Neurophysiology of the Chakras

The chakras can be interpreted from many points of view, for example, the physical, psychological, behavioral, psychic, symbolic, mythical, religious, scientific, evolutionary, spiritual and more. They have both a microcosmic aspect within the human framework and, at the same time, a macrocosmic aspect which totally encompasses our perception and experience of life. At whatever level we examine them, they represent a hierarchical, interlocking and interdependent series of mandalas which, when superimposed on one another, make up a total picture of the human personality.

Each of us stands at a certain point along the line of evolution that ascends the chakras and this will determine how we see the world. Someone who lives at swadhisthana sees the world in terms of gratification of his desires, for example, at manipura in terms of gratification of power instincts, at anahata in terms of compassion and love for all humanity. The degree of evolution of the chakras depends to a great extent on the activity within our nervous system and our state of consciousness. Someone at a lower level cannot understand someone at a higher level whereas the person at a higher level has been at the lower level before, has a wider range of experience, and more importantly, he has more circuits awakened or activated for handling life’s experiences, for perceiving at different levels, and for interpreting and acting on the demands of life.

Even within the same chakra there are different levels of evolution, balance and activity, so that someone living at manipura might be more aware than someone else at manipura, their center being more balanced and awakened, so that, for example, they use their power drives constructively to help people rather than destructively and for their own personal ego gratification. An adult generally has a more evolved manipura chakra than a child, protecting the child from danger while the child pulls the wings off butterflies or gaily stamps on ants and insects. Of course, this is relative and varies from individual to individual.

Each level in the chakra system is the sum total of various physical, emotional, mental, psychic and spiritual elements. Each chakra has its own neurological plexus and endocrine gland and these link up to various organs and systems in the body. They in turn are connected to the controlling mechanisms of the brain, each of which has emotional, mental and psychic components. The chakra is like a transducer, a linking point between the various levels of our being and it converts and channels energy either up or down to the various levels.

In trying to understand the chakras, therefore, we can think of each level in the spinal cord as controlling a different segment of the body, and at the same time, representing a level of functioning in the nervous system and mind. Ajna chakra, for example, is a much more complex center than mooladhara, or any chakra for that matter, controlling as it does the intuitive and higher mental faculties related to the most evolved circuits in the cerebral cortex. Ajna chakra has as its symbol the two-petalled lotus, and we can think of this as representing the two hemispheres of the brain with the pineal gland as its main focusing central point. Mooladhara, on the other hand, controls very deep, powerful, primitive, animalistic, unconscious urges and instincts which are related to very simple and primitive neurological circuits at the bottom of the brain common to all animals, reptiles and even birds. The chakras within the brain Recent discoveries in neuroscience, precipitated by fantastic advances in technology, measuring capacity, surgical technique and pure pioneering perspicacity, promise to revolutionize our concept of man and propel us into new and better techniques in medicine, psychology and living in general. Like Einstein’s discovery of relativity, the ramifications of these discoveries take time to percolate down into common usage. The brain is one of the hardest of all areas to research because of the inaccessibility and delicacy of the area to be studied. There is also an inherent and almost insoluble problem in studying the brain. Man is using his brain to study and understand his own brain. This is like trying to understand the mind with the mind, or grasp the hand with the same hand, or see the eye with the same eye. We cannot know ourselves objectively as we can an external object or person, for we are the knowledge itself. Besides this, few people are keen to let doctors open their skulls and look inside. Neurosurgeons and yogis share common ground because both aim to know the truth and reality of themselves. It is the approach which differs. While scientific researchers have approached the brain objectively and have attacked and dissected it with knives, probed it with electrodes, photographed and X-rayed it, stimulated and drugged it in order to mechanically and externally manipulate its circuits into giving up their secrets, yogis decided to scientifically discover the secrets of the brain by experiencing it directly through meditation. Their findings agree with those of modern science. Yogis discovered through meditation that within their bodies were circuits and centers with both physical and psychic components that they called nadis and chakras. Though we take this for granted now, we must remember that these studies were made thousands of years ago without the aid of modern microscopes. Not only did yogis achieve a wonderfully complete and practical system of techniques, but way back then they also based their techniques on solid scientific research, the discovery that there are six major primary centers in the body, the chakras, in a hierarchical, interconnected network within the spinal cord. They also saw that each chakra had its own definite physical, psychological and behavioral characteristics, connected to the brain by a network of energy flows, all of which did not necessarily correspond to purely physical structures. They also discovered many secondary centers which were subsidiary to the primary ones. The chakras in the spinal cord were found to be points manipulated by focusing attention, mental and psychic energy, breath and body postures, so as to derive certain physical and psychic experiences. The techniques allow us to learn to control the most basic and vital instincts and needs of body, emotions, mind, psyche and spirit. Recent discoveries from neurophysiology and anatomy show that vital nerve plexes and endocrine organs exist within the body, spine and brain and correspond to the levels described by yogis. These findings support the claims of yogis that their system is more than just mere exercises and relaxation. It is a method supplying the tools to control our body, mind, metabolism and personality. The triune brain Dr. Paul MacLean, neurophysiologist and head of the Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health, USA, has demonstrated that the brain of man is functionally divided into three main areas, three interconnected biological computers, each with its own special intelligence, subjectivity, sense of time and space, memory, motor and other functions. (1) Each brain corresponds to a separate evolutionary step and is distinguished neuroanatomicalty and functionally, containing strikingly different distributions of the main neuro chemicals in the brain, dopamine and serotonin. If we look carefully into these levels and compare descriptions of neuroscientists and yogis we see that both were saying the same thing.

