Left Agnya:
Qualities: superego
Gross expression: right temple
Place on hand: left ring finger
Manifestations: conditioning, memories
Causes of catch: harm to self, habits
Centre Agnya:
Qualities: forgiveness, resurrection
Gross expression: crossing of optic thalamus (pineal & pituitary glands)
Place on hand: ring fingers
Manifestations: sight, hearing, thought
Causes of catch: roving eyes, bad company
Number of petals: two
Element: light
Right Agnya:
Qualities: ego
Gross expression: left temple
Place on hand: right ring finger
Manifestations: ‘I-ness’
Causes of catch: wrong ideas about God, worries, harm to others
The Agnya Chakra, sometimes called the third eye, is placed at the centre of the brain. When Kundalini passes through the chakra, our thought waves elongate so that the space between two thoughts grows wider. As the petals of the chakra open, silence blossoms in the centre and spreads outwards, pushing the thoughts to the periphery of your awareness. In thoughtless awareness, you actually feel this beautiful silence which is at the heart of creation. Just like the vibrations, this expansion of silence is a wave created without percussion. Absolute and therefore beyond causality, all you can say is that it is.
The human mind is divided into an ego (ahankara) and a superego (manas). They are the culminations of the channels of pingala and ida nadi which cross here at Agnya.
Everything which passes into the left side; memories, conditioning, all that is past, accumulates in the super-ego on the right side of the brain. Like the ego, the superego is a dead end and so overactivity of the left side makes it swell up like a balloon. This can be caused by the exercise of a highly emotional temperament, by wishing harm to yourself, by indulging in habits and so on. For problems of this nature you should do the same as for a weak left side.
The superego is in the subconscious realm, where all your past knowledge and experience is stored. Bordering the individual subconscious is the collective subconscious and existing there are spirits of the dead (bhoots) still tied to this earth by chains of passion and appetite. Spiritualists, mediums, necromancers, work in this realm.
The ego, (ahankara) is on the left side of the brain and is the balloon into which the fumes of right side activity rise. As we burn energy in working, thinking planning, losing our tempers, the subsequent heat generates these fumes in the right side as in a furnace chimney. But instead of escaping to the atmosphere these fumes only inflate the ego balloon. This is why, at a relatively early age, the fontanele area calcifies and hardens and we begin to develop our separate identities and our concept of ‘I’. As the heart is enveloped by ego, we lose sight of the spirit and identify only with the one we call ‘I’.
To deflate the balloon and pull the ego back into proportion with the rest of the instrument, we have to prick it with the pin of humour. By watching the ego as a witness, you begin to see its subtle tricks and manipulations and then it becomes a joke. We cannot fight the ego, it is a contradiction in terms. We can only bring it down with our laughter. Then the heart can break through its stranglehold.
It is not that we want to kill the ego. It has after all its place in the instrument; without it we would not act. But we want to bring it into balance with the superego, in order to create the space for the Kundalini to pass through into Sahasrara.
In the same way that the spirit does not accumulate guilt, it does not accumulate sin or karma. Karma is the result of past action of ego, and once we are in the Spirit, beyond ego, we are beyond karma.
The ego is in the supraconscious, the realm of the future. Clairvoyants, power seekers, visionaries, go to this side.
Ambitious people who have led extremely egocentric lives, possibly dominating nations with the power of their ego, may, on dying, pass into the collective supraconscious from where they may possess people of similar ambition.
Exploration of either realm is extremely dangerous. Shri Mataji says they are essentially the same : ‘It makes no difference if it is the black fumes of the coal (subconscious), or the yellow fumes of the benzol (supraconscious). Both are equally suffocating.’
En route to the Sahasrara Chakra, sushumna nadi passes through centre Agnya. To cross the agnya chakra we must develop the power of forgiveness. We must learn to forgive ourselves and others. Once we see that our anger is self-destructive, that it is only we who suffer as the result of that emotion, then it becomes easy to forgive. We realise that forgiveness itself is a myth. The person we are forgiving remains unaffected. All that happens is that we lose our chains. Furthermore forgiveness relaxes the Agnya, thus allowing the Kundalini to pass through the narrow crossing point of the optic chiasma.
Because agnya governs our sight, we should respect the eyes as a gift with which the beauty of God’s creation is revealed to us. We should not waste or abuse that gift. If you want to stop your eyes from wandering, fix them on the earth. You can also clear this centre through the other elements, by looking at a clear sky or into the candle flame.
Being the gateway to the sahasrara, the purest realm,the agnya will not allow Kundalini to rise above it if there are still impurities in the mind. So we must purify our minds, purify our attention which in the realised state, is the instrument of our perception. Shri Mataji says, ‘this eternal light encompasses the whole world, and you see the whole world within yourself.’