Indecent Practices and Erotic Trance:
                           Making Sense of Tantra

                            by John Ryan Haule
                             Copyright © 1999
                            All Rights Reserved
                     http://www.jrhaule.net/ipet.html


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                                   Eight

                              The Subtle Body



             * The Subtle Body
             * First Chakra, Muladhara, At The Base Of The Spine
             * Second Chakra, Svadhisthana, In The Lower Abdomen
             * Third Chakra, Manipura, At The Solar Plexus
             * Fourth Chakra, Anahata, The Heart Center
             * Fifth Chakra, Vishuddha, The Throat Center
             * Sixth Chakra, Ajna, Centered Above The Eyebrows
             * Seventh Chakra, Sahasrara, At The Crown Of The Head



     Kundalini has been the theme of the last five chapters. In Chapter
     Three, we saw that eros is able to mobilize emotion and
     imagination alongside physiology to overcome the stimulus-response
     loop of the orgasmic spasm reflex. In Chapter Four, we expanded on
     the significance of eros, finding its fullest development in
     kundalini, for which we have physiological and historical evidence
     suggesting that kundalini (by whatever name) has been known and
     cultivated as a natural human capacity since at least the last Ice
     Age. In Chapter Five, we saw how the mad saints use eros/kundalini
     unconsciously to overwhelm their ego and mobilize an unconscious
     process whereby the psyche as a whole is re-organized. Ego returns
     as an observer of processes that are understood to be of divine
     origin and that establish a larger center in the psyche which
     India has called atman or self. In Chapters Six and Seven, we
     considered the antinomian saints who strive to make the psychic
     re-organization conscious by deliberately entering the realm of
     the shadow -- culturally defined areas of impurity and evil. The
     left-hand path of Tantra is a dangerous undertaking in which the
     antinomian saints court the dangers of powerful disturbance
     (sexual arousal, disgust, terror) in order to stimulate the
     integrating dragon of kundalini as a force which can meet those
     challenges by surging up from within. The heroic saints confront
     those terrible forces with kundalini, rendering them
     "non-terrible" worthy opponents.

     For the antinomian saints, kundalini is merely the dragon of the
     soul's life energy: known only as a formidable and dangerous power
     which rises up from within, like a seed outgrowing its pod. It is
     enough for them to know that such a power exists. They familiarize
     themselves with it merely as an autonomous and potentially
     "friendly" force and never come to understand it in detail. In
     order to rise beyond the heroic rung of the diamond ladder to the
     next, it is necessary to learn the nature of kundalini in much
     finer detail. This task, as we have said, requires that the mystic
     redirect attention from the outside to the inside. As long as the
     disturbing force of disgust, compulsive sexuality, or terror is
     seen as coming from without, it is enough to know that kundalini
     is an inner dragon capable of neutralizing the exterior
     challenger. If we are to go beyond meeting exterior challenges,
     however, we have to familiarize ourselves with the details of what
     occurs within us as this inner dragon is mobilized.

     Those who have turned their gaze inward and contemplated kundalini
     herself have found her to resemble a serpent that moves with the
     suddenness, brilliance, and zigzag course of a bolt of lightning
     and the indestructibility of a diamond. Traditionally, therefore,
     they have referred to kundalini with the term vajra, meaning
     thunderbolt, diamond, and adamantine. However, it is only the
     awakened kundalini that moves like this. For most individuals, she
     sleeps coiled up at the bottom of the body cavity or at the base
     of the spine, encircling an internal linga or phallus, drinking
     the vital energy[1] that is wasted by those men and women who
     have not learned the secret of her nature. Once aroused, she rises
     up through the body to the cranial vault; and along her serpentine
     path she draws attention to a subtle body comprised of several
     "centers," "chakras," or "wheels" that remained closed or
     "knotted" in those who have not familiarized themselves with
     kundalini.

     In this chapter we shall begin discussion of the achievement
     required at the subtle-body rung of the diamond ladder by turning
     our attention inward to describe the nature of those chakras that
     comprise the subtle body. Afterwards, in Chapter Nine, we shall
     see how familiarity with the subtle body enables the mystic to
     gain a certain mastery over the diamond body and convert it into
     an internal ladder of ascent.


                              The Subtle Body

     To begin with it must be noted that the subtle body is an imaginal
     fact. It surely manifests itself with physiological and emotional
     accompaniments, but what we shall be describing in this chapter
     are not structures that can be laid bare through a careful
     dissection of the fleshly body. The chakras and the pathways that
     connect them -- i.e., the subtle body itself -- are perceptible
     only on the subtle plane. Discussion of the subtle body,
     therefore, implies familiarity with erotic trance. Indeed, anyone
     who recognizes some of the sensations and impression described
     below has to have entered an altered state of consciousness --
     whether acknowledged as such at the time or not. Although there
     are several traditional descriptions of the subtle body which
     disagree among themselves as to whether it is comprised of only
     four centers or more than twelve, and although we shall follow the
     most common tradition which identifies seven of them, we may say
     that at a minimum there is a center in the lower abdomen whose
     opening makes us aware of a monumental power at once frightening
     and promising, portending an uncommon adventure of some sort;
     another in the chest associated with transcendent feelings of love
     and connectedness; a third in the brow whose opening reveals the
     subtle plane of the imaginal world; and one in the crown of the
     head which gives us access to the Absolute, God, or ultimate
     manifestation of the cosmos. In examining these centers and the
     ones in between, we shall be following Eliade, who says, "Careful
     reading of the texts suffices to show that the experiences in
     question are transphysiological and that all these `centers'
     represent yogic states" (Eliade, 1969: 234). When Eliade calls the
     experiences "transphysiological," he seems to mean that although
     they are rooted in physiological changes and are described in
     physiological language, they transcend physiology in the sense
     that they are also changes in consciousness, manifestations of
     erotic trance.

     At all four of the centers just mentioned, we encounter something
     that transcends the profane world of the ego and the persona
     field. In the lower abdomen a power is felt surging forth that
     manifests as incomparably greater than the ego and alerts us to
     the fact that the I we have believed ourselves to be is something
     like a pod about to be outgrown by its seed. At the heart center
     we become aware of a connectedness inconceivable to the
     subject/object dichotomy of everyday thinking and which dissolves
     the illusory barrier between ourselves and our partner and between
     ourselves and the world at large. In seeing the imaginal world
     through the "third eye" of the brow chakra, we become aware of
     essential realities hidden from our fleshly eyes which convince us
     of their greater, "cosmic" truth. At the crown chakra we become
     aware of the fullness of that larger reality and know our place in
     it -- at once infinitesimal and unlimited.

     All these experiences reveal to our esoteric eyes the central fact
     of Tantrism, the fact that the subtle body itself is a sort of
     cosmos in miniature, filled with the power, connectedness, and
     vision -- that is to say consciousness -- that comprises the
     cosmos at large. "The essence of Tantric thought is that man is a
     microcosm. . . . In man is truth and through man it must be known
     (Dimock, 1989: 137). Evola says nearly the same thing, "The body
     in Tantrism is `made cosmic' and is conceived of in terms of
     principles and powers that also act in the world" (Evola, 1983:
     221). Because the same fundamental layers can be discovered in
     both the microcosm and the macrocosm, the various systems of yoga
     "map" the cosmos onto the body and the body onto the cosmos. They
     are, in the expression of Feuerstein (1989: 176),
     "psychocosmograms," that is, guides both to the microcosm of the
     psyche and the macrocosm of the universe.

          All things are unified through the microcosmic self.
          There are seeming dualities in the world, such as men
          and women, human and divine, self and not-self. But such
          dualities are only seeming, and the first step toward
          restoring the normal state of unity is the realization
          of this (Dimock, 1989: 138).

     In the "transphysiological" language of Tantra, cosmic energy is
     said to flow into the microcosm through the chakras and thence to
     cycle through the subtle body and out again into the macrocosm. It
     is said that this happens in all of us, whether we know it or not
     and whether or not we cooperate in the process. Our degree of
     openness at the various chakras corresponds to our degree of
     consciousness; and our conscious participation in the macrocosm
     increases proportionately (Karagulla & Kunz, 1989: 36). More
     specifically, however, it can be said that each chakra, beginning
     at the base of the spine and proceeding upwards to the head, opens
     for us a separate and progressively higher "level of
     consciousness" (Sivananda Radha, 1990: 49). This means, for
     instance, that those who have awakened kundalini to the point of
     becoming aware of the center in the lower abdomen experience the
     world differently than those in whom kundalini is still asleep.
     Those who have opened their heart center have still another field
     of consciousness opened to them. Jung (1996: 13) summarizes this
     universal doctrine by pointing out that "each chakra is a whole
     world." He means that those in whom kundalini sleeps at the base
     of the spine live entirely in the empirical world and have no
     access to erotic trance. Those whose consciousness is centered in
     the lower abdomen have entered erotic trance, but the world they
     live in is impoverished compared to that available to those in
     whom the heart chakra has opened.

