The Chakra System

The word chakra is Sanskrit, and signifies a wheel. It is also used in various subsidiary, derivative, and symbolical senses.
The special use of the word chakra with which we are at the moment concerned is its application to a series of wheel-like vortices which exist in the surface of the etheric double of man.

This invisible part of the physical body is of great importance to us, for it is the vehicle through which flow the streams of vitality which keep the body alive, and without it as a bridge to convey undulations of thought and feeling from the astral to the visible physical matter, the ego could make no use of the cells of his brain.

(condensed from C.W. Leadbeater’s “The Chakras”)