CG JUNG - Countryside Anarchist

26 OCTOBER 1932
of psychical things. The reality we reach there is a psychical reality; it is
a world of psychical substance, if we can apply such a term. I think we get
nearest to it when we say it is a world of psychical reality. So another
point of view to explain the series of the cakras would be a climbing up
from gross matter to the subtle, psychical matter. Now, the idea of this
transformation from earth to ether is one of the oldest constituents of
Hindu philosophy. The concept of the five elements is a part of the
Samkhya philosophy, which is pre-Buddhistic, belonging to the seventh
century B.C. at the latest. All subsequent Hindu philosophies, like the
Upanisads, took their origin in the Samkhya philosophy. So this concept
of the five elements dates back endlessly—there is no way of telling its
age. One sees from the age of that component that the fundamental
ideas of tantric yoga reach back into a dim past. Also the idea of the
transformation of the elements shows the analogy of tantric yoga with
our medieval alchemistic philosophy. There one finds exactly the same
ideas, the transformation of the gross matter into the subtle matter of
the mind—the sublimation of man, as it was then understood.
Speaking of this alchemistic aspect of the cakras, I want to call your
attention to the symbol of maõipÖra, the fire center. You remember, perhaps,
that in the fire center there are those peculiar handles, one could
call them, which Professor Hauer hypothetically explained as parts of
the swastika. 2 Now, I must confess that I never have seen a swastika symbol
that had only three feet. There is the Greek form of the triskelos, but
I don’t know whether that existed in India. It was found on Greek coins
in Sicily, from a period between four hundred and about two hundred
B.C.—when Sicily belonged to Graecia Magna and was a large and flourishing
Greek colony. The triskelos is like this: the three-legged being. But
the swastika is like this: running on four feet. So I suggest that these
might be handles attached to the triangle of maõipÖra. I rather think that
they are handles of a pot—to lift the pot—and there is a lid on top which
has also a handle. I think that is probably to be explained from the alchemistic
aspect, because maõipÖra is the fire region, and that is the
kitchen, or the stomach, where the food is cooked. One stuffs the food
into the pot, or into the belly, and there it is heated by the blood. In that
way food is prepared so that one can digest it.
Cooking is an anticipation of digestion, a sort of predigestion. For example,
in Africa the papaya tree has the very peculiar quality that its fruit
and leaves are full of pepsin, the same stuff which is found in the juice of
the stomach, the digestive stuff par excellence. The Negroes wrap up
2 Ibid., 75.
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