     Prefacing his remarks by warning that the following is a very
     limited perspective on kundalini and the subtle body, Jung says we
     can get some idea of the "worlds" that are opened to us through
     the several chakras if we begin in the head and work downward. In
     this passage he avoids all reference to what we have called
     "erotic trance," and speaks only of how the various psychological
     possibilities symbolized by the chakras may be grasped in a
     preliminary manner by one who remains in ordinary consciousness:

          We begin in the head; we identify with our eyes and our
          consciousness: quite detached and objective, we survey
          the world. That is ajna [the brow chakra]. But we cannot
          linger forever in the pure spheres of detached
          observation, we must bring our thoughts into reality. We
          voice them and so trust them to the air. We clothe our
          knowledge in words, we are in the region of vishuddha,
          or the throat center. But as soon as we say something
          that is especially difficult, or that causes us positive
          or negative feelings, we have a throbbing of the heart,
          and then the anahata [heart] center begins to be
          activated. And still another step further, when for
          example a dispute with someone starts up, when we have
          become irritable and angry and get beside ourselves,
          then we are in manipura [the center located at the
          diaphragm or solar plexus].

          If we go lower still, the situation becomes impossible,
          because then the body begins to speak. For this reason,
          in England, everything below the diaphragm is taboo.
          Germans always go a little below it and hence easily
          become emotional. Russians live altogether below the
          diaphragm -- they consist of emotions. French and
          Italians behave as though they were below it but they
          know perfectly well, and so does everyone else that they
          are not.

          . . . Svadhisthana [the chakra in the lower abdomen]
          represents the level where psychic life may be said to
          begin. Only when this level became activated did mankind
          awaken from the sleep of the muladhara [at the base of
          the spine] and learn the first rules of bodily decency
          (Jung, 1996: 63).

     Singling out sexuality as the central issue in kundalini, Ken
     Wilbur has taken a similar head-downward approach as Jung. Noting
     that Freud had it backwards, that "God-consciousness is not
     sublimated sexuality; sexuality is repressed God-consciousness"
     (Wilbur, 1990: 130), Wilbur says that we "tie knots" in our
     consciousness, beginning with how we see things, then how we
     conceptualize them, feel about them, and so on. At each chakra we
     "tie a knot" until what might have been God-consciousness is
     reduced to genital sexuality. What Freud sees as our maturation
     from the "polymorphous perversity" of the infant into adult
     genital sexuality, Wilbur sees as constriction:

          The infant takes equal erotic and blissful delight in
          all the organs, surfaces, and activities of the body,
          and thus his entire cosmos is one of bliss, while the
          normal adult finds exuberance and bliss, if at all, in
          only one specific and narrow region of the body -- the
          genitals. Genital bliss can thus be viewed in comparison
          with the body's natural possibilities, as a
          constriction, a restriction, a cramp, a knot. Note it is
          not so much genital sexuality that comprises the knot,
          but rather the restriction of bliss to only one specific
          region of the body, excluding all others (Ibid., 122)

          Kundalini yoga, therefore, wisely proceeds to reverse
          this tyranny of awareness and bliss step by careful
          step, untying the knots in what it sees as roughly the
          reverse of the order in which they were tied (Ibid.,
          125).

     Jung and Wilbur have taken a very Western and psychological
     approach to the subtle body of Tantrism. The reader who is
     familiar with traditional descriptions of the chakras as
     resembling open lotus flowers, each with a distinctive number of
     petals, each petal bearing a different letter of the Sanskrit
     alphabet, and so on, may be both relieved and puzzled. We are
     relieved to know that some sense can be made of the Hindu subtle
     body without entering the impenetrable world of Hindu iconography.
     On the other hand, we may wonder if something has been lost "in
     translation." No doubt something has been lost, but if we can
     begin to connect traditional descriptions of the subtle body with
     bodily and imaginal experiences we ourselves have actually had, we
     will have gained a great deal.

     My intention is to sketch a phenomenology of sexual/mystical
     experiences with the metaphor of the diamond ladder serving as an
     organizing image. Now as we approach the subtle-body rung and our
     attention is directed within, it will be useful to begin with
     common physio-imaginal and emotional experiences that are readily
     available to anyone who has noticed bodily reactions and imagery
     in ordinary life. For the mystics differ from the rest of us
     primarily in the fact that they have taken their erotic trances
     seriously, investigated them, and learned to obtain some mastery
     of them -- at least in the sense that their imaginal life has
     attained some stability. Imaginal experiences are so much
     denigrated by our persona field that most of us in the West
     discard our experiences as merely imaginary -- therefore private,
     idiosyncratic, and undependable. In doing so, we fail to notice
     that we may already be familiar with experiences that the mystics
     have taken so much for granted and so ubiquitous as not to merit
     comment.

     In discussing the interior diamond ladder that is comprised of the
     chakras, therefore, I shall emphasize bodily/imaginal experiences
     that are readily available to all of us and employ as much as
     possible of Jung's 1932 lectures on kundalini yoga (Jung, 1996).
     Jung's account is not only psychologically sound and easy to
     understand but also validated by several writers far more immersed
     in Indian thought than was Jung (e.g., Mookerjee, 1989; Svoboda,
     1994; van Lysebeth, 1995; Sinha, 1993; Dimock, 1989; McDaniel,
     1989; and the close approximation of Eliade's thought to Jung's).
     Evola (1992, 1995) attacks Jung's writings on yoga and alchemy for
     having missed the point of mysticism through his therapeutic
     interests, and Wilbur (1982) seems to agree. But this, in fact, is
     the advantage of Jung's writings. He roots his observations in
     experiences that are available to us all -- precisely the thing we
     need to bring mystical claims down out of the stratosphere to a
     grounded place where we can connect them with our own experience
     and begin to appreciate that the mystics are people very much like
     ourselves -- people who differ from us primarily in the fact that
     they have attended to experiences that we habitually discard.

     Proceeding upwards from the base of the spine to the head, as is
     traditional, I shall try to draw out the psychological and
     mystical significance of the seven chakras by describing how I
     have experienced them, filled out sometimes with reports I have
     gathered from others. I do not mean to suggest that everyone has
     to experience what I have, only that the concreteness of one
     individual's experience may give the reader a handle by which to
     grasp what the mystics have claimed. Such quasi-bodily experiences
     by no means exhaust the significance of the various chakras but
     are intended only as a starting point. What I hope to provide is
     surely a "low level" appreciation of the subtle body. But if
     successful this account should help readers to identify similar
     experiences in their own lives and provide a concrete foundation
     for the chapters that follow. My fundamental assumption, here, is
     that we all have a far wider acquaintance with erotic trance than
     we are inclined to believe. I find this verified again and again
     as I listen to the experiences of my patients, who often describe
     with some embarrassment sensations and images that seem irrational
     and crazy to them only because they are unfamiliar with the
     literature of mystical states.


             First Chakra, Muladhara, At The Base Of The Spine

     The muladhara is the place where kundalini sleeps. Apparently for
     this reason it is ignored in some systems. Because kundalini is
     asleep, the experience of the world from this "root chakra" is
     familiar to us all. It is the ordinary world devoid of erotic
     trance. Jung observes: "We are in our roots right here in this
     world -- when you buy your ticket from the streetcar conductor,
     for instance, or for the theater, or pay the waiter -- that is
     reality as you touch it. And then the self is asleep, which means
     that all things concerning the gods are asleep" (Jung, 1996: 14).
     Mookerjee calls it "the root center of physical experience"
     (Mookerjee, 1989: 39); and Evola says it is characterized by
     ordinary sexual desire (Evola, 1992: 173).

     Ordinary individuals live their entire lives in the root chakra.
     Therefore it is not characterized merely by physicality but above
     all by our unconscious participation in the persona field, the
     social consensus that discards all imaginal experiences as invalid
     and that might well be called "group-think" or "mass-mindedness."
     Evola enumerates qualities typical of the root chakra: "greed,
     false knowledge, credulity, delusions, indulgence in coarse
     pleasures, and the force that induces sleep" (Evola, 1992: 151).
     Following Jung, Arnold Mindell associates the muladhara with
     toilet training and says that all of our "cramping" comes from our
     inability to let go in public life because the knot we have tied
     in the root chakra restricts "the inner animal or child who
     defecates and urinates at will" (Mindell, 1982: 40). Such
     "cramping" results from our determination not to embarrass
     ourselves by falling afoul of the expectations of the persona
     field.

     Vimalananda refers to the traditional Hindu association of the
     muladhara with the primal element of earth. For the Greeks there
     were four elements: earth, water, air, and fire, in ascending
     order of subtlety. The Hindus have five, adding ether as the
     element more subtle than fire. In both systems, earth is the
     principle of inertia, weight, and dullness. Vimalananda says,
     "Once the Kundalini Shakti enters the Muladhara Chakra the entire
     Earth Element must be transformed before She can move to the
     Svadhisthana Chakra" (Svoboda, 1994: 77). He seems to imply that
     the muladhara is not merely the center of ignorance, where the
     subtle plane never appears. Indeed, to experience it as a chakra
     requires that our esoteric eyes be opened -- even while we remain
     within its sphere of influence.

