Manipura
Then, if you pass through that danger you reach the next
center, manipura, which means the fullness of jewels. It is
the fire centre, really the place where the sun rises. The sun now appears; the
first light comes after the baptism.
One sees all (that) very beautifully in the Catholic rite of
baptism when the godfather holds the child and the priest approaches with the
burning candle and says: Dono tibi lucem eternam” (I give thee the
eternal light) – which means, I give you relatedness to the sun, to the God.
You receive the immortal soul, which you did not possess before; you are
then a “twice-born.” Christ receives his mission and the
spirit of God in the
So Manipura is the center of the identification with the god,
where one becomes part of the divine substance, having an immortal soul.
You are already part of that which is no longer in
time, in
three-dimensional space; you belong now to a fourth-dimensional order of things
where time is an extension, where space does not exist and time is not, where
there is only infinite duration – eternity.
This is a worldwide and ancient symbolism, not only in the
Christian baptism and the initiation in the
So this third center is rightly called the fullness of
jewels.
Dr. Reichstein: But is not manipura a symbol of fire, of things burned?
Dr. Jung: Well, it is not just a destructive symbol; it means more a source of energy. But you are quite right – there is always a note of destruction when one speaks of fire; the mere mention of fire is enough to rouse the idea of destruction. And there you touch upon that fear that causes abstraction; we easily get abstract when we do not want to touch a thing that is too hot.
So it is just that – you get into the world of fire, where
things become red-hot. After baptism you get right into hell
– that is the enantiodromia.
And now comes the paradox of the East:
it is also the fullness of jewels.
But what is passion, what
are emotions?
There is the source of fire, there is the
fullness of energy.
A man who is not on fire is nothing:
he is ridiculous, he is two-dimensional.
He must be on
fire even if he does make a fool of himself.
A flame must
burn somewhere, otherwise no light shines; there is no warmth, nothing.
It is terribly awkward, sure enough; it is painful, full of conflict,
apparently a mere waste of time – at all events, it is against reason.
But that accursed Kundalini says, “It is the fullness of jewels; there is
the source of energy.”
As Heraclitus aptly said:
war is the father of all things.
Now this third center, the center of emotions, is localized
in the plexus solaris, or the center of the abdomen. I
have told you that my first discovery about the
Kundalini yoga was that these
cakras really are concerned with what are called psychical localizations.
This center then would be the first psychical localization that is within
our conscious psychical experience. I must refer again to the
story of my friend, the
Cont’d … Then there are the
primitive
tribes who have their psychical localization in the abdomen.
And that is true of us as well: there is a certain category of psychical events
that take place in the stomach. Therefore one says,
“Something weighs on my stomach.” And if one is very angry,
one gets jaundice; if one is afraid, one has diarrhea; or if in a particularly
obstinate mood, one is constipated. You see, that shows what
psychical localizations means.
Thinking in the abdomen means that there was once a time when
consciousness was so dim that people noticed only the things that disturbed
their intestinal functions, and everything else simply passed by the board; it
did not exist because it had no effect upon them.
Now, as I said, the first psychical localization that is
conscious to us is the abdomen; we are not conscious of anything deeper.
I don’t know of a trace of a
primitive psychology where people would
locate their psyche in their bladder.
And from the heart it is an equally long distance down to the
plexus solaris, and then you are caught. For there you
have no freedom at all. There is no air substance: you are
just bones and blood and muscles; you are in the intestines; you are functioning
there like a worm with no head. But in the heart you are on
the surface. The diaphragm would be about the surface of the
earth. 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 Banares 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 stage of life; they have forgotten that there are buried fires still
burning. Then they were
unconscious, but when they touch the
lower centers, 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
Now in Manipura you have reached an
upper layer where there comes a definite change. The bodily
localization of this cakra under the diaphragm is the symbol for the peculiar
change that now takes place. Above the diaphragm you come
into anahata, the heart or air center, because the heart is embedded in the
lungs and the whole activity of the heart is closely associated with the lungs.
One must be naïve to understand these things. In
primitive experience, it is the same thing. In fact, it is a
psychiological truth. We understand more or less what
manipura means psychologically, but now we come to the great leap,
anahata.
What follows psychologically after you have fallen into hell?
When you have come into the whirlpool of passions, of instincts, of
desires and so on, what follows after that?
Mrs. Crowley: Usually an enantiodromia; some opposite will now be constellated. Some vision perhaps, or something more impersonal will follow.
Dr. Jung: An enantiodromia, which would be the discovery of something impersonal? In other words, that one no longer identifies with one’s desires. Now, one must consider the fact that it is hard to talk of these things, because most people are still identical with manipura. It is exceedingly difficult to find out what is beyond. Therefore we must remain a bit in the symbolism first. The next center, as I told you, has to do with the air. The diaphragm would correspond to the surface of the earth, and apparently in getting into anahata we reach the condition where we are lifted up from the earth. What has happened? How do we get there at all? You see in manipura we still don’t know where we are; we are in muladhara just as well, at least our feet are still standing in muladhara: but in anahata they are lifted up above the surface of the earth.
