“We possess seven centers of experience that make us human. All seven need to awaken and blossom: the instinctual and the impulsive, the willing and the emotional, the communicating and the intellectual – and, finally, the spiritual”
The human being is a highly complex, multi-faceted entity. Humans were equipped, in accordance with their great role and destiny, with different centers of perception and experience which could allow them the complete awareness of, and interaction with, all aspects of life. Each such center communicates with one certain layer through appropriate skills and abilities, and each such layer is vital for the existence of life and the processes of awareness.
What is quite astonishing is the fact that all these layers exist and operate simultaneously, just as all centers of perception and experience exist and function at the same time.
However, this simultaneous existence is also the cause of great confusion and contradiction, and as a result, an intense attraction of many people – among them esteemed philosophers, spiritual teachers, scientists and visionaries – towards a one-dimensional vision that would enable a total perception and experience of only one or two aspects of life.
Many humans tend to develop mainly one center of their being. This bias to one-dimensionality is understandable, since life is an inconceivable and uncontainable phenomenon in both breadth and depth.
Nonetheless, we must not avoid our own complexity but rather validate it wholeheartedly. Taking on the mission of comprehending the phenomenon of life and the extraordinary human experience is of tremendous significance. We need this awakening of the full spectrum of human centers as well as a complete awareness of the phenomenon of life as a whole.
Why? Because missing major elements of the perception of life and our very being necessarily implies an inability to realize our true identity and our destiny here on earth.
The human ladder
“All the contradictions and tensions we find inside us are the result of our ignorance of the seven centers – and the ways they should balance and complete each other”
Our true identity is not the spirit or infinite consciousness, and at the same time, it is most certainly not mere matter. The human being is a hybrid, at least as long as one breathes within a physical form. Choosing only half of the identity – or even less than that, only one particular layer out of one of the halves – would completely block our connection with the meaning of life.
The human being is a bridger, a ladder with several steps which begins in the earth while its upper end reaches the infinite skies of consciousness. This ladder is bidirectional: through it, the material and human existence can be elevated more and more beyond its narrow confines, while the infinite consciousness can experience the denser levels of existence for the sake of its realization and manifestation.
The seven dimensions of life are the outline of this bidirectional ladder, deriving inspiration from the seven centers of perception and experience within the human body – the ones we historically called the “Chakras.”
Chakras, in this context, are devices of perception which are meant to allow the experience of the various material and spiritual layers of our being. As such, they perfectly capture the complexity of the human entity – and for this reason, their traditional understanding as a ladder of development, along which one abandons the previous step as soon as one shifts to a higher step, is quite a limited perception of the breathtaking vision they can offer.
In actuality, Chakras suggest a full mapping of the centers of human existence and, as a result, the capacity to harmonize and synchronize these centers into a total and multidimensional experience.
The seven dimensions are therefore not a hierarchy within the human experience, because as soon as we prefer any of them, we immediately hinder the flow throughout the ladder from either above downward or below upward. That is why we can perceive them as starting from below or from above and both perspectives will be correct. In truth, not only will these two perspectives be correct, but any type of perception or philosophy of life – for example, spiritual or scientific – can fall into place within this all-embracing, multidimensional ladder, since the dimensions are the very structure that contains them all in the first place.
- Starting from below upwards, we can first find the earthly dimension, which is experienced by our instinctive center – in it appears the most direct and base human experience, in which we are a gradually becoming a personality abiding in a human body; a biological entity, like many other species of plants and animals, experiencing a separate existence surrounded by physical attachments to people and things.
- “Above” it, we find the sensual dimension, a somewhat more refined material plane which is experienced by our feeling center. In this dimension, we interact with the phenomenon of life through the senses, the experience of pleasure and any other intense experience, and the depth of the moment with all its colors and nuances.
- The third evolutionary dimension, experienced by our willing center, is the one in which we know life as a space for ambition and achievement, overcoming and victory.
- With the fourth, relating dimension, we interact through our emotional center, and in it we explore the realm of “me” and “other” in relationships.
- The manifesting dimension, which we fulfill through our communicating center, is life’s fifth layer, in which we perceive life as a space for self-expression and a mutual influence of ideas and visions.
- The sixth, exploring dimension, experienced by our thinking center, is where we interact with life as a philosophical and intellectual opportunity for learning and knowledge.
- The seventh, meditative dimension, is our spiritual center which focuses on life as an opportunity for the discovery and realization of consciousness itself.
With such a map, we easily receive a spiritual vision of a new type: the human being is a spirit just as it is not more than a simple human. The human being is a becoming entity and at the same time, an eternal being; immortal and mortal.
One’s existence shifts to the tension and friction between these two existential extremes, rather than, as usual, falling into one category of self-experience. Moreover, while the seven layers form together our internal and external world, each one of them allows a complete change of perception, and with it, a transformation of meaning, happiness, values and attributes; each of them is a world unto itself, a world within the world, a component as well as a wholesome experience; in short, a holon.
The human being is all that. There is no real or foundational collision between any of the dimensions, since they are potentially systems of perception which can be easily unified. All contradictions within our being are the outcome of a lack of knowledge that prevents one from controlling this system, which, at its best, enables willfulness and sacrifice, nowness and ambition, and awareness of one’s approaching death and a confident recognition of our immortality, all at the same time.
The human entity is the freedom of movement between all dimensions. The human awareness is the connecting point between all seven dimensions, since its original purpose is to simultaneously elevate and bring down.
