Lesson 2.8: Crown Chakra - Sahasrara

Course Two: The Seven Chakras · Lesson 8 of 11 · 10 min read

Crown chakra — Sahasrara

The seventh and last. It sits at the top of the head, its element is thought, and it is the only one of the seven that Sunita's notebook does not give a sentence to.

Six chakras speak — I am, I feel, I do, I love, I speak, I see. For the crown she wrote three words and stopped: silence, bliss, enlightenment.

The card

The chakra with no sentence

The missing statement is not an oversight in the notes. It is the teaching.

Everything below the crown is something you do — being, feeling, acting, loving, speaking, seeing. All six are verbs, and all six involve a person doing something. The crown is where those stop. There is no seventh verb because at the crown there is nothing to be done.

The same pattern appears in the mantra. The master list in the notebook gives Aung for the crown, and most teachers use it. But her second list — the one that runs Silent, Djna, Ram, Hung, Om, Aaa, Silent — records the crown as silent.

Both are in the notebook, and they are not in conflict. Aung is what you chant while you are still learning. Silence is what the crown eventually asks for.

This lesson takes the second reading, because a course that ends its seventh chakra by telling you to stop chanting is closer to what the tradition is actually saying than one that gives you another syllable to repeat.

Thought as an element

Earth, water, fire, air, ether, light — and thought.

It is a strange word to find at the end of a list of elements, and it is the clearest statement of what the whole sequence has been describing. The tradition began with the densest thing it could name and ended with the least dense thing there is.

Notice too that the body part is the cerebrum and the medical location is the cerebral cortex — the only entries in the entire seven where the notebook uses precise anatomical language rather than everyday terms. At the point where the tradition becomes least physical, its vocabulary becomes most so. That is worth noticing rather than explaining.

Working with the crown

The bowl. B, 250 Hz — the smallest of the seven, and the second of the two universal bowls. As Lesson 1.4 noted, a crown bowl should be the little one. Resist the instinct to make the top of the set the impressive piece.

Because it opens and closes sessions in this tradition, the B bowl gets more use than any other in a full set. If you are building up one bowl at a time and already own an A, this is the sensible second purchase.

The mudra. The notebook records the name, Sahasrara mudra, without describing the hand position. The form most commonly taught is simple: rest both hands lightly on the top of the head, fingertips almost touching, or hold them a few centimetres above it with the palms facing down.

If you prefer, leave the hands open and upturned on the knees. At this chakra a simpler shape is not a lesser one.

The colour. Violet, at the very top of the head — and then above it.

There is no affirmation

Six chakras have one. This one does not, and we have not invented one.

Where the other sessions began with a spoken line, this one begins with a full minute of sitting still and saying nothing at all.

Practice: a Saturday crown session

This session is deliberately emptier than the six before it.

1. Sit upright, eyes closed, hands however you have chosen.
2. Say nothing. Sit for one full minute before you touch the bowl. No affirmation, no intention, no counting.
3. Play — strike once, quietly. The bowl is small and it is near your head.
4. Listen all the way to the end of the tone, and then keep listening into the silence afterwards.
5. Do not chant. If you feel the urge to fill the gap with Aung, notice the urge and leave it alone.
6. Feel — the top of the head, and then the space just above it.
7. Imagine violet, if you find that useful. If it feels like effort, drop it.
8. Five or six strikes only, with long gaps. Then three minutes of silence rather than the usual two.

There is no exercise afterwards. The previous six lessons each ended with something to write down or something to do. This one does not, and that is the point of it.

Common mistakes

• Trying to achieve something. The crown is the one chakra where effort is counterproductive. Sit and let it be dull if it is dull.
• Filling the silence. Chanting, counting, visualising hard. All of it is the mind avoiding the instruction.
• Striking loudly near the head. Quiet. Always quiet up here.
• Using a large bowl above someone's head. Uncomfortable for them, awkward for you.
• Starting the course at the crown. It is the most attractive chakra and the least useful to begin with.
• Treating a boring session as a failed one. Most crown sessions are uneventful. Do them anyway.

How do you know you got it right?

You can recite the card — Sahasrara, top of the head, thought, B at 250 Hz, violet, Saturday, gold, Uranus — and you sat through the three closing minutes without reaching for something to do.

You have now covered all seven. Look back at what you have written across the last seven lessons: where you feel safe, one thing you want, the smallest step toward it, something you are willing to accept about yourself, one true thing said out loud, and something you already knew.

That sequence was not accidental. It is the seven chakras in order, and you have just walked up your own body.

Something to sit with

Six chakras have a sentence. The seventh has none.

You have spent seven lessons learning what to say, want, do and see. What is left when you stop?