Sushumnā
Sushumnā · su-shumnā, “the most gracious one”
Prāṇa has other meanings too: see all meanings of Prāṇa.
Sushumnā is the central nāḍī (channel of the vital breath) of the body. The Agni Purāṇa teaches that seventy-two thousand nāḍīs spread through the body from the region of the navel, that ten of them are chief, and that Sushumnā runs through the middle of the body, with Iḍā on the left and Piṅgalā on the right. Along it flow the streams of amṛta (the nectar of immortality) in the purifying meditations, along it rises the nāda (inner sound) in the dīkshā, and by its path the worshipper goes out in meditation at the final offering of the homa.
In the dīkshā that Bhagavān Śiva teaches to Skanda, the guru joins his own Sushumnā with the disciple’s, conceives a thread as the disciple’s Sushumnā and ties it at his śikhā, and places in his hand a kuśa that is the form of Sushumnā. The Purāṇa also names Sushumnā as one of the twelve śaktis of the Ādityas, the śakti of Sūrya.
In the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Śuka teaches Parīkshit that the shining Sushumnā nāḍī is the path by which the yogī leaves the body for Brahmaloka, passing through Agni, the Śiśumāra circle and Maharloka, and at last merging into the Paramātmā.
In the nāḍī-cakra
Agni Deva teaches Vasishṭha Maharshi the nāḍī-cakra, the wheel of the nāḍīs, saying that by knowing it, knowledge of Śrī Mahāvishṇu arises. Below the navel is the Mūlādhāra cakra, and from it the nāḍīs issue like sprouts. In the middle of the navel there are seventy-two thousand nāḍīs, which pervade the body like a wheel, below, above and on all sides. Ten of them are chief, and these ten carry the prāṇa-vāyu (the vital breath): Iḍā, Piṅgalā, Sushumnā, Gāndhārī, Hastijihvā, Pṛthā, Yaśā, Alambushā, Kuhū and Śaṅkhinī.
“O best of the twice-born,” Agni Deva says, “in the middle of the body is Sushumnā, on the left Iḍā, on the right Piṅgalā.”
Source: Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 214
The path of amṛta
In bhūta-śuddhi, the purification of the body that comes before pūjā, the worshipper dries away all impurity with the bīja “yaṃ” at the navel and burns it with the bīja of fire in the heart-lotus. Then he meditates on a form like the moon in the sky. Streams of amṛta flow from it, spread through all the nāḍīs by way of the Sushumnā nāḍī, fill the heart-lotus and flood his whole body (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 23).
In the daily rite of the Trailokya-mohana mantra of Śrī Mahāvishṇu, the sādhaka does śarīra-śoshaṇa, the drying of the body. After the pāpa in his body is driven out and burned to ash, he contemplates amṛta at the head and floods his body, outside and inside, with the streams of amṛta coming down the path of the Sushumnā nāḍī. With his body thus made pure he does prāṇāyāma and nyāsa (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 307).
In the Vāruṇī dhāraṇā, the fixing of the mind on water, one of the four dhāraṇās of Vishṇu, the sādhaka imagines endless drops of water joining into a mass of snow, from which streams flow over the earth and flood the universe. With that water, cool from the touch of snow and in the form of amṛta, he floods the circle of cakras from the brahmarandhra down to the mūlādhāra, and meditates on the indu-maṇḍala, the circle of the moon, in the middle of the Sushumnā nāḍī. One who is afflicted by hunger and thirst should contemplate this dhāraṇā, give up sloth and do japa of the Vishṇu mantra (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 375).
Source: Agni Purāṇa, Chapters 23, 307, 375
In the homa
In the homa that Maheśvara teaches to Skanda, the worshipper visualises the purified ghee as having two halves and the three nāḍīs Iḍā, Piṅgalā and Sushumnā. From each part in turn he takes ghee with the sruva and offers it:
- from the Iḍā part, with “oṃ haṃ agnaye svāhā”;
- from the Piṅgalā part, with “oṃ haṃ somāya svāhā”;
- from the Sushumnā part, with “oṃ hāṃ agnīshomābhyāṃ svāhā”, to Agni and Soma together.
Each time the ghee left over is put into a separate vessel.
At the pūrṇāhuti, the final full offering, he places the sruva face down on the sruk filled with ghee, holds them in the śaṅkha-mudrā, rises, stands with the feet even and rests the roots of the ladles on his navel. With his gaze fixed, in his inner contemplation he leaves behind Brahmā and the other kāraṇas (causes), goes out by the path of the Sushumnā nāḍī and stands above. Then he raises the ladles to the left breast and, softly reciting the mūla-mantra up to “vaushaṭ”, pours the ghee into the fire in a stream as thin as a grain of barley.
Source: Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 75
In the dīkshā
In the chapters on dīkshā (initiation), Bhagavān Śiva teaches how the guru works through the disciple’s Sushumnā.
The joining of the nāḍīs. In the samaya-dīkshā, after the disciple has been given a name and seated near the fire, the guru contemplates that the Sushumnā nāḍī has come out of the disciple’s body and merged into his own. Taking a darbha consecrated with the mūla-mantra, he places its tip in the disciple’s hand and its root on his own foot, or the tip on his own foot and the root in the disciple’s hand. With the Śiva-mantra he breathes out, contemplating that he enters the disciple’s heart, and breathes in, contemplating that he has returned to the space of his own heart. This is the nāḍī-sandhāna, the joining of the nāḍīs, made by the fire of Śiva (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 81).
