Psychical Self-Regulation

The ideas of psychical self-regulation originated in Europe, namely in Germany. German physicians at the end of the 19^th century began to develop the idea which they called autogenic training. The book Autogenic Training by doctor Schultz became most well-known.

What was the subject of these recommendations and research? Relaxation, first of all. One could relax the body and the mind when lying on the back or sitting in the so-called coachman’s posture (that is sitting on a chair in a stooped pose).

Of course, this had nothing to do with yoga as a spiritual direction, but it laid the basis of this subject. And it played a positive role as a pre-history of psychical self-regulation.

The next large stage was the activity of Alexander Romen, a doctor-psychiatrist, who worked in Alma-Ata and in Moscow. The very term psychical self-regulation was invented by him. He dedicated much of his time and effort to this direction, published tens of works on this subject.

What did he write about? Mainly it was just propaganda of the idea: “Let workers of mines practice psychical self-regulation!”, “Let workers of hospitals also…!”, and so on…

It was very good, because thanks to him the term psychical self-regulation was accepted and became well-known. But Romen did not create any system of teaching psychical self-regulation.

Such a system was created for the first time by us, by our scientific-spiritual School. Why can I claim this? Because efficient psychical self-regulation is not possible without the use of the functions of the chakras.

The chakras are reflexogenious zones of the emotional-volitional sphere. By moving the concentration of the consciousness into a certain chakra, we can — just thanks to this movement of the consciousness — can change the attunement of ourselves either to intellectual activity, or to the perception of the beautiful, or to developing in ourselves the most significant quality — the capability for cordial love, or to work activity, etc.

Without the use of the chakras one cannot regulate so efficiently one’s own psychical state.

It is our books that presented for the first time a description of the functions of the chakras and methods of working with them. And for the first time, thanks to these books, the very concept of the chakras became legitimated in the USSR. Before this, the functionaries of the Communist Party, who supervised the science, asserted that the existence of chakras was not proved by science and therefore there were no chakras whatsoever! Thus the very subject of chakras was forbidden!

Yet chakras do exist. One can learn to use them — and this makes the beginning of the true path of yoga: raja yoga and the next higher stage — buddhi yoga.

I should mention also that there was a lot of different literature about chakras published by incompetent authors from different countries, and this literature caused much harm.

For example, there is a statement (though this is not the most harmful one) that chakras contain structures resembling lotus flowers with different numbers of petals. But in chakras there are no lotuses! They contain no such structures whatsoever! Chakras are volumes filled with bioenergies or with the consciousness of man.

If one tries to see lotus flowers in the chakras, it is not harmful. By doing it, one learns to concentrate in the chakras.

Another error is extremely harmful: a long time ago another German doctor wrote a book where he claimed that the chakras have to be colored with different colors: since there are seven main colors of the rainbow, seven musical notes, seven chakras — all are seven — therefore every chakra has to have a corresponding musical note and a corresponding color. For example, it turned out that the anahata chakra has to be green…

And this tragic error caused a lot of harm to a very large number of people who sincerely wanted to become better and believed this false idea!

… Let us understand that in the chakra anahata the spiritual heart has to be born and to begin to grow. Then the spiritual heart has to transform — by its quality — to the state of the Holy Spirit and the Creator.

The Holy Spirit, the Creator — what is Their color? Tender-white-goldish! (Juan Matus spoke of amber-tinted color).

And of what use is a green spiritual heart? God is not green at all! Who is green? Frogs… So with a green spiritual heart one can aspire to merge with swamp algae for example, but not with God!

All the chakras have to be made perfect. The most important of them is the anahata chakra. We can grow properly (as a consciousness) in qualitative and quantitative aspects only as spiritual hearts! There is no other possibility!

The state of all the chakras has to be made as close as possible to the state of God in the aspect of the Creator and in the aspect of the Holy Spirit. The most subtle stratum in the entire multidimensional Absolute is the Creator. We have to strive to submerge by the spiritual heart into Him; then we will be able to draw there all other structures of the organism that have value there.

What structures do I mean? There are the chakras (they were known in India in particular). There is also the concept of dantians (they were known to Chinese Taoists). The chakra anahata is the middle dantian. There is also the lower dantian — the power block of the organism consisting of the three lower chakras. And there are three upper chakras composing the upper dantian.

The main dantian is the middle one. And the other two are auxiliary. They are also necessary; they, too, have their own functions.

