Part II - Shri Yantra, Kabbalah, and Inner Alchemy
Abstract
In 'The Enneagram as Mandala' we sought to show that mandalas may be conceived as having
And then, in Part I of 'Enneagram as Double Mandala', we noticed that the Enneagram was also intended to represent PROCESS. Like other double-mandalas, it is comprised of two figures which, in combination, depict special kinds of 'movement' that are, in general,
conceived as paradoxical - impossible, yet nevertheless somehow in fact achieved.
In certain mandalas that are amongst the most profound and spiritually meaningful,
both characteristics of the mandala - non-linear structure and paradoxical movement -
are inextricably interwoven. In the Shri Yantra, which we will be exploring in this paper,
liminocentric structuring is combined with a very special kind of paradoxical 'movement', a primordial sistolic/diastolic MOVEMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS, in which awareness alternately (and ultimately simultaneously) contracts inwardly toward the center of the diagram and back outward toward the periphery, in a manner that is most aptly modeled by a three-dimensional 'spiral'
made to wrap back around on itself in a donut-shaped figure that is called a 'torus' by mathematicians. Mastery of this kind of mental movement is, as we shall see, the primary subject of the early 'Yoga Sutras', which act as the theoretical foundation for the meditational systems out of which the mandala, as a profound spiritual practice and visualization, originally emerged.
In the Yoga Sutras nine stages of 'samadhi' are discerned.1 They parallel the nine
tiers of 'spiritual evolution' that are represented by the Shri Yantra when, according
to authorities on the subject, the two-dimensional diagram is conceived as a three-dimensional object. 'Samadhi' is the special meditational state that an individual can enter into when she becomes capable of 'holding the object of meditation without any distractions' and it thus becomes possible for her 'to know the object much more intimately than in ordinary thinking'. After the mind is 'pacified' in the requisite manner, there are less distractions. With fewer simple DEFLECTIONS of attention from one object to another occur, the mind can be 'concentrated' at length on one object, and the SCOPE of attention can be widened or narrowed at will. The result is not only access to special types of non-ordinary 'knowledge' about the object of meditation, but also access to significant discoveries that the individual can make about the nature of the mind itself. This most fundamental kind of movement of mind, which the individual becomes capable of 'in samadhi', is what is simulated by the Shri Yantra, and reflected in its nine-tiered structure.
When the 'mandala offering' that we described earlier (associated with a specific
In these systems that are devoted to 'inner alchemy' it is CONSCIOUSNESS - as structure and process - that is ultimately being symbolized. Profound personal transformation is triggered when awareness is turned in on itself - ie 'introverted' in a radical manner that is depicted as a resorption or withdrawal of energies into the central channel, through its opening at the bottom.
In Indian texts this is visualized as the unfurling of a serpent (called 'Kundalini'), which previously blocked the entrance at the bottom of the channel by coiled itself 3 1/2 times, in a spiral, at the base of the central channel. As it unwinds and straightens out, it travels up the
central column, piercing each of the chakras in sequence, in a movement that is CONTRARY to habit - as the individual travels a path that reverses the order originally traversed as spirit initially embodied itself in form during the individual's physical birth, and undifferentiated awarness differentiated itself.
In much the same way in which Jung sought to better understand the obscure elements in
an individual's dream by drawing on the symbols that are their counterparts in mythology
(a practice he called 'amplification'), in these papers we attempt to shed light on the Enneagram by comparing it to various other mandala figures about which more is known.
To this end we explore the Shri Yantra and the Tibetan 'mandala practice'. But as the
insights that are embodied in these systems seem not to be exclusively the product
of Eastern minds and may in fact be universal, we will also turn our attention in this paper, albeit only for a brief moment, to another mystical system that seeks to describe the manner in which spirit 'emanates' into matter - the Kabbalah. It also has apparently been diagrammed as
a three-dimensional 'torus'.
