Chakras, Sanskrit, and Shakti, Part 2

Shakti Mantras
by Thom Ashley-Farrand

(Page 2 of 2)

In healthy people, the chakras are vibrant and spin with vigor, facing out from the subtle spine. In those who are not well or who have abused themselves through drugs or alcohol, the chakra flowers are dull and spin sluggishly as they hang facing downwards, listless and only partially active.

The ancient Indian mystics with "second sight," the ability to see clearly into the subtle realm, noticed that when certain Sanskrit syllables were pronounced, certain petals on some chakras responded very positively. For an indeterminate time, mystical mantra experiments were conducted and their results passed on orally to successive generations of spiritual teachers. Results of early experiments were verified as practitioners used mantra formulas identical to some of the early seers and found, amazingly, that later users of those same mantras all arrived at a nearly identical state of being.

Those ancient seers also noticed that when certain Sanskrit sounds, not all of which were words or meaning-based sounds as in modern language, were chanted in certain sequences, the resulting vibrational effect upon the chakras and physical body was remarkable. The sounds seemed to work synergistically, producing significant results in whoever chanted them, whether they understood what they were chanting or not.

The more the mystics investigated through expanded means of subtle perception, the more they understood what was happening. They saw that we are surrounded by energy all the time: spiritual energy. They also saw that when the Sanskrit formulas were chanted - that is, as the petals on the chakras vibrated in mystical resonances - a tiny amount of this spiritual energy was actually pulled into the subtle body. The chakras were accessing and drawing in the energy that surrounds us all the time. One may say by way of analogy that our chakras were little TV sets that, instead of pulling in television signals, pulled in spiritual energy. Continuing this analogy, the various chakras are the different channels. By the chanting of the Sanskrit formulas, people were experiencing a net gain not just in energy but in usable spiritual energy.

Over months and years of such activity, the energy gains were amazing. People who previously had no noticeable aura now had one. Among those who had been seemingly quite ordinary, some became healers, while others seemed to grow wise and mysteriously tap into realms of spiritual knowledge and understanding. The total amount of energy in the body was increasing as chanting continued over time, because the chakras were constantly accessing, pulling in, and processing new energy.

So astonished were these early seers that they acted just like the CIA of today. They immediately clamped a lid on the spread of this knowledge even as they continued to study it. As the years rolled by, the sages noticed that continuous chanting led to spiritual abilities, such as clairvoyance (mystical seeing), clairaudience (mystical hearing), as well as others. The subtle body, as it grew, began to work with the laws of the universe in ways that seem like science fiction today. These outcomes were carefully written down (after the advent of writing) and can be found today in the Vedas, the Upanishads, and most recently the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Finally, the sages arrived at an understanding of how the energy-gaining process of the chakras was directly tied to the Sanskrit language. The six chakras located along the spine of the subtle body each have a different number of petals - or spokes, if you prefer. The total number of petals or spokes composing those six chakras is fifty. Similarly, the Sanskrit alphabet consists of fifty letters, with each one corresponding to a particular petal of a chakra. When a mantra built from the language is chanted, our chakras vibrate in tune with the Sanskrit sounds because Sanskrit is specifically vibrationally tuned to the activity of our chakras. Sanskrit is an energy-based language first and a meaning-based language second. It is not only the language of our chakras, it is a language that the feminine-based power within us understands, and to which it also responds.

Shakti Power

In numerous texts on yoga, meditation, and Eastern mysticism, we find references to different types of shakti power - the Great Feminine energy that exists both within and without our bodies.

As a force in the universe, shakti powers everything, from the planets in their orbit to the radiant power of the sun. Whether referring to the power behind gravity or the power behind the speed of light, shakti is the term used to describe the operating power of the cosmos, from the smallest atom to the grandest galaxy. Any kind of force, power, or influence has its genesis in shakti, and shakti is feminine in nature.

In us, shakti is described in innumerable mystical texts as a serpentlike power cell coiled three times, sitting at the base of the spine. This atomiclike power cell furnishes the energy we use for both conscious and subconscious functioning. The housecleaning our bodies perform while we sleep is powered by the shakti that energizes the sympathetic, parasympathetic, and autonomous nervous systems to send instructions to the lymphatic system, the pituitary gland, and a host of other places in our slumbering forms. Whether it is blood circulating in the veins and arteries, a nerve impulse jumping a synaptic gap in the brain, our body straining while running the hundred-meter dash, or the working out of a physics or organic chemistry problem, our shakti provides the energy to accomplish the activity. Since many of these functions go on all the time behind our consciousness, we don't think about them. But aware of it or not, shakti is the power behind them all.

Copyright © 2003 by Thomas Ashley-Farrand. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Throughout history, many people in the West have turned to God the Father for blessing and guidance. But in the East, the Great Feminine has always been held in high esteem - not as a secondary source of power but as the primal power, the shakti that flows through our body and all of nature. Centuries ago, the seers and sages of India observed that particular chanted prayers - Sanskrit mantras - connect us with this feminine energy and increase its potency.