Ajna chakra is the most important chakra. It is here that there is a confluence of the three nadis. Ida, pingala and sushumna nadis terminate in ajna chakra, but you have to create union between the three. The union takes place in ajna chakra, and when the union is created, the third eye or intuition is developed. With this union, you become the seer.
The awakening of ajna chakra is considered to be very important and therefore the practices of yoga for this awakening are very important. One of the most important practices is trataka. Trataka can be practised on a candle, on a black dot, on a crystal or on the reflection of your own mark on the forehead. You can put a red mark in between the two eyebrows and you sit in front of a mirror and concentrate on that dot. That is one practice. You have to learn a lot about it because trataka has a very great influence on the retina and the brain. It helps you to stabilize the disturbed tendencies of the mind.
The object which you see with the eyes open does not remain steady when you close your eyes. After a few seconds the object begins to disperse. You can remember the candle flame but you can’t visualize it, because then the brain functions only on the basis of memory, not on the process of imagination.
The brain has both the faculties – memorization and imagination. Memorization is much easier; you can do it with the conscious mind. If you want to remember someone now, you can do it, but if you want to visualize him, you cannot, because for visualization it is necessary that the dispersing tendencies of the mind must be consolidated and concentrated. In other words, the conscious forces of the mind should be more or less withdrawn. That is the reason why in dreams you can see an object very clearly, because in dreams, the conscious forces are withdrawn. Dream is a compulsion on you. In a dream you are not able to maintain self-awareness and in a dream you are not able to control your own imaginations. If you are running after a train, you can’t catch it. In dreams you have so many disabilities, but a dream is a stage of visualization.
From this we can come to the conclusion that this state of mind should be developed consciously. That is why visualization is very difficult for most people. There are quite a lot of people who can visualize. They can visualize colours and they can hear sounds. I have been talking to many musicians and artists for many years. The artists can see the colour and compare the colour on the canvas with the colour which they imagine.
To visualize a colour, you need a very high frequency of mind. But you cannot increase the frequency of the mind as long as it has high velocity. This is the law of energy: if the velocity is high, the frequency is low. If the frequency has to be high, the velocity has to be low. Therefore, to decrease or minimize the velocity of the mind, you have to take recourse to a mantra because as the sound increases in frequency, the mind decreases in velocity. To increase the frequency, you have to decrease the velocity of the mantra also. For instance, if your mantra is Om Namah Shivaya, you practise it in the mind. That is the first way how to increase the frequency. Then you should decrease the speed of the mantra. When you are decreasing the speed of the mantra, the mantra is expanding. If you can practise one mala in five minutes, later you practise one mala in fifteen minutes.
So how do they practise the mantra for increasing the frequency and decreasing the velocity? First they fix a matra; matra means timing. Matra has to do with time and time has a direct effect on the mind. In the same way that an object has an effect on the mind, time also has an effect on the mind because time is a category of the mind. Time is not different from the mind. If you withdraw time, you withdraw the mind; if you withdraw the mind, you transcend time. If you expand time, you expand the mind. Therefore, the minimum time and the maximum time has to be understood.
In the science of drum beating, there is a science of matra, which is consecutive but separate, so that minimum time has to be fixed. That is called tala. You can learn this better from the people who play the drum. Now you have to adjust your mantra on tala. So you say, ‘Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya’. In one tala is one mantra. Now tala remains the same but you increase the period of mantra, ‘Om Na Ma Ha Shi Va Ya’. Then you again increase, ‘Om Naaa Maaa Haa Shii Vaa Yaa’. You go on increasing. The meter is fixed, but the mantra becomes longer and longer and longer. By this you decrease the velocity because the effect of sound is definite on the mind.
If you go deeper into science, light and sound are the subtle aspects of matter. I mean, even your body is a combination of light and sound. It is something which the science of yoga and tantra have been talking about for many thousands of years. Now modern physics is also coming to the same conclusion. An object is convertible into light and sound, and sound and light can be reconverted into a matter. We have to base the effect of ajna chakra on light and sound. Therefore, the importance of trataka and the importance of mantra should be understood clearly.
If you want to make the mind steady, you will have to decrease the rapid eye movements. They are known as REM and you have to decrease them because the brain is vibrating at very great speed though you cannot even feel it. You don’t feel it; it is surprising because the brain is insulated and it is soundproof.
It is has been proved that breath from both the nostrils do not flow at the same time all the time. There is a period of 1 hour 20 minutes to 1 hour 40 minutes when alternate nostrils flow. This alternate behaviour of the nostril is dependent on the lunar movement. The behaviour and function is absolutely opposite in the black fortnight and the bright fortnight. If on the first day of the bright fortnight, at a particular time the left is flowing, in the dark fortnight it is the right that will be flowing.
In yoga there is a very important book known as Swara Yoga. People know very little about it but I have worked on it for many years, subjecting my swamis in Munger Ashram to this observation. They made a chart of the behaviour of the breaths and it was found that in everybody it was the same, and we could ascertain what happens during sickness and which breath flows at that time.
These two breaths, ida and pingala, which flow in the left and right nostrils, have to do directly with the lobes or hemispheres of the brain. As long as these two breaths are flowing alternately, one hemisphere will be quiet and the other will be vibrating. When both the breaths flow equally, then both the hemispheres or lobes of the brain become serene. When the brain becomes serene, then shambhavi mudra takes place automatically. Shambhavi mudra is the position in which the pupils of both eyes are concentrated and united in the mid-eyebrow centre. You should not practise it by force, it happens automatically once you are completely relaxed or when sushumna nadi is flowing.
When both the breaths, ida and pingala, flow freely with equal force that is the flow of sushumna. It flows only for a short time when the change of breath takes place. Sushumna flows in everybody for a very short period in between the change. That small period is the period of serenity and intuition.
27 February 1983, Geneva, Switzerland