     Svoboda's guru suggests that there is a moment when kundalini is
     awake in the root chakra, and then the boring constancy of the
     empirical world will be seen as changing, in the process of
     transformation. I take this to mean that the first beginnings of
     erotic trance must be found in the root chakra, in the interval
     between kundalini's awakening and her ascent. Logically, this
     makes sense. But he gives us little to go on in identifying this
     moment. I am inclined to think that it corresponds to what we will
     consider in Chapter Eleven. There is a moment between every pair
     of identifiable experiences when our mind is empty. The yogin
     learns to recognize these moments and expands upon them. They
     constitute our opportunity to enter a very high state of yogic
     trance. Normally the first moment of kundalini's awakening escapes
     our notice because we fail to catch sight of that empty moment
     that occurs between our blindness to anything but the empirical
     world, and that fall into confusion that characterizes the opening
     of the second chakra.

     Theoretically, all of the chakras lie outside of our awareness as
     long as they are "closed" or "knotted." But when they "open" they
     are experienced as whirling vortices. When I learned this detail,
     it opened my eyes to sensations I had long had regarding the
     second chakra, the svadhisthana, and helped me to become aware of
     less obvious impressions in other parts of my body. Despite that,
     it was some time before I recognized the experience of the
     muladhara opening. Indeed, to this day I have rarely noticed the
     muladhara as the first chakra to open. It is usually only while
     practicing carezza that I experience a great whirling aperture in
     the space between my anus and scrotum (the perineum), pointing
     downward toward my feet. We might guess that no chakra's opening
     can be recognized before we enter erotic trance and that it is
     therefore easy to miss the opening of the root chakra which above
     all characterizes our state of ignorance regarding the subtle
     plane.


             Second Chakra, Svadhisthana, In The Lower Abdomen

     Long before I had heard of the chakras or kundalini, I was very
     much aware -- indeed uncomfortably conscious -- of the sensation
     that must be the most elementary experience of the opening of the
     second chakra. From my teens until well into my twenties, I found
     that whenever I met a girl or a woman who appeared to me as a
     potential "earthly Venus," a yawning hole seemed to open in my
     lower abdomen. I described it to myself as "opening like the eye
     of a camera." The sensation was so vivid that I thought I could
     almost "see" in my mind's eye the "iris" of a camera's aperture
     spinning open below my navel. Unlike a camera's eye, however, it
     never reached a pre-determined diameter where it could mercifully
     stop but kept on whirling, almost painfully, opening wider and
     wider, causing unbearable tension. This was accompanied by an
     overwhelming feeling of vulnerability. I felt I had lost all
     protection, the barrier that gives us anonymity and comfortable
     mystery in the eyes of others. My "boundaries" were dissolving. I
     thought it must surely be apparent to everyone in my vicinity,
     especially to the young woman who had occasioned it. It never
     dawned on me that she might be having somewhat the same sensation.
     For that I seemed to need conversation, which of course was
     difficult to conduct under the circumstances.

     The primal element that the Hindus associate with svidhisthana is
     water. Evola has tied that together with my familiar experience
     quite economically, in saying the emotions generated by the chakra
     in the lower abdomen are: "terrifying unleashed power, sexual
     drive, aversion, shame, and languor, the force that causes thirst"
     (Evola, 1992: 151-2). Jung likens the water of svadhisthana to
     what he calls the Night Sea Journey. This is the central image in
     his Symbols of Transformation (CW 5), based on the ancient
     mythological theme whereby the sun sinks into the Western Sea at
     night, whence it passes underneath us all night long, fighting the
     forces of darkness to arise renewed out of the Eastern Sea at
     dawn. All psychological transformation, Jung tells us, happens in
     exactly this way. An old ego-attitude requires renewal, and this
     can only take place through a terrifying confrontation with the
     forces of the unconscious. To be swallowed up by the unconscious
     means madness, but to struggle consciously with the demons of the
     unconscious leads to a transformation of the ego-attitude whence
     we arise renewed. He observes that the elephant traditionally
     painted in the center of the Hindu icon for the muladhara becomes
     in the svidhisthana the leviathan, the undersea monster.

          Now, the second center has all the attributes that
          characterize the unconscious. Therefore we may assume
          that the way out of our muladhara existence leads into
          the water. A man I know who is not in analysis has had
          interesting dreams representing this quite frequently,
          and they were all identical. He found himself moving
          along a certain road . . . the dream always began with
          such a movement -- and then, to his great amazement, all
          these roads inevitably led into water, the second cakra.

          Therefore, the first demand of a mystery cult always has
          been to go into water, into the baptismal fount. The way
          into any higher development leads through water, with
          the danger of being swallowed by the monster. . . .
          Baptism is a symbolical drowning. . . . It is a symbolic
          death out of which new life comes, a newborn babe (1996:
          16).

     The second chakra, as it opens in the lower abdomen, brings to our
     awareness all the promise and terror of eros. We are in an erotic
     trance. Eros appeared between me and those women before whom I
     felt closeness, sexual desire, shame, terror, and the loss of all
     protection. I knew -- although I lacked the words to express it --
     that a harrowing adventure lay before me. I was in danger of
     losing everything I had known about myself. Perhaps I would
     violate all the rules I took for immutable. I no longer stood with
     the elephant, stolid as the earth and possessing an impeccable
     memory -- recalling all the experiences that made me "me." Now I
     was looking into the watery abyss of my destruction, highly
     unlikely to survive any so-called transformative process. When the
     svadhisthana inspires such fright, it is because we cling to our
     ego, ahamkara, the memory of me and mine. After experiences like
     this, I know Vimalananda is not exaggerating when he says,
     "Whenever trouble increases during your sadhana, you can be sure
     that you are getting closer to your deity" (Svoboda, 1994: 126). I
     was resisting my deity. I had no idea what she wanted of me, but I
     was sure I was unprepared and inadequate to the challenge.
     Implicitly, I had already learned some of Vimalananda's wisdom:
     "Those who ride Kundalini without knowing their destination risk
     losing their way" (Svoboda, 1994: 20). Jung is more specific:

          The gods . . . are germs in us, germs in the muladhara,
          and when they begin to move they have the effect of an
          earthquake which naturally shakes us, and even shakes
          our houses down. . . . To fly is one's own activity, and
          one can safely come down again, but when one is carried
          upward [by a great wind or by kundalini], it is not
          under one's control, and one will be put down after a
          while in a most disagreeable way -- then it means
          catastrophe. So you see, it is wise not to identify with
          these experiences, but to handle them as if they were
          outside the human realm. That is the safest thing to do
          -- and really absolutely necessary. Otherwise you get an
          inflation, and inflation is just a minor form of lunacy,
          a mitigated term for it. And if you get so absolutely
          inflated that you burst, it is schizophrenia (Jung,
          1996: 27).

     If the yawning of the abdominal chakra causes us this much
     discomfort, we are surely not ready for our Night Sea Journey. But
     if we should ever have the strength to enter some distance into
     the fray -- like a vira, not a mad saint -- and come out of it in
     one piece, the opening of the svadhisthana can become a source of
     information. We risk the life of our sanity, but it is not we
     ourselves, our limited egos, that face down the enemy. It is the
     dragon of our soul's energy that takes on the leviathan. We come
     out of the experience knowing something of the nature of
     kundalini. She has opened our eyes for the first time to the
     subtle plane; and although it scared the life out of us when it
     first occupied the field of our vision, we have now claimed a
     parcel -- marked some boundaries and familiarized ourselves with
     the flora. It is therefore with delight that I have found the
     svadhisthana opening sometimes when I am in session with a
     patient. It gives evidence of a powerful bond between us, at a
     nearly instinctual level; and while open, it gives our
     communication added significance. There is nothing shameful,
     sexual, or greedy about the experience. It is informative. Its
     disturbing power has been neutralized, turned from a worthy
     opponent into an ally.

     An additional detail may be worth mentioning. Sometimes when my
     svadhisthana has opened with a patient, I have also "seen" a tube
     connecting our bodies at the level of the abdomen. I have never
     seen this reported in the literature, but find it a useful
     experience insofar as the tube is distinctly different with each
     individual. Sometimes it seems made of flesh of different colors
     and textures, once it appeared to be made of glass, and on another
     occasion it was comprised of countless threadlike tubes, braided,
     in white and red. Each time it has given me a useful impression
     regarding the sort of relationship shared with the patient. I had
     believed this experience was unique to me, and therefore hardly
     worth mentioning, until I heard an interview with the world
     religions expert, Huston Smith, on National Public Radio's
     program, "Fresh Air."[2] Terri Gross asked Smith if he had ever
     experienced "satori."[3] In reply he told a story about his
     seemingly fruitless struggles with the koan[4] assigned to him
     ("Does a dog have Buddha nature?"). He had many frustrating
     meetings with his Zen master (Roshi), until one day something
     inexplicable but momentous occurred and Smith saw that his Roshi
     and he were connected to one another, abdomen-to-abdomen, by a
     tube. This "tubed" experience was his "satori."


