Dear Subscribers,

Writing for a diverse readership is full of challenges.  Because I have so many web sites that appeal to different people, one never knows which post will trigger which responses from neophytes and which might seem too basic for the cognoscenti.  This is one of those posts because many of you have been involved in Eastern studies for decades and others have never given a single thought to either the aura or prana.

Bridge

So, at the risk of oversimplifying, let me begin by trying to build a bridge, perhaps a flimsy one, between East and West.  If we were created in the image of God or from the mind of God — as you wish and please don't send me posts about your beliefs because I honor all sincere and serious ones — it is fair to ask just how God manages this and maybe even which part He built first.  I might take a wild flight of fancy and say God didn't build this vast Universe without a Plan so perhaps the Plan was the starting point and then the structure for containing the "construction" came next.  If you can more or less agree with the gist of this, then the structure is the aura and the various energy centers in the aura which process stimulation.  Whatever is stepped down in frequency builds more density and whatever is increased in frequency is more complex but spacious, meaning the ratio of "empty" space to "solidity" is greater and greater as the frequency is increased.  I honestly don't believe too many people would disagree with this because if you think about it long enough, it's fairly obvious that this is true.

As expected, material science is more or less oblivious to emptiness and this is an amazingly rich topic in its own right, but whether you are thinking of the pauses between notes in a musical composition or the hollow areas in your lungs or stomach, space exists.  In fact, even the densest parts of our body are full of space.  There is a fabulous picture of a bone taken with a grayfield microscope that shows how much "emptiness" there is in what we value more for its solidity, but let me abandon this subject for a moment and develop a few more concepts for those who are writing me with questions about prana.

The lighter something is, the more readily it reshapes or dissipates.  In the normal classification according to earth, water, fire, and air, there are no clear boundaries between the elements.  For instance, on the spectrum of earth and water, there are varying degrees of mud.  Dry soil is earthier than mud but all soil contains some moisture, some temperature (fire), and some space (air) so we cannot separate the elements completely.  However, if we have something quite dense, it takes more effort to reshape it than if we have something lighter.  Think of all the effort it takes to make a horseshoe that fits properly!  Relative to metal, other substances are malleable.  They are all nonetheless created in a matrix of energy that is conductive and supportive of life.  If separated from the source of life, there is a loss of vitality, what we call death.  You might say, the dense part returns to dust and the spirit body lives on without the density because life is by nature immortal.  If we could master the relationship between Spirit and Matter, it is likely that we could live indefinitely without losing our forms.  Contrariwise, if we ignore the relationship and overemphasize one or the other, separation is inevitable, in which case, the form decomposes, some parts faster than other parts, and the vital body retains its shape or reshapes itself in preparation for its next venture.

Prana

One of the people writing me asked if fruit and vegetables lose prana with refrigeration.  I believe I answered this question in several previous posts, but let me approach it from a different angle.  The moment something is separated from the life sustaining matrix, it begins to lose prana because prana is part of the vital energy field, not chained to a part of the whole.  Prana relates to the form when everything is in place and living but separated parts lose their connection over time.

Taking another perspective, we would say that the phenomenon of the phantom limb is due to the fact that for a period of time after an amputation occurs, the aura continues to retain its original shape so the individual who suffered the loss continues to sense the limb as present. However, over time, the aura usually reshapes, by which time not only would the phantom have vanished but regeneration would be a tricky undertaking.

Sprouts

Earlier today, I was speaking to Nadamayi about the sprout material online.  She learned how to sprout from someone who had studied the Essene material.  He was very interested in prana and she told me she feels energy when moving near the plants.  Anyone who was exposed to the Secret Life of Plants knows this, but we asked some awkward questions for which we will continue to seek answers.

Here is the context.  If plants are 97.5% sunlight and gases and only 2.5% of their "value" comes from the soil, just how important is good soil?  Sprouters rely heavily on water and sunlight but they often add kelp or trace minerals to the growing medium. Those who are growing micro greens (turf sprouting) are also using some kind of soil and/or additive to enhance the nutrient value of the sprouts. Thus, somewhere between Fukuoka-sensei and the soil amendments league, there is a void as big as the most important word in the Fukuoka philosophy:  Mu.  He maintained that Westerners cannot understand this word.  Of course, if we did, we would begin to live differently.  If we take a utilitarian view of Nature, the natural world is there for our gratification and we can rape and plunder all we want.  If we overdo it and the soil loses its vitality, we suffer from loss of essential nutrients and use supplements to overcome the hazards, meanwhile, of course, we use chemical stimulation to force the plants to do what the soil can no longer support.

