I think we’re getting the wrong idea about chakras and the subtle body. They’re outliers in the collection of eastern thought that has been vaguely incorporated into the New Age movement: most Buddhist, Hindu, and Zen philosophy is about perception and proper action, but chakra work alone seems to carry connotations of psychic awakening and what you might call “magic.” These connotations come from exactly one point, and turns out it’s a place where Western thought is unique.

In the chakra system, we have low-vibration energy that comes into your sushumna through the muladhara chakra, and its vibration is raised as it passes through you and leaves at a very high vibration through your sahasrara chakra. But where does that low-vibration energy come from?

In some theories there’s another chakra below the root chakra, the “earth star,” which is perhaps to be viewed as the earth’s crown chakra. This evokes the idea of an earth mother; that is, Gaia. This seems to be the widely accepted interpretation of the source. But while we’re borrowing from the Greeks, let’s point out that they had a division here: Ge, Gaia’s realm¹, referring to the earth, underground, agricultural fertility, and so on; and Chthon, referring to the underworld, the realm of Hades, Hecate, the furies, and all the gods that we view as creepy because they involve death.

Now, it’s not surprising that we’d overlook this distinction in the West, because it has been an exceptionally long time since Christian areas of the world believed in a unified afterlife that was below us: after Jesus, all good Christians go to the sky, and what’s left down there isn’t much fun. Not only did this destroy our culture’s conception of the underworld and our understanding of the allegorical significance of an underworld descent, it made death even worse to think about. And so we assume that the source of the energy for our chakra-cogs is the Gaia of life and fertility, which detaches the whole concept of the subtle body from death and gives a comfortable feeling of magic.

But what happens if we assume that the energy Chthonic instead of Gaian? First of all, that energy flowing up our sushumna stops being psychic power and starts looking like our life force and a host of more familiar metaphors: the thread of fate, the candle-flame of the soul, and so on. And then the idea of improving the flow of energy starts looking a bit different: less like a psychic awakening and more like having a stronger life force, a thicker thread, or a brighter flame.

Essentially, it becomes clear that the subtle body is a metaphor for the psyche.

Let’s look at an ideal activation of the chakras². First, as a child (when your root chakra is activated) you develop a “primordial trust” that “the earth is a secure place which provides you with everything you need.” As puberty comes along, the sacrum is activated, and you “open yourself towards others, especially people of the opposite sex, and behave naturally.” Your creativity is awakened. As you grow to maturity (solar plexus activation) you develop “a feeling of peace and inner harmony with… life in general, and your place in life in particular,” you find your calling. With this solid foundation of safety and belonging, you are able to view others with compassion and acceptance—the activation of your heart chakra—and then (apparently in your 30s) learn to express yourself without fear with the activation of the throat chakra. Through this open and honest communication you gain the wisdom that comes along with the activation of the third eye, and finally, generally somewhere around 50, you get your crown chakra activation and gain a deep understanding of what this whole ride has been about.

This is the story of an ideal life without unaddressed psychological trauma, and the activation of each chakra corresponds to a new stage in our personal development. The work done to clear blockages becomes a form of therapy. For example, Kundalini dance turns into a form of movement therapy, with music chosen to bring up blockages from a specific chakra, and then dance to work through it. It even throws Tantra into a theraputic light of sorts.

This interpretation puts the chakra system approximately in line with a lot of other things: if chakra blockages are called attachments and patterns, it lines up with ideas from Zen, Buddhism and Hinduism about acting without attachment and seeing through illusion. It also fits nicely with psychotherapy.

I love it when things come together.

1. In fact: Gaia comes from Ge (earth) and Aia (grandmother).
2. The quotations and approximate activation ages in this paragraph are taken from The Chakra Workbook by Shalila Sharamon and Bodo J. Baginsky.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 4th, 2010 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Smart-Sounding Babble, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.