Mooladhara & Swadhisthana Chakras

Swami Satyadharma: So docs pooled energy act to block or can it be used to activate the chakra? For example, if a person has a lot of pooled energy in mooladhara, would that be an energy block or could that pooled energy be utilized to activate and awaken a chakra?

Swami Vivekananda: It can be used to activate if the psychological blockages are eliminated.

Swami Shankardevananda: I think there is a difference between storage and blockage. The ability to hold or store energy takes place consciously, whilst having an unconscious or subconscious blockage leads to repression. Swami Vivekananda: And repression of a highly energized chakra can produce all sorts of physical symptoms, such as muscle tension, malfunctioning of internal organs, etc., as well as emotional problems.

Swami Shankardevananda: What are the psychological effects of mooladhara awakening?

Swami Vivekananda: As I have already said, renunciation.

Swami Shankardevananda: The feeling of separation, the beginning of your individual awareness; awakening to the fact that you are separate from something else.

Swami Nischalananda: Primal alienation or something like that.

Swami Shankardevananda: Do you think that the basic energy at mooladhara is anxiety, fear, or is it insecurity?

Swami Vivekananda: The basic emotion? Well, it depends on the energization of the circuit. If there is not much energy it will tend to be depression and hopelessness. But if there is a lot of energy it will then depend upon the evolution of the chakra. If it is little evolved, then there will be intense insecurity, which is anxiety. If it is highly evolved there will be a sense of oneness and complete security. Generally rnooladhara is blocked to some extent in most people and blockages may manifest as muscle tension. Muscle tensions are manifestations of the circuits of mental blockages, samskaras. It is the samskaras that keep down the evolution of the quality of consciousness that is within these chakra circuits. I think that low evolution, muscle spasms and the maladjustments of the organisms that are supplied by that part of the autonomic nervous system are due to psychic tensions.

Swami Shankardevananda: These psychic and personality tensions are due to various events in the environment.

Swami Vivekananda: That is right. The inner unconscious conflicts coming into conflict with events in the environment. For example, if a man feels very insecure and someone steals a valuable possession from him, he may go into an absolute frenzy. This is opposed to the reaction of someone else who does not have the same sort of conflicts and insecurities.

If a person cannot express the feeling that is involved at mooladhara, that feeling can express itself in somatic problems such as spasms of the muscles, in autonomic problems, blood pressure, constipation, and who knows what else, maybe functional urethritis, cystitis, colitis, rectitis, dysmenorrhea, etc.

PSYCHOSIS

Swami Shankardevananda: Would you associate a highly energized, low evolved mooladhara problem as the cause of manic depression? Swami Vivekananda: I think manic depression is an ida/pingala thing. I think we are in another dimension there, because a manic person will undergo all manifestations of a very highly energized and controlled chakra. He will be rushing around gambling all his money away, trying to get more, getting into all sorts of sexual exploits, going round pushing other people around - the rajasic aspect. Swami Sambuddhananda: Would you say that schizophrenia and paranoia are related with ida and pingala imbalance?

Swami Vivekananda: Yes, there are people who are stuck in ida. Ida is very much overactive. It is interesting that research shows that the taking in of negative aspects of the environment through the right hemisphere (ida) is paranoia. This is what paranoia is all about. A lot of people, some of them quite highly evolved people who have specialized much in ida are a bit paranoid. The ida seems to have a negative aspect about it. Even if you come into it at a high level of consciousness, it seems to have a bit of a negative pull. If you are going to activate your chakras you have to make sure your ida and pingala are balanced.

Swami Shankardevananda: But manic depression, psychosis and other mental problems relate to either mooladhara or ajna because it is only at these two points that you have the fusion of ida and pingala. Therefore, psychosis, manic depression and all these things would seem to relate very much to the mooladhara/ajna circuit. If ida and pingala are coming out of mooladhara chakra then what would be the mechanism dealing with psychosis?

Swami Vivekananda: I think that ida and pingala are only related to the activities of the cerebral hemispheres.

Swami Shankardevananda: But the whole body is controlled by the hemispheres. The whole body gets the energy. Arteries and veins, sensory and motor nerves, right and left hemispheres are all reflections of the ida and pingala process. Swami Vivekananda: I see ida and pingala anatomically up here in the brain, not crossing down the spine. I believe that ida and pingala crossing each other is a concept and a symbol of experience.

Swami Satyadharma: I think that awakening of mooladhara is the beginning of psychic awareness. That is why with mooladhara awakening, people often become disturbed.

Swami Vivekananda: Yes. They can get caught in the psychic consciousness, which is the consciousness in which you have hallucinations, etc. Swami Satyadharma: It is much more powerful than anything they have ever experienced before. Swami Vivekananda: We slide in and out of it twice a day anyway, even if we are not doing any formal closed eye meditation techniques. I think if you hold the awareness at the psychic level, and you can do it with yoga nidra, you will experience a state in which there is thought blocking - what is called thought disorder - you know, where one thought leads on to another one that is unrelated to it and it just goes off into the distance. Paradoxical thinking - where two paradoxical things can exist together, hallucinations, voices talking to you, you see things and so forth. Swami Shankardevananda: So therefore we assume that pingala is blocked and ida is flowing. All that stuff is coming out through ida from mooladhara; basic subconscious material. Swami Vivekananda: At the same time there is psychic withdrawal. Swami Shankardevananda: Yes, so what does that imply? Swami Vivekananda: If there is a psychic withdrawal, then even though we appear to be in communication with the outside, in actual fact we are still inside from the psychic point of view. Paradoxical thinking, suspicious feelings, voices and all these things, and not being able to keep your thoughts together on one topic for any more than a couple of seconds - all these come from a psychic, inner plane.