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 intent of the Enneagram.

According to Mookerjee, the 'yantra', unlike the 'mandala', is a 'pure geometric configuration without any iconographic representation'. 'Whereas a yantra', he explains, is a directly accessible visual form, 'a mandala, especially of the classical Tibetan tradition, is a composition of complex patterns and diverse iconographic images.'¹ To some extent, this accounts 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 such a mandala are combined, one needs to have some additional knowledge about the meaning of the iconographic symbols. ²

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.

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.

'The Shri Yantra, in its formal content, is a visual masterpiece of abstraction', he says, 'and must have been created through revelation rather than by human ingenuity and craft'.³ 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 may have seen it before, you have actually SEEN it.

Shri Yantra

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 or concepts. Please take your time.

Here is how one long-time zen practitioner described the first EFFECT that the diagram had on him when we presented it and asked him, without any further explanation whatsoever, 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 happens 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 the next step into this diagram - What is 'wrong' with the picture? Can you find the visual anomaly that is embedded in it?

Need another hint? Try sketching the figure.

Want another hint? 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?

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 taking out the horizontal strip in the middle ....

Double Mandala (Shri Yantra)

=

symmetric fringe

plus

asymmetric center

.... and replacing it with the SYMMETRICAL center that the remainder of the design visually IMPLIES and therefore causes one to expect.

By now it is perhaps beginning to dawn on you that the Shri Yantra is actually a cleverly drawn visual slight-of-hand! It is an ancient illusion that is a precursor to similar 20th century perceptual illusions and is in the same class of figures as those produced by the gestalt psychologists. Like the famous 'duck-rabbit' diagram, or the portrait of the 'young-woman/old-woman' (left), it demonstrates that we can be tricked by perception when the figure-ground relationship in a figure is reversed or otherwise tampered with. The more recent stereo-scopic 'magic eye' pictures that were the craze in the early 1990s provide us with another example of the same phenomenon.

As in these cases, the illusion that is deliberately built into the Shri Yantra makes it very difficult to draw the figure freehand, as you no doubt came to realize if, in fact, you did try to sketch it. But it is no MERE illusion, meant merely to delight or entertain. 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 induced by 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.)

If you were asked to pantomime or draw the alternating narrowing and widening of the scope of attention that is induced by the Shri Yantra, how might you do that? What simple geometrical figure might you use to capture of the essence of this kind of movement? We submit that it is the spiral that has characteristically been used to communicate this. It draws us into the center, but also leads us out. This is because the spiral is a circle in which the center also becomes, or IS, the periphery - as paradoxical as this might seem at first. In our terminology, it is 'liminocentric'. The outermost (circle) is identical with the innermost (point), a structural fact that leads to a peculiar type of motion, which we have identified as 'systolic/diastolic'. The spiral is thus the simplest figure illustrating the combined affects of liminocentric structure and paradoxical movement.

Citing the analysis of Evans and Fudjack, philosopher of science John Schumacher (1989) described how the figure 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 (Evans and Fudjack).
(John Schumacher, Human Posture,State University of New York Press, 1989, page 162)

The Fraser Spiral (low resolution) 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 to 'gestalt' perceptual illusions of this sort. (The Task of Gestalt Psychology by Wolfgang Kohler, 1969 Princeton University Press, p.43)

When Schumacher speaks of the 'opening' of attention, he has in mind a state of consciousness that is relatively uncommon, and 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 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, since the third stage of Yoga, [as this is described in the Yoga Sutras], is one of purging oneself of assumptions or attitudes in respect of the object of meditation, a 'reduction of the subjective role of the mind to the utmost limit'.

In The Science of Yoga this 'third stage' of Yoga meditation is described by Taimni 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 the surface of one object to another. As a result of the individual's increased capacity to concentrate or diffuse awareness at will while holding the same object of meditation firmly in attention, 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 systolic/diastolic movement of mind that has brought this about may thus 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 other words, the anomalous assymmetry that has been cleverly designed into the center of the Shri Yantra not only generates the attentional 'vicious circle' that causes the viewer, in search of the elusive center of symmetry, to expand and contract her scope of attention. It simulates the kind of systolic/diastolic movement of mind that is capable of catapulting the mind beyond the vicious 'samsaric' (mundane) circle.... expansion and contraction of attention.

