Muladhara, The Realm of Memory

The chakras do not awaken. They are already awakened in everyone. It only seems as if they awaken as we become aware of flowing our energy through them, because energy, willpower and awareness are one and the same thing. To become conscious of the core of energy itself, all we have to do is detach awareness from the realms of reason, memory and aggressive, intellectual will; then turning inward, we move from one chakra to another. The physical body changes as these more refined energies flow through it and the inner nerve system, called nadis, inwardly becomes stronger and stronger. The muladhara chakra is the memory center, located at the base of the spine, and is physically associated with the sacral or pelvic nerve plexus. Mula means "root" and adhara means "support," so this is called the root chakra. Its color is red. It governs the realms of time and memory, creating a consciousness of time through the powers of memory. Whenever we go back in our memory patterns, we are using the forces of the muladhara.

This chakra is associated also with human qualities of individuality, egoism, materialism and dominance. Man lives mostly in this chakra during the first seven years of life. This center has four "petals" or aspects, one of which governs memories of past lives. The other three contain the compiled memory patterns and interrelated karmas of this life. When this chakra is developed, people are able to travel on the astral plane. It is complete within itself, but when the first two chakras are charged with gross, instinctive impulses and developed through Western education, with its values and foibles which contradict Hindu dharma, they can create together a very strong odic force which, when propelled by the worldly will of the third chakra toward outer success and power, can dominate the mind and make it nearly impossible for awareness to function in the higher force centers, so great is the material magnetism. Men living fully in these lower three chakras therefore say that God is above them, not knowing that "above" is their own head and they are living "below," near the base of the spine.

You have seen many people living totally in the past--it's their only reality. They are always reminiscing: "When I was a boy, we used toÆ’ Why, I remember whenÆ’ It wasn't like this a few years agoÆ’" On and on they go, living a recollected personal history and usually unaware that they have a present to be enjoyed and a future to be created. On and on they go, giving their life force energies to the task of perpetuating the past. The muladhara forces are not negative forces. Used and governed positively by the higher centers, the powers of time, memory and sex are transmuted into the very fuel that propels awareness along the spinal climb and into the head. Similarly, the mature lotus blossom cannot in wisdom criticize the muddy roots far below which, after all, sustain its very life.

The center of man's reasoning faculties lies in the second, or hypogastric, plexus below the navel. It is termed svadhishthana, which in Sanskrit means "one's own place." Its color is reddish orange. Once the ability to remember has been established, the natural consequence is reason, and from reason evolves the intellect. Reason and intellect work through this chakra. We open naturally into this chakra between the ages of seven and thirteen, when we want to know why the sky is blue and the "whys" of everything. If very little memory exists, very little intellect is present. In other words, reason is the manipulation of memorized information. We categorize it, edit it, rearrange it and store the results. That is the essence of the limited capacity of reason. Therefore, this center controls the muladhara, and in fact, each progressively "higher" center controls all preceding centers. That is the law. In thinking, solving problems, analyzing people or situations, we are functioning in the domain of svadhishthana.

This center has six "petals" or aspects and can therefore express itself in six distinct ways: diplomacy, sensitivity, cleverness, doubt, anxiety and procrastination. These aspects or personae would seem very real to people living predominantly in this chakra. They would research, explore and wonder, "Why? Why? Why?" They would propose theories and then formulate reasonable explanations. They would form a rigid intellectual mind based on opinionated knowledge and accumulated memory, reinforced by habit patterns of the instinctive mind.

Source K.H.M