Anatomy is related to matter and deals with the structure of body, while occult anatomy is related to life and deals with function. Life is an organizing agency which is anterior to and causal to the organism which is its expression. Hence there is distinctness of function with regard to organism. Function transcends organ as purpose transcends action. Within and above the physical organism there is a functional organism which the yoga calls the vital body or Pranayama Kosha. This pranic body brings to the physical organism its vital powers and the activities of its various organs. An essential characteristic of this pranic or functional body is that it is electric in nature. Yoga describes the constituents of the pranic body as luminous like lightening.
Now prana is not a homogeneous force, not an undifferentiated fluid; it is the very complex life energy of an ego who has developed many tendencies, whether powers or weaknesses and lends them to his physical body. The pranic body thus appears to be a highly organized individual complex of these powers. Various pranas are in fact mentioned of which the singular prana is the synthesis or abstract unity. The differentiated vital pranas or currents are the functional energies of the physical body. The pranic body organizes, maintains and develops the physical organism. Since prana is vital electricity, the vital tonus of the physical body is preserved and maintained by the pranic body.
It has been proved that electricity plays an important part in keeping the substance of living bodies. Living matter is colloidal in structure and the colloidal state is maintained by the electric charges which keep the particles of substance separate. The difference between the dead and the living matter is precisely this that in death the isolated particles of the colloids lose their electric charges; they become physically inert as they become electrically extinct. The aging of the tissues is due to loss suffered by them in the tension of their colloidal charges. The vital tonus then is a function of the electric tonus; and all activities tend to be conceived no longer as mechanical or chemical but as related to electricity. Occult anatomy gives a graphic account of this vital electricity and deals with its subtle functions.
The pranic body would not be an electric complex were it not polarized. That portion of it which underlies the nervous system has been found to be electrically positive, while portion underlying the cellular and the humoral system is electrically negative. It has been ascertained that while the body is sustained by the chemical food, it is maintained and kept alive by breathing. It is the breathing which provides the body with the electrical energy it needs to preserve its vital powers. For we do not breath air alone we also inhale electric charges. Oxygen is not the only element introduced into our body by the respiratory system but also electric ions freely dispersed in our atmosphere. Now air, from this point of view, is defined as a highly dispersed colloidal system. Air is known to contain ions of varying weights light, medium and heavy. These ions have been weighed, numbered and measured as to their electric charges. It has been found that the most useful ions for us to absorb by breathing are negative ions. Positive ions debilitate the health; diminish the vital energy, while the negative ones strengthen the vital energy. The blood being in contact with the lungs, becomes a carrier of negative charges to the somatic system. This function of breathing has been called electro exchange and as oxygen is the most electro-negative of chemical elements, its part in the maintenance of life processes must not be described as chemical only but as electrical also. It thus becomes clear that the bio-electric function of blood circulation is dual; 1) It keeps up the negative tension of the somatic system and 2) keeps up at the same time the positive tension of the nervous system. The whole electric structure is thus maintained in a state of active efficiency, since the vital tonus is exactly represented by the potential difference between the two electric systems of the body.
The theory of life as combustion is now superseded by one of electrical induction. The body can no longer be likened to a machine run by heat whose activity is measured in calories, it has now become an electric engine. Both in the cellulo-humoral and nervous systems, electricity is found to play an all important part. Since living substance is in its nature colloidal, whether in the flowing humours or in the plasma of the cells, its isolated particles carry electrical charges. These charges constitute a highly differentiated electric lining to the somatic substance of the body, whose chemical and organic complexity it espouses and whose activity it commands. It has already been shown by experiments that there exists an electro-structure in the plant life, in the animal life and in the human life. Its tension is now equated with the vital tonus which preserves the physical body.
So well organized is this electro-structure that to each function corresponds a special need of the nerve influx. Along the nerve ruling the function of the muscle and through the tissue itself, the nervous electricity runs at a particular speed. But along the nerve ruling a gland and through the tissue of that gland there is another speed of nerve energy. Each function has its own chronaxie. Sensory activity, muscular movements, glandular secretion, contraction or dilation of blood vessels, cell metabolism, every conceivable function is a dynamic whole within the electric body and imposes its own kind of energy upon the organs serving that function. Chronaxie expresses all the functional properties of the tissue under consideration.