Before going too far this direction, let me just say failure to recognize vitality as the cornerstone of life is what dooms modern science to oblivion. Eastern philosophy recognizes ki, chi, qi, prana, whatever you want to call it, but we don't even have a word for this in English. So, what is it?

It is energy that vitalizes whatever is living. Each living structure has centers for receiving and distributing energy. The main vortices have physiological correspondences in the endocrine system and correlate precisely to the endocrine glands, each of which is highly specialized to enable the incarnate being to express his or her particular gifts and personal idiosyncrasies. Any tampering with this system will result in a falling out with oneself which is why I have for years stood steadfastly against all artificial use of hormones except emergency use of adrenaline. In lectures, I have used the word "reprehensible" and been accused of exaggeration, but if you understand the system as I do, you would even find "reprehensible" mild. I believe that with the overlay of so many hormones on our physicalities, we are all being pushed away from ourselves and into a risky oblivion in which we do not even know for sure who we are, thus giving rise to countless forms of therapy to help us find our way back. There is a sure a way back: detoxification and purification followed by detachment and then receptivity. Every other strategy has perils.

So, what did I just say? Let's say you have a whirling vortex that allows you to process a certain amount of energy through that center. This energy stimulates its corresponding endocrine gland which in turn floods the blood stream with hormones that stimulate or inhibit various physiological functions. This is supposed to be unique for each individual, not the same for everyone much less cranked up with hormones from animals or synthetic imitations. I am quite sure that if we succeeded in extricating ourselves from the pharmaceutical contaminants as well as those from plastics and so forth, our energy systems would work better.

The Nadi

In addition to the main vortices or chakras, there are fine lines that correspond to our nervous systems. One of the earliest and simplest healing methods I learned from Morrnah Simeona was to straighten out these lines and once they were perpendicular to the surface of the skin, energy could be sent to the patient to regenerate the wound. Morrnah told me she learned this technique from an angel in a dream when she was a small child. She used to discuss her dreams with her father and after that one in particular, he said, "now all you need is patient." A truck ran over her dog and her father said, "You have a patient." Her dog was healed in a few hours. She was not more than four years old when she exhibited her first signs of having a special gift. If you send energy without fixing the lines, you tend to create congestion and chaos.

What does this have to do with prana? Well, life has a lot to do with prana and Nadamayi and I were all over the map this morning. In theory, we could be breatharians but only if our auras were in order and the energy fields in which we find ourselves have sufficient prana and then only if there is not some massive dislocating factor such as a cell phone tower or nuclear power plant.

If we cannot survive on sunlight, we presumably need food but the energy of the food depends on prana both for its own vitality and our assimilation of that vitality. To say we are eating dead food is no exaggeration. First, we canned food, then froze it, then we added preservatives to extend shelf life, then we harvested crops prematurely so as to ripen the fruit and vegetables artificially and supply a consistent flow to the market place. We have been poisoning our soil and water and even the plants themselves. Then, we tried to destroy Nature by making seeds incapable of producing new plants, and if this were not enough, we nuke foods both in our homes and on a grand scale with super huge machines in monstrous facilities, all for your "safety" and "health."

The path back to sanity is actually short: your own kitchen and yard. There is so much to this story because over and above the prana, there is the matter of seasonal harvesting. Let me give you a simple example of this. In Ayurvedic philosophy, we accumulate elements under a variety of circumstances, starting with seasons. For instance, we accumulate fire during the summer. If you watch plants, especially the green ones, they are sweeter in early summer and more and more bitter as fall approaches. This means that eating from your own garden tends to balance your constitution far better than something grown in Peru in heaven knows what manner, stored under who knows what conditions, and finally put on your supermarket shelves. Keep in mind that the seasons of the southern and northern hemispheres are reversed so you are basically doing the opposite of what Nature suggests because you are consuming drastically out of season food that has lost much of its prana.

This subject is obviously vast and the premier of the film Food, Inc. is today so perhaps I should continue this after there is more press on this movie.

Many blessings,

Ingrid

Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2009

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