THE CROWN CHAKRA (SAHASRARA)
The Crown Chakra (Sahasrara)
• Function: autonomy
• Attributes: connection to the universe, spiritual maturity, manifestation, truth filter, liberation from false beliefs, wisdom, elevation, understanding, freedom, vision, power, influence, ebullience, bliss
• Attribute paradox: “I don’t believe in myself.”
• Common issues in sahasrara: attachment to false beliefs, easily influenced, follower
The crown chakra is referred to as the mahapadma, or great lotus. It is said to have twenty rows of fifty petals (one thousand total) all facing downward. In the yogic and Buddhist texts, large numbers such as one thousand or ten thousand are used to denote limitlessness. For example, in the Buddhist question, “The ten thousand things return to the one, where does the one return to?” the ten thousand things refer to everything—everything returns to the one.
Located at the crown of the head, the crown chakra is the culmination of the kundalini quest—the full bloom of the lotus—boundless consciousness. It is comprehension at a higher level than what is possible by the solar plexus mind tied to intellect and ego, for it connects directly to universal knowledge. Science can never fully comprehend the universe, as science is a solar plexus chakra construction and as such is limited, while the universe is limitless. The third eye chakra enables us to see clearly and the crown chakra provides an even more expanded perspective, spiritual knowledge, and autonomy. It connects us directly to sustenance from the spiritual source and when the crown chakra is strong and we are grounded in the root chakra, we can slip into samadhi (a deep meditative state) more readily.
The crown chakra is a truth filter, providing a reference point so that when indirect teachings, such as some of those passed down through the generations or that come from institutions, don’t ring true, they are readily discarded. When beliefs are imposed, however, then samskaras form.
A major samskara here is that too much attention is given to the material world and not enough to the spiritual. Our society elevates materialism and we believe that if we acquire a lot then we will be happy. Religious, academic, and scientific authorities hold sway over our beliefs, and intuitive knowledge is demeaned and discounted. There are huge institutions and organizations all serving unconsciousness. Now we can see our collective insanity and understand that, in actuality, material things and attainments don’t have that much to offer; and that is why people are always searching for more and more gratification. There is something within us that does not allow us to be happy unless we are connected spiritually. Its main purpose is to move us toward truth so that we can bloom fully. Just as the subtle body has been overlooked for so long, so it is within the subtle body—the crown chakra needs more attention from us.
Autonomy, Freedom, Liberation
When we work with the crown chakra, we enter the realm of autonomy. Autonomy means that we are free to think and act without yielding to influence from others. We realize that we can be social and connected and still be autonomous. The spiritual path is our own path for it is personal transformation that we seek. In the crown chakra, we realize that most samskaras are related to false beliefs imposed by familial, social, religious, and cultural indoctrinations.
Samskaric wounds appear early in life, when we are told what to believe instead of allowed to develop our own spiritual connections. It is not acknowledged that we have within us a connection to spirit that allows us to develop our own understanding of who we are and what we are doing here, but instead we are indoctrinated.
The crown chakra is the storehouse of our beliefs. One cannot comprehend the depth of the “programming” that we each experience in our cultures until one works with this energy and surfaces them one by one. These implanted falsehoods lie deep in our minds and we are often unaware of them—and even if aware, we don’t understand the impact they have on our lives. Some are not so surprising—for myself and female clients that I work with, it often arises that “woman are considered second-class citizens” in all of the major religions. This samskara interferes with the growth and development of women both externally, in the religion itself, and internally, within the aspirant. In a book review of The Hidden Lamp, this point is addressed.
Of course women practiced Zen in the old days. Of course, some were equals of the great male teachers. But for the most part these women and their stories were marginalized in the most prominent Chinese lineage charts and lamp records. These omissions have left women in the dark. It has denied them a place within the tradition, excluded them from authority and has suggested—not very subtly—that illumination was not for them—women could not serve as bearers of the lamp.20
Indeed, there are a lot of mixed messages in historical Buddhism. The Buddha accepted women as aspirants and stated that they could become enlightened. Yet, during different periods, devoted female aspirants, regardless of their attainment, were told that they must wait to be reborn a male in order to attain to full Buddhahood. A variety of different types of limitations are still imposed on women in modern religious society.
