CG JUNG - Countryside Anarchist

INTRODUCTION
ism, the positivist experimental epistemology, and the growing dominance
of psychoanalysis, and when developmental phases could hardly
be associated with anything other than what was becoming the alpha and
omega of the study of personality—the child—Kundalini yoga presented
Jung with a model of something that was almost completely lacking in
Western psychology—an account of the developmental phases of higher
consciousness.
In Kundalini yoga the body is represented as consisting in a series of
cakras: mulvdhvra, svvdhiü°hvna, maõipÖra, anvhata, viçuddha, vjñv,
and sahasrvra. These are located in different parts of the body and
linked by channels (nvìzs), the most important of which are the iìv,
piõgalv, andsuüumõv. Most commentators concur that the cakras and
the nvìzs are not intended as physiological depictions of the body in the
contemporary Western sense but represent a subtle or mystical body.
Feuerstein described them as “idealized version of the structure of the
subtle body, which are meant to guide the yogin’s visualisation and
contemplation.” 26
Jung’s lectures are principally taken up with providing a modern psychological
interpretation of the cakras. Narendra Nath Bhattacharyya
stated that the cakras are best understood through seeing their different
components as constituted by a process of historical layering:
From a historical point of view it may be suggested that the padmas
or cakras were originally conceived of in terms of human anatomy
for the purpose of physiological study. . . . At a subsequent stage, in
conformity with the tantric idea that the human body is the microcosm
of the universe, worldly objects such as the sun, moon, mountains,
rivers, etc., were connected with these cakras. Each cakra was
again thought to represent the gross and the subtle elements . . .
quite in accordance with the tantric idea that the deities reside
within the human body and that the aspirant has to feel the deity
within the body itself. These cakras came to be conceived of as the
seat of the male and female principles, symbolized by the male and
female organs. . . . The presiding deities of the cakras were originally
tantric goddesses. . . . The theory of letters, of the alphabet
symbolising different tattvas was also grafted, and in this way we
by Olga von Koenig-Fachsenfeld (Stuttgart, 1932), 66–67; my translation. On the relation
of this lecture to the lecture of the same title in the appendix to this volume, see
xxxiv.
26 Feuerstein, Yoga: The Technology of Ecstasy (Wellingborough, 1990), 258.
xxiv