(Jung, in Spiritual Disciplines, p. 394)
The Shri Yantra, an ancient Indian figure that was designed for use as an object of meditation, has been so thoroughly discussed in the West that it has developed a literature all its own. The advantage of comparing this figure to the Enneagram lies in the fact that the yogic practices with which it and similar figures are associated, have been passed down in a reliable and accurate fashion from teacher to student through unbroken spiritual lineages that continue to flourish to date. More thoroughly documented and clearly articulated than the spiritual practices that are connected to the Enneagram, the yogic practices may prove to be an invaluable resource in understanding the original SPIRITUAL intent of the Enneagram. One might think of yantras as mandalas in which the 'form' aspect of the figure, as geometrically represented, is emphasized. Both the mandala and the yantra, according to Mookerjee and Khanna, 'exemplify dynamic relationships concretized in the rhythmic order elaborated out of the multiplicity of form'. But in constructing yantras, as they explain, 'trantrikas dispensed with conventional ideas of the dynamics of form, and concentrated instead on another aspect. They had recourse to the explanation of primordial forces and vibrations in order to understand the hidden logic behind phenomena, so that in tantric abstraction, form is seen in the context of origin and genesis, in terms of the basic impulse which shaped it.' 3 Unlike the mandala, the yantra is a 'pure geometric configuration without any iconographic representation'. 'Whereas a yantra', Mookerjee and Khanna observe, is a directly accessible visual form, 'a mandala, especially of the classical Tibetan tradition, is a composition of complex patterns and diverse iconographic images.' 4 This may account for why the double nature of most mandala figures is not VISUALLY apparent, in the way that it is, as we shall see, in the Shri Yantra. In order to apprehend how the two 'orders' in a mandala are combined, one usually needs to have some additional information about the meaning of the iconographic symbols. 5 In comparison, although the double-nature of the Shri Yantra is subtle and elusive and can at first glance go un-noticed, it is nontheless an 'open secret' - one that is, as we shall see, readily accessible to any viewer who is prepared to actually LOOK at the diagram, even if he or she has little or no knowledge of iconography.
Meditating on the Shri Yantra Closely consider the Shri Yantra as it is displayed in the line-drawing below. You have probably seen it before, on the cover of a book or in a photograph. There are 960 yantras, according to the Tantraraja Tantra. Distinguishing itself from these others, the Shri Yantra is the most celebrated, according to Mookerjee and Khanna. 'The Shri Yantra, in its formal content, is a visual masterpiece of abstraction', they say, 'and must have been created through revelation rather than by human ingenuity and craft'.6 This is high praise indeed, and might seem, at first, like an exaggeration. But it is not. Although the figure is subtle, its profound meaning can be discerned without having to know anything more about the diagram than what is physically manifest in the lines which comprise it. So take a moment to carefully study it visually. Please don't assume that because you are familiar with it, you have actually SEEN it.
What is unique about this figure? Treat it as a visual riddle or 'koan', if you can. Can you see the puzzle that is embedded in the very design of the figure? There IS one, a puzzle that is subtly presented in a completely visual form, without words. Please take your time. Here is how one long-time zen practitioner described the initial EFFECT that the diagram had on him when we presented it without any further explanation and asked him to visually meditate on it -
The visual effect of looking at the array of triangles is of a shifting field of larger and smaller triangles, giving almost a perception of depth, as one triangle shifts to one either larger and seemingly closer, or smaller and seemingly farther away. The triangles forming the array (i.e., not the smaller triangles the main triangles form) are either equal sided, or their bottom side is shorter than the two vertical sides. The smaller triangles are generally not uniform, although they are mostly nearly (or exactly) equalsided. This is a precise and accurate phenomenological description of what may happen when one looks at the diagram, but not yet an insight into its most essential nature. Here's a hint that might be helpful in taking you further into the diagram - What is 'wrong' with the picture? Can you find the visual anomaly that is embedded in it? Not yet? Need another hint? Try SKETCHING the figure. Its not easy to draw the figure. But why not? Put your finger horizontally across the center of the figure. What can you say about the remaining portion of the figure? Now remove your finger. What do you see in the horizontal center strip, recently covered by your finger? Still puzzled? Take a look at the following two diagrams. Which figure is the central figure in the Shri Yantra? How do they differ?
