Root chakra

From AnthroWiki
Root chakra (Muladhara)

The four-petalled lotus flower, the root chakra (Sanskritमूलाधार Mūlādhāra "the root support", from mūla "root" and ādhāra "support"), is the lowest of the seven main soul organs of perception in the human astral body.

According to the findings of the German mystic and Jakob Böhme disciple Johann Georg Gichtel, the root chakra is under the direct influence of the lunar sphere. According to modern yoga teachings, its colour is red.

In the root chakra rests the kundalini force, symbolised by a snake coiled in three and a half coils, which connects the physical body with the astral body throughout earthly life. Once awakened, it can become the highest power of love or pure desire increased to the highest degree. This is also indicated by the two snakes of the Mercury staff, which also stand for the unconscious (black) and for the conscious (white) side of the Kundalini force. In Goethe's fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily, this deeply unconscious force is represented by the green snake. When the upper parts of the astral body are lifted out of the body during sleep, it appears to the clairvoyant gaze as a fine silvery shining ribbon that joins the body in the spleen region. At death, this silver cord breaks and the astral body can no longer return to the body.

The future importance of the Kundalini force

Main article: Kundalini

The Kundalini force still works unconsciously in people today. However, it will become much more important in the future when we learn to control it consciously. There is a harmonising power in it that can lead the whole of humanity to brotherhood - and this development takes its starting point from music:

„When the fifth root-race will have reached its end and the sixth root-race will be in the ascendancy, an influence will have developed in the field of the conscious mind, which is now still very much in the background during the fifth sub-race, but which is already developing. It is something that emanates from the musical. The importance of music will be expressed more and more in the fifth sub-race. Music will not be merely art, but will become a means of expression for quite other things than the purely artistic. Here is something which points to the influence of a quite definite principle on the physical plane. In the field of music or music-like things, the most important impulses will be given by the initiates of the fifth root-race. What must flow into the fifth root-race, and that in the field of the conscious life of the mind, is what is called the Kundalini fire. This is a force which is still dormant in man, but which will become more and more important. Today it already has a great influence, a great significance in what is perceived through the sense of hearing. During the further development in the sixth sub-race of the fifth root-race, this Kundalini fire will gain great influence on what lives in the human heart. The human heart will really have that Kundalini fire within it. Man will then be permeated by a special power which will live in his heart, so that in the sixth root-race he will no longer distinguish his own good from the good of the whole. Man will be so permeated by the Kundalini light that he will have the principle of love as his very nature.

In the seventh sub-race the whole of humanity will be in true chaos, for the root race will then be close to extinction. But a small part of the people of the seventh sub-race will be the true sons of the Kundalini fire. They will be imbued with all the powers of the Kundalini fire; they will be the material for the next root race, for those who direct the further development of humanity. Thus the fifth root-race is heading for those heights where the divine fire, the Kundalini fire, will kindle with sacred pathos the divine principle within man, so that man will no longer be separated from man, but, as far as the thinking mind reaches, a brotherhood will be brought about. This fire will one day live in people. And in those human beings who are initiated in the course of the fifth root-race, there already lives a hint of this divine fire, in which is the power of brotherhood and which will abolish the separateness of man. But it is only beginning to work its way through, it is only just beginning to emerge, it is still veiled, veiled by what are the separating passions of men, the separating powers of the Kama. And where it appears in detail as the herald of a coming time, it takes on a different form, a quite different character. On the plane of delusion, the divine fire is the divine wrath. Only then, when brotherhood will flood the whole of humanity, will it be divine love. But as long as it asserts itself in the individual as zeal, it is divine wrath, and it asserts itself as strong force in the individual precisely because the rest of humanity is not yet ripe.“ (Lit.:GA 92, p. 101ff)

See also

Literature

References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.