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Chart No. 1
[See Book 3, Chart 1]
In the writings of Aristotle and in the Hindu texts of the Charaka [Caraka] and the Susruta [Sushruta], the heart was considered the central organ and the seat of consciousness. This was based upon the fact that the heart center with its twelve petals or branches of psychosomatic importance in connection with the two sympathetic chains and their ganglions was found to be the center of egoistic sentiments of affection and attachment, of fear, hate, doubt, remorse, pride and conceit.
But in the Tantric writings (as in Galen[1]) the seat of consciousness is placed in the brain or rather in the cerebrospinal system. The soul which is the primal center of consciousness in the body, has its special seat above the foramen of Monro [interventricular foramen] and the middle commissure [interthalamic adhesion, massa intermedia, gray commissure], but traverses the whole cerebrospinal axis - up and down - along the central canal of the spinal cord called the Shushumna [Sushumna].
In this chart the Shushumna [Sushumna] is illustrated by the heavy line in the very center of the upright spinal column and cord. It terminates as a microfilm of potential energy in the seed power mechanism in man. All living things which bear seed after their kind have this power of perpetuating themselves. With few exceptions, vegetation usually bears its fruit and seed upward.
The central line in this chart brings out the thought of the emanation or projection of energy from above downward and outward. Hence, we have the old Hermetic axiom, "As above, so below. As within, so without."[2] In modern language, the good author James Allen[3] said, "As a man thinketh so is he." This, in brief, illustrates Nature's arrangement of the flow of finer forces. The end of the involutionary cycle is wrapped up in the seed power as "the foundation of the deep" from where it can start other cycles of manifestation.
In this symbolism is wrapped up the mystery of how the one energy can become many beings and lives. The one in the many and the many in the one are wrapped up in the manifestation of the seed power as One in All -- the secret of the heights in the depths of being, and the deep reflecting itself in the heights.
The deep calls unto the deep in this mysterious power of creativeness in all things. The descending energy is a vibratory Sound Current in its positive primal action. The reflecting energy is a radiant Light Current in all things. In this manner "The Light from above shineth into the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not."[4]
The deepest psycho-physiology is explained in the Bible, but mankind has not understood. Modern science finds its depth in the details of matter, like the atom; only these end findings of matter are never assembled into a complete whole again. Man's mind and thinking process is caught in the circumference of the manifestation of endless varieties of particles. The comprehension of a return current, back to its Source, is lacking.
Although man knows that the sensory currents all flow back to the center from where the energy emanated, he does not follow that path in the over-all picture of Life in the individual or in the cosmos. He is still caught in the motor-current cycle of the centrifugal force. The grand middle path of the neuter [neutral] energy core as a unifying principle and the way back home to the Source, has eluded the mind of man. The Light shines but it is not reflected upwards; only matter seems to have the light of interest and attraction for man. The vibratory activity of the Song of Life is in the heart and center of all things but it is not heard by mortal man. Even Job said, "And the Pleiades sang together."[5] In the great and in the small, "Life is a song". Man would be so
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1 Aelius Galenus, Claudius Galenus or Galen of Pergamon (AD 129-180), a Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher who greatly advanced the early understandings of anatomy, physiology, neurology, pathology and pharmacology.
2 Described in The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus.
3 James Allen (1864-1912), a British philosophical author and pioneer of the self-help movement. In 1903, he published his most popular book, As a Man Thinketh.
4 John 1:5
5 Job 38:7
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