The Vedanta Kesari April 1939

To enumerate these centres they are the base of the spinal column and the levels of the genitals 1939] SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES OF SRI RAMAKRISHNA 9445 of the navel of the heark of the throat and of the eyebrows and finally the crown of the head. [...] The spiritual evolution of man consists in the shifting of the mind's centre of activity from the lower to the higher of these centres. [...] When the Kundalini is asleep the mind of man is confined to the three lowermost centres of the spinal column and the focus of* its attention is limited to the gross objects of the physical plane that impinge on the five senses and to the intellectual and aesthtic apprehensions that have their basis in physical life. [...] It is but the accident of the street: the circle is iinnnediately formed; the soul of the tribe its evoked; a little after the architecture of the amphitheatre emerges anew from the ground. [...] The decline of the rel;ious sentiment in a given 4'oup tends to the formation of a new myth; it is on this that the art of the group rests; if the myth is gross the art cannot be less gross.