The thread as the Sushumnā. In the nirvāṇa-dīkshā, the ācārya worships the disciple seated on the maṇḍala at his left, takes a fine thread and conceives it as the Sushumnā nāḍī. With the mūla-mantra he takes it up to the tied tuft, brings it down to the big toes, and then, by the order of withdrawal, takes it again to the śikhā of the disciple, a seeker of moksha, and ties it there: on the right for a man and on the left for a woman. He worships Śakti on the disciple’s head and joins her into the thread. Then he places the Sushumnā nāḍī on the thread with the mūla-mantra, worships it with the hṛdaya-mantra, covers it with the kavaca-mantra and offers three homas with the hṛdaya-mantra to establish the nāḍī; homa is done in the same way to establish the Śakti (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 83). On the following day, after the sampāta-homa, the guru places in the disciple’s hand the kuśa that is the form of the Sushumnā nāḍī (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 84).
The kalās. As the guru purifies the disciple’s bonds kalā by kalā, each kalā has its own pair of nāḍīs. The Pratishṭhā kalā, whose cause is Vishṇu, has the nāḍīs Gāndhārī and Sushumnā, the vāyus samāna and udāna, the senses of taste and of excretion, the object taste, a white half-moon maṇḍala marked with a lotus, and the state of deep sleep (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 85). The last kalā, the Śāntyatīta, whose sole cause is Sadāśiva, has the nāḍīs Kuhū and Śaṅkhinī and the vāyus Devadatta and Dhanañjaya (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 88).
The rising of nāda. At the end of the nirvāṇa-dīkshā the guru contemplates the seven vishuvas in order. The first is the union with prāṇa; the second is the mantra uttered in order from the heart; the third is the form of nāda going along the Sushumnā. When the nāda joined to the nāḍī dissolves into Śakti, that is the praśānta vishuva. When the nāda dissolved in Śakti revives, moves upward and dissolves in sameness, that is the vishuva called Śakti. When the whole nāda crosses the boundary of Śakti and dissolves in the unmanī, that is the sixth, beyond Śakti. The seventh is called tattva, the place of joining (Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 88).
Source: Agni Purāṇa, Chapters 81, 83–85, 88
Sushumnā among the śaktis of the Ādityas
Teaching the marks of the images of Sūrya, Bhagavān Hayagrīva describes a lotus of twelve petals on which the twelve Ādityas are installed, each with four arms. Their śaktis stand on the tips of the filaments of that lotus: Iḍā, Sushumnā, Viśvārci, Indu, Pramardinī, Praharshiṇī, Mahākālī, Kapilā, Prabodhinī, Nīlāmbarā, Vanāntasthā (or Ghanāntasthā) and Amṛtākhyā. Each śakti shares the colour of her Āditya. Sushumnā is the śakti of Sūrya, the second of the Ādityas, and her colour, like his, is red.
Source: Agni Purāṇa, Chapter 51
Per Bhāgavata Purāṇa
The yogī’s departure
In the second Skandha, Śuka teaches Parīkshit how the yogī leaves the body. Established in ātma-jñāna, at the time of leaving the body he presses the anus with his heel and brings the prāṇa-śakti upward through six places: the svādhishṭhāna in the lower belly, the maṇipūra at the navel, the anāhata at the heart, the viśuddhi at the throat, the ājñā between the eyebrows and the sahasrāra, the brahmarandhra. From the navel he raises it to the heart, and by the path of the udāna-vāyu to the throat; joining the mind with the buddhi, he brings it to the root of the palate; closing the seven openings of the two nostrils, the two eyes, the two ears and the mouth, he brings it to the ājñā between the eyebrows. Fixing his buddhi on moksha, he stays so for about half an hour, then breaks through the brahmarandhra and becomes one with the Paramātmā.
The shining path to Brahmaloka
If the yogī is going to Brahmaloka or to another place in the brahmāṇḍa, he goes with his subtle body. “O Rājā,” Śuka says, “the shining sushumnā nāḍī is the path to the attainment of Brahmaloka.” By that path the yogī comes out of the body and, by the path of the sky, reaches Agni Devatā, where the faults still left in him are destroyed. Then he reaches the circle of lights of Śiśumāra, which belongs to Śrī Hari and is like the navel of the Virāṭ Purusha, passes beyond it with a subtle body free of faults, and reaches Maharloka, the loka of those who worship saguṇa Brahman. At the end of the kalpa, seeing the lower lokas burnt to ash by the flames from the hoods of Ādiśesha, he reaches Brahmaloka, where the great siddhas roam in vimānas for two parārdhas, without old age, death, pain or anxiety, grieved only by compassion for the beings who suffer in low births. There he dissolves the elements one into another, the senses into their tanmātras, these into ahaṅkāra, ahaṅkāra into the mahat-tattva and that into the māyā-śakti; and when his subtle body has merged into prakṛti, he merges with it into the Paramātmā, the changeless mass of bliss, and is not born again.
Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 2, Chapter 2
Sources
- Agni Purāṇa, Chapters 23, 51, 75, 81, 83–85, 88, 214, 307, 375
- Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 2, Chapter 2