THE FORCE-CENTRES

CHAPTER I

THE MEANING OF THE WORD

states

represents

THE word Chakra wheel is Sanskrit, and signifies a wheel. It is also used in various helpful derivative subsidiary, derivative and symbolical meanings symbolical senses, just as is its English equivalent equivalent; as we might speak of the wheel of fate fate, so does the Buddhist speak of the wheel of life and death; and he describes describes that first great sermon sermon in which the Lord Buddha propounded His doctrine as the Dhammachakkappavattana Sutta The Discourse on Setting the Wheel of the Law in Motion (chakka wheel being the word used Pali equivalent for the Sanskrit chakra) which Professor Rhys Davids renders poetically renders as "to set rolling the royal chariot-wheel of a universal empire of truth and righteousness." That is exactly the spirit of the meaning which the expression conveys to the Buddhist devotee, though the literal translation of the bare words is "the turning of the wheel of the Law". The special use of the word chakra with which we are at the moment concerned is its application to a series of wheel-like vortices which exist in the surface of the etheric double of man.

PRELIMINARY EXPLANATIONS

As this book may probably fall into the hands of some who are not familiar with Theosophical terminology it may be well to insert here a few words of preliminary explanation.

In ordinary superficial conversation a man sometimes mentions his soul, implying that the body through which he speaks is the real man, and that this thing called the soul is a possession or appanage of that body; a sort of captive balloon floating over him, and in some vague sort of way attached to him. This is a loose, inaccurate and misleading statement; the exact opposite is the truth. Man is a soul and owns a body, several bodies in fact; for besides the visible vehicle by means of which he transacts his business with this lower world, he has others which are not visible to ordinary sight, by means of which he deals with the emotional and mental worlds. With those, however, we are not for the moment concerned.

In the course of the last century enormous advances have been made in our knowledge of the minute details of the physical body; students of medicine are now