The Serpent Power — Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe) (1924)
is the closest physical parallel of the case that we are trying to understand. As a well-known passage in the Upanishad has it, ‘The whole (Pūrna) is subtracted from the whole, and yet the whole remains.’ I think our present case comes very near to this. The Kundalī at the Mūlādhāra is the whole primordial Shakti in monad or germ or latency: that is why it is coiled. The Kundalī that mounts up the Nādī is also the whole Shakti in a specially dynamic form—an eject likeness of the Eternal Serpent. The result of the last fusion (there are successive fusions in the various centres also) in the Sahasrāra is also the whole, or Pūrna. This is how I look at it. In this conception the permanent static background is not really depleted, much less is it dispensed with.
“4. When again I say that the volume or intensity of the coiled power can be affected (though not its configuration and relative equilibrium), I do not mean to throw up the principle of conservation of energy in relation to the Kundalī, which is the embodiment of all energy. It is merely the conversion of static (potential) energy into dynamic (kinetic) energy in part, the sum remaining constant. As we have to deal with infinities here, an exact physical rendering of this principle is not to be expected. The Yogī therefore simply ‘awakens,’ and never creates Shakti. By the way, the germ-cell which evolves the body does not, according to modern biology, cease to be a germ-cell in any stage of the complicated process. The original germ-cell splits up into two: one half gradually develops itself into the body of a plant or animal—this is the somatic cell; the other half remains encased within the body practically unchanged, and is transmitted in the process of reproduction to the offspring— that is, the germ-plasm. Now, this germ-plasm is unbroken through the whole line of propagation. This is Weismann’s doctrine of ‘continuity of the germ-plasm,’ which has been widely accepted, though it is but an hypothesis.”
In a subsequent postscript the Professor wrote:
“1. Shakti being either static or dynamic, every dynamic form necessarily presupposes a static background. A purely dynamic activity (which is motion in its physical aspect) is impossible without a static support or ground (Ādhāra). Hence the philosophical doctrine of absolute motion or change, as taught by old Heraclitus and the Buddhists and by modern Bergson, is wrong; it is based neither upon correct logic nor upon clear intuition. The constitution of an atom reveals the static-dynamic polarisation of Shakti; other and more complex forms of existence also do the same. In the living body this necessary static background is Mūlādhāra, where Shakti is Kundalī coiled. All the functional activity of the body, starting from the development of the germ-cell, is correlated to, and sustained by the Shakti concentrated at, the Mūlādhāra. Cosmic creation, too, ending with the evolution of Prithivī Tattva (it is, however, an unending process in a different sense, and there perhaps Henri Bergson, who claims that the creative impulse is ever original and resourceful, is right), also presupposes a cosmic static background (over and above Chidākāsha—ether of Consciousness), which is the Mahākundalī Shakti in the Chinmayadeha (body of Consciousness) of Parameshvara or Parameshvarī (the Supreme Lord in male and female aspect). In the earliest stage of creation, when the world arises only as a mist in Divine Consciousness, it requires, as the principle or pole of Tat (That), the correlate principle or pole of Aham (I); in the development of the former, the latter serves as the static background. In our own experiences, too, ‘apperception’ or consciousness of self is the sustaining background —a string, so to say, which holds together all the loose
is the closest physical parallel of the case that we are trying to understand. As a well-known passage in the Upanishad has it, ‘The whole (Pūrna) is subtracted from the whole, and yet the whole remains.’ I think our present case comes very near to this. The Kundalī at the Mūlādhāra is the whole primordial Shakti in monad or germ or latency: that is why it is coiled. The Kundalī that mounts up the Nādī is also the whole Shakti in a specially dynamic form—an eject likeness of the Eternal Serpent. The result of the last fusion (there are successive fusions in the various centres also) in the Sahasrāra is also the whole, or Pūrna. This is how I look at it. In this conception the permanent static background is not really depleted, much less is it dispensed with.
“4. When again I say that the volume or intensity of the coiled power can be affected (though not its configuration and relative equilibrium), I do not mean to throw up the principle of conservation of energy in relation to the Kundalī, which is the embodiment of all energy. It is merely the conversion of static (potential) energy into dynamic (kinetic) energy in part, the sum remaining constant. As we have to deal with infinities here, an exact physical rendering of this principle is not to be expected. The Yogī therefore simply ‘awakens,’ and never creates Shakti. By the way, the germ-cell which evolves the body does not, according to modern biology, cease to be a germ-cell in any stage of the complicated process. The original germ-cell splits up into two: one half gradually develops itself into the body of a plant or animal—this is the somatic cell; the other half remains encased within the body practically unchanged, and is transmitted in the process of reproduction to the offspring— that is, the germ-plasm. Now, this germ-plasm is unbroken through the whole line of propagation. This is Weismann’s doctrine of ‘continuity of the germ-plasm,’ which has been widely accepted, though it is but an hypothesis.”
In a subsequent postscript the Professor wrote:
“1. Shakti being either static or dynamic, every dynamic form necessarily presupposes a static background. A purely dynamic activity (which is motion in its physical aspect) is impossible without a static support or ground (Ādhāra). Hence the philosophical doctrine of absolute motion or change, as taught by old Heraclitus and the Buddhists and by modern Bergson, is wrong; it is based neither upon correct logic nor upon clear intuition. The constitution of an atom reveals the static-dynamic polarisation of Shakti; other and more complex forms of existence also do the same. In the living body this necessary static background is Mūlādhāra, where Shakti is Kundalī coiled. All the functional activity of the body, starting from the development of the germ-cell, is correlated to, and sustained by the Shakti concentrated at, the Mūlādhāra. Cosmic creation, too, ending with the evolution of Prithivī Tattva (it is, however, an unending process in a different sense, and there perhaps Henri Bergson, who claims that the creative impulse is ever original and resourceful, is right), also presupposes a cosmic static background (over and above Chidākāsha—ether of Consciousness), which is the Mahākundalī Shakti in the Chinmayadeha (body of Consciousness) of Parameshvara or Parameshvarī (the Supreme Lord in male and female aspect). In the earliest stage of creation, when the world arises only as a mist in Divine Consciousness, it requires, as the principle or pole of Tat (That), the correlate principle or pole of Aham (I); in the development of the former, the latter serves as the static background. In our own experiences, too, ‘apperception’ or consciousness of self is the sustaining background —a string, so to say, which holds together all the loose
No commentary for this page.