Breath & Energy · “Breath Is the Bridge”
Solar & Lunar Accumulator
Use concentrated imagination, posture and faith to ‘charge’ the body with vitality (sun) or develop intuition (moon), drawing imagined radiant energy through the palms into the body.
Solar ‘A’ (8-10 a.m., sunny): lightly clothed, face the sun (do NOT look at it), palms to the rays ~1-2 min imagining vitality gathering “like a battery”; sweep charged palms forehead→solar plexus imagining the energy entering; bow; 7 cycles. Lunar ‘B’ (8-10 p.m., near-full moon, in silence): gaze the disc 1-2 min, gather its “cool threads,” sweep down imagining intuition flowing in, lingering at brows/heart/solar plexus; 7 cycles. Optional add-ons only — results are faith-dependent.
What it is
These are two optional “additional” exercises Sadhu offers in the Second Series — explicitly not part of the core numbered ladder (“there is no direct connection between these and the basic ones”) but meant to “strengthen your physical body” (the Solar, ‘A’) and “revive and develop the higher intuitional part” (the Lunar, ‘B’).
They are his clearest pieces of frankly occult energy-work: standing outdoors, palms turned to the sun or full moon, you use concentrated imagination plus faith to feel radiant energy gathering in the hands “like a battery being charged,” then sweep the charged palms down the front of the body from forehead to solar plexus, imagining the energy magnetising your “physical, astral and mental vehicles.” Sadhu names the Solar version the “Solar accumulator action.” He is candid that “results can be meagre or marvellous” and that “faith is also a most important factor” — making clear these depend on belief, not a demonstrated mechanism.
The Method
Addition ‘A’ — Solar accumulator (Blue Pranayama):
- On a sunny morning, “best time between 8 and 10 a.m.,” go to a private spot (quiet garden, field, flat roof), dressed very lightly, free of tight clothing.
- “Stand upright facing the sun so that you are bathed in its rays. Then raise your head as if looking at it, but without doing so directly, so as to avoid being blinded.” Stretch the arms wide, palms at right-angles to the rays.
- When you feel the rays warming the palms, “imagine that the inexhaustible, subtle and life-giving energy of the sun is being collected in them, like a battery being charged.” Hold one to two minutes — “there is no danger of overcharging.”
- Bring the arms forward, fingers slightly inward, to about an inch from the forehead. “Imagine that the accumulated energy in your palms is flowing through the tips of your fingers” into the body, “magnetizing your physical, astral and mental vehicles,” and move the hands slowly down — forehead to solar plexus in about half a minute. “There is no need to magnetize anything below this. centre.”
- Sweep the arms outward, bow as low as you can, return to the start. Repeat seven times. Throughout, “think only about what has been prescribed.” Addition ‘B’ — Lunar accumulator (Green Pranayama):
- On a clear evening “between 8 and 10 p.m.” when the moon is full or close to full (waxing, not waning), travel there and back in silence, speaking to no one; retire immediately after, no talking till morning; no food just before or after.
- After a short pranayama, stand facing the moon, breathe slow and deep, and “gaze at the silvery disc for one to two minutes, imagining it as a source of delicate vibrations. like cool threads.”
- As with ‘A’, turn the palms to the moon, gather its “subtle vibrations,” then sweep down from the forehead — but now imagine “the subtle. power of intuition, or ‘knowledge without thinking’” flowing in. Seven cycles (~two minutes each: one minute collecting, one charging), lingering the fingertips longest over the brows, the heart, and the solar plexus (“most important”). Optionally cultivate “a strong desire to become more subtle or ethereal.” Both require, for a short time, “freedom from thoughts”; if it is too hard, “stop the exercise” until later training makes stilling the mind easy. Sadhu says A and B “become obligatory only after Chapter XIX has been. mastered” — until then, if you feel no attraction to them, “do not perform them at all.”
Source & Lineage
Chapter XVII, “Second Series,” Additions ‘A’ and ‘B’, in Concentration (Allen & Unwin, 1959). Sadhu links them to a “particularly useful form of concentration known as the ‘I-Current’” elaborated in his In Days of Great Peace, and to the broader Western occult tradition of “od”/solar accumulators.
The will-imagination-faith triad (“Concentration, will-power and faith. three different aspects of the one. thing, called ‘fulfilment’”) is his recurring theme. Mouni Sadhu (1897-1971). → (sadhu mouni).
Common refinements
Looking at the sun. The one hard safety rule — never gaze at the solar disc; even Sadhu’s “raise the head without looking directly” is risky. We’d keep the eyes off the sun entirely.
- Treating it as core. Sadhu makes these optional add-ons; skip them if unattracted, and don’t let them displace the numbered exercises.
- Expecting drama. Results are explicitly variable and faith-dependent; disappointment comes from over-expectation.
- Breaking ‘B’s silence. The lunar form’s effect (such as it is) leans on the unbroken silence and timing he specifies.