Limiting beliefs based on gender, race, religion, etc., impact everyone, not only the one belonging to the disparaged group, but the one harboring the beliefs also. Remember, these false beliefs are based on limiting samskaras in sahasrara suppressing its positive attributes. So both the discriminator and the discriminated are wounded as they both have the limiting samskaras. False beliefs are injurious, period. Whatever group is targeted feels diminished, takes in the false belief and has difficulty standing in their own power. The discriminating group is also diminished, although in more subtle ways. Any samskaras in the crown chakra bring with it diminishment, and the weakening of the connection to the higher source. Note also that prejudice creates a wound in the heart chakra that contributes to a painful sense of disconnection—again for both parties.
False beliefs are everywhere and just seem to “float” out there in the ozone. We are always being influenced by our culture and are constantly picking up memes. Memes are “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” 21 These can then crystalize into beliefs and stereotypes.
With religion it goes both ways. We are indoctrinated into the religion we are born into and the opposite is true also:
No religion exists in a vacuum. On the contrary, every faith is rooted in the soil in which it is planted. It is a fallacy to believe that people of faith derive their values primarily from their Scriptures. The opposite is true. People of faith insert their values into their Scriptures, reading them through the lens of their own cultural, ethnic, nationalistic and even political perspectives.22
We each have within the crown—and all of the chakras—a “truth monitor.” We are wired to live in truth and every experience and belief is “reviewed” by this monitor. If negative or untruthful, a samskara appears. This can be challenging for those who have treasured their religious connections and hold dear certain beliefs. Working with Jim, who has a dedicated spiritual practice of meditation, the issue of religion came up here in the crown chakra:
… The religion I grew up with has a lot of negative press recently. I have always seen it as a duality, with mainly saintly, devoted people and a few selfish and evil people in the wrong jobs. What is coming through for me is: “That is not true.”
Jim handled this knowledge well because he had already done a lot of Traya work and was not so dependent on outside forces—his locus of influence had already shifted to internal. (See Chapter 5).
Another session with Jim surfaced the following:
… Everyone that I knew growing up was so oppressed by institutions. Everybody else had all the power and there was no standing up to them. The only hope was to someday get a job with one of them and then really lose your autonomy.
This is reminiscent of Foucault’s position that “power somehow inheres in institutions themselves rather than in the individuals that make those institutions function.” 23 Another samskara came up:
… Religion was imposed on me. I grew up in it and took in all those beliefs even though it didn’t resonate with me. Rituals and pomp further inculcated their power and ownership of the truth.
Not just religious but all types of false beliefs are oppressive and limiting. Despite attempts to eradicate poverty and “lift up” the people trapped in it, poverty itself has a relentless way of continuing. Lotus grew up in a poor area. When working here, the following two issues came up:
… When you grow up in a ghetto, it is an unstated fact that you are involved in a dead end. Everyone assumes that you belong there and that is where you will stay. And everyone else belongs there too.
… It is also believed that there is nothing positive about the people there—they are defined by their poverty not their humanity.
These types of beliefs keep many people trapped in poverty.
Our beliefs about aging too can be hindrances. June was led to the crown chakra when we addressed the issue of finding productive activities in her life.
… I am too old and time is running out.
After we let the negative energy related to this belief out, these words came in with the positive:
… You are never too old and time never runs out.
I wonder just how much of the malaise and decrepitude of aging is a meme that is pervasive in our society. One study done with a group of elderly men when they lived for several weeks in an environment replicating their youth showed exactly that. They watched sports, television shows and listened to music from an era of their youth. They imagined themselves to be in that time again discussing current events of the time with each other. At the end of the study, “They were suppler, showed greater manual dexterity and sat taller. Perhaps most improbable, their sight improved. Independent judges said they looked younger.” 24
It is not only societal beliefs that imbed in the crown chakra and impede us, but personal ones also. I was working with a small group designed to help the members get a firm foothold on the Traya path. At the last session I had them focus on the crown and ask, “What negative beliefs are in my way?” This was the first time that they ever worked with this chakra. Following are some examples of what came immediately into their minds:
Ted: … When I was six, my mother made fun of my being hairy. This made me believe that I am unattractive.
Jess: … My son is twenty-five and still dependent on me financially in some ways.