The figure to the right is the central figure in the Shri Yantra. The figure to the left was constructed by removing the horizontal strip from the middle ....
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 (Shri Yantra) |  |  |
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.... and replacing it with the SYMMETRICAL center that the remainder of the design visually
IMPLIES and therefore causes one to expect.
By now it may have begun to dawn on you that the Shri Yantra is actually a cleverly
As in these other cases, the illusion that is deliberately built into the Shri Yantra makes it very difficult to draw it freehand, as you no doubt came to realize if, in fact, you did try to sketch it. In order to achieve the intended effect one must keep in mind two goals that pull in different directions, just as in trying to draw the portrait of the young woman/old woman, you would have to keep in mind that every line you make is a line in two completely different portraits! But the Shri Yantra is no MERE illusion, meant simply to delight or entertain. Nor is it just an object lesson in the psychology of perception. It has a profound meaning, one which reveals itself only when the effects of the diagram are studied in relationship to how consciousness becomes capable of 'moving' in certain states that one can enter into in meditation. In their (1975) analysis of the figure, Evans and Fudjack remark,
.... how can we conceive of the [Shri Yantra] as an object for meditation? How is one to fixate attention on the diagram? Well, at first glance the diagram appears to be a symmetrical geometrical design and we know how to fixate attention on such a design by staring at the point of symmetry at its center. However, the Shri Yantra does not have a point around which the design is symmetrically fixed. Zimmer alludes to this by mentioning its 'elusive' center. So in focusing attention inward toward the center we wind up at a point, line, or configuration none of which is a satisfactory center of symmetry. We find ourselves compensating the small center triangle, for instance, by widening our scope of attention to it and some counterpart that promises symmetry. But we pass to this wider symmetry-suggestive area by a quantum leap, so to speak - we lose ourselves and find ourselves staring again at the entire configuration which suggests that the diagram is, after all, symmetrically composed. So we focus in toward the center again in search of that elusive point. We either become dissatisfied or distracted by some other activity or we discover the joke, the trick. The diagram is designed to appear symmetrical when we take it, in its entirety, as an object of attention, but is also cleverly designed to have no point of symmetry. It is an illustration of paradox. Not so much the paradox of time and eternity as the paradox of a symmetrical object without a point of symmetry - a logical contradiction. (C.O. Evans and J. Fudjack, CONSCIOUSNESS, 1976.) Representing Systolic/Diastolic Movement Graphically If you were asked to draw what is being described in the above passage - the alternating narrowing and widening of the scope of attention that is induced by the Shri Yantra - how might you do that? Without using words, what simple geometrical figure or motion might you use to capture the essence of this kind of movement? We submit that the simple spiral would be the most apt and elegant solution. For the spiral naturally induces this kind of mental movement, and has thus characteristically been used to communicate or represent it. If, having drawn a spiral, we mechanically rotate it in one direction it draws our attention into the center of the figure, into a seemingly endless tunnel - an effect that has been used to induce hypnotic trance. If we rotate the spiral in an opposite direction, it leads us away from the center, towards the figure's periphery.
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 Like the Shri Yantra, this figure draws our attention toward the figure's center. Because of the spiral? Look again - there is no spiral! These are cleverly drawn concentric circles, creating the illusion of a spiral. See for yourself by using your mouse arrow to trace one of the circles. We can think of the Shri Yantra as a precursor to this diagram and, in general, to 'gestalt' perceptual illusions of this sort. (The Task of Gestalt Psychology |
The spiral might even be conceived as a 'circle in which the center also IS the periphery' - as paradoxical as this might seem at first. It is thus a figure that BEGINS to
suggest the kind of structure that we have called
In one respect, however, the figure of the spiral fails in the end to adequately represent liminocentricity. For if we follow the line inward, when we reach the center we must turn around and head back if we are interested in returning to the periphery. We can easily imagine extending the figure by adding a short straight line that would directly connect the center of the spiral its outer edge. The resulting diagram could be thought of as illustrating what would happen were we to 'take a short cut' THROUGH the center, directly to the periphery, instead of bouncing back, along the same line, in the opposite direction. But such a line would make the figure look, at best, somewhat artificial. How, then, might one better represent movement THROUGH a liminocentric structure? We might take a hint from composer Stephen Nachmanovitch, who provides a wonderfully apt way of describing what it is like to move through a piece of music that is liminocentrically structured. As he describes it, in such a situation ...