                Third Chakra, Manipura, At The Solar Plexus

     Would-be heroes who enter the abysmal waters of the svadhisthana,
     aware of their fright but moved by the greater force of kundalini,
     emerge renewed like the rising sun in manipura, whose element is
     fire and location the solar plexus. The one who trembled before an
     adventure that clearly appeared too formidable steps out of the
     abyss with new self-knowledge. In retrospect it is clear to us
     that before our plunge -- when we still lived in the ordinary
     world of the root chakra -- we had little idea what we stood for,
     we were unaware of the essential and nearly impersonal principles
     on which our life is founded. But having been put to the test, we
     find our existence has simplified itself. We have jettisoned the
     illusory ideals of our "false self," that persona we subliminally
     formed so that we could hold our head up in the hectic and
     ephemeral world of social consensus. In the process we have been
     whittled down to our essentials -- the real principles that ought
     to have been guiding our life but which we had hidden from
     ourselves in shame, false modesty, and cowardice. In manipura we
     find our essential being.

     Such at any rate is the promise and potential of manipura, the
     solar plexus of our being. Jung's description of this chakra,
     whose Sanskrit name means "fullness of jewels," is somewhat more
     ambivalent. He articulates two aspects of manipura.

          [Manipura] is the fire center, really the place where
          the sun rises. The sun now appears; the first light
          comes after baptism. This is like the initiation rites
          in the Isis mysteries, according to Apuleius, where the
          initiate at the end of the ceremony was put upon a
          pedestal and worshipped as the [sun-]god Helios, the
          deification that always follows the baptismal rite. You
          are born into a new existence; you are a very different
          being and have a different name (Jung, 1996: 30-1).

          As long as you are in the manipura you are in the
          terrible heat of the center of the earth, as it were.
          There is only the fire of passions, of wishes, of
          illusions. It is the fire of which the Buddha speaks in
          his sermon in Benares where he says, The whole world is
          in flames, your ears, your eyes, everywhere you pour out
          the fire of desire, and that is the fire of illusion
          because you desire things which are futile. Yet there is
          the great treasure of the released emotional energy.

          So when people become acquainted with the unconscious
          they often get into an extraordinary state -- they flare
          up, they explode, old buried emotions come up, they
          begin to weep about things which happened forty years
          ago. That simply means that they were prematurely
          detached from that state of life; they have forgotten
          that there are buried fires still burning. Then they
          were unconscious, but when they touch the lower centers
          [i.e., the first three chakras], they get back into that
          world and become aware that it is still hot, like a fire
          that has been left forgotten under the ashes. But take
          away the ashes and there are still the glowing embers
          underneath, as it is said of pilgrims going to Mecca:
          they leave their fires buried under the ashes, and when
          they return the following year the embers are still
          glowing (Ibid., 35-6).

     Jung reveals that the manipura is as much a dual experience as are
     the first two chakras we have considered. In the first kundalini
     sleeps, but she may also be awakened. In the second we are
     confronted with destruction; but if we allow kundalini under the
     aspect of virya to confront those dangers, we can be transformed.
     In the third we have access to our essential being, but the
     smallness of our remembered ego-identity may seize upon
     resentments and unresolved issues from the distant past. The
     passion that might proceed directly from our essential being may
     be distorted by our neurotic defenses. Still the passion is an
     important achievement; for, "A man who is not on fire is nothing:
     he is ridiculous, he is two-dimensional" (Jung, 1996: 34).

     The person who trembled before the abyss of svadhisthana had no
     real passion -- at least nothing that burned from within. That
     former being of ours was unacquainted with the inner fire and too
     apt to become a shuttle-cock between fear and pretension. In
     manipura we are introduced to our essential being, but an
     important task remains for us. We have to learn to face up to its
     truth and stop protecting ourselves with illusions about who we
     wish we were, who we are afraid we might be, and our resentments
     concerning the obstacles that prevented us from realizing these
     things years ago.

     In its best sense -- that is to say, when it is "open" -- manipura
     presents us with a sobering realization of the identity that lurks
     beneath all the lies we have constructed about ourselves; and this
     is the source of the real fire of our being. It is the "center of
     the life force" (Mookerjee, 1986: 40). At its worst, when the
     manipura is still knotted and closed, we immerse ourselves in
     illusory fantasies about our essential identity and manifest a
     passion that betrays its neurotic nature by consistently missing
     the mark. Evola says that the combustion of the manipura is desire
     in the form of "a burning, shining substance," characterized by
     emotions such as: "anger, fear, astonishment, violence, pride, and
     hunger" (Evola, 1992: 152). Mindell describes it in terms of: "gut
     knowledge . . . where many assertive reactions are repressed and
     turned into aggressions and anger. Stomach cramps, ulcers, `heart
     burn,' diabetes, and cancer . . ." (Mindell, 1982: 41). But when
     stripped of its neurotic illusions, this third chakra "confers
     knowledge of character and the dispositions of human beings"
     (Evola, 1992: 158).

     This means that when it is "open" the manipura dissolves the
     barriers between us and opens our eyes to imaginal realities. In
     the erotic trance of the solar-plexus chakra, we apprehend the
     subtle reality of our own essential being and that of our partner.
     The amazing thing about all the chakras, when they open, is that
     the rigid boundary of the rational and empirical world that
     divides the subject resolutely off from the object is dissolved in
     an imaginal trance. The "object," especially our partner, is no
     longer a mysterious "other," closed off from us, living a private
     existence that we can apprehend only from the outside. The erotic
     trance made possible by the rise of kundalini and her opening of
     the chakras reveals greater realities that are available only on
     the subtle plane. When the manipura chakra opens, we have an
     immediate intuition, self-evidently true, of our own essential
     being and that of our partner.

     By my mid-twenties I had already begun to appreciate this aspect
     of erotic encounters. The thorough confusion brought on by the
     opening of the abdominal chakra which had characterized my
     adolescence had cleared somewhat, and I could see that, however
     intimidating the challenge might be, it also revealed something
     essential about both me and the individual I had newly met. It
     appears that greater familiarity with erotic openings had tempered
     my panic. The watery abyss of the svadhisthana no longer blurred
     my vision so completely. I pursued some of those visions made
     possible by the opening of the solar-plexus chakra -- the glimpses
     of what seemed to be the other person's "essential being," the
     personality that underlay all the confusing details of everyday
     life. I felt I had become acquainted with a reliable core of
     information. I found that retaining this vision in my memory and
     comparing it with the details I learned later only confirmed the
     truth of realities seen on the subtle plane.

     We may surely be mistaken about such things. For when the manipura
     is activated but still knotted, our vision of our own being as
     well as that of our partner will be distorted with our own
     defensive illusions. We may be led into an erotic involvement
     filled with delusions, misunderstandings, and emotional disasters.
     Patients have told me, for example, that they were so convinced by
     an initial erotic trance that they and their future partner were
     "made for one another" that they naturally assumed all the
     everyday details of living together would be worked out
     miraculously. When things became more complicated and intractable,
     they were inclined to believe that they could never again trust
     such visions. They want to retreat from all experiences of the
     subtle plane out of fear of being misled again. But they are
     missing a crucial distinction. The vision of their partner's
     essential being may well have been accurate enough. What failed
     was their assessment of the defenses which distort the way we live
     that essential being. Information about subtle realities such as
     the essential being of ourselves and our partner does not absolve
     us from the necessity of struggling with our illusions and
     defenses in everyday life. It is the potential for an "inflation"
     ("I know everything I need to know") and self-delusion ("therefore
     everything will take care of itself") that has prompted Jung to
     insist that the "gods" activated in the various chakras must be
     viewed as impersonal third parties. The vision of my essential
     being is not "me," it is the greater personality I might become;
     and the same is true of my partner.

     I have never felt the manipura opening like a whirling lotus
     flower or camera eye. Its most powerful quasi-bodily
     manifestation, however, did reflect its theoretical nature as the
     locus of my essential being. Some years ago, when my son had just
     earned his driver's license, he had an accident while driving to
     high school. I hurried to the hospital; and as I passed through
     the inner doorway of the emergency room to the cubicles where
     patients were awaiting examination, my straight-ahead gaze locked
     onto the eyes of my son, his upper body elevated on an examination
     table. The moment our eyes met, I felt a powerful blow to the
     solar plexus. The depth of our connectedness was immediately
     apparent, almost as though our joint life of sixteen years passed
     before my eyes. The essential nature of our bond was unmistakable.
     He had suffered no injuries. The ambulance ride to the hospital
     had merely been a precaution. But the immanent possibility of
     disaster had stripped away all illusion, and we met one another in
     the essential being of manipura.

