Background on Sahaja Yoga

The word ‘Sahaja’ (Saha + ja) means born with you or inborn. Whatever is inborn manifests without any effort. Hence Sahaja Yoga is the name given to my system, which is effortless, easy, and spontaneous. It is a part of Nature, you may call it life’s source-the vitality of the Divine.
To understand life, consider the case of something that is living: a germinating seed. The seed grows by itself into a tree, blooms into flowers, and then the flowers become fruit. Any human effort cannot change the process of growth from a seed into a tree. The gardener can only look after the growth of the tree. In the same way, the process of the growth of our consciousness, to further evolution, takes place effortlessly.
When a foetus is between two and three months old, in the mother’s womb, a column of rays of consciousness, emitted through the all-pervading Divine Love, pass through the developing brain to enlighten it. The shape of the human brain is prism-like. So, the column of rays falling on it gets refracted into four diverse channels corresponding to the four aspects of the nervous system.
These are:
1. Parasympathetic nervous system
2. Sympathetic nervous system (right)
3. Sympathetic nervous system (left)
4. Central nervous System (This need not be discussed as it is the link with objectivity).
The set of rays that fall on the fontanel bone (apex of the head known as Taloo) pierce in the center and pass straight into the medulla oblongata through a channel (Sushumna). This energy, after leaving a very thread-like, thin line in the medulla oblongata, settles down in three and a half coils in the triangular bone at the base of the spinal cord (Mooladhar). This coiled energy is known as Kundalini.

The subtle energy enters through the center of the brain (Sahasrara Brahmarandhra) and precipitates six more centers on its way down. The gross manifestation of this subtle energy, in the Sushumna channel of the spinal cord, is termed the Parasympathetic nervous system. The centers of Chakras are expressed as plexus outside the spinal cord. Surprisingly, we have the same number of plexus and sub plexus outside, as the number of Chakras and their petals inside, the spinal cord.
Medical science knows very little about this system. Science calls it the autonomous nervous system, meaning the system that works spontaneously, on its own. For example, if we want to increase the rate of our heartbeat, we can do so by exerting ourselves (activity of the sympathetic nervous system). But we cannot directly reduce the heart (activity of the parasympathetic nervous system). The parasympathetic nervous system is a system that is like a petrol pump through which the petrol of Divine Love fills us. But when a human child is born and the umbilical cord breaks, a gap is created in the Sushumna (the subtle channel in the spinal cord). And on the gross level, one can see there is a gap between the solar plexus and the vagus nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system. This gap is known as the void in the Zen system of religion and Maya (or Bhav- Sagar) in Indian thought. Later when ego and superego bloat up like balloons and cover our brain at the apex of the left and right sympathetic nervous systems, the fontanel bone calcifies, and the all-pervading vital force of Divine Love gets cut off completely.
Then the human being identifies himself as a separate entity and the consciousness of ‘I’ (Aham) presides. This is why Man does not know His universal unconscious. His ego severs this subtle connection.