We have a sense of Chinese boxes opening into one another, until inevitably the final box opens up and contains - the first. (Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play - the Power of Improvisation in the Life and the Arts page 107
As Nachmanovitch implies, movement through a limincentrically organized structure
might best be represented THREE DIMENSIONALLY. And the particular three dimensional figure that seems to best express a feeling for what When the donut's central hole is reduced to a very small channel, or even
In older theories of the universe, a presumed vortical movement of cosmic matter accounted for the origin of the material world. In contemporary physics a torus is utilized to illustrate something similar - a 'singularity' in the space-time continuum which, on one side, is a 'black hole' into which matter disappears, and, on the other side, a 'white hole' out of which matter emerges or is created. Again, it is in the central column of the torus that is thereby created that an 'objectless' state of affairs pertains, just as the 'undifferentiated' state of consciousness is experienced by the individual when awareness is withdrawn in meditation INTO the 'sushumna', the central column of her personal energy-field. The mudra that is demonstrated in the photograph to the left represents the offering that is made in the Tibetan 'mandala offering practice' and is the equivalent of the nine-tiered structure
But how does the structural advantage that we gain when we move from a two-dimensional representation of systolic/diastolic movement (as spiral), to a three-dimensional model (as torus), help us to understand the nature of the profound spiritual TRANSFORMATION that the Shri Yantra, and these other 'mystical body' systems promise? To answer this question let us first turn to the Kabbalah, in order to refresh our memories about the overall purpose of these spiritual systems. The Kabbalah
Z'ev Ben Shimon Halevi describes the general purpose of the system - to induce a personality transformation of the most profound sort -
The transformation of the ego is the first major step in Kabbalistic work, because while a person may study the subject assiduously, until he begins to actually change, it remains merely an academic operation, no matter how much he may work at theory and practice. To change means growth, and this requires the death of the old personality and its useless patterns. Because there are few who are prepared to do this, Kabbalah is only for those who are willing to sacrifice and risk... The author goes on to explain that this transformation of the ego is only the FIRST step in the Kabbalistic work. 'To change means growth', he says, 'and this requires the death of the old personality and its useless patterns'. Further achievements along the path entail 'the ability to operate not from the ego, but from the self'. So we are talking here about precisely the same kind of profound transformation, which, in the introduction to this series, we identified as the subject proper of our investigations - the shift from an Ego-centered personality arrangement to a Self-centered arrangement. And here, interestingly, we again see the torus used as the figure on which such a transformation can be most easily mapped. Why? Because with the torus we can begin to illustrate how 'undifferentiated consciousness' is 'differentiated consciousness' turned 'inside out' as it were, and vice versa. And this gives us a glimpse of how the 'unconscious' (undifferentiated awareness) is, and always was, integrated into 'consciousness' (differentiated awareness). All we need do is adopt a perspective that is wide enough to experientially acknowledge this truth in a manner similar to the to how the torus 'represents' this achievement graphically. Stepping Out of the Double Bind Citing Evans and Fudjack's analysis of the Shri Yantra, contemporary philosopher of science John Schumacher (1989) describes how the diagram succeeds in '... opening attention, as it were, to the periphery of the visual field', that part of the field that is normally relegated to the background of consciousness. 'Consider the Shri Yantra', he says, ... an apparently symmetrical figure that actually has no center of symmetry - staring at such a figure turns into a constant shifting of the focus of attention from the whole to the center and back again, and again, until ultimately we resist the shift to the center, opening attention as well. (John Schumacher, Human Posture,State University of New York Press, 1989, page 162) When Schumacher speaks of the 'opening' of attention, he has in mind a special state of consciousness that is relatively uncommon and is tantamount to 'dropping through' the center of the diagram, as opposed to merely bouncing back and forth between center and periphery. This state is sometimes referred to by the yogic term 'samadhi', as Evans and Fudjack originally pointed out. As they mentioned, the Shri Yantra is actually a visual DOUBLE-BIND that pits the tacit 'assumption of symmetry' (subtly suggested by the whole drawing) against the actual fact of the ABSENCE of a point of symmetry in the diagram. For the viewer, the only way 'out' of this visual double bind is to consciously RECOGNIZE the built-in contradiction, and then ...
