My unproven theory about the hara

     My unproven theory is that the hara is a nerve bundle located within the brain, not inside the belly.  A corresponding area exists in the belly, possibly part of the enteric nervous system, but the hara that we feel is actually a bundle of cells located inside the human brain.  We all feel our bodies indirectly through the brain, which forms an analog image of our physical body via a complex pattern of nerve cells located within the brain.  When you stub your toe, you do not feel your injured toe directly.  What you feel is the neural analog image of your toe sending out signals of pain.  If you sever the neural lines of communication between toe and brain by cutting your spinal cord, you will feel no pain at all, not even if your toe is completely crushed.  Amputees who have a leg cut off often feel a "phantom leg," which is just the neural analog image of their physical leg still active and sending out signals within the brain.  We all live in our brains and the brain is all we really know of our personal self and the universe.

     When you concentrate on the hara point, it is like going to the basement of your brain, the most fundamental level of the brain's consciousness where all the major switches are located.  You can run around your house turning off lights one by one, or you can go to the basement and just turn off the main circuit breaker with far less effort.  In the same way, by resting in the hara center you can more easily turn off the thinking process.  Speaking more accurately, you can ignore thoughts altogether, like a flock of noisy birds flying overhead.  Going to the hara center slows down the thought process and can even bring it to an absolute halt.

     J. Krishnamurti's method was to observe thoughts, and by doing so increase awareness.  The more you use awareness, the stronger it grows in the same way your muscles grow with the stimulation of exercise.  My own preferred method is to drop the thinking process directly by going to the hara center and simply relaxing there.  When centered in the hara, cosmic consciousness comes easily and naturally.

     Subjectively, my own hara feels like a magnet for cosmic energy.  I get the sensation of being filled up with the universe as an ocean flowing into a quiet pool of water.  The distractions of the ordinary tasks of living draw me away from the hara center and up from the depths of meditation into the pragmatic thinking centers of the brain.  Thus, I am still just a student of meditation who needs to spend time every day in formal meditation sessions to keep myself centered in that sensuous and quiet center of the hara.

     The sensation of going to the hara is one of falling into a warm and friendly space which is somehow associated with the belly.  The hara's association with the belly may be due to the fact that gaining nourishment is the most essential task of survival.  Our brains and consciousness evolved from less complicated forms of life that were almost entirely food oriented.  What better place to locate the fundamental control center of consciousness than at the belly's analog image point located within the brain.

     If you shift your personal center of gravity from the thinking center down to the hara center of the brain, you will feel a pleasing orgasmic sensation in the hara and a refreshing wind like energy that rises upward.  When you center your attention in the hara, the thinking center of the brain slows down and the brain saves the chemical energy it must expend to create new thoughts.  The more chemical energy the brain stores up in the form of neurotransmitters, the higher and more blissful the meditator feels.