He was annoyed with his son and wanted to change this pattern. He wanted his son to grow up and take responsibility for his life. While working here, he remembered how he always did things for him:
… I never believed in his ability to stand on his own feet, doing things for him since he was small.
Jess saw that he actually created this dynamic with his son, dropped his annoyance, and became determined to disconnect gently and give his son space to blossom on his own:
Zara: … I was invited to the movies with a friend and her family and I wanted to go with them. My brother said he would come home from work early so that we could go and visit a relative that I liked. He didn’t come home early and I missed out on the movie. The belief that I took in was to forgo what I want so as not to inconvenience others. I have been doing that my entire life.
Marion: … I was interested in art but felt that I couldn’t follow that road because I was told that I would never be successful or be able to support myself. My parents lived in such limitation. They went to work in menial jobs and they came home. Their perspective was so limited and I picked that up from them.
Spiritual Maturity, Liberation, Knowledge, and Understanding
We are turning our experiences over to the experts for analysis and interpretation when we can be doing that ourselves. The crown chakra tells us that the same is true of the spiritual path. We learn that not only have we been unconscious to so much but that everyone is unconscious to some extent—even many spiritual teachers. This chakra asks that we become our own guru and liberate ourselves from false beliefs. Only commit to a path because the spiritual truths of the teachings resonate with us and because of the prajna (wisdom) that arises, not because of outside influence, spiritual materialism or cultural bias. The Buddha advised us not to follow him blindly but to test the teachings out for ourselves and follow those that are true. Patanjali warns against domination of the vrtti of preconceived beliefs (no matter how authoritative) and tells us to be present in our experience. It is in the crown chakra that you become a spiritual “grown-up” and spiritually autonomous, because you have dropped the ego identity and have connected directly to a higher spiritual force. This doesn’t mean that you cannot belong to a spiritual group or organization and practice with other people, it means that the responsibility is on you to determine what is true or not. The truth becomes our guru because we now have direct access to the limitless, all-encompassing, transcendental truth and wisdom.
Elevation
When the crown chakra is strong, then we are less likely to become wrapped up in or taken over by the solar plexus chakra’s tendency for grasping and clinging. There is a sense of transcendence from worldly concerns while, at the same time, being fully engaged in the world. We understand what is really important and put our energies there.
Belief and the Body
The power of the mind to change biology is now taken for granted and scientists incorporate it into every clinical trial for new drugs and treatments. It is called the placebo effect.
Placebo—simply thinking you will get better can actually make you better. Patients experience positive effects from drugs merely because they expect to. Clinical-trial participants often report a wide variety of positive relief even when given sugar pills and told they were drugs.
Nocebo—simply thinking you will get worse can actually make you worse. Patients experience negative side effects from drugs merely because they expect to when told about side effects. These complaints may include burning sensations, vomiting, and even upper-respiratory-tract infections. Many participants reported these problems even when they were part of control groups that were taking a sugar pill.
It has even been shown that people with DID, or dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder), can have different physical problems depending on the identity they are manifesting:
“They may have different handedness, wear glasses with different prescriptions, and have allergies to different substances.” 25 Entirely different physical states within the same body!
Even before we reached the crown chakra, our Traya work had already proved to us the power of the mind. We have seen how our minds created both intra- and interpersonal difficulties due to outside events and we also saw how our minds healed these same issues. We have also seen that certain emotional states are associated with corresponding changes in brain chemistry. For example, depressed states show correlated changes in brain chemistry that antidepressant medications are designed to correct. This has led to the false belief that chemistry is what is causing the depression when it is actually the reverse—the depression (a very samskaric heart chakra) is causing the changes in brain chemistry. We know this because when we heal the heart chakra completely with Traya, the brain chemistry adjusts accordingly and there is no longer a need for these medications. We are awed at how powerful our minds are.
Manifestation, Power, and Influence
I was surprised to find that manifestation in this world is such an important function of this chakra, as I expected it to be more concerned with transcendence. The crown chakra tells us that we must create the world that we need in order to thrive, and this is done through this energy. We find that we are beings with a power that we didn’t know that we had—not the will-oriented making of the solar plexus chakra but the manifesting of our heart’s desires. A mistaken belief that most of us hold is that power lies outside of us, when in actuality the reverse is true.