The three levels are called the reptilian, mammalian and human levels:

1. The reptilian complex includes the very topmost spinal cord and the lower areas of the brain, including the medulla oblongata and part of the reticular activating system, that part responsible for our waking, conscious state. This area contains the basic neural machinery for self-preservation and reproduction, including regulation of the heart, blood circulation and respiration. It controls mating, social hierarchies, insistence on routine, obedience to precedent and ritual, and slavish imitation of fads and fashions. According to MacLean, the R-complex plays an important role in aggressive behavior, territoriality, ritual and the establishment of social hierarchies. This area corresponds to the description of the mooladhara and swadhisthana chakras, because yogis have told us these centers maintain our most basic and primitive, animalistic drives and instincts; basic living, eating, sleeping and procreating within a dark and primitive, monotonous and repetitious existence, minus joy, love and self-awareness. They are related to our deepest unconscious and subconscious mind. MacLean and his co-workers have found that this area dominates the lives of most people, which agrees with the statement by yogis that most people live in mooladhara and swadhisthana, though their function is modified by the higher centers. We spend most of our time controlled by and stimulating the lower chakras within the blinding limitations of our daily rituals. MacLean has also shown that this is true neurologically. Removing the cerebral cortex from hamsters a day or two after birth and leaving only the R-complex and limbic system, MacLean found that the hamsters grew up normally, gave birth and displayed every form of behavior normal for hamsters. They could even see without a visual cortex. Leaving only the R-complex in birds, he found that they could function normally and carry on most kinds of communication and day-to-day routines.This research indicates that our day-to-day functions are controlled by these primitive areas and that we do not really need much more of our brain to handle the basic problems and demands of a neatly ordered, socially accepted lifestyle. We rarely stimulate our higher centers, and in fact find it hard to cope with any demands out of the ordinary. This is why yogis tell us to practise yoga so as to develop our inner unused capacity, some nine-tenths of the brain or more, and to stimulate the growth and development of our higher centers. Psychology also tells us that beneath the sane facade of any human being there lurks a primitive creature, instinctive and irrational, a Mr. Hyde composite of all that is animalistic and forbidden. Freud called this the id, an unconscious area from which arises our desires, passions and the energy underlying our emotions and sense of who we are. Yogis call this mooladhara and swadhisthana and tell us that the unconscious and subconscious areas have two centers controlling them, one located in the perineum and the other in the spine behind the pubic bone controlling sexuality and all its related behavior. Both psychologists and yogis tell us that most of us spend most of our time trying to gratify and fulfil these basic urges for food (survival) and pleasure. Much of our time, for example, is organized for making our daily “bread”, a slang term for money, by which we can buy food, shelter, clothing and pleasure. Few of us realize that there is much more to life than this. By practising yoga we learn to balance and control these centers physically and also at the level of their instincts and drives, freeing their energy from primitive, compulsive ritual and rechannelling it up sushumna to the higher centers for the awakening of higher consciousness.
2. The mammalian structures are under the control of the limbic system, which controls emotion, memory and other behavior which is less ritualistic and more spontaneous. It is also thought to control playful behavior, exhilaration, awe and wonder and the subtler, more human emotions such as love. MacLean has found that damage to areas of this part of the brain results in deficits in maternal behavior and absence of play. Within the limbic system are the behavioral centers for rage, fright, fear, feelings of punishment, anxiety, hunger, desire, pleasure, pain, sex, joy and love. This area is thus related to manipura and anahata functioning. If we stimulate the areas of the spinal cord behind the navel and heart associated with the chakras, we will send energy into the brain to turn on the various components at the physical, mental and behavioral levels associated with the chakras.