Moreover all those different functional speeds are coordinated in the electro-structure as the corresponding organs are coordinated in the physical body. They are vertically as well as laterally connected. Each lower functional level is subordinated to the higher levels. Each higher function exercises control over the lower ones and all functions are subordinated to the crowning one, which in the animal is the specific instinct and in man the self-conscious will which can check and stimulate all the others, imposing its master speed.
This electro-structure in which all the different functional speeds are coordinated is known as pranayama kosha or vital body in Yoga Shashtra, as functional body in physiology and as etheric double in theosophy. The etheric body being electrical in nature is indicated by the radiating lines of forces, the short being positive and the long ones being negative. The electric body sends out longer or shorter positive and negative vibrations. The appearance of these vibrations outside the physical body is known as aura. Aura then depends upon the etheric power which the etheric body sends out permitting greater ease in the transmission of vibrations. The etheric body is the connecting link between the physical body and ego. When the main positive-negative vibrations at the glabella of the physical body is neutralized, the silver cord connecting the physical body and the ego is said to have broken loose, that is, death occurs. To sum up, 1) there is an electro-structure lining up the physical body 2) it is constitutionally electrical, hence it is called etheric, 3) it expresses the functional activitiy of the physical organs. 4) Being functional it is admitted to be casual and anterior to the physical body. 5) it is highly organized and the details of its organization broadly reflect the organization of the pranas, dividing the structure into correlated areas and subordinated functional levels. 6) The integration of functions culminates in the self-conscious will. Occult anatomy covers all this subject.
Physiology has discovered functional hierarchy and the levels of function are three: the humoral, the autonomous and the voluntary. The humoral has for its essential function the regulation of all the chemical processes going on within the cells and is called metabolism. This function is under the rule of glandular system. The chemical elements absorbed in the food or otherwise are first turned into colloids by the various digestive processes, then passed into the blood, finally to be distributed as reserves by the endocrine glands. The humoral system preserves the chemical equilibrium. The thyroid deals with the iodine, the pituitary with the bromide, the parathyroid with calcium, the suprarenals with the alkalis, the liver and the pancreas with sugar. The quantity of water in the cell colloids is maintained as well as the chemical institution of the various tissues. The main function of this level is “to regulate the general metabolism, to maintain the continuity of the basic humoral composition and of the acid-alkaline equilibrium of humorals, by releasing water through the skin and kidneys, by pouring the endocrine secretion, by increasing the tenor of the blood either in alkaline or in acid ions.” This results in what has been called vegetative tonus.
The second level that of the autonomous system introduces us to the animal stage. Centered in the midbrain, around the third ventricle it rules the humoral level of which it commands the organs and functions by means of the sympathetic and parasympathetic chains. The two chains possess a mutually contrary and compensating action, the one exciting certain organs and the other inhibiting them. The equilibrium between these two chains is constantly watched over by the middle brain centers, modified according to the needs of the moment with wonderful quickness and subtlety. In fact to this level of animal consciousness belongs instinctual and the affective aspects of consciousness. The preservation of life instinct has its seat here, and the various emotional states are only alarm bells which that instinct rings, so that the organism is immediately adapted to its present needs. It is no wonder therefore if the middle brain and the sympathetic physiology assume an increasing importance both in medicine and education. Emotional disturbances often lead to functional disorders which, in turn, lead to functional diseases when the disorders become habitual.
The third level is represented b the higher brain – its two hemisphere, the cerebellum and spine with their afferent and efferent nerves. Its essential function is mental activity, that is, voluntarily relationship between the individual and its environments.
Occult anatomy and ordinary anatomy join hands in bringing about functional unity as well as structural unity which marks the three leveled human organism. Each level is held in subordination by the higher ones and all are integrated in the top-most. This law of subordination has been verified both in the normal and in the pathological state. Not only does the inhibition of the higher suppress its own activity, it also liberated from its brake the activity of the lower. Many are the proofs attesting that the three levels together are held in subordination by the self-consciousness in man, by the consciousness of the species in the animal. In psychoanalysis the free expression of the repressed effects is only possible when the higher consciousness has been removed by relaxation. A similar condition, necessary for the establishment of the conditional reflexes and hypnosis, can only obtain its automatic response if the subject has lost the use of his self-consciousness.
Functional disturbance has been restored to health by stimulating the weakened higher level and by reeducating the latter to permanent mastery. This only proves that the relationship of self-consciousness with its physiological levels can be of two kinds. It can associated with them in weakness and then disturb the psychological subordination by stimulating the lower level unduly; it can associate with them in strength and then assume complete mastery over them. This law explains the physiological feats of the Hathayogi; it would also explain the psychological feats of the Rajayogi.
