CG JUNG - Countryside Anarchist

LECTURE 2
dalini.” Quite the contrary, they can experience the divine because they
are so deeply conscious of the utter difference of God and man. We are
identical with it from the beginning because our gods, inasmuch as they
are not just conscious abstractions, are mere germs, or functions, let us
say. The divine thing in us functions as neuroses of the stomach, or of the
colon, or bladder—simply disturbances of the underworld. Our gods
have gone to sleep, and they stir only in the bowels of the earth. 3 For our
conscious idea of God is abstract and remote. One hardly dares to speak
of it. It has become taboo, or it is such a worn-out coin that one can
hardly exchange it.
Well now, Kundalini yoga in its system of cakras symbolizes the development
of that impersonal life. Therefore it is at the same time an initiation
symbolism, and it is the cosmogonic myth. I will tell you one example.
There is a Pueblo myth according to which man was generated far
down in the earth in a pitch-black cave. Then, after untold time of a
dormant and absolutely dark wormlike existence, two heavenly messengers
came down and planted all the plants. Finally they found a cane
which was long enough to go through the opening in the roof and was
jointed like a ladder, so mankind could climb up and reach the floor of
the next cave; but it was still dark. Then, after a long time, they again
placed the cane under the roof and again climbed up and reached the
third cave. And so again, until finally they came to the fourth cave where
there was light, but an incomplete and ghostly light. That cave opened
out upon the surface of the earth, and for the first time they reached the
surface; but it was still dark. Then they learned to make a brilliant light,
out of which finally the sun and the moon were made.
You see, this myth depicts very beautifully how consciousness came to
pass, how it rises from level to level. Those were cakras, new worlds of
consciousness of natural growths, one above the other. And this is the
symbolism of all initiation cults: the awakening out of mÖlvdhvra,andthe
going into the water, the baptismal fount with the danger of the makara,
the devouring quality or attribute of the sea.
Then, if you pass through that danger you reach the next center,
maõipÖra, which means the fullness of jewels. It is the fire center, really
the place where the sun rises. The sun now appears; the first light comes
after the baptism. This is like the initiation rites in the Isis mysteries,
3 In his “Commentary on ‘The Secret of the Golden Flower’” (1929) Jung wrote: “The
gods have become diseases; Zeus no longer rules Olympus but rather the solar plexus and
produces curious specimens for the doctor’s consulting room” (CW, vol. 13, §54). For a
reevaluation of this often-cited notion, see Wolfgang Giegerich, “Killings,” Spring: A Journal
of Archetype and Culture 54 (1993): 9–18.
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