     We allude to this reality of holding our essential being in the
     region of our solar plexus when we speak of being punched or
     kicked "in the gut" by events that seem to challenge the ground of
     our conscious existence. The metaphors of everyday life often
     reveal their origins in the ancient and timeless discoveries of
     the kundalini tradition. An analogous experience was reported to
     me by a female colleague who had undergone treatment by an urban
     shaman. I asked her what she had experienced, and she jabbed me as
     hard as she could with the extended fingers of her right hand in
     my solar plexus. "It was like this," she said, and jabbed me
     repeatedly. "I felt my solar plexus being pushed inward by a force
     I could not control." Months later, when I met her at another
     conference, the experience was still with her, and she jabbed me
     again.

     A more vivid description of the power and fire of kundalini as she
     manifests in the manipura chakra can be found in Jung's
     autobiography (Jung, 1961), when he describes his meeting with
     Freud, in 1909, in the elder man's study in Vienna.[5] Jung had
     come prepared with a series of questions on parapsychology, which
     Freud rejected as utter nonsense:

          in terms of so shallow a positivism that I had
          difficulty in checking the sharp retort on the tip of my
          tongue. . . .

          While Freud was going on this way, I had a curious
          sensation. It was as if my diaphragm were made of iron
          and were becoming red-hot -- a glowing vault. And at
          that moment there was such a loud report in the
          bookcase, which stood right next to us, that we both
          started up in alarm, fearing the thing was going to
          topple over on us. I said to Freud: "There, that is an
          example of a so-called catalytic exteriorization
          phenomenon."

          "Oh come," he exclaimed. "That is sheer bosh."

          "It is not," I replied. "You are mistaken, Herr
          Professor. And to prove my point I now predict that in a
          moment there will be another such loud report!" Sure
          enough, no sooner had I said the words than the same
          detonation went off in the bookcase.

          To this day I do not know what gave me this certainty.
          But I knew beyond all doubt that the report would come
          again. Freud only stared at me. I do not know what was
          in his mind, or what his look meant. In any case, this
          incident aroused his mistrust of me, and I had the
          feeling that I done something against him. I never
          afterward discussed the incident with him (Jung, 1961:
          155-6).

     Clearly Jung sees this meeting as having marked the beginning of
     the end of his relationship with Freud. Both men felt the
     essential ground of their existence challenged in this encounter.
     Freud had placed his reputation and all his efforts into
     constructing a rational and "scientific" psychology that would
     stand up to the empirical criticisms of the nineteenth century,
     while Jung had been vitally concerned with parapsychology from
     childhood, had delivered papers on the subject before his college
     debating society, had written his doctoral dissertation on
     mediumship, and eventually coined the term "synchronicity" to
     describe the "non-causal but meaningful connections" with which
     parapsychology concerns itself. Parapsychology's reality was as
     essential for Jung as its rejection was for Freud. Both men were
     involved at the level of the manipura chakra.

     When Jung bit his tongue and suppressed a spontaneous "retort," he
     immediately became aware of an impersonal force -- a blazing fire
     at the solar plexus that heated his diaphragm until it was a
     glowing vault. A "knot" in his manipura flamed up in suppressed
     rage -- a powerful defense against Freud's withering remarks. When
     the bookcase popped, he knew in the erotic trance of his aroused
     state that the sound was connected with the unbearable pressure
     and heat below his diaphragm. The energy of his kundalini was out
     of control, and it would happen again. Under the circumstances, we
     might wonder if Freud was less frightened of parapsychology than
     of Jung's manipura demonstration. It must surely have sufficed to
     convince him Jung was determined to "kill the father." Indeed, at
     their next meeting the drama continued: Freud fainted as Jung went
     on and on about some peat-bog corpses that had been recently
     discovered. At a third meeting in 1912, Freud fainted as Jung
     became enthusiastic over the Egyptian monotheist, Amenophis IV
     (Ikhnaton) who had removed his father's name from the monuments he
     had built (Jung 1961: 156-7).

     All three incidents suggest a conflict at the level of the solar
     plexus; but the one with the bookcase gives us the most
     information. It appears that the rage of a knotted manipura
     combined with the opening of the subtle plane whereby Jung had
     precognitive abilities. The bounds of ordinary reality were
     dissolved as an inner experience of fire was accompanied by an
     outer physical event. The "essential being" of the two men seemed
     to be at stake. Both of them had knots in their manipura. Even
     Freud's fright suggests that -- deny it as he might -- he was
     convinced of Jung's "killing the father" so thoroughly that he was
     unable to doubt it. He, too, was in a sort of trance, and in
     retrospect no one doubts that he was right.

     Much later in his life, it appears that Jung had learned to use
     the opening of his manipura in his conduct of analysis. His
     patients report sessions in which the ordinary world dissolved
     into "whirling molecules" and they could no longer say what
     distinguished them from the furniture in the room. On such
     occasions Jung spoke to them of dreams they had had but not
     reported. He seemed to speak, as they said, to their "essential
     condition." Jung himself described this situation as "thinking
     unconsciously" and attending to a third party to whom he referred
     as "the Three-Million-Year-Old Man" (cf. Haule, 1999a). It appears
     Jung was employing a vision of the essential being of his patient
     as well as his own that became available through a mutual opening
     of the manipura chakra. To avoid becoming "inflated" with this
     knowledge, he ascribed it to the agency of a third party of
     superhuman intelligence and wisdom -- very much as an Indian would
     refer to Shiva or Shakti, even kundalini, as the divinity
     responsible for an erotic vision.


                  Fourth Chakra, Anahata, The Heart Center

     A great transition occurs when we traverse the diaphragm from the
     solar plexus to the heart center. We leave "the lower chakras"
     with their close connection to the physical body and enter "the
     higher chakras." In the lower three we move between ego and its
     essential core, what Evola calls "the principle of
     individuality,"[6] the me beneath my pretensions. My essential
     being and the fierce desires, defenses, and illusions that distort
     it have a personal quality. However, in the anahata:

          One no longer identifies with one's desires. . . . It is
          hard to talk of these things because most people are
          still identified with manipura. . . . The diaphragm
          would correspond to the surface of the earth, and
          apparently in getting into the anahata we reach the
          condition where we are lifted up from the earth. . . .
          You rise above the horizon . . . if you're identical
          with the sun (Jung, 1996: 36-7).

     Jung sticks close to the imagery of the Night Sea Journey in his
     articulation of the chakras. In the second, the sun sets in the
     Western Sea and begins its struggle with the darkness of the
     unconscious. In the third, light dawns in the East, but the sun
     has not yet detached itself from the earth, which Jung emphasizes
     by speaking of the blaze of manipura as the fire at the center of
     the earth. Only in anahata does the sun of our being break free of
     the earth and rise into the air. Anahata is traditionally
     identified with the primal element of air: "because the heart is
     closely associated with the lungs. One must be na•ve to understand
     these things. In primitive experience, it is the same thing. In
     fact it is a psychological truth" (Jung, 1996: 36). It is also a
     physiological truth, for our breathing and heart rate are very
     closely related. The heartbeat that speeds up in the face of
     sexual arousal, terror, and the like, can be controlled by the
     breathing exercises of yoga.

     In the earth of muladhara where kundalini sleeps, we are stolid
     and unmoving in our identification with rationality, empirical
     facts, and the assumptions of our social consensus. In the water
     of svadhisthana we plunge into the chaotic emotional turbulence of
     the unconscious. In the fire of manipura we can become caught in
     passions of a very personal nature. But when we rise into the air
     of anahata, we detach ourselves from our personal identity. In the
     solar center, for example, I am convinced that in seeing my
     essential being I am seeing "the real me"; and as I direct my
     manipura-inspired gaze upon you, I perceive "the real you." But in
     the heart center a real "detachment" takes place.

     For example, when we experience one another sexually through any
     of the lower chakras, we cannot avoid the impression of
     viscerality. Negatively, we may feel "invaded" through the abdomen
     or "punched in the gut" of the solar plexus; positively, we may
     feel "entered" or "joined." The bodily foundation of these
     experiences and the sense that they are "mine" is never lost. But
     when my heart chakra has spun open, I have had the most airy
     feeling of transcendent bliss. "Bliss" is not an appropriate word
     to describe what happens in the lower chakras. We may talk of
     pleasure, pain, intimations of truth, and the like; but we are
     never moved to speak of bliss. We thus feel a crucial distinction
     between the lower and the upper chakras. Furthermore, we are moved
     to call it transcendent bliss. It is neither mine nor yours. It
     transcends us both and "comes to us," as though bestowed from on
     high. When our heart chakras spin open, there is no doubt in our
     minds that they are spinning in unison and that the oneness we
     experience is supremely light. In my experience, it can take place
     while we are fully clothed and without the physical activities of
     love-making. Toomer seems to have alluded to the heart chakra when
     he said that he had dropped the weight of "that me."