We can submerge into the Creator with all our dantians and merge with Him! This is an important goal which is worthy effort!

In order to be able to submerge all the dantians into the Creator, we have to bring them to His state. Let me repeat that His Light is tender-white-goldish. It makes no sense to try to enter the Creator with red, green, or other-colored chakras!

People who were engaged in the work of coloring their chakras — unless they wash out, which is very hard to do — they have no possibility to reach the higher stages on the Path of spiritual development! This is a trap! I ask everyone not to follow this harmful tendency and stay away from those who promote such vicious, dangerous pseudo-spiritual tendencies!

By the way, one may ask, pointing at me: “Why does he impose his opinion as if he alone is right? Why should others believe him?”

The point is that our group has managed to traverse the entire Path; we have reached the end of the Path. Of course, we know that there are possibilities for continuing work on ourselves, but we have traversed the entire Path — and therefore we can see very well mistakes made by other seekers. If you have traversed and studied the entire Path, if you know it — then you can see concrete stages of this Path and you can easily discern true and false attempts of other people who try to walk this Path.

… So, we agreed that the main chakra is anahata. And that the Straight Path is the Path of love for the Creation and the Creator. And if through our love for the Creation we have mastered the function of Love (with a capital letter) — then we can fall in love with the Creator too. Thanks to this love we merge with Him in the end.

If we have made at least initial steps on this Path (namely if we have developed ourselves as spiritual hearts), then it is easy to develop further. Then we learn to be more subtle and more large spiritual hearts.

How can we grow? For this purpose we have to find some forms that we can fill with ourselves (as spiritual hearts). They can be cocoons of strong, powerful, subtle trees of different biological species. In our region, they are poplars, pines, birches, spruces. I mean some particular plants which can be called plants of power; that is, this concerns only certain specimens, not the entire biological species.

So we can learn to fill their forms with ourselves as spiritual hearts by exiting from the anahata chakra backward into these forms.

Then we can spread in expanses that we find in the mountains, in the steppe, over the sea. By training in this way, we become larger and larger spiritual hearts and gain the ability to see with the consciousness.

Another important point is that the spiritual heart necessarily has to have arms with hands; with these hands we can support, nourish other living beings with our power of love, help them.

If we walk this Path, then Holy Spirits very soon become visible for us. And if we are able to see Them, then we can also hear Them: after all it is more convenient to hear someone if you see them.

By filling the forms of Consciousnesses of our Divine Teachers, Holy Spirits, by attuning with Them — we grow with Their help up to the level when we can enter the Abode of the Creator.

Then one can look from the Primordial Consciousness at the Creation, can come to the matter of one’s own body from another side, from the side of the Creator, can transform the matter of the body…

… This is the Straight Path!

The idea of the Straight Path exists in Buddhism. It is present also in Islam — as a principle of directing one’s attention toward the Creator.

The Straight Path is the shortest Path to full spiritual self-realization!

Of course, one has to keep in mind that the techniques of psychical self-regulation alone cannot enable one to grow to the fullness of Perfection. Two other components are also necessary: intellectual and ethical ones.

We have to understand with the mind what is God, to begin with. But so few people can give a reasonable answer to this question! At best they can tell you one of the names of God and tell you that this is God. But they have no idea what is behind these names! They would not tell you that God is the Creator (the Primordial Consciousness), that God is also the Absolute (that is Everything: the Creator together with His Creation)! And they do not know what we should do in relation to the fact that there is God!

The majority of people who acknowledge the existence of God begin to beg from Him salvation for themselves or, at best, for someone else as well. But in reality God does not need our prayers or different variations of our worship! God needs our efforts on self-development!

What concerns repentance practiced in some spiritual movements, its purpose does not consist in begging forgiveness for our misdeeds; its purpose is to learn not to repeat mistakes!

If we have understood this, then the ethical component of spiritual development becomes actual for us; ethical work on oneself becomes meaningful. One has not to kowtow all day long but has to learn to avoid repeating mistakes!

But what is a mistake and what is not? We are able to discern this only if we understand what is God, what is man, what is the meaning of our lives! This meaning consists in our spiritual development! The meaning of life consists in spiritual development, not in accumulation of money or becoming elevated over others!

If we have understood this very well — only then can we make significant progress in our personal evolution in short periods of time.

Vladimir Antonov, Ph.D. (in biology)
(chapter from the book Anatomy of God)

Translated from Russian
by Mikhail Nikolenko

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