3. The human side of the brain is the most recently evolved neocortex, the seat of intelligence and many of the characteristic human cognitive functions. It is here that, with amazing speed and precision, the various faculties are integrated and synchronized. The cortex makes possible: thinking, calculation, analysis, discrimination, intuition, creativity, use of symbols, planning, anticipation of the future, artistic and scientific expression, and myriad other highly evolved and purely human faculties. We know that the frontal lobes of the brain are especially important, being the most recently evolved part of the brain. Some researchers think that this part of the brain, in connection with the other sections, is responsible for the very human capacity of self- awareness and knowledge of this self-awareness; we know that we know, and we know that too. We know that patients with severe frontal lobe damage or who have had frontal lobotomies, operations which sever the frontal lobes from the rest of the brain, are incapable of planning for the future and lack a continuous sense of self. They cannot see what effect a certain action will have on the future. Such people become dull, slow, cease to care for themselves or others, or about what they say or do. They are friendly, cooperative vegetables with a serious lack of imagination and loss of interest in life. They may be suffering from intense pain and not even care about the fact. The frontal lobes are therefore said to be responsible for planning and discrimination, for anticipation of tho future and, therefore, for the purely human emotion of anxiety. This differs from fear which is related to an actual event. Anxiety is a mental event, related to some future occurrence. It is valuable for our survival and evolution as individuals and as a species, for caring for the family unit and for society; for our compassion. More than this it is the force responsible for motivating the formulation of laws and economic and political systems, for motivating the development of the arts and sciences, for religions and a system of ethics, for all philosophies, and for the development of materially and spiritually secure cultures. As we developed the capacity to plan, the frontal lobes freed our hands for the manipulation of tools, drawing, writing and other bases for human cultural development. Knowledge of death and the anxiety it engenders spurs us on to make the most of life and to develop religious or spiritual systems which help us to cope with the thought of death. It has also led to the yogic sciences which liberate us from death and take us to immortality. David Loye believes that not only are the frontal lobes involved in anticipation, but are actually involved in seeing into the future. (2) He states that when, for example, a car is rapidly approaching us, the frontal brain alerts both right and left hemisphere components to process all the information from the rest of the brain, agreements and disagreements, so that we can discriminate and decide what will most likely happen. He found in two separate studies that people who tended to use both sides of the brain were better able to predict the outcome of events than either right or left-brain dominant people. This supports the yogic view that both sides of our nature must be balanced for proper function, fuller living and the development of our inner potential. Ajna chakra All of these intellectual, intuitive, creative and expressive functions are said by yogis to be characteristic of ajna and vishuddhi chakras. We know that, yogic techniques are especially aiming at stimulation of ajna chakra, which lies at the pineal gland, midway between the hemispheres. Yogis state that ajna chakra and the pineal gland as its physical center, is the master control chakra, the guru chakra. We know from physiology that just in front of the pineal gland lies the thalamus, at the top of the limbic system. The thalamus has been found to be one of the main centers regulating the interaction of our senses and motor activity (ida and pingala), the pre-frontal cortex, which includes the right and left sides of the brain (ida and pingala), the hypothalamus, which integrates and expresses emotion and regulates the ANS and the endocrine glands, and the cerebellum, which helps to control movement. It therefore integrates senses, thought, emotion and action. It is also important in the recognition of pain and other sensory modalities, such as variations in the degree of temperature and touch, the size, shape and quality of objects contacting the sense organs. An interesting fact is that it is involved in the control of movement and especially the degree of squeezing and contracting of muscles and joints, We see, therefore, that the pineal/thalamic area fits the description for ajna chakra, the area where senses and emotion, both ida functions, and motor and intellect, both pingala functions, meet. Yogis tell us that fusion of ida and pingala at ajna is one of the definitions of yoga. It leads to an explosion within the nervous system which somehow fuels and activates a much larger number of circuits within both hemispheres and the limbic system than would normally occur. It is as though our nervous system suddenly becomes charged with a high tension electric line, which yogis called sushumna. Yogis also tell us that ajna is involved in intuition and perception of the subtle and psychic. If the thalamic area handles degrees of perception and motor activity, making it possible for us to experience the subtle things of life, then yogic techniques may allow us to develop our sensitivity in this area so as to be able to expand and extend our normal capacities in order to sense the psychic quality of matter, an “extra” sense or common sense, occurring at the meeting point of all the senses, the thalamus.

