Course XLI - Teaching 15: The Lotus of One-Thousand Petals

If the description of the Crown Center is a very hard work, the enumeration of its powers and valuable development becomes a harder task indeed.
It is sufficient to say the Crown Center is the only one that pours spiritual forces on man.
It does not contain divisible mental matter: it only has potential essence of mental matter, which is a part of the Manifest Spirit.
By developing this Center, the individual obtains perfection that not only grants science and infuse wisdom, but even knowledge about things that the one who possesses it believes to be completely detached from his lower principles.
The long-wished liberation cannot be achieved without this Center. Liberation is a passive state of the superior mind, reflected on an extraordinary activity in all acts of life, without disturbance of any kind in the ecstatic state of this Initiate.
All other Centers are summed up in it, not as an active force, but as their potential reflection. Just as those secondary forty-two feminine Centers and each one of the seventy-two men’s Centers and its apparent valves in the physical body of the individual being.
The Crown Wheel keeps a direct and continuous communication with the Sight Wheel in all men, even in those less developed; a man transmits through it the consciousness of being, but in a being spiritually developed, his communication becomes so continuous, strong and persistent that, if one can call this spiritual force light, a torrent of light floods the Sight Wheel.
The Crown Center, properly enlarged, reveals the only knowledge to the Adept: a unique knowledge that makes forget all things; in short, as it were, all powers make the adept ignore the Only and Primordial Power, so that he handles separatist shadows that constitute the Created Universe. But this Power makes the Adept to ignore shadows of the Created Universe, and to stare only at the Only Power that promotes them.
If the Crown Wheel sums up all others and is the “seat” of the Spirit in the complete man, and if all Mystical Schools have understood it like that, by orienting their searches in this sense, the Great Element neither stays in it nor gives rise to its activity.
Mystics have failed because they did not look for that which drives and moves it, that is, Kundalini. Remember the story about the one who looked for God for years and years studying the firmament and, as soon as he was able to know as much as possible, an animal-trap broke him to pieces.
Centers are not stores of the Great Element. The Great Element is throughout Sushumna. Wheels are only stopcocks to distributing specific activities.
The Nature of the Great Element is fourfold: Spirit (Consciousness and Will, simultaneously), Mind, Energy and Matter.
The Crown Wheel is mainly consciousness, and cannot move by itself; when it moves, it is because the Sacrum Wheel, mainly the Will, drives it. Even the Will cannot act by itself: it does by order of the Crown Wheel. Thence consciousness and will act in a reciprocal way.
The Great Element ascends through Sushumna. You may imagine Sushumna as a pillar built with the Great Element. In this pillar there is a narrow channel, Virga; and in it, another very narrow duct, Brâhmânâdi. The above-described thing finds its physical expression: Sushumna corresponds to the spine in a wide sense; Virga, to the spinal medulla; and Brâhmânâdi, to the so-called central channel of the spinal medulla.
Mystical Schools differ as for through what duct Kundalini can ascend; some Schools state that through Sushumna; others, through Virga; and others, through Brâhmânâdi. On the other hand, we state that She can ascend through those three: when it concerns to Energy related to “animal” life, through Sushumna, and when it concerns to mental energy, through Virga. Brâhmânâdi –the “channel of God”– is the way of the Spirit.
It ascends more slowly through the first way; faster through the second; and the Spirit ascends almost instantaneously.
You can observe very numerous grooves and circumvolutions on the brain, which is physical expression of the Spirit, even in hardly developed beings. We can assume they are countless on the brain of a great mystic.
The Great Element is reflected, but rather weakly, on the Crown Wheel when it ascends through nerves; petals remain languid. Expansion increases when it ascends through medulla (Virga). And like in Gautama Buddha’s case, expansion is wonderful when it ascends through the narrow central channel.
If the being ascends very quickly, bursts. But the being permits to go out through the higher part, if it resists; so, the Great Element unites with the Great Cosmic Store.
For example, in the event of accidents, ascension in beings ordinarily evolved is so violent that they die for this motive, and not directly by the accident.
Kundalini must ascend through Brâhmânâdi to achieve the Perfect Ecstasy. So, the seven stopcocks must work without any fault, perfectly.
Here Kundalini sparkles to the utmost; rather, when the Cosmic Ether stored on the Sacrum plexus comes here, it cannot be any longer the Cosmic Ether of manifest life: it becomes the Cosmic Ether itself. The development of the Crown Wheel has two aspects: one active aspect, with manifestation seed; and another passive aspect, without manifestation seed.
One is the holy syllable “OM”, and the other the holy syllable “A”.
When the Initiate is actively in this mystical state, the aura of this wheel rises, gets bigger and extends in a wonderful way. But when the Initiate is in a passive state, the aura of this wheel covers and hides his whole being with its shell, as a nutshell preserving its fruit.
When a soul of this kind remains in ecstasy, it is impossible to see its individual attributes because only a feeling of eternity fits into it.
Here no exercise is useful, except mental emptiness and continuous yearning for higher spiritual perfection; but those who succeed in developing such a power, unveil external aspects of most absolute immobility, insensibility and incorruptibility.
So, may all disciples aiming at perfection succeed in uttering eternally the holy syllables: “OM”.