It is through the crown chakra that universal consciousness comes into the level of form. Physics shows that energy creates matter and the shorter the wavelength, the more energy, and thus more power. The crown chakra’s energy has the shortest wavelength of any chakra and is thus the most powerful. While every chakra has an impact on the outside world and creates situations in the outside world based on its health status, the crown manifests desires, vision, and purpose in life via its connection to the creative power of the universe. It is through this energy that our higher good manifests and our dreams come true. Our deepest desires come into fruition as long as they are aligned with spiritual growth and direction and the good of others. In Hinduism there is the “wish-fulfilling cow” Kamadhenu that is believed to become accessible in this chakra. She is the divine mother of all cows and represents the creative manifestation energy of the crown chakra.
In order to manifest, we must have a vision. Before we change the world, we must have a vision for our own lives and what needs to come next. Our vision manifests from our heart’s desire not from our willpower—if we maintain a strong moment connection. The moment is the place of manifestation. The creative energy of the crown chakra will only manifest if the moment connection and the connection between the two lotus poles, the root chakra (muladhara) and the crown chakra (sahasrara), are strong. When you heal these two chakras and also maintain a strong moment connection, you unleash the energy of manifestation.
Self-actualization is only one of the benefits achieved here. We realize also that our purpose is not to escape this life or to escape to some heaven. Since we are all connected, there can be no heaven while others are suffering on earth. As we work with the higher chakras, our perspective shifts. We realize that the world is not here for us to exploit but we are here for the world. Our job is not only to align with the creative power of the universe but to actually manifest something in the world—to influence this world in some helpful way. I once heard a Zen master say, “Enlightenment is believing in yourself 100 percent.” When you believe in yourself, then you have influence and power.
The crown chakra takes time to get to know. We need to spend time here, and the work that we do to arrive here is well worth the effort. We do this by healing the lower chakras and meditating as much as possible, as it is most fully activated when we meditate. Spiritual power and knowledge then dominate our consciousness rather than the distractions of the material world.
When we connect with a healthy crown chakra in meditation, we experience bliss. Being on a spiritual path means being on a path of energy aligned with truth, and it means doing the practices on that path and understanding how the truth functions in us for the good of all.
••• Exercise: Traya Practice at the •••
Crown Chakra (Sahasrara)
Grounding
Ground by sitting up straight, focusing on the soles of your feet, and breathing in and out of the chakras at the soles of your feet.
Basic Technique
It is best to wait until the lower chakras have been strengthened before working here. Rarely will you be led here by any of the deep mind–
directed techniques for surfacing samskaras until then. So that you can get a sense of this energy, we are going to use a variation of the basic technique in that we will focus on the chakra, but instead of starting by asking for memories, we are going to first ask for false beliefs. This is a very subtle energy and it may be difficult for the beginner to tune in here and surface a memory. This will help.
Step 1: Focus—Keep your attention at the crown of your head and breathe in and out gently.
Step 2: Surface—Breathe in and out gently and ask, “What false beliefs are here and where did they come from?” After something comes into your mind, you can ask, “What else?” or move on to step 3.
Step 3: Release—Note the belief and associated memory or memories. Let negative energy go out by visualizing it coming out of the chakra, waiting until the outflow stops.
Step 4: Replace and Imprint—Visualize positive energy coming in (rays from the sun) and taking up the space that was taken up by the negative energy that went out. Ask, “What is this positive energy bringing in with it?” Note the words that appear in your mind.
There is no scene from nature here as sahasrara is beyond the realm of elements.
Ground yourself back in your body by breathing in and out of the soles of your feet.
20. Barry Briggs, “Revision of ‘The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty Five Centuries of Awakened Women’ by Florence Caplow and Susan Moon,” Primary Point, Winter 2015, 18.
21. Merriam-Webster, “Meme (1),” accessed January 1, 2016, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meme.
22. Reza Aslan, “Bill Maher Isn’t the Only One Who Misunderstands Religion,” New York Times, October 8, 2014, editorial, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/opinion/bill-maher-isnt-the-only-one-who-misunderstands-religion.html.
23. Dino Franco Felluga, Critical Theory: The Key Concepts (New York: Routledge, 2015), 238.
24. Bruce Grierson, “What If Age Were Nothing But a Mind-Set?” New York Times, October 22, 2014, MM52.
25. Gerald C. Davison and John M. Neale, Abnormal Psychology (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1998), 170.