     Although there is a sensation in our chest, it is as though our
     entire body has been "sublimed"[7] and turned into air, flowing
     through the vortex of my anahata into yours and back again. "I"
     and "you" persist, but a discarnate "we" predominates. Jung
     alludes to this experiential fact when he says that
     "individuation" begins in the heart chakra. In his language
     individuation does not mean "individuality," but rather one's
     connection with what is transpersonal, impersonal, or collective.
     Our personhood is rooted in what we share with all humankind, and
     indeed with the universe. The process of individuation for Jung
     establishes a living relationship with the impersonal ground of
     existence that he calls "the collective unconscious" or "the
     self." When we realize the centrality of the self, we discover
     that the ego we thought exhausted the reality of who we are has
     become merely an "appendix" of the larger reality the Hindus call
     atman.

          In anahata individuation begins. . . . Individuation is
          becoming that thing which is not the ego, and that is
          very strange. . . . The ego discovers itself as being a
          mere appendix of the self in a sort of loose connection.
          For the ego is always far down in the muladhara and
          suddenly becomes aware of something up above on the
          fourth story, in anahata, and that is the self (Jung,
          1996: 39-40).

          In anahata . . . [one] gets the first inkling of the
          power and substantiality, or the real existence, of
          psychical things. . . . One cannot catch them with a
          butterfly net, nor can one find them under microscopes.
          They become visible only in the anahata (Jung, 1996:
          45).

     In the texts of Tantrism, the heart center is often described as a
     "void" that is "free of duality" and characterized by the state of
     bliss (Silburn, 1988: 7). "When Kundalini touches the heart
     center, [the yogin] breaks the attachment that ties him to the
     body" (Silburn, 1988: 73). Traditionally this condition of being
     beyond the body and the empirical world is symbolized by the
     "unstruck sound" which is the literal meaning of anahata (Evola,
     1992: 153). Everything written about the anahata chakra emphasizes
     sublimity. It is not only we who are "sublimed," but the field of
     our consciousness as well. It is the immaterial world, the subtle
     plane as a realm in itself and not merely the esoteric
     significance of empirical realities. This is what Jung means when
     he says we get our "first inkling of the power and substantiality,
     or the real existence, of psychical things." Erotic trance becomes
     spiritual to a degree unknown at the lower chakras.

     Whenever a chakra opens for us, the boundaries of everyday life
     are obliterated. When the svadhisthana opens in the lower abdomen,
     we have the sense that the two of us are dissolving into an erotic
     and dangerous we. At the manipura this dissolution manifests
     itself in our intuition of the essential being of the other. At
     the anahata it gives us the ability to "detect the feelings of
     other people" (Evola, 1992: 158; italics added). This is also why
     it is the primary center of love. But we can only read the
     feelings of others accurately when the anahata chakra is open. It
     may be activated but remain knotted. Then it can be characterized
     by a narcissistic self-love that includes, "hope, anxiety,
     apprehension, doubt, remorse, and hesitation" (Evola, 1992: 153).
     Mindell attributes to a knotted heart center, "hypochondria,
     skipping heart beats, cramping, stopping, over-excitement, and
     na•ve sentimentality" (Mindell, 1982: 42). To be moved by the
     feelings that predominate in anahata without being detached from
     our ego-centered concerns distorts them as surely as our
     intuitions of essential being may be at the third chakra. If the
     open anahata is characterized above all by detachment from the
     body, from the personal realm, and from the outer world, a knotted
     anahata reveals persisting attachments, personal desires, and
     possessiveness.

     When the anahata is knotted, its activation may be extremely
     painful. Typically this condition arises when we fall deeply in
     love with an individual who pretends not to reciprocate our
     feelings. Unable to conceal his feelings entirely, our would-be
     partner inadvertently gives us ample evidence that he loves us in
     return but cannot submit, perhaps, to the tumult of his own
     svadhisthana. Pulling back in fear, he frustrates our hopes and
     maintains distance. When our anahata chakra is knotted, we can
     feel this ambivalent rejection as a tearing or cutting right down
     the center of our chest. Such a torment results from our own
     knotted heart center. We have not yet risen above the surface of
     the inner earth of our diaphragm, and are still filled with
     personal attachments. We want to possess this beloved who rejects
     us. Unable to love in the pure, airy letting-be of an open
     anahata, our chest is clenched shut; and every attempt by the
     heart center to open seems to tear our flesh. Our pain is evidence
     that our "deity" is approaching and demanding that we let go of
     our attachments.

     Intermediate between the bliss of a whirling anahata and the
     torment of a torn anahata lies the nearly sublime sensation that
     our heart center opens ecstatically like a groove in our chest
     that may sometimes expand to involve the lower chakras in an
     openness extending from pubis to clavicle. We may feel that our
     partner nestles in that tender and sensitive trough or that we
     nestle inside our partner. Often it is difficult to determine
     which of us contains the other. The knottedness of the anahata is
     no longer experienced as painful. It is, indeed, delightful; but
     its rootedness in the physical body, now transformed through our
     erotic trance, reveals that we are perhaps lying on the surface of
     the inner earth and have not yet risen into the air. The subtle
     plane predominates over sensual realities. In Divine Madness
     (Haule, 1990: 154-6) I recounted an example of a couple who had
     reached a state like this and then were astonished to see that
     their coupling was but a footnote to the "real event": gigantic
     spirit beings were uniting in the air surrounding them. Although
     innocent of the whirling sensation so frequently described, their
     eyes were opened to "the real existence of psychical things": the
     full spirituality and independence of a divine subtle plane.
     Consistent with Jung's expression of the ego finding itself an
     "appendix" to a self which manifests "up above on the fourth
     story," those lovers felt personally "left out" of the main event,
     a pair of egos who were only permitted to observe.

     Ioan Couliano says that this experience is cross-cultural and
     invariably associated with the space of the heart as it exists in
     the subtle body:

          . . . "cleansing one's pneuma" or hegemonikon, or
          "cleansing one's heart." These are the theoretical
          givens that make it possible to understand a number of
          mystico-magic Oriental techniques that place much
          importance on the transparency, purity, and brilliance
          of the "seat of the heart," such as Taoism, Yoga,
          Sufism, and Hesychasm.[8] Whether or not it is
          designated by the vocables hsin, akasa, hrdaya, qalb, or
          kardia, this "cardiac space" always represents the
          phantasmic synthesizer whose cleanliness is the
          condition essential to all manifestation of divinity
          (1986: 114).

     A "clean" heart-space is uncontaminated with personal attachments,
     assumptions, and desires. In the literature of Sufism and
     Buddhism, this heart-center requirement is often expressed as
     "polishing the mirror of the heart"; for only a mirror devoid of
     all dust fragments and fingerprints can reflect the realities of
     the subtle plane without distortion. What Couliano calls
     "phantasmic synthesizer" is precisely the imagination, what Corbin
     calls, employing the capital letter I, "active Imagination." This
     is our imaginal capacity, our faculty for transcending the merely
     personal and gaining access to the mundus imaginalis, the imaginal
     world -- an objective and impersonal reality which is
     substantially the same for all who enter. Whatever differences may
     be found from one individual to another are attributed solely to
     personal predispositions, to smudges on the mirror of the heart.

     The examples of mysticism described in the seven chapters
     preceding this one have had relatively little to do with the heart
     chakra. The mad saints enter into the turbulence of svadhisthana's
     watery abyss and lose their ego-orientation. Kundalini obliterates
     the world of their ego; and if they survive the ordeal
     psychologically, kundalini has brought them through the abyss to
     their essential being in manipura. The antinomian saints struggle
     with the same transit, but do so in a far more conscious manner.
     If any of them rose to the level of the anahata, we have paid
     little attention to this development. In the chapters that follow,
     however, the vast majority of the examples will be centered in the
     heart chakra. Despite the doctrine that kundalini sleeps and wakes
     in the root chakra, it is commonly said that "Kundalini usually
     chooses to stir from the heart" (Silburn, 1988: 28), or that the
     heart chakra is "where we always are" -- a reference to the self
     or atman rather than the ego.

     The great Bengali poet, Ramprasad Sen, says that he wants to dwell
     only in the heart chakra because (a) one cannot remain long in the
     crown chakra where complete union is attained, (b) in the lower
     levels one cannot "enjoy" the experience, and (c) in the heart
     center one is intoxicated but remains aware of one's surroundings
     (McLean, 1998: 75-6). In the verse that follows, the "cage of
     green bamboo" refers to the rib cage. "Lalan" is one of
     Ramprasad's names.

          Mind, your only hope is to stay in the cage,
          The cage you have made of green bamboo.
          One day the cage will fall down,
          Lalan says, When the cage is opened
          That bird will fly away somewhere.
                                   (McLean, 1998: 82).


                 Fifth Chakra, Vishuddha, The Throat Center

     The primal element of vishuddha, the throat chakra, is ether,
     which is itself a highly abstract notion. In the West ether has
     come to mean a certain sort of aromatic compound. This is not at
     all the primal element ether. Indeed, ether no longer plays a role
     in modern physics and chemistry.[9] In late antiquity, the Middle
     Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and even to the
     nineteenth century, ether still had a role to play as the rarefied
     medium through which the stars and planets move. India's ether
     plays a role something like that of our own discarded notion, but
     it also and more importantly refers to a level of psychological
     and mystical experience. In Sanskrit, ether is akasha:

          [Akasha] means literally "radiance." Early on, it
          acquired the meaning of "space" or "ether," and served
          as a frequent comparison for the transcendent Self,
          which is described as being brighter than a myriad of
          suns. . . . In later times, akasha came to be regarded
          as the finest of the five material elements (bhuta) of
          the manifest cosmos. In this sense, the concept is
          similar to Aristotle's "quintessence" and the
          "luminiferous ether" of nineteenth century physics -- a
          notion that was abandoned at the beginning of our
          century (Feuerstein, 1990).

