Chakras: Vishuddha Chakra (Vishuddhi)

By Stuart Sovatsky

Chakras: Vishuddha Chakra.

From sexual passion to compassion to spiritual dispassion: such are the refinements from svadhisthana to anahata and now vishuddha, the throat chakra.

Words are, literally, "shaped currents of air" (the heart element); thus, "the word become flesh" is found as the opened heart. The elemental ether that lives in vishuddha is even more subtle than air and is thus "more than words can say." Vishuddha permeates words with their spirit, their near-ineffable meanings, nuances, and innuendoes often lost in a too-literalness. In other instances, subtle meaning is lost to us because we are in too much pain or fear or, worse, because we are blinded by greed or vengeance.

The waverings of the heart receive a whispered steadying from the dispassion of vishuddha, quickening the words of the heart with the Summative Word, prema, unconditioned love. Thus King Solomon discerned the foundling's true mother from the false. Thus marriage vows and final vows ring ominously.

The legendary artist's, orator-statesperson's, teacher's, or poet's heightened perception of a transcendent beauty or a cosmic order in the phenomena of life involves the sensitivities of vishuddha. (Perhaps, therefore, the special license given to artists regarding the erotic?) Sublimity has been refined yet further.

As Sri Jnaneshvar (1987) stated, "The sentiment of tranquillity will be found to surpass that of love . . ." (p.235). Such deft tranquillity, supported by the other chakras, approaches all of life's possibilities with unperturbed skillfulness and empathic wonder, from the most ecstatic to the most horrific and tragic. Shakespeare, the "I have a dream" speech of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Sri Jnaneshvar speak from vishuddha.