Carl Jung on the chakras, from The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, by Carl Jung
“So, too, the chakras are symbols. They symbolize highly complex psychic facts which at the present moment we could not possibly express except in images. The chakras are therefore of great value to us because they represent a real effort to give a symbolic theory of the psyche. The psyche is something so highly complicated, so vast in extent, and so rich in elements unknown to us, and its aspects overlap and interweave with one another in such an amazing degree, that we always turn to symbols in order to try to represent what we know about it. Any theory about it would be premature because it would become entangled in particularities and would lose sight of the totality we set out to envisage.
You have seen from my attempt at an analysis of the chakras how difficult it is to reach their content, and with what complex conditions we have to deal when we are studying not just consciousness but the totality of the psyche. The chakras, then, become a valuable guide for us in this obscure field because the East, and India especially, has always tried to understand the psyche as a whole. It has an intuition of the self, and therefore it sees the ego and consciousness as only more or less unessential parts of the self. All this seems very strange to us: it appears to us as though India were fascinated by the background of consciousness, because we ourselves are entirely identified with our foreground, with the conscious. But now, among us, too, the background, or hinterland, of the psyche has come to life, and since it is so obscure and so difficult to access, we are at first forced to represent it symbolically.” pp 61-62
First, Root chakra: “If we assume that Muladhara, being the roots, is the earth upon which we stand, it necessarily must be our conscious world, because here we are, standing upon this earth, and here are the four corners of this earth. We are in the earth mandala. And whatever we say of Muladhara is true of this world. It is a place where mankind is a victim of impulses, instincts, unconsciousness, of participation mystique, where we are in a dark and unconscious place. We are hapless victims of circumstances, our reason practically can do very little. Yes, when times are quiet, if there is no important psychological storm, we can do something with the help of technique. But then comes a storm, say, a war or a revolution, and the whole thing is destroyed and we are nowhere.” pp14-15
Second, Sacral chakra: “the next chakra, Svadhisthana, must be the unconscious, symbolized by the sea, and in the sea is a huge leviathan which threatens one with annihilation. Moreover, we must remember that men have made these symbols. Tantric yoga in its old form is surely the work of men, so we can expect a good deal of masculine psychology. Therefore no wonder that in the second cakra is the great half-moon, which is of course a female symbol. Also, the whole thing is in the form of the padma or lotus, and the lotus is the yoni.” p.15
Third, Solar Plexus Chakra: “Then, if you pass through that danger you reach the next center, Manipura, 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, according to Apuleius, where the initiate at the end of the ceremony was put upon the pedestal and worshiped as the 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.” p. 30…”As long as you are in Manipura you are in the terrible heat of the center of the earth, as it were. There is only the fire of passion, of wishes, of illusions. It is the fire of which 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.” p.35
Fourth Chakra, Heart Chakra: “..in Anahata a new thing comes up, the possibility of lifting himself above the emotional happenings and beholding them. He discovers the puruüa in his heart, the thumbling, “Smaller than small, and greater than great.” “..It is the withdrawal from the emotions; you are no longer identical with them. If you succeed in remembering yourself, if you succeed in making a difference between yourself and that outburst of passion, then you discover the self; you begin to individuate. So in Anahata individuation begins.” p. 39 “The heart is always characteristic of feeling because feeling conditions influence the heart. Everywhere in the world feelings are associated with the heart. If you have no feelings, you have no heart; if you have no courage, you have no heart, because courage is a definite feeling condition. And you say, “Take it to heart.” Or you learn something “by heart.” You learn it, of course, by the head but you won’t keep it in mind unless you take it to heart. Only if you learn a thing by heart do you really get it. In other words, if it is not associated with your feelings, if it has not sunk into your body until it reaches the Anahata center, it is so volatile that it flies away. It must be associated with the lower center in order to be kept.” p. 45
The Fifth Chakra, Throat: “The concept of the atom, for instance, might be considered as corresponding to the abstract thinking of the Visuddha center.” “You see, that world will be reached when we succeed in finding a symbolical bridge between the most abstract ideas of physics and the most abstract ideas of analytical psychology. If we can construct that bridge then we will have reached at least the outer gate of Visuddha.” p. 47 “.. in Visuddha the whole game of the world becomes your subjective experience. The world itself becomes a reflection of the psyche. For instance, when I say that the world consists of psychical images only—that whatever you touch, whatever you experience, is imaged because you cannot perceive anything else; that if you touch this table, you might think it substantial, but what you really experience is a peculiar message from the tactile nerves to your brain; and even this you may not experience because I can cut off your fingers, you still experience your fingers only because the cut-off nerves cannot function in any other way; and your brain even is also only an image up here—when I say such a heretical thing I am on the way to Visuddha.” p. 50
The Sixth Charka, Third Eye: “… in the Ajna center the psyche gets wings—here you know you are nothing but psyche. And yet there is another psyche, a counterpart to your psychical reality, the non-ego reality, the thing that is not even to be called self, and you know that you are going to disappear into it. The ego disappears completely; the psychical is no longer a content in us, but we become contents of it. You see that this condition in which the white elephant has disappeared into the self is almost unimaginable. He is no longer perceptible even in his strength because he is no longer against you. You are absolutely identical with him. You are not even dreaming of doing anything other than what the force is demanding, and the force is not demanding it since you are already doing it—since you are the force. And the force returns to the origin, God.” p. 57
The Seventh Chakra, Crown: “Sahasrara represents the level where psychic life may be said to begin.” p. 63 “In the mystery of baptism—the plunge into Sahasrara—the“old Adam” dies and the “spiritual man” is born. The transfiguration and ascension of Christ is the symbolical representation and anticipation of the desired end, that is, being lifted above the personal and into the suprapersonal.” pp 67-68