In man health is assured if he associates his self-consciousness with his highest level. Living at one’s highest is therefore the surest medical prescription. However all physiologists do not perceive the spiritual importance of the self in man. Hence some of the psycho-physiologists exalts the unconscious process above the self, the psychic above the spiritual by endowing the unconscious with the essential character of spirit. Man can no longer be considered as body and mind only but as a ladder of functions some bodily, some psychic, over which is playing the free dynamism of the spiritual self.
The etheric body is described as “a field of energy that sustains every cell and atom of the physical body, permeating every part of it and extending beyond its periphery to form a part of the health aura.” The etheric body is therefore the archetype upon which the physical body is erected. The etheric body has three basic functions all closely related. It acts as a receiver of vital force or prana, as an assimilator of prana and as a transmitter of prana. All the chakras are located in the etheric body. A chakra may be defined as a force center or a focal point in the etheric body for the reception, assimilation and transmission of energies. These energies originate from a variety of sources – from the local environment, from the group consciousness of a nation and from cosmic forces flowing from the surrounding universe. All these energies are received by the chakras and transmitted to the human force field.
Yoga speaks of seven major chakras; it locates two of them in the head and the remaining five along the dorsal part of the spine. They appear as rotating vortices of subtle matter and each center is said to consist of interblending concentric whorls of energies. These energies, having passed through the chakras, play upon the nadis or nevers causing the nervous system to respond and in so doing pass the impulse on to the endocrine glands. This effects release of hormones into the blood stream, thus conditioning man and making him what he is at any given time. Hence a close correspondence is held to exist between the glands of the physical body and the chakras of the etheric body.
Gonads, adrenals, pancreas, thymus, thyroid, pituitary and pineal are the even glands of the physical body which have their close correspondence with the seven chakras of the etheric body, namely muladhara, swadhisthana, manipura, ananhat, vishuddhi, ajna and sahasrara. A simulation of the etheric centers or chakars stimulates the glands and the glands thus stimulated secrete the hormones which vivify the physical body.
The base chakra animates the substance of the physical body. The code of life is known to exist in the double helix configuration of the DNA molecules. Curiously enough the ascent of the kundalini from the base to the crown chakra follows the pattern of the double helix reminding us of the Caduces of the inter-twined snakes, long used as a symbol of the healing arts.
Each chakra is a vortex of energy which revolves under the influence of a positive and negative current. The current following on the right side of the body is positive and on the left side is negative. As these currents cross at the nodes they cause the chakra to revolve in its own direction. The direction of its revolution is itself determined by the influence of the positive and negative currents through the right and left sides of the body.
These energy currents are in fact the breath, that is why breathing is of vital importance in yoga. At various times the breath predominates through one nostril or the other. The alternation of the breath in this way produces the changes of the direction in the flow of energy currents and the revolution of the chakras. The positive and the negative currents are termed ida and pingala respectively. It is when the positive and negative forces of this polarity are balanced then the third force manifests. This third force or the neutral force is called Sushumna in yoga and middle pillar in quabalistic terminology.
Sushumna, so far, has been taken to mean a certain subtle nerve line connecting the base of the vertical column with the top level cerebrum. But in yoga “the occult meaning of sushumna is a basic axis that maintains and evolves with respect to two ideal limits. “Bindu and Nada-potency. Sushumna is the true norm of any given form of systematic, harmonized process in all creation, so that a material atom a living cell, a conscious or unconscious mental phenomenon-all tend to come under its governance for their utmost harmonic manifestation.” Wherever this tendency is in evidence, the process is said to be normal and correct but a deviation from it makes the process abnormal and erratic.
The human body is a very complex and delicate mechanism. The energy that works it is Mahaprana which is not a mere biological factor now being studied as DNA, RNA etc. It is an operative élan or power in all creation. It is known as Kundalini in yoga science; hence it is absurd to identify it with any nerve or mechanism of the body. But in the human apparatus it finds itself subject to a variety of physiological conditions as represented chiefly by the brain, the spinal column and the nervous system in general. It has been so-be-cause otherwise man cannot carry on with the pressing requirements of his biological existence here on earth. But adaptation to these requirements has meant a load, a drag, a brake. An ascent of Kundalini thereby “from static dormant base of mere potency to the dynamic level of perfect unfoldment” becomes a necessity. Hence the awakening of Kundalini plays an important part in Occult Anatomy.