The cakra system — the psycho-spiritual topology of subtle energy centres arrayed along the sushumna axis — enters the depth-psychology corpus chiefly through the mythological readings of Joseph Campbell, the Tibetan synthesis of Lama Anagarika Govinda, and the Shaiva technical texts mediated by Jaideva Singh and Swami Lakshmanjoo. Campbell’s sustained contribution is the explicit mapping of cakra levels onto Western psychological schools: muladhara corresponds to behaviorism, svadhisthana to Freudian libido theory, manipura to Adlerian will-to-power, anahata to the threshold of individuative choice, and sahasrara to mystical union. Govinda situates the centres within a Tibetan Buddhist cosmological framework, insisting that their symbolic contents cannot be transferred mechanically between Hindu and Buddhist systems, and warning that the forces activated by cakra practice can lead equally toward liberation or destruction. Singh and Lakshmanjoo anchor the term in Kashmir Shaivism, where the cakras are traversed by the rising of para shakti and cit kundalini from muladhara, piercing brahmarandhra into universal consciousness. Jung references the ‘chakra system’ obliquely in his alchemical indices, recognising its structural kinship with mandala symbolism and the process of individuation. The central tension in the corpus lies between a psychological-analogical reading (Campbell, Jung) and a technical-experiential one (Singh, Govinda), with the question of cross-cultural translatability remaining productively unresolved.
We move up now to Cakra 2, svadhisthana… At this cakra the psychology is transformed. It is no longer behaviorism but, rather, the psychology of Dr. Freud. Everything is exciting. Sex is the aim of life.
Campbell systematically maps each cakra onto a distinct Western psychological framework, here equating svadhisthana with Freudian libido psychology and the moon’s governance of the tides of life.
, Transformations of Myth Through Time, 1990thesis
So Cakra 3 is a primarily power-dominated cakra… The petals are described as having the color of lightning-laden thunderclouds. In the center is the womb, the yoni—fire, energy.
Campbell identifies the third cakra with Adlerian will-to-power, reading its iconographic violence and fire symbolism as the psychological register of aggression and domination.
, Transformations of Myth Through Time, 1990thesis
the drop striking the field of time, breaking into the pairs of opposites: Cakra 3, aggression, Cakra 2, erotics, male and female, pairs of opposites in all the aspects. Now comes the final event, Cakra 7, sahasrara.
Campbell presents the cakra sequence as a cosmological-psychological topology of the pairs of opposites, culminating in the mystical dissolution of duality at the seventh centre.
, Transformations of Myth Through Time, 1990thesis
Cakra 6 to Cakra 5, where the syllable is ham, and now we’re coming down to Cakra 4, at the level of the heart, where the syllable is yam… This is the place of decision. If you don’t sign out here, you’re going to come down the rest of the way.
Campbell presents the fourth cakra as the decisive threshold between identification with the luminous or corporeal aspect of existence, integrating Tibetan death-journey imagery into the cakra schema.
, Transformations of Myth Through Time, 1990thesis
this vega which pierces and penetrates muladhara cakra so that you pass through it… this force rises and becomes full of bliss, full of ecstasy, and full of consciousness… This is the rising of cit kundalini, which rises from muladhara cakra to brahmarandhra.
Singh and Lakshmanjoo describe muladhara cakra as the site of initial penetration by the ascending cit kundalini, whose passage through the spinal channel culminates in the bliss of consciousness at brahmarandhra.
, Vijnana Bhairava: The Manual for Self-Realization, 1979thesis
the energy of this centre is depicted as the dormant force of the goddess Kundalini — who as the Sakti of Brahma embodies the potentiality of nature, whose effects may be either divine or demoniacal.
Govinda frames the energy of the cakra centre as the ambivalent force of Kundalini-Shakti, emphasising that ignorant arousal destroys while disciplined awakening under a guru leads to liberation.
, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960thesis
The seven Centres of the human body represent in a certain way the elementary structure and dimensionality of the universe: from the state of greatest density and materiality up to the state of immaterial multi-dimensional extension.
Govinda articulates the seven cakras as a recapitulation of cosmic dimensionality within the human body, mapping the ascent from dense materiality to radiant enlightened consciousness.
, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960supporting
the symbol must coincide with certain features or qualities of the cakra in question, either with a view to intensify or to sublimate them… if this is true within the closely related Buddhist systems, how much more is this the case with respect to Buddhist and Hindu yoga-systems!
Govinda argues that the symbolic content assigned to a cakra is functionally determined, and warns against the mechanical transference of correspondence-tables between distinct yogic traditions.
, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960supporting
muladhara is the point… your breath goes down in the central vein, in the pathway of the central vein, then it touches muladhara. From that muladhara is the appearance of para shakti.
Lakshmanjoo specifies muladhara as the origin-point of para shakti within the sushumna, attainable only through sustained meditative concentration that arrests ordinary breath.
, Vijnana Bhairava: The Manual for Self-Realization, 1979supporting
knowledge of what is known today in India as the kundalini was not in ancient times confined to the Indus Valley Civilization… a pair of copulating vipers… entwined about an axial rod in such a way as to suggest both the caduceus of classical Hermes… and the seven spinal centers of the sushumna.
Campbell argues for a universal, cross-cultural antiquity of the cakra-sushumna complex by identifying its structural analogue in Sumerian ritual imagery and the caduceus of Hermes.
, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion, 1986supporting
The method of the Kundalini is rather to recognize affirmatively the force and importance of this center and let the energies pass on through it, to become naturally transformed to other aims at the higher centers of the ‘rich in happiness’ sushumna.
Campbell contrasts the Kundalini method with clinical fixation, presenting the cakra system as a therapeutic technology of energic transformation rather than repression or compulsive discharge.
, The Mythic Image, 1974supporting
Cakrarulham means ‘in the wheel of movement’, anackam, without movement. That energy, that svarupa of energy, is that the way to make yourself established in that state?
Singh glosses ‘cakrarudham’ as the paradox of movementless movement, situating the cakra concept within the Kashmir Shaiva philosophy of spanda as motionless vibration.
, Vijnana Bhairava: The Manual for Self-Realization, 1979supporting
chahra system, 280
Jung’s index to Psychology and Alchemy registers the chakra system as a reference point within the broader architecture of the work, signalling its structural relevance to alchemical and mandala symbolism without extended elaboration.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944aside
Lotus centers, see cakras (circles)… Lotus ladder, 66, 69, see also sushumna (spinal channel)
Campbell’s index cross-references cakras with the lotus ladder and sushumna, confirming the terminological equivalences operative throughout his comparative mythological system.
, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion, 1986aside
chakras, 265&n
A bare index reference in Jung’s Collected Works volume on psychogenesis of mental disease, indicating the chakra system’s peripheral presence within Jung’s clinical and psychological framework.
, Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907aside