     In Jung's words, ether is: "Matter that is not matter, and such a
     thing must necessarily be a concept. . . . One reaches a sphere of
     abstraction. There one steps beyond the empirical world, as it
     were, and lands in a world of concepts" (Jung, 1996: 42). In being
     "beyond the empirical world," vishuddha has much in common with
     the heart chakra as well as the upper two centers. But the heart
     chakra is characterized primarily by feeling, while the throat
     chakra brings conceptual realities to our awareness. In an open
     anahata we can feel the feelings of others; in an open vishuddha
     we can detect their thoughts (Evola, 1992: 158). If in anahata we
     rise into the air, in vishuddha we rise into a much more abstract
     space comprised of ether:

          [In vishuddha] one should admit that all one's psychical
          facts have nothing to do with material facts. For
          instance, the anger which you feel for somebody or
          something, no matter how justified it is, is not caused
          by those external things. It is a phenomenon all by
          itself. . . . In other words, our worst enemy is perhaps
          within ourselves.

          If you reach that stage, you begin to leave the anahata
          (Jung, 1996: 49).

     The clarity with which Jung spoke of the first four chakras
     appears to desert him as he gets to the fifth. Appearing to
     recognize this, he throws up his hands before the task of
     describing the chakras remaining, "It doesn't help to speculate
     about the ajna and sahasrara and God knows what" (Ibid., 47). It
     is not only Jung, however, who begins to speak obscurely when he
     reaches the fifth chakra. I have found no accounts of what it
     feels like to have the throat center open like a whirling lotus,
     and have not experienced it myself. Possibly my throat chakra is
     particularly knotted. I am well known, in fact, as one who has
     frequently to clear my throat -- a factor that is certainly
     related to my constant post-nasal drip, but may well have
     psychological and spiritual dimensions as well. Evola says that an
     open throat center makes it possible for, "Atma [to] see itself in
     everything and dominate past present and future." Meanwhile a
     knotted vishuddha is characterized by emotions of "affection,
     sadness, respect, devotion, happiness, regret, and relationship"
     (Evola, 1992: 154).

     Clear distinctions between anahata, vishuddha, and ajna (the brow
     chakra), are hard to find. But if vishuddha is associated, as
     tradition holds, with a facility in the use of words and concepts,
     it would seem that my writing employs the throat chakra. The
     reader will perhaps be the best judge as to whether this book
     testifies to an open or a closed vishuddha, but I think my
     experience in writing is not unique to me. I find that some other
     power, entirely impersonal and "not me," proposes images and words
     which in the first instance I simply observe. Often a whole scene
     unfolds for me, and I simply write down the words that come by way
     of articulating it. Sometimes words and phrases come of their own
     and the images follow.

     If this is a description of kundalini proposing and my ego
     disposing, then perhaps Muhammad is the best historical example of
     a man who worked entirely from the vishuddha. For by his own
     account he merely repeated word-for-word what the Angel Gabriel
     spoke to his inner ear when he was reciting the texts that
     eventually were assembled as the Qu'ran. So respectful was he of
     the divine origin of those words, that he eschewed all ego
     participation in the process. Every one of his inspired
     pronouncements began with the word, "Recite." Kundalini, in the
     person of Gabriel, began every entry into the oral record that
     became the Qu'ran with the command to Muhammad that he was to
     "recite" what followed, and Muhammad was so worshipful in his
     regard for the impersonal source of what he was to say that he did
     not omit even the initial word of command.

     In my case, ego plays a much larger role. I argue with kundalini,
     telling her that this is not yet the time for this particular
     idea, image, or set of words. I wait for her to speak to the issue
     at hand, reminding her that she got me into this or that
     difficulty and that it is her responsibility to get me out of it.
     I also do not hesitate to shape her material with an eye to my
     imagined reader. Sometimes I become depressed at the way things
     are going and block my access to the impersonal source of
     inspiration. I also have to submit myself to a great deal of
     ego-centered research, studying what others have said and
     accumulating a supply of material which kundalini shapes by
     turning up my interest. But it is generally she who finds the
     conceptual connections between the various ideas I have found in
     my academic sources. While the dialogue is going on between me and
     kundalini, I often lose tract of time and my commitments in the
     empirical world. In a few instances this has led to embarrassment,
     but I find that generally kundalini or some other watchman keeps
     track of these things -- not unlike the internal clock-keeper who
     wakes me in the morning or at the end of an occasional afternoon
     nap at precisely the right moment, eliminating the need for an
     alarm clock.

     According to the Hindus, ether is the element that transmits
     vibrations -- particularly those of sound. Thus the pronouncing of
     mantras is said to be associated with the vishuddha, not only
     because mantras are phrases, words, or isolated syllables, but
     also because mantras are said to change our consciousness through
     the etheric vibrations produced when we speak them aloud. Music --
     especially the music of the spheres -- belongs to the vishuddha. A
     musician once told me that the throat chakra is his most
     dependable access to the subtle body and the subtle plane. He can
     open it at will by pronouncing the mantra given him by a guru. But
     it also opens of its own and enables him to perceive that the
     world is ethereal and comprised of vibrations.


              Sixth Chakra, Ajna, Centered Above The Eyebrows

     A great deal of nonsense has been written about the brow chakra,
     often called the "third eye," especially in Western literature.
     New-age accounts credit the third eye with every sort of imagery,
     making little or no attempt to distinguish the imaginal from the
     imaginary. Ajna is different from the other "higher chakras" in
     that it has more to do with imagery than the others. The heart
     chakra is responsible primarily for feelings, the throat center
     for concepts and words, and the crown chakra for cosmic vision.
     What distinguishes the brow chakra is imagery of a mythological
     and impersonal character. It is our eye into "Indra's Heaven," to
     use the metaphor from our earlier story about Nanda, the Buddha's
     half-brother.

     The myth that we live without knowing it as a myth -- and perhaps
     without knowing that we are living a myth at all -- represents the
     unacknowledged ground of our personal existence. When our ajna is
     open, this impersonal ground expresses itself in imagery and
     narrative. It has a thoroughly impersonal character. The extent to
     which we live our life centered in the ego's concerns obscures the
     mythological foundation and enables us to depart from our
     psychological roots in various neurotic ways. When the
     mythological foundation of our life is acknowledged, however, it
     does indeed form the basis of our existence; and ajna, as our
     imaginal access to our foundation, envisions the ruling myth of
     our life. In this sense it is the "command center." Beyond that:
     "It is the receiver for the guru's telepathic communications to
     the student. Hence it is also called the guru-chakra. . . . Its
     activation is said to lead to all kinds of psychic powers
     (siddhi), notably clairvoyance and the ability to communicate
     telepathically" (Feuerstein, 1990).

     Mookerjee says the ajna "controls" the various states of
     consciousness that one gains through meditation (Mookerjee, 1986:
     42). It gives us "simultaneous knowledge of things as they really
     are"; and is the perceiver of cosmic consciousness (Ibid., 12).
     Silburn says that these visions occur while the body, will, and
     intellect are "benumbed," although the "heart keeps watch"
     (Silburn, 1988: 74). This seems to mean that genuine ajna
     experience requires a real detachment from the body, as is true of
     all the higher chakras. Karagulla, a medical doctor who reports
     her educated observations, notes that while a clairvoyant is
     "seeing" invisible or imaginal realities, the eyes appear
     "slightly dilated and fixed," and the pupils do not react in the
     normal way to light (Karagulla & Kunz, 1989: 84).

     A dramatic story about the opening of the ajna chakra constitutes
     a turning point in the biography of Ramakrishna. A naked,
     wandering guru named Tota attempted to initiate Ramakrishna into
     his own fairly orthodox practice of Vedanta. Meanwhile,
     Ramakrishna reports being delighted with Tota's nakedness and used
     the opportunity to play with the elder man's "little penis,"
     apparently as though it were the member of a boy -- thus
     expressing Ramakrishna's unconscious identification with
     homosexuality and Tantra.[10] Tota became frustrated by this
     sexual play and by Ramakrishna's devotion to the goddess,
     believing that it kept Ramakrishna's eyes closed to Vedanta's
     formless vision of brahman:

          The graceful form of his Mother kept appearing to him,
          floating in his psychic sky to challenge the command of
          the monk who had smirked at Ramakrishna's devotion.
          Finally, Tota took a piece of sharp glass and embedded
          it in Ramakrishna's forehead: "Concentrate here," he
          said. Once again the goddess appeared, but this time the
          saint imagined that his new-found knowledge was a sword
          and cut the goddess in two. At once his mind ascended
          past name and form and merged into the formless brahman.
          Within a mere three days, he had attained what it took
          Tota forty years to accomplish (Kripal, 1995: 152).