... the realization that the diagram is a trick approximates 'enlightenment' insofar as this realization is concommitant with dropping the assumption that the diagram is symmetrical... (Evans and Fudjack, CONSCIOUSNESS, 1976, page 78) This realization is commensurate, they explain, with the third stage of Yoga as described in the Yoga Sutras, according to Taimni - in which one is 'purged of assumptions or attitudes in respect of the object of meditation', and there is a 'reduction of the subjective role of the mind to the utmost limit'. In Taimni's The Science of Yoga this 'third stage' is described as 'a new kind of movement or transformation of the mind in which consciousness begins to move IN DEPTH, as it were', instead of merely deflecting restlessly from one object to another. As a result of meditation practice the individual increases her capacity to hold the same object of attention firmly in attention, while simultaneously concentrating or diffusing awareness at will, and the object '... is denuded of its coverings or non-essential elements' and can actually be psychically entered INTO in a way that it not normally possible in everyday consciousness. Evans and Fudjack suggest that the 'denuding' process that Taimni describes is tantamount to removing the object from its contextual underpinnings, resulting in a radical re-orientation of the individual toward it. A dropping off of the individual's habitual 'implicit attitudes toward the object' are the result, and the object is seen in a totally new light, as it were. The individual passes into or through the empty 'center' or ESSENCE of the object. This special movement of mind, which breaks through the objectness of the object, may be construed as producing an altered or transcendent state of consciousness in which, in the words of Eliade, there is 'recovery, through Samadhi, of the ORIGINAL NON-DUALITY'. In his work, Taimni lists a total of nine 'stages of samprajnata and asamprahnata samadhi', 8 which the meditator works her way through in progressing toward 'full enlightenment'. In the following passage, Atum O'Kane describes the role that samadhi plays in the seven-stage inner 'alchemical' process taught by Sufi Pir Vilayat, in which the individual's personality is 'dissolved' and 're-created' in a manner that he connects with Ouspensky's work. It is in the 3rd stage of Vilayat's process that the 'whole personality has dissolved', and the 'movement of consciousness' from the personal to the transpersonal dimensions is completed. O'Kane explains -
This is experienced in meditations that promote SAMADHI, dissolving one's sense of individuality and returning to a state beyond all forms as in a deep sleep. The purpose in descending from SAMADHI back into individuality is that personality can be re-created. The last [four] stages are concerned with this reintegration of the personality. (Atum O'Kane, 'The Art of Spiritual Guidance', in Sufism, Islam, and Jungian Psychology, 1991, ed. J. Marvin Spiefelman, New Falcon Publications, Scottsdale Arizona, page 68)
So, turning our attention back to the Shri Yantra, we can conclude that the anomalous asymmetry that has been cleverly designed into the center of the Shri Yantra not only generates the attentional 'vicious circle' ('samsara' in Sanskrit) that causes the viewer to repeatedly expand and contract her scope of attention in a never-ending search for the elusive center of symmetry. It also demonstrates that this kind of systolic/diastolic movement of mind, when permitted to be taken to its ultimate conclusion, provides its own antidote and is capable of transcending 'cyclic' consciousness altogether. The 'trick' is to move THROUGH the center, through the undifferentiated state AT the center, and back out again, but in such a way that everyday consciousness has been turned 'inside out'. In the case of the Shri Yantra this is simulated when the individual becomes conscious of the anomaly that is central to the design. One must become aware of it AS anomaly, and of the central role of that anomaly as generative 'mystery'. If, after being acknowledged, it remains the focus of attention, the lens THROUGH WHICH we see the myriad forms in the 'differentiated' world, consciousness has been, in effect, turned 'inside out', and its liminocentric nature is subject to continuous conscious appreciation. The Self as Central 'Anomaly'
'The conscious mind is forced to stand the tension [between conscious and unconscious] by means of CIRCUMAMBULATIO. The magic circle thus traced will also prevent the unconscious from breaking out again, for such an irruption would be equivalent to psychosis'. (Jung, in Spiritual Disciplines, page 386).