The chakras in perspective

Yogis tell us that the chakras lie along the spinal cord, that mooladhara lies in the perineum and the other chakras move upward towards sahasrara at the apex of man’s evolution and consciousness. Ajna chakra is the highest center in which man feels that he exists separate from the universe. Union or cosmic consciousness takes place in sahasrara. Ajna is the controlling chakra, the guru center where commands are heard. Neurophysiology points out that there are centers in the brain, stretching upward from the medulla oblongata to the pineal/thalamic area which correspond to the classical description of the chakras as told by yogis. We can say that within the brain all these fall under the control of ajna, that they are layers of evolution within ajna, and as each chakra awakens in the spine, it affects the level of conscious awakening and activity in ajna. The pineal/thalamic area would represent that part of the brain which is most awakened and fully activated by total ajna chakra awakening, while the medulla oblongata area is that part which corresponds to the mooladhara chakra area. This would explain the close link between mooladhara and ajna; that the awakening of one consequentially awakens the other.

In most people, ajna chakra, the thalamic/pineal area is dormant. Living in mooladhara and swadhisthana for most of the time would mean that ajna chakra functions mainly from the medulla oblongata, the reptilian brain. Only when we stimulate and awaken the centers by yoga do we jump levels in our nervous system and consciously awaken the higher, pineal/thalamic areas and their concomitant levels of consciousness. When ida and pingala fuse in ajna, energy flows from mooladhara up to ajna, from the medulla oblongata to the pineal/thai arnic area.

There are many techniques which can work on ajna chakra, such as shambhavi mudra, trataka, mantra japa, nadi shodhana and bhramari pranayama, to name a few. When we say these techniques are stimulating ajna chakra we are really stating that somehow they stimulate the integrating and centrally located pmeal/thalamic area and thereby awaken our normally dormant, higher intellectual/emotional, logical/intuitive functions. They stimulate the higher elements of ajna and raise our consciousness up out of the lower, reptilian medulla oblongata. The techniques balance the functioning of our total brain/mind complex, ida and pingala, by focusing on the central, stimulating area and set the stage for the awakening of kundalini.