Something here about how this diagram progresses beyond a simple spiral - the vortex, which is entree into the 'torus'!!! and double spiral.

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 very center of the diagram, a superfluous ninth triangle. 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), which 'comes to be the cornerstone', the ninth triangle winds up as the 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'.

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 Artsp.92

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 Artspage 107

We have seen that the 'eruption of the sacred into the [mundane] world' (97), about which Eliade speaks, is a central motif in the mandala. But for the first time we see, in the Shri Yantra, that the sacred erupts into the mundane in the form of the 'superflous ninth'.

For Heinrich Zimmer, who recognizes the Shri Yantra as a support for meditation, the diagram is ...

1. a representation of some personification or aspect of the divine,
2. a model for the working of a divinity immediately within the [meditator's] heart..., and
3. 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.

(in Mookerjee and Khanna, The Tantric Way, New York Graphic Society, 1977, page 50)

'The nine [triangles]', says Zimmer, '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'. (ftn 63 in CONSCIOUSNESS).

and some material from "The idea of the Self, which is solely a limiting concept comparable to Kant's 'Thing in itself', is thus essentially a trancendental postulate..." (Jacobi, 131). In other words, it is not itself capable of being an 'object of attention' - this feature is most aptly represented by an anomaly or assymetry, such as the one present at the center of the Shri Yantra. (as opposed to the center of the ars magna, which is merely a sign, a label, which says 'God' resides at the center). It thus cannot be approached 'directly', but only tangentially, in a

Following the path described by a spiral we approach the center, but only indirectly, in a 'round about' fashion

circumambulatory way, according to Jung [ftn ], which can be represented by the geometrical figure of the 'spiral'. "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, 386, Spiritual Disciplines). The 'magic circle' that Jung is describing here is the mandala proper - not the physical representation, painted in sand or on paper, but the psychic field, organized in the individual or group. This is the 'mandala' in which spiritual practice is conducted.

The spiral is a circle in which the center becomes, or IS, the periphery, as paradoxical as this might at first seem. 'The self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious' (Jung, in Jacobi, 130).

Nine-spoked vortex at center of mandala representing Old Testament Ezekiel vision Edinger, The Creation of Consciousness, p. 73

Speaking of the Shri Yantra, Jill Purce says -

From the marriage between the central point (the original non-manifeest 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, footnote 61)

"...yantras and mandalas exemplify dynamic relationships concretized in the rhythmic order elaborated out of the multiplicity of form (49, Mookerjee)" In constructing yantras, as Mookerjee explains, '...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.'(mookerjee, 51)'The yantras are not only based on mathematical form but also on a mathematical method. The artist must look beyond appearance and penetrate to structure and essence...'(54, mookerjee). 'The circle occurs very frequently in yantras and mandalas ... It symbolizes wholeness or totality and, in a yantra, is normally placed within a square pattern with four re-entrant gates. The square symbolizes the elemental earth or the material quality of nature. The four gates represent the earthly plane which one must transcend gradually to identify with the core of the pattern in which resides the essence'. (55)

In Part II we will investigate an even more fundamental form of movement than the kind we usually have in mind when we use the term to describe the simple physical displacement of an object from one location in space to another. This other type of movement is more primordial in nature, and is mental as opposed to physical - it is a movement that takes place in the 'mindstuff' of the individual. In ancient Indian sutras this kind of mental movement is linked to a development that takes place in the meditation practice of an individual, after the mind is 'pacified'. When there are fewer simple DEFLECTIONS of attention from one object to another, so that the mind can be 'concentrated' at length on one object, the SCOPE of attention can be widened or narrowed at will, resulting in some rather significant discoveries that the individual can make about the nature of the mind itself. We will see how this most fundamental kind of movement of the mind is simulated by a profound double-mandala that is used for meditation, the Shri Yantra.

