Manas chakra
Manas · मनस्
Six petals just above ajna, one for each of the five senses and one for dreaming. Manas in Sanskrit psychology is not the mind that reasons but the part that receives, and this centre is where reception is still happening.
- Location
- Above ajna, in the region of the brow and forehead
- Petals
- Six: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch and dream
- Manas means
- The receiving mind, not the reasoning intellect
- Below it
- Third eye chakra
- Above it
- Soma chakra
- Its sheath
- Manomaya kosha
Six petals, six inputs
The petal count is a list. Five senses, plus the sixth channel by which impressions arrive when the senses are closed, which the texts call dream. Nothing here is metaphorical: manas chakra is where the raw material of experience is still arriving, before ajna does anything with it.
That placement, above the third eye rather than below it, is deliberate in the sources that use it. Discernment sits under the flow of impressions and steadies it.
Manas in Indian psychology
Sanskrit divides what English calls mind. Manas receives and coordinates the senses. Buddhi discerns and decides. Ahamkara identifies, saying that this is mine. Chitta stores.
The centre carries the first of those functions only. Practitioners who expect it to be the seat of thought are using the English word rather than the Sanskrit one.
In practice
This centre is worked on indirectly, through practices that reduce sensory input: darkness, silence, closed eyes, yoga nidra's rotation of awareness. Dream practice in the Tibetan and hatha traditions also addresses it, since dreaming is one of its six channels.
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