health, and spiritual illumination, all in the present lifetime.
This is what the Academy of the Jamilian University offers you.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Barbara Brennan. Hands of Light: A Guide to Healing Through the Human Energy Field. Bantam (1988)
This book provides a scientist’s look at the field of bioenergetic healing, offering specific techniques towards expanding perceptual tools of healing, seeing auras, understanding psychodynamics and the human energy field, and spiritual healing. With the clarity of a physicist and the compassion of a gifted healer, the author presents an in-depth study of the human energy field as a vehicle through which we create our experience of reality, including health and illness.
“Chakras” is a reading list of more than thirty books and audio recordings on the subject developed by the Henry S. Olcott Memorial Library, the national library of the Theosophical Society in America.
Ken Dychtwald. Bodymind: A Synthesis of Eastern and Western Approaches to Self-Awareness, Health, and Personal Growth. Tarcher Putman; updated edition (1986)
The updated edition of the 1977 classic explores the bodymind connection, integrating ancient Eastern knowledge with the pioneering contemporary work of Wilheim Reich, Moshe Feldenkrais, Fritz Perls, with the author’s own intuitive analysis of the psychosomatic functions the bodymind region corresponding to each of the Kundalini chakras. The Yoga Journal article “Bodymind and the Evolution to Cosmic Consciousness” (July-August 1977) assigns the rainbow spectrum colors to each of the chakras that are now ubiquitous.
Roland T. Hunt. The Seven Keys to Color Healing: A Complete Outline of the Practice. HarperCollins (1940, 1981)
This book traces the history of color healing and proposes an eight chakra system.
Anodea Judith. Wheels of Life. Llewellyn Publications (1987)
The main focus of Wheels of Life is an in-depth examination of each chakra – what each chakra can do for you and how you can clear it, balance it, and strengthen it to help you achieve optimum health, improved spirituality, and strengthening of psychic powers. It includes revised chapters on relationships, evolution, and healing, and a new section on raising children with healthy chakras.
Charles Webster Leadbeater. The Chakras. Quest Books; 2nd edition (2013)
First published in 1927, this pioneering book by clairvoyant C. W. Leadbeater was the first to introduce “chakras” to the West as centers of spiritual contact in the human body and bridges to higher consciousness. Color illustrations show the chakras as they appeared to him.
A foreword by Anodea Judith and annotations by Kurt Leland explain terms and place the book in context within the evolution of the New Age version of the chakra system.
Kurt Leland. Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan. Ibis Press (2016)
For the Theosophical Society in America, this book tells the story 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. The book also addresses the inconsistencies between chakra systems and the various names, colors, locations, and other associations assigned to them, showing how the Western chakra system developed from the mid-19th through the 20th century, into the most common version in use in the West today that came together as recently as 1977.
The one-hour video “Kurt Leland – The Chakras: A Magical Mystery Tour” introduces the same material as the book in brief.
Leland’s article “The Rainbow Body: How the Western Chakra System Came to Be,” published in the Spring 2017 edition of Quest Magazine addresses the questions: When did the term chakra first come into the English language? When did the rainbow color scheme originate? And how long has the ubiquitous New Age list of chakra qualities been around?
A review of the research on the anatomical and physiological evidence of the chakras.
Richard Wilhelm, C.G. Jung, and Cary F. Baynes. The Secret Of The Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life. HarperOne (1970)
An ancient Chinese Taoist treatise on light meditation and the practice of “circulating the light,” this book claims to contain the hidden jewel that both Eastern and Western religions have been seeking for centuries: the Golden Flower, the hidden light within the human body that is the key to spiritual enlightenment, whose energy path, associated with breathing, has been described as an internal wheel. This ancient esoteric treatise was transmitted orally for centuries before being recorded on a series of wooden tablets in the eighth century by a member of the Religion of Light, the Taoist adept Lu Yen. It is said that Lu Tzu became one of the Eight Immortals using the methods described in the book. This remarkable and important work, first published in the United States in 1931, is Cary F. Baynes’ elegant English translation of sinologist Richard Wilhelm’s 1929 German translation of the original Taoist texts. The foreword by psychologist Carl Jung concerns the differences in consciousness between the East and West; the appendix by Jung honors the memory and accomplishments of the book’s translator, Richard Wilhelm. Illustrated with eleven plates and four text illustrations.
Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon, pseudonym). The Serpent Power. (1919)
First published in 1918, this text has been extremely influential on the modern practice of Kundalini yoga in the West. Written under the pseudonym Arthur Avalon, it is a study of both ancient texts and the philosophies of Kundalini, Shakti, meditation, and yogic practice. This classic text is notable for its translations of two ancient Tantric texts: “The Description of the Six Chakras” and “Five-fold Footstool.”
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