on Sushumna by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

[Guest guest]

Withdrawing Into Sushumna

 

How do you bring about a balance? It is done by regular practice of

the five steps. Choose a time to withdraw deliberately the energies

from both the ida and pingala currents and to move awareness into

sushumna in a very positive way. In the morning when you awaken and at

night before you sleep are the best times. Breathe regularly, the same

number of counts in and out. Sit in the lotus posture. When you sit in

the lotus posture, you are actually short-circuiting the ida current

to a certain extent. When you are breathing regularly, through the

control of the breath, you are short-circuiting the pingala current to

a certain extent. Then, when awareness flows into the core of energy

within the spine, you soon become consciously conscious of the

sushumna current. At that point, awareness is within and begins

immediately to draw upon all the externalized energies of the body,

and these two psychic currents are drawn within to their source.

 

When we chant the mantra Aum, and do it correctly, we pronounce the AA

so that it vibrates the physical body. The OO has to vibrate through

the throat area, and the MM, the head. In doing this, we are

deliberately moving awareness out of the muladhara and svadhishthana

chakras, deliberately harmonizing all the forces of the instinct and

physical body, and of the ida and the pingala currents. Chanting the

AA and the OO and the MM brings the sushumna into power. We are

transmuting and changing the flows of all the energies through the

physical and astral body and blending them as much as possible into

the body of the soul.

 

The mantra Aum can be chanted at any time. It can be chanted silently

and cause the same vibration through the body. When you chant Aum, the

ida and the pingala blend back into the sushumna.

 

You will actually see this happening. You will see the pink ida

current begin to blend back into the golden center of the spine. At

other times it is seen winding through the body. The same happens with

the pingala force. It, too, moves back into the spine, until you are

all spine when you are centered in the sushumna. This is how it feels,

like being all spine. This beautiful, pure energy flows out through

the sushumna and the ida and the pingala and then on out through the

body. This energy becomes changed as it flows through the first three

or four chakras. It makes what is called prana. This energy runs in

and through the body. It is a great mind energy which is in the world

of thought. All the stratas of thought are prana. The human aura is

prana.

 

Prana, or odic force, is transferred from one person to another

through touch, as in a handshake, or through a look. It is the basic

force of the universe, and the most predominate force found within the

body. You have to really study prana to get a good understanding of

what it is. It runs in and through the skin, through the bone

structure, through the physical body and around the body.

 

Breath controls prana. This practice is called pranayama. It is the

control of prana, the regulation of prana, or the withdrawal of prana

from the external world back to its primal source. That is why

pranayama is so important to practice systematically, regularly, day

after day, so we get all the prana into a rhythm. In this way we get a

rhythm of the pure life force flowing through ida, pingala and

sushumna and out through the aura. We gain a rhythm of awareness

soaring inward, into refined states of the ajna chakra and sahasrara

chakra, the perspective areas from which we are looking out at life as

if we were the center of the universe. This is how we feel when we are

in these chakras.