Speaking of the Shri Yantra, Jill Purce says -
From the marriage between the central point (the original non-manifest seed Bindu), which is the pure consciousness of Siva, and his own first manifestation as the initial involuntary and creative vortex of the female Sakti (the downward triangle [at the center]), comes the differentiation of the entire manifest world. Jill Purce, The Mystic Spiral- Journey of the Soul,1974, The Hearst Corporation, footnote 61) But both the vortex and the entire differentiated world to which it gives birth owe their existence to the 'anomaly' at the center. Like Emerson's 'wounded oyster', who 'mends his shell with perl', the flaw at the center of the Shri Yantra gives birth to an additional figure at the innermost reaches of the yantra, the superfluous NINTH triangle about which we spoke in an earlier paper. Whereas the pseudo-shri-yantra in the diagram above needs only eight triangles (four upward and four downward) to complete the figure in a pleasing fashion that has both horizontal and vertical symmetry, the anomaly at the center of the actual Shri Yantra brings into existence this remarkable ninth triangle, the curious 'black sheep' of the arrangment. But like 'the stone which the builder refused' in the Psalm of David (118:22), the piece that eventually 'comes to be the cornerstone' of the building, the ninth triangle winds up as the manifest centerpiece of the arrangment. 'Sometimes the very sin of omission or commision for which we've been kicking ourselves', composer Stephen Nachmonovitch tells us, in a passage that is curiously reminiscent of the miraculous appearance - the veritable virgin birth - of the ninth triangle in the Shri Yantra, 'may be the seed of our best work'. This principle, a basic one in the TANTRIC psychology out of which the mandala emerged, is the theoretical basis on which the 9 'sins' or 'drawbacks' that are manifested respectively in the 9 Enneatypes can be correlated to 9 'enlightened qualities'. Nachmanovitch might as as well be speaking about these characterological pitfalls associated with the Enneagram types when he says ...
The power of mistakes enables us to reframe creative blocks and turn them around. ... (In Christianity they speak of this realization as FELIX CULPA, the fortunate fall.) The troublesome parts of our work, the parts that are most baffling and frustrating, are in fact the growing edges. We see these opportunities the instant we drop our preconceptions and our self-importance. Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play - the Power of Improvisation in the Life and the Arts, page 92 As we have seen in earlier parts of this series, the eruption of the sacred into the mundane is a central motif in the mandala. But now, in the Shri Yantra, we see for the first time precisely how this eruption occurs - in the form of the 'superflous ninth' that is conjured into existence as a result of honoring anomaly. When the fortunate 'mistake' (in the form of a 'gap', or acausal event, or incongruous element) is recognized as anomaly, and that anomaly is honored as the centerpiece of the arrangement, as 'mystery', then that which is marginal, fringe, 'liminal', is made central. And out of that creative matrix that resides at the center comes a different KIND of 'object' - an object with a somewhat different status, as 'unborn' yet 'manifest'. Nine-Tiers, Nine Strata We have thus come to a point in our analysis at which we can begin to view the nine tiers along the inner column of the torus not merely as discrete 'stages' of development of consciousness, but also as 'strata' - everpresent layers of the structure which can be (and are) brought into relief by the systolic/diastolic focusing of selective attention in the manner perscribed in the Yoga Sutras. As Mookerjee and Khanna remind us, the Shri Yantra is
According to Mookerjee and Khanna,
