Work with Meridians.
Sushumna, Chitrini, Zhen-Mo,
the Microcosmic Orbit, and the Middle Meridian
Upon mastering all exercises described above, it would be appropriate to put the main meridians of the body to rights.
The whole human body, as well as the bodies of animals and even plants, is being run through by numerous canals, invisible with regular eyesight, which channel energies of various levels of refinement around the organism. These canals, called meridians (or nadi) were discovered and utilized in ancient Chinese medicine (Zhen Tsyu therapy).
The meridians can be discovered, in particular, because of their increased — compared to adjacent body tissues — electroconductivity (but one should keep in mind that electric current, even the weakest one, is inadequate for them; therefore the methods of punctate electrodiagnostics and electropuncture can be used in the extraordinary cases only).
The meridians can be seen by people whose range of perception was expanded through a system of training similar to ours.
As a result of inflammatory processes in the body tissues, a contaminating type of nutrition, or external negative energetic influences, the meridians can lose their conductivity. In this case, lingering disorders of the organs, deprived of proper energy supply, may develop. Such diseases usually cannot be completely cured by using drug therapy. In cases like this, acupunctural methods and similar healing techniques (laser, vibration, and other kinds of influence through “biologically active points” of the integument) turn out to be efficient. These methods work, because they restore conductivity of the meridians by means of sending currents of energy through them.
But it is more effective to cleanse the meridians on one’s own using the methods described in this book.
Let us talk about several meridians that can be successfully used in psychic self-regulation.
All the chakras are connected with one another by large meridians that run along the spine, as well as the front and the middle part of the body.
A wide canal called sushumna (tu-mo or du-mo in Chinese) runs along the spine from muladhara to sahasrara. One of its functions is to distribute the energy extracted from food to the chakras. Within sushumna — in its back section — there is a significantly narrower canal (its diameter is about 2 centimeters), called vajrini, through which the energy of svadhisthana (called udana) flows to other chakras.
The third of the spinal canals — chitrini (Brahmanadi) — is located behind sushumna. It begins at the end section of sahasrara, passes under the occipital bone, and runs down the back part of the neck and then — down the backmost part of the spinal column, coinciding with the spinous processes of vertebras and the skin.
Chitrini is an extremely important structure. It will serve us as a standard for one of the subtlest states, to which we can attune the emotional sphere.
On the G.Gurdjieff’s scale of hydrogens [62], the state of chitrini is assessed as H-3. This is the Holy Spirit’s level of subtlety. Upon learning to concentrate in chitrini, one can easily “dive” as a consciousness through this canal into the eons of the Holy Spirit and directly communicate, embrace, and then merge with Him there. This is how religious truths turn from abstractions into reality.
The system of the chakras is also communicated by the front channel (zhen-mo). It begins from the upper end of sushumna, forks into two branches that turn around sahasrara and join in the forehead area to split into several small canals that run down the face and join again in the vishuddha region. One more branch of this canal goes through the middle of the head, reaches the chin coming through the palate and joins the other branches at the neck. After that the canal runs down the front side of the trunk, branching off to every chakra, passes the share bone, and heads for the coccyx.
We should pay special attention to the upper part of this canal, which unites the four chakras of the so-called emotional center [62] — anahata, vishuddha, manipura, and ajna — into one functional block.
Anahata and vishuddha play the leading role in this complex. The intensity of emotions depends to a certain extent on the manipura chakra, while the ajna chakra serves as a liaison for interaction with hypothalamic-pituitary complex, which plays an important role in coordination of the emotional and behavioral reactions of the entire organism through the endocrine system.
Only those people whose front canal is well developed and who know how to use it are able to experience truly exalted positive emotions in communicating with other people and with nature. But such people are extremely few: only a handful per thousands. Most people do not have a developed front canal, and it takes special efforts to develop it.
In Chinese tradition, the system of the spine and the front canals is called microcosmic orbit. By means of circulating energy around the microcosmic orbit, one can perform transformation of energies within the organism. The aim of this work is to produce and accumulate Golden Elixir within the organism; the subtlest energy obtained as a result of such transformation was called by this term in ancient alchemy.
Performance of exercises with the microcosmic orbit produces a strong emotional effect.
On one of the subtlest planes, the system of the chakras is communicated by one more canal — the middle meridian. This wide meridian connects the developed chakras, running vertically through the middle of the entire body. It forms along with the development of the chakras: it cannot be found in people whose chakras are undeveloped. Its width corresponds to the diameter of the chakras. This is also a very important energy structure of the organism.
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Let us begin with sushumna. The easiest way to cleanse it is to use an image of a “bottle brush”. In order to do this, we need to imagine ourselves moving back from the body out of anahata and becoming a little bigger then the body. Then we start to scrub sushumna with this “bottle brush”. An important detail to keep in mind while doing this is that we need to cleanse also the passage from sushumna to muladhara, which goes not just down from the sacrum in a straight line, but down and forward.
The next in turn for cleansing is the middle meridian. It is convenient to work with this structure at special places of power, which are auspicious for moving the concentration of the consciousness below the body. This implies that by this time the consciousness of the practitioner must be developed by performing the previous exercises to such an extent that allows moving as a consciousness below the body without losing the subtle state.
Upon entering the middle meridian from below, we have to “wash” its walls with an image of a wet rag with soapy foam for example, or in any other appropriate manner.
After that, it is quite important to cleanse the partition between sushumna and the middle meridian. In order to do this, one has to be in both meridians at the same time, coming into sushumna from above and to the middle meridian — from below. In this case, the partition between these meridians and possible dark spots on it become visible. Elimination of these spots brings the next stage of purification of the body.
When sushumna is cleansed, we may start working with the microcosmic orbit. For this purpose, we enter the two lower chakras and bring their energy up the sushumna, move it over the head, and bring it down through the front canal back to the two lower chakras. We repeat this exercise several times. During this process, coarse energies, including those causing diseases, get transformed into subtle ones in the zhen-mo meridian.
After the first few times of working with the microcosmic orbit, one must perform a deep relaxation in shavasana.
In the future, we may learn to change the trajectory of the energy moving around the microcosmic orbit — so that the energy flow will pass through the diseased regions of the body (if there are any). This will enable us to heal them.
We begin to learn to rotate energy around the orbit which includes the sushumna meridian. But then we have to learn to do the same through chitrini and within the energy cocoon that surrounds the body. All this will bring yet other levels of health improvement and refinement of the consciousness. In the practice of our School, this is usually performed quite easily at the corresponding places of power — areas that have a special energetic significance for a human being. You may well find them somewhere around the place you live in.
In conclusion of this chapter I want to mention that there are methods of Chinese Qi Gong that got into Europe, which involve work with the microcosmic orbit without preceding thorough cleansing and development of the chakras and meridians. In such cases the entire work is performed only at the level of visual images, while purifying, healing, and refining effects are not obtained.
Vladimir Antonov, Ph.D. (in biology)
(chapter from the book Ecopsychology)
Translated from Russian
by Mikhail Nikolenko