The Number Nine, As Spiral

Stuff here about the nine levels of the mandala,

"The mandala indicates a focalization of wholeness and is analogous to the cosmos. As a synergic form it reflects cosmogenic process, the cycles of elements, and harmoniously integrates within itself the opposites, the earthly and the ethereal, the kinetic and the static.'" (64) But, "the circle also functions as the nuclear motif of the self, a vehicle for centering awareness, disciplining concentration and arousing a state conducive to mystic exaltation. Each of the five component parts of the mandala - the four sides and the centre - is psychologically significant; they correspond to the five structural elements of personality and the five Buddhas of the Diamond Vehicle: Vairochana, 'The Brilliant One'; Aksobhya, 'The Unshakable'; Ratnasambhava, 'The Matrix of the Jewel'; Amitabha, 'The Infinite Light'; and Amogasiddhi, 'The Infallible Realization'. Through contemplation on the mandala, the adept can tap higher levels of integration and realize cosmic communion, a micro-macro unity - 'The five Buddhas do not remain remote divine forms in distant heavens, but descend into us. I am the cosmos and the Buddhas are in myself. In me is the cosmic light, a mysterious presence, even if it be obscured by error. But these five Buddhas are nevertheless in me, they are the five constituents of the human personality'. Tucci further observes that 'Pure Consciousness assumes five faces of different colours from which derive the five directions which corresponds to the five 'families' of the Buddhist Schools... The mandala is a psychic complex which conditions the return of the psyche to its potent core."(64)

'The static principle predominates in the Para Bindu [the center of the Shri Yantra] ...'(58, Mookerjee)

The Shri Yantra is also called the 'Nava Chakra', 'since it is composed of nine circuits, coudnting from the other plane to the bind [center]. 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.'(59, Mookerjee). [in the enneagram, as here, the nubmer 'nine' is associated with successive phases in the process of spiritual growth - or, conversely, in the processes of 'becoming' and 'deconstruction'. Mookerjee tells us that the nine circuits - which also appear in traditional mandalas - are 'associated with nine classes of yoginis (female yogis)'- we share argue that in the case of the Enneagram, the nine points signify nine forms of wisdom (which are inextricably interwoven with nine corresponding obstacles) associated with spiritual 'realization' (or 'individuation', to use Jung's term for the accomplishment of the task of realizing the Self by integrating the 'unconscious' or undifferentiated order of reality into the everyday 'order' characterized by bifurcated consciousness and change.

We might note that the figure is also constructed of nine primary triangles - a fact which SHOULD strike us as anomalous, given the initial impression of the figure as symmetrical with respect an imaginary horizontal axis passing through the center of the figure. If the figure were symmetrical in this way, there should be an equal number of upward and downward triangles, eight or ten. But there are not - there are downward triangles and four upward. How can this be?

The nine mandalas of the Shri Yantra

On closer inspection of the figure we notice that it is indeed quite peculiar. In fact, when we try to reconstruct the diagram, we inevitably arrive at the surprising fact - which strikes us with the force of an 'aha' experience - that the figure can be correctly drawn only when we incorporate in it a very subtle slight-of-hand, which ...
Fake Shri Yantra
(perfectly symmetric) which would constitute a 'desacralization' of the shri yantra, to use Eliade's term

'Beyond the drive to create is yet a deeper level of commitment, a state of union with a whole that is beyond us. When this element of union is injectected into our play-forms, we get something beyond mere creativity, beyond mere purpose or dedication. We get a state of acting from love.' Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play - the Power of Improvisation in the Life and the Artsp. 183. Section Two

skip to section three

There is left-right symmetry in the diagram (it is symmetrical with respect to an axis that can be drawn vertically through its center). And at first glance it also appears to have symmetry with respect to a horizontal axis that can be drawn through its center. But as one progressively narrows one's scope of attention, focusing in toward the middle of the figure, the viewer is thrown off balance. Somehow we seem to be now looking at an asymmetrical figure in which the upward and downward triangles are out of balance! To compensate for the imbalance that seems suddenly to be there, we are prompted, unconsciously, to widen our scope of attention, seeking the counterpart of whatever triangle sticks out as the offending one.

In this way we are led open our focus on areas of ever-larger scope, until we are enticed to include the whole diagram within our view, and again it appears to us to have horizontal as well as vertical symmetry. And we are inclined to again narrow our attention, moving in toward the center, which, once we reach it, catapults us back out.

---

Footnotes

1. Mookerjee, pages 50 and 62.
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2. 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.
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3. Mookerjee, pages 56 and 62.
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