Through contemplation on the Sri Yantra, the adept can rediscover his primordial sources. The nine circuits symbolically indicate the successive phases in the process of becoming. ...The nine circuits within the Shri Yantra move from the gross and tangible to the sublime and subtle realms. (Mookerjee, page 59) For Heinrich Zimmer, the Shri Yantra was 'a kind of chart or schedule for the gradual evolution of a vision while identifying the Self with its slowly varying contents, that is to say, with the divinity in all its phases of transformation'. 10 'The nine [triangles]', he explains, 'signify the primitive revelation of the Absolute as it differentiates into graduated polarities, the creative activity of the cosmic male and female energies on successive stages of evolution'. 11 Here, as in the enneagram, the number nine is associated with successive phases in the process of spiritual growth, and in the mundane processes of birth
But even more importantly, the nine constitute 'strata' - layers superimposed, one on top of the other. Like nine steps, each built on the previous step, or a nine-storied building, with each level presupposing the previous level, there remain some trace of previous layers in the present one. Like 9 Chinese boxes, one within another, arranged in a liminocentric fashion, so that the innermost box opens on the outermost - each hold an ambiguous place in its relationship to the other. It can be construed as either container/context for another box (indeed, for the entire series of boxes), or as a content WITHIN the others. The difference is only a matter of perspective. Likewise, whether consciousness is experienced as 'differentiated' or 'undifferentiated' at any given moment is really a matter of perspective - a matter of how wide (and inclusive) or narrow (and exclusive) the SCOPE of the focal part of our awareness - our ATTENTION - is at the moment in question. As we will see in the next paper, this fact about the nature of consciousness impacts in a most important way on how we choose to view the Enneagram as a personality typology. For only from our deepest faults can we extract the most unfathomable treasure. And this process - whereby ignorance is alchemically transformed into wisdom - requires us to intimately know the channels in which consciousness runs. Footnotes
1. I.K. Taimni, The Science of Yoga, 1961, Theosophical Publishing House; Madras, India; page 38.
2. See, for example, the figure on page 174, in Lama Govinda's Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960, Samuel Weiser Inc, New York.
3. A. Mookerjee and J. Khanna, The Tantric Way, 1977, Boston, The Graphic Society, pages 49 and 51
4. A. Mookerjee and J. Khanna, The Tantric Way, 1977, Boston, The Graphic Society, pages 50 and 62.
5. This may be why Jung, who was not himself part of a living lineage, missed the fact that all traditional Mandalas, due to the meaning that they carry by virtue of the iconographic meaning of various aspects, are 'double-mandalas' in the sense in which Von Franz uses this term.
6. A. Mookerjee and J. Khanna, The Tantric Way, 1977, Boston, The Graphic Society, pages 56 and 62.
7. Fortune, The Mystic Qabalah, 1935, Ibis Books, New York, pages 252-4.
8. I.K. Taimni, The Science of Yoga, 1961, Theosophical Publishing House; Madras, India; page 38.
9. Jolande Jacobi, The Psychology of C.G.Jung, Yale University Press, 1962, pages 127-9.
10. Heinrich Zimmer, in Mookerjee and Khanna, The Tantric Way, New York Graphic Society, 1977, page 50. Mookerjee remarks that the nine circuits mentioned by Zimmer are associated with nine classes of yoginis (female yogis).
11. Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, edited by
J. Campbell, 1946, New York:Pantheon books, page 140
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Nachmanovitch is talking about it, while also maintaining the systolic/diastolic movement motif that the 'spiral' so adequately captured, is the 'torus' - a donut-shaped three-dimensional spiral. When, by using the torus, we move into the realm of three-dimensional figures, we find a more elegant solution than was available in our two dimensional spiral diagram, as the center appears no longer as a mere inner 'end point', but as an extended channel through which one can pass directly to the 'other side' of the figure.
