36 Spirituality Studies 9-1 Spring 2023 7.1 Manas Chakra Dhā ranā Woodroffe mentions a secret minor chakra called manas (Woodroffe 2017, 56). This chakra is located above ajña and comprises six petals (sabda-jñana, sparsa-jñana, rupa-jñana, aghranopalabhi, rasopabhoga, and svapna), i.e., the faculties of hearing, touch, sight, smell, taste, and sleep, or the absence of these. Thus, these faculties are switches than can be simply activated and deactivated not only by empirical means and the urges of the senses, however, by one’s “awareness” (Sa. jñana sakti, ś ktopaya). In this chapter, we suggest a dharana that allows one to intervene into the natural rhythm of the process of falling asleep to stay alert meanwhile transiting into and persisting in “dream” and “deep sleep” states (Sa. svapna, susupti). As Table 2. shows it, these states are corresponding to the parapara and para levels of meditation. However, when one falls asleep the veil of maya (more precisely its niyati sakti), one of the limiting forces, traps one in ignorance concealing one’s real nature [17]. Ksemaraja in his commentary on Spandakarikas (see Spanda-nirnaya) writes that a yogi who is “established in his divine nature sees both in the waking and dream states what he will to see. This is not possible for the common people” (Vasugupta 2014, 135). The memory management of recent operating systems (Russinovich 2012; Willems 2011) work quite similarly to the process mentioned above. In a nutshell, when certain memory ranges of running processes are not actively used, the operating systems swaps these ranges to a persistent storage (e.g., hard disk) so the free space in the memory can be reallocated to other processes. These ranges are restored once they are referenced again. The senses are withdrawn similarly to that when falling asleep and it is up to the “highest will” (Sa. icchā) when the physical and psychological system awakes again. However, the very state of being awake or in dream state is flagged and controlled by the svapna petal of the manas chakra. Thus, when one relaxes one’s attention on that specific energy center when going into bed, there is a subtle moment when the “transition” from one state to the other occurs. The one-pointed awareness on this area allows for bringing forth the throb (Sa. spanda) that manages this functionality. If one acquired enough power to stay alert here and can relax one’s attention from this power, the transition to dream state occurs smoothly while one remains alert. The first sign of one’s success when breathing changes to flow on both nostrils, which corresponds to the activity of ākāśa tattwa that is a prerequisite of dhyana. From this point on, one can continue this relaxation process from every experience using the technique of “deep diving” (Sa. majjatā) or ātmavicāra (Muni 1966, 8) for example. Levels Metaphysical Categories Ś akti Consciousness Avastha (State) Person paratita transcendent anuttara absolute ananda bliss turiya fourth beyond subject and object para supreme Siva iccha will abheda non-difference susupti deep sleep aham I parapara intermediate Sakti jñana cognition bhedabheda difference in non-difference svapna dream state tvam Thou apara lower Nara kriya activity bheda difference jagrat waking state he/she/it Table 2. Trika Correspondences as given in Bäumer (2021, 33).
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