     The ultimate victor in this story was Ramakrishna, who brought
     Tota to such despair that he wandered into the river to commit
     suicide, where he had a vision of the goddess, the Mother of the
     Universe, and realized that, "Brahman and the sakti of brahman are
     nondifferent!" (Kripal, 1995: 153). But the detail about embedding
     the piece of sharp glass in Ramakrishna's forehead appears to be
     an authentic reference to what it feels like to have the brow
     chakra open. Bhattacharya's introduction to the ajna chakra was
     very similar. His "instructor," a little Vaishnavite yogin named
     Narada, removed a brown bead from his hair and pressed it into
     Bhattacharya's forehead. Bhattacharya gives a lengthy series of
     incidents in which reality and illusion are so interwoven with one
     another that it is impossible to distinguish one from the other.
     The ajna brings us visions, but no little discernment is required
     before we can utilize them. Bhattachaya says, "To this day I feel
     much embrarrassed for this brow-reaction [the seeing of visions];
     and I always stand in fear of it" (Bhattacharya, 1988: 287). His
     confusion and embarrassment betray a certain "knottedness" in his
     ajna.

     I have never felt my own brow chakra open, but several people have
     reported to me that they have experienced it as a vertical split
     in the forehead, suggestive of the Indian icons in which a third
     eye is positioned vertically between the two horizontal fleshly
     eyes.[11] One woman told me she experienced it as an unusually
     sharp and persisting headache in the center of her forehead that
     was "so immobilizing that I couldn't get out of bed to get an
     aspirin" and that when she closed her eyes she had an image of a
     "gridlocked woven pattern in multiple colors." Apparently her
     knotted ajna was trying to open. Further evidence of the
     knottedness of her ajna is suggested by the fact that she was
     assailed by visions she found extremely disturbing. For example, a
     vision or dream of a car crash convinced her that one of her grown
     children was in danger of dying in an automobile accident. She
     entered a psychotic-like state that lasted a couple of weeks, and
     restored her sanity by returning to the yogic practices she had
     been neglecting. On her return to sanity, she said that the lesson
     she had learned from all that had happened was that such visions
     were "true but not literal." In short, she had learned that the
     visions belong to the subtle plane and not to the empirical world.

     Muktananda's experience confirms that the sensation accompanying
     an opening ajna chakra may be a powerful pain in the forehead:

          I started to feel a pain between the eyebrows, which was
          so strong I could not sleep at night. Then a light came
          in meditation, like a candle flame without a wick, and
          stood motionless in the ajna chakra, the two-petaled
          lotus between the eyebrows (Muktananda, 1978: 128).


            Seventh Chakra, Sahasrara, At The Crown Of The Head

     Sahasrara, meaning "thousand," refers to the "thousand-petaled
     lotus" or "thousand-spoked wheel" that represents the crown
     chakra, sometimes located at the crown of the skull, where the
     energy of kundalini may be felt to exit, and sometimes located
     some four inches above the crown of the head. "The Sahasrara is
     the centre of quintessential consciousness, where integration of
     all polarities is experienced, and the paradoxical act of
     transcendence is accomplished in passing beyond ever-changing
     samsara[12] and `emerging from time and space'" (Mookerjee, 1986:
     44). It is the point at which semen rising through the central
     channel (sushumna) is said to be transformed into nectar and the
     point where Sadashiva, as the union of Shiva and Shakti, occurs.
     Silburn says that to pass beyond the brow chakra, it is necessary
     to have mastered meditation's goal of samadhi, the state of
     non-dual consciousness (Silburn, 1988: 29). What is attained in
     the sahasrara is the "splendor of consciousness"; and it does not
     come about through self-effort. In Christian terms, it is a matter
     of "grace," i.e., supernatural agency, a gift of God. What is seen
     in the high attainment of samadhi in the crown chakra is a vision
     of "the very nature of things" (Silburn, 1988: 31).

     "The very nature of things" may be called Sadashiva, Shakti,
     consciousness, brahman, or given a large number of names; but the
     essence of the vision involves seeing the underlying nature of
     reality. The empirical world is revealed as a limited and illusory
     vision of ultimate reality, which may be described as the energy
     that lies behind what we see with our fleshly eyes.[13] It is the
     fundamental experience of "Thou art That." Gopi Krishna's
     meditation on the thousand-petaled lotus of his sahasrara gives us
     a distorted hint of what the experience may be. To approach the
     experience more clearly, we will have to consider the nature of
     samadhi and the Buddhist doctrine of nothingness (shunyata) or
     "co-dependent origination" in Chapters Eleven and Twelve. For now
     it will be enough to know that it transcends all earlier
     experiences and is the goal of mysticism. "Indra's Heaven" and its
     analogues that become available to our imaginal vision in the brow
     chakra are also revealed to be a limited and illusory perspective
     on the ultimate when the yogin's sahasrara opens.


                              *      *      *


     This survey of the seven centers that comprise the subtle body
     represents a very limited account. We have striven to remain close
     to everyday consciousness so as to reveal aspects of the
     subtle-body experience that many readers may have had and in the
     hope that experiences that have not been had can at least be
     vividly imagined. Surely more complete and officially "correct"
     versions are available. I have tried to keep this account simple
     by not going beyond my own experience. The point is that we
     encounter a whole world of experience at each chakra, for each one
     bring a unique perspective to bear, with its own physiology,
     emotion, and imaginal structure. The chakras are the gateways to
     the several dimensions of the subtle plane, where what is "out
     there" and what is "in here" are not different. We all experience
     the subtle body in fragmentary ways. Most of us discard these
     glimpses because we have no way of naming and categorizing them.
     They have no place within our Western consensus. I am convinced
     that the best way to proceed is to begin taking note of the
     experiences we are already having, and not to try to force
     ourselves to have the experiences we find described in books. Thus
     the descriptions above are not meant to be taken as a blueprint so
     much as a set of clues. subtle-body.



     ----------------------

       1. Although the texts generally describe this energy as "sperm"
          or one of its mythological equivalents, the fact that it is
          common to both men and women prompts my employment of this
          more general expression, "vital energy."

       2. First aired in 1966. I heard it repeated on April 2, 1999,
          while revising this manuscript.

       3. Satori: the experience of "awakening" or "enlightenment" in
          Zen.

       4. Koan: A saying, phrase, or story given to a student of Zen to
          be meditated upon with the idea of finding an "answer." Koans
          always take the form of conundrums designed to frustrate the
          student's reasoning and everyday thinking powers so as to
          bring about a break-through, i.e., satori.

       5. Of course Jung never connects this incident with the language
          of kundalini yoga.

       6. He uses the Latin expression, principium individuationis.

       7. In chemistry, to "sublime" is to pass directly from the solid
          state to the gaseous state without becoming a liquid in
          between. You can see this on a warm, humid day in winter when
          the snow turns directly into steam and may even produce a
          fog.

       8. Hesychasm: the mystical practice of the Orthodox Church,
          discovered by the monks of the monastery at Mt. Athos in the
          fourteenth century. By repeating the mantra, "Lord Jesus
          Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me," they sought a vision
          of "the Divine Light, the Energy, not the essence of the
          godhead," through yoga-like practices (Ferguson, 1977).

       9. Unless one sees it smuggled back in the form of the "fields"
          through which the energy-packets of quantum theory propagate
          themselves; or in the "no-place" where Bohm's "implicate
          order" lies "folded up." As we shall see in Chapter Eleven,
          there is ample reason for considering this mythological
          interpretation of certain obscure notions in modern physics.

      10. Not only does this playful sexuality suggest that Ramakrishna
          was infantilizing the elder guru, it also implies that
          Ramakrishna was initiating Tota into his own unconscious
          Tantric practice at the same time that Tota was endeavoring
          to initiate Ramakrishna into Vedanta.

      11. This vertical placement of the "third eye" seems to represent
          a minority position among Indian iconographers, as the eye in
          the center of the brow is more frequently represented in the
          horizontal position. It is tempting to think that those who
          place it vertically may be more fully initiated.

      12. Samsara: the eternal round of death and rebirth, also the
          empirical or profane world, the source of all illusion. We
          are fated to be reborn into the empirical world after every
          death until we attain the transcending consciousness which
          sees through it. Once this is achieved, our death ends the
          struggle and we enter forever into the full reality of what
          is.

      13. This doctrine that the empirical world is a limited aspect of
          ultimate reality is common to the various schools of Tantra.
          It contrasts with the Vedanta doctrine of Shankara, whereby
          the empirical world has no reality at all, is merely an
          illusion. For Tantra, the empirical world is a real but
          limited perspective on "the very nature of things." It is
          illusory insofar as it poses as the way things really are;
          but it is real insofar as it constitutes a limited aspect of
          ultimate reality.