Anahata (Heartsday)

Earth

IV

Not Struck

Subdominant

And so we ascend to chakra four, at the level of the heart, where what Dante called La Vita Nuova, "The New Life," begins. And the name of this center is Anahata, "Not Struck"; for it is the place where the sound is heard "that is not made by any two things striking together."

Every sound normally heard is of two things striking together; that of the voice for example, being the sound of the breath striking our vocal cords. The only sound not so made is that of the creative energy of the universe, the hum, so to speak, of the void, which is antecedent to things, and of which things are precipitations. this, they say, is heard as from within, within oneself and simultaneously within space. It is the sound beyond silence, heard as OM (very deeply intoned, I am told, somewhere about C below low C ). "The word OM," said Ramakrishna to his friends, "is Brahman. Following the trail of OM, one attains to Brahman."

In the Sanskrit Devanagari script OM is written either as ॐ or as ओ , and in the posture of the dancing Shiva image the pose of the head, hands, and lifted foot suggests the outline of this sign--which makes the point that in the appearance of this god the sound resounds of the wonder of existence.

The sound AUM, the, "not made by any two things striking together," and floating as it were in a setting of silence, is the seed sound of creation heard when the rising Kundalini reaches the level of the heart. For there, as they say, the Great Self abides and portals open to the void. The lotus of twelve red petals, marked with the syllables kam, kham, gam gham, ngam, cham, chham, jam, jham, nyam , tam, and tham, is of the element air. In its bright red center is an interlocking double triangle, the color of smoke, signifying "juncture" and containing its seed syllable yam displayed over an antelope, which is the beast, swift as wind, of the Vedic wind-god Vayu. The female triangle within this letter holds a lingam like shining gold, and the patron Hindu deity is Shiva in a gentle, boon-bestowing aspect. His shakti, known here as Kakini, lifts a noose and skull in two hands, while exhibiting with her other two the "boon-bestowing" and "fear-dispelling" gestures. ~Joseph Campbell The Mythic Image

Wish-Fulfilling Tree

The Hatch

Just below this lotus of the heart there is pictured a lesser [octagonal], uninscribed lotus, at about the level of the solar plexus, supporting on a jeweled altar an image of the Wish-Fulfilling Tree. For it is here that the first intimations are heard of the sound OM in the Silence, and that sound itself is the Wish-Fulfilling Tree. Once heard, it can be rediscovered everywhere and no longer do we have to seek our good. It is here-within-and through all things, all space. We can now give up our struggle for achievement, for love and power and the good, and may rest in peace.~Joseph Campbell The Mythic Image