We bring the four exercises on the arms and legs together into a single mantra. Having mastered bringing on each sensation in the limbs individually, as practised in Exercises 1 through to 4, the four key words—Heavy, Warm, Clear, Light—have now each accumulated an automatic power of association to their respective bodily sensations.
The next step is to bring the four key words together into a combined mantra. This single combined mantra carries the felt-sense of the body through the sequence of sensations which clear it of tension and disturbance.
The combined mantra is practised first on the limbs, reciting each mantra slowly so that each of the four shifts of the felt-sense is registered in turn as a cyclical sequence of change:
As proficiency develops with practice the speed of inner recitation can gradually be increased. And over time a single mantra evolves:
This series of relaxation mantras brings on a progression and enhancement of body-feeling associated with the four elements of imaginative experience:
This enhancement and empowerment of body-feeling is dimensional not directional. It aligns with the two dimensions of up versus down, and inside versus outside. These two dimensions are central to the esoteric psychology of the Western mystical tradition1,2.
- In the Tractatus aureus . . . cum SchoIiis Dominici Gnosii (1610) there is a drawing of the “secret square of the sages.” In the centre of the square is a circle surrounded by rays of light. The commentary gives the following explanation: Reduce your stone to the four elements . . . and unite them into one and you will have the whole magistery – a quotation from Pseudo-Aristotle. The circle in the centre is called: the mediator, making peace between enemies, or [the four] elements; nay rather he alone effects the squaring of the circle. The circumambulation has its parallel in: The circulation of spirits or circular distillation, that is, the outside to the inside, the inside to the outside, likewise the lower and the upper; and when they meet together in one circle, you could no longer recognize what was outside or inside, or lower or upper; but all would be one thing in one circle or vessel. For this vessel is the true philosophical Pelican, and there is no other to be sought for in all the world.
Jung, 1944, Psychology & Alchemy, CW vol.12 §167n - His disciples asked: Shall we then enter the kingdom by being children? Jesus said to them: When you make the two one, and make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below — and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female female; when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image — then you will enter the kingdom.
Gospel of Thomas, saying 22
Begin applying this body-feeling empowerment to the chakric core where there is much more of a visceral emotional dimension to the auric felt-sense:
As well as using these mantras in sequence during sessions of formal practice of autogenics, use the relevant ones individually for clearing experienced knots of emotional tension felt in the body core upon awakening from disturbing dreams at night. In other words these autogenic mantras are beneficial for the quality of sleep when used in hypnagogia.
You may wish to synchronise the autogenic mantra with your breathing rhythm, breathing through each part of the body in turn, letting go on the out-breath:
When using REM Autogenics as an induction for visioning work with the Strobonaut app, the relaxation and visioning mantras can be integrated together, for example:
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