GURU OF THE CHAKRA - THE SPINNING WHEEL OF ENERGY, (continued):

People have come to him complaining of migraines, spinal aches, asthma, anger, drug addiction, homosexuality, bad marriages and chronic constipation.

Therapy is tailored to the individual needs of students. Vegetarian diets work for some while mantras, or chants, are more effective on others, according to Bhatnagar. Many of the students are still meat eaters and some even practice religion other than Hinduism.

There are also those who opt for the color of the day: light blue on Monday; orange or red on Tuesday; green on Wednesday; yellow on Thursday: white on Friday; blue or black on Saturday and gold on Sunday.

A therapy session with Bhatnagar consists of an hour-long encounter during which he examines a person's spine. By touching it, he says he is able to make a diagnosis by feeling where energies are blocked or flowing freely. Tambura tapes played during the session are tuned to affect the region of the spine where tensions have collected, he says.

The demands of Bhatnagar's Chakra therapy, however, do not extend to asking students to give up their jobs, their cars, their homes or any other material comforts.His students in Princeton encompass a range of ages and financial situations but Bhatnagar, while encouraging their spiritual and physical development, does not require that they abandon their homes or their wealth.

"Giving up has to take place inside," he has said. "I can live in a house and not be possessed by it."

Bhatnagar's own house is on Prospect Avenue Extension in Princeton, a brown shingle complex that juts out over Carnegie Lake. Inside, the Indian influence extends to the functional living room with its views of the water and the smell of incense, Outside, the child's play equipment, reflects the influence of his two-and-a-half-year old son, Chandra, a straight-standing, independent type with a solemn facade hiding his playfulness.

Bhatnagar's wife, Uma, who was his student in 1970 at the New School for Social Research in New York, is a 29-year-old Sarah Lawrence graduate with came from what she describes as a "rich, aristocratic, DAR, Conservative, chauvinistic family."

Now she is content with the role of mother and wife, fiercely dedicated to her husband's work and devoted to the raising of their child, whom she nursed until he was 19 months old, and who still sleeps with his parents.

The group of 14 men and women, which gathers on Alexander Street for Bhatnagar's Thursday evening lectures and meditations sit on the floor of the living room, notebooks in hand, as he addresses himself to the various Chakras and answers students' questions.

On this particular evening, a number of them are concerned with death. How will they know it? When will it come? How should one treat the body of the deceased?

''Life after life after life is the same life," he tells them. "There are signals people receive prior to dying and they can take advantage of them. In other cultures, people tend to shrink away from death, but not Hindus. For example, 15 minutes before death, the eyes don't blink at the sun. When we begin to recognize these signs, we can help prepare ourselves or the old for dying."

The class is quiet and reverential. Bhatnagar smiles at the inquisitiveness and eagerness before him. It is as if he is serving as a dictionary and they are intent on discovering all his meanings.

The lecture is followed by meditation, with Shyam playing the tambura in an adjoining room lit by candies and filled with images of Indian deities. The students, in yoga position, sit in silence, filling the room with something unseen and unheard but felt just as strongly as if it were tangible. Something deeply spiritual is happening in the room.

Outside the SRI Center in New York, taxis and trucks careen past in a chorus of screeching tires and blaring horns while inside, nine men and women sit before Shyam Bhatnagar for a session. Among them are two matronly looking women who just want to sample his musical therapy before rushing to another appointment. While the others sit quietly with their legs crossed under them, the women squirm at the pulling of seldom-used muscles.

He tells them the rules to observe for meditation: Prior to meditation, wear loose clothing, wash your hands and face and sit on a toilet to let trapped winds out of the body. Concentrate on clearing the mind. Then sit with the right body (leg) over the left. Let the thumb and forefinger of each hand touch, while the other three digits are spread out. Put your tongue in the place it touches to pronounce the letter "L." Close your eyes and look to the middle of your eyebrows. Keep your head raised five degrees higher than straight. Face north.

You may hear sounds, he tells them. First you will bear the chirping of birds. That will become faster and then come the bells, then the conch, then the vena (a deep, sustained tone), then the rhythm of drums. Then you will feel a very pleasant experience in the throat, then hear the sustained sound of the flute then a big drum and the whole body feels it's pulsating. Then comes the sound of an elephant and, lastly, you hear thunder.

"When you come to this point," he tells them, "you hear a non-stop sound called naada. It is the sound of the entire universe. It is a sound that makes one feel completely divine, joyful."

Behind him, a large mirror allows the students to see the straightness of Shyam's spine. It is an example he sets because he believes and teaches that it is the center of the body from which he can diagnose their physical and psychological problems.

It has been a long day for Shyam, one of the two days during the week that he spends at the New York center. He has been driven to New York by George, a student and co-worker, has lunched with Mary, the psycho-therapist who just lost her husband, and has dropped off his wife and son at his grandmother-in-law's Upper East Side apartment.

Throughout the day he has given therapies, including a demonstration of the tamboura for John a Portuguese diplomat from the United Nations.

Shyam spends Sunday mornings at the home of psychologist Patricia Carrington and her psychiatrist husband, Dr. Harmon E. Ephron, in Kendall Park. Also in attendance at recent session were Princeton psychiatrist Paul Weber and Ann Medlock, co-founder of SOLO (for divorced and widowed women) and a public relations specialist.

It was second Chakra discussion day and Shyam and Dr. Ephron got around to a discussion of father images.

"Americans are always looking for a father figure. But President Kennedy was not a father figure, Shyam maintained. "Johnson was a corrupt figure and so was Nixon and, suddenly, the country was fatherless. There was a wave of neurosis so strong I could see changes in peoples' faces. In the last 15 years, the most fatherly looking people have been imported to fill this country's spiritual needs. "

"Yes," added Ephron. "People go to Europe not for its youth, but for its antiquity. The people we import from India have to have a big beard and a fat belly."

During the morning, Dr. Carrington curled up on her couch, in the fetal position, to illustrate the way a person's sleeping habits may reflect his or her psychological makeup.

It is a much more informal session than the ones held in either Princeton or New York, and Shyam laughs at the interruptions of a tape recorder that isn't working and a dog who wants to play.

This month, Bhatnagar leaves to give an address in Luxembourg, where he has been appointed honorary professor of Chakra therapy. From there he will visit his center in Munich. In June, he will lead a 23-day "Journey to the Source," a "vacation for mind, body and soul" that will take 8 to 15 people into the Himalayas to explore the basics of vegetarianism, the traditional Indian system of healing, breath and biorhythms.

When Bhatnagar is away four to six months of the year, one student, John Myers answers questions, and George Herrington, another assistant, leads purifications and teaches cooking.

"One man came to me last week," muses Bhatnagar. He said, 'I want you to give me a miracle. I was told you could show me a miracle.' I said to him, 'Who told you that? What exactly did they say?' 'I want you to do something,' he said, 'that will make me believe in God.'

"Well, I told the man he would have to see me several times. But he never came back. He wanted push-button enlightenment."

He acknowledges the attraction he holds for some students. Being given godlike proportions is what he calls "the irony of this occupation."

"I have enough bad habits so that when a student begins to feel this way about me, I am able to show him that I am human.

"What I do is bring them to the house and let them see that I have a wife and family. People do idealize you, though." he adds.

Shyam, who says he's worked with some 2,000 people over the last 10 years, is as philosophical about his appeal as he is about the Hindu approach to life and self-awareness.

"People like to associate great powers with me," he told the weekly gathering of psychiatrists and psychologists last month, "that I may or may not have.

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