(Manipura) is the fire region, and that is the kitchen, or
the stomach, where the food is cooked. One stuffs the food
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
Therefore manipura would be a center in
which substances are digested, transformed.
For after manipura follows
anahata, in
which entirely new things occur; a new element is there, air, no longer gross
matter.
You know, it is sometimes an ideal not to have any kind of
convictions or feelings that are not based upon reality. One
must even educate people, when they have to cross from manipura to
anahata, that
their emotions ought to have a real basis, that they cannot swear hell and
damnation at somebody on a mere assumption, and that there are absolute reasons
why they are not justified in doing such a thing. They really
have to learn that their feelings should be based on facts.
(The)
discovery of the psychogenic factor in medicine was really something you could
compare with the crossing from manipura to
anahata.
So the crossing-over from manipura to anahata is really very difficult. The recognition that the psyche is a self-moving thing, something genuine and not yourself, is exceedingly difficult to see and to admit. For it means that the consciousness which you call yourself is at an end. In your consciousness everything is as you have put it, but then you discover that you are not master in your own house, you are not living alone in your own room, and there are spooks about that play havoc with your realities and that is the end of your monarchy. But if you understand rightly, and as tantric yoga shows you, this recognition of the psychogenic factor is merely the first recognition or the purusa. It is the beginning of the great recognition appearing in the most grotesque and ridiculous forms. You see, that is what the gazelle signifies. TPoKY 54
Manipura
means “City of the Shining Jewel.” Here the energy is
aggressive: to conquer, to consume, to turn everything into oneself.
We have an Adlerian psychology at this point, a total transformation.
One of the problems in the early Freud camp was already recognized here.
For Freud, sex was the prime energy; for Adler, it was the will to power.
For some people it is one, for some the other.
Jung
comes in as these two are fighting this thing out and says, “Yes, there are
people running this way; here are also people running that way.
All of us have both. One is recessive and the other
dominant in any given case.” So he had this psychology of the
duality in what he called enantiodromia; you tip over and your sex drive
suddenly gives way to a violence drive. Or your winning drive
suddenly gives way to sex. They are in opposition to each
other in our lives.
So
Cakra 3 is a primarily power-dominated cakra, and the Sanskrit here is very
important. This is the one from which most of the energies
have to be generated. Look at this ominous lotus.
The petals are described as having the color of lightning-laden
thunderclouds. In the center is the womb, the yoni –
the fire, energy. The swastika motif means movement, energy,
violence. The syllable is ram, and the animal is a
ram. He represents the vehicle of the god of fire, Agni, the
fire of the womb, the fire of the sun, the fire of the sacrificial altar.
These are all the same fire. They are the transforming
fire. The womb is the transforming medium, transforming past
into future. The gods here are Shiva, in his violent aspect,
and his consort, Lakini, her jaws and breasts smeared with the blood and fat of
sacrifices.
Now we get to the deep stuff. Kali is in her Durga
aspect. But she is as black as time, Kali.
Kali means “black”; kali means “time.” That’s
her name. She is black time out of which all things come,
back into which they go – the void, the transcendent, the mother and tomb of all
things. “Don’t be afraid. Nothing’s
happening, just a ripple on the surface.” Her prime altar is
the battlefield, sacrifice. This is the yoga of war.
The individual gives himself up to the Lord Death and is not in
protection of himself but is moved by the tides of history.
People living on the levels of Cakras 1, 2, or 3 are living on animal
levels. Animals, too, cling to live.
Animals, too, beget their future. Animals, too, fight to win.
So people on these levels have to be controlled by social law,
dharma.
Just think of what our popular religions are concerned with – prayers for
health, wealth, progeny, and victory. That is asking the gods
to serve your animal nature. This is popular religion.
It doesn’t matter what the god’s name is.
What
is it the popular world wants? It’s health, wealth, and
progeny, and it doesn’t matter what the god’s name is. So
that’s the one religion, the one popular religion all over the world, no matter
what the name of the god is. The job of the priests, those in
charge of the historical temple, is to get the name of their god linked up with
this thing, and the money pours in like crazy.
Think of the first temptations of the Buddha: the temptation of lust,
Cakra 2; temptation of fear, Cakra 3; and the temptation of duty,
dharma.
He had gone past this. We’re not in the field of
authentic religious life, in the field of the spiritual birth, until we come up
to Cakra 4. This is at the level of the heart – the Sacred
Heart of Jesus. Jesus, as Leopold Bloom says in Ulysses,
“with his heart on his sleeve.”