Tantra…Chakras. Myth and reality

 chakras

The chakras were part of a stream of lineage of yoga known as Classical Tantra (read our blog post here) which spread across India from around the 5th to about the 12th Century ACE. 

The creators of chakra yoga, were the first of the yogis to perceive the chakras and the subtle energy body. 

They wrote many thousands of texts and manuals, however many of which were lost to time, invasion and a basic lack of interest in the Middle Ages. 

in the early 20th century a British translator called ‘Arthur Avalon’ discovered a late Hatha text (the period/lineage of yoga that came after Tantra.) He mistranslated much of this text into a book called “The Serpent Power” which became a big hit across the world and influenced everyone from Carl Jung to Joseph Campbell

What follows is an outline of the New Age ideas you might have been taught about in books, lectures and teacher trainings, or from your Google searches, that never actually came from the Tantrik tradition. All of the following ideas are 20th century innovations, some harmless, others with somewhat problematic consequences.

MYTH 1: THE 7 CHAKRAS OF THE HUMAN BODY

This idea that there is a definitive number and location for the chakras wasn’t part of the Classical Tantrik tradition. 

The chakras were mutable (liable to change) in the tradition and each lineage or school of Tantra had a different way of relating to the chakras. 

Some schools worked with 5. Some used 9, others 16. None of them were considered ‘incorrect’, rather the number of chakras you worked with related to the kinds of practices your school focussed on. 

Some schools focussed on deities and others the 5 elements. For this reason a different number of energy centres made sense to the different traditions.

On top of that the Sanskrit names that we have come to know as meaning the different chakras:

Root chakra: Muladhara
Sacral chakra: Swadhistana
Navel chakra: Manipura
Heart chakra: Anahata
Throat chakra: Vishudda
Third eye chakra: Ajna
Crown chakra: Sahasrara

These were not the exclusive names for the chakras. In fact along with the varying location and numbers of the chakras, across different lineages, the names of each of the chakras varied too. So Swadhisthana doesn’t mean the sacral chakra, it’s just the name attributed to it in one Tantrik lineage.

In the middle ages many schools were working with the 7 chakra system and so it became one of the more dominant systems

MYTH 2 CHAKRA RAINBOW 

the one Tantrik text that is published and available to Sanskrit scholars describes only the colours red and gold, alternating between the chakras.

MYTH 3: THE CHAKRAS & YOUR EMOTIONS

Your root chakra is related to survival, your throat centre to how you speak, your navel to personal power…

Well this one can be tracked to Carl Jung. After reading ‘the Serpent Power’ by Arthur Avalon, (that excellent mistranslation of a late Hatha text that described the chakras) Jung was inspired to create a series of lectures called ‘the Psychology of Kundalini Yoga’. Basically Jung overlaid his ideas of psychology and emotional states onto the chakra system, something that the tradition never did. 

The Tantrik practices didn’t do this because the idea was to move away from the limited mechanics of the mind and emotions that trap us, and practice in a way that elevates our consciousness to create an integrated state of awakening.

Despite this, Jung’s ideas spread across the Western world and became almost biblical in nature for New Age followers and also yogis. This understanding of the chakras became so dominant it even spread back to India, as part of the interchange of ideas that has been going on for many hundreds of years. 

That is why many yoga teachers and schools teach the chakras in this way.

MYTH 4: THE CHAKRAS RELATION TO ORGANS, NERVE PLEXUSES AND GLANDS

This is for those who have gone deep into their (non-Sanskrit text) related studies of the chakras. There are many books and yoga teacher training manuals that will describe how the Third Eye relates to the pineal gland, or the Throat centre relates to Thyroid gland. Some get specific with nerve plexuses. Others relate to Organs, much like the Traditional Chinese Medicine System.

IN THE TANTRIK TRADITION THE CHAKRAS WERE PURELY ENERGETIC. 

They were padmas, loci, centres, lotuses, focuses for highly specific energetic vinyasa (sequences of practice). Because they were based purely in the energetic realm, it meant that the chakras, like all aspects of the energy body, were mutable (changeable) in certain ways. 

When this energetic tradition came to the West, practitioners who were not drawing from source texts began to overlay the chakras (again) with Western ideas about the physiological body. This happened from both Western and Indian teachers, for complex reasons. 

This overlay is, problematic. 

It is problematic because it is part of a colonialisation of yoga that has happened over the last 2 centuries in many ways. linking this subtle body system to a rational Western scientific model, represented a kind of justification, or the validity to this system. As in ‘the chakras are real because they also relate to tangible Western anatomy like the nerve plexuses and glands.’ 

To be embedded in a non-colonial viewpoint of the chakras would be to embrace them as subtle body phenomena, which can only be experienced through specific subtle body practices.

MYTH 5: THE SOLAR PLEXUS

This is a quick one! No tantrik text ever describes a chakra as ‘the solar plexus’ or describes a chakra as being located in the region of the solar plexus. None of the 9 lineages and thousands of texts. Ever.

There chakras located in the navel and the heart, but never in between. The Solar Plexus is Hellenic (Greek) in origin and comes from Greek philosophy.

MYTH 6: THE CHAKRA CLEANSE AND REMOVAL PROCESS

Has anyone ever told you that they can give you a root chakra healing? Or even better, remove that pesky root chakra for you? Or that they can use crystals to give you a chakra healing? If they have, you can be certain that they are not drawing from any  ancient text and probably never will.

The Ancient Tantrik tradition was highly erudite, producing many thousands of books and manuals, and fostering a great community of scholars and teachers. Over the span of around 1100 years these texts espoused a common thread of practices that involved breath, visualisation and mantra. These rites, or the vinyasa (sequences of practice) remained consistent across lineages and millennia.

There were specific times when the teacher or Master would perform the spiritual rites on or to the students. But mostly the practices were part of the Tantrika’s daily Sadhana (self practice). These students were householders, men and women, with jobs and families who would perform their daily Sadhana and personally connect to their energy body and chakras themselves. It was a personal, phenomenological, spiritual experience. The practice so refined that it could guarantee liberation within one lifetime for the dedicated student!

Needless to say at no point was any Tantrik Master doing psychic surgery to remove their student’s chakras as part of this tradition.

MYTH 7: THE CHAKRAS & BIJA MANTRAS

Again, this misnomer is for all those who are deep in the chakras world. Maybe you’re a teacher. Maybe you have been to a chakra workshop.

Usually it goes that each of the chakras has a specific bija (seed) mantra that correlates to it:

Root chakra: LAM

Sacral chakra: VAM

Navel chakra: RAM

Heart chakra: YAM

Throat chakra: HAM

Third eye chakra: AUM

Crown chakra: AUM or silence

None of this is correct and I will explain why.

But firstly I would like to soften the blow by saying that working with mantras is actually the primary practice of the Tantrik tradition. So the intention is correct! In fact the Tantrik path was known to itself not as ‘tantra’ but as mantra-marga, the path of mantra. And using these mantras isn’t too far off either.

It’s just that correlating these bija mantras with the chakras is fundamentally incorrect for a few reasons.

Firstly, every text that mentions this thread of mantras relates them not to the chakras but to the 5 elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Wind and Space. In the New Age tradition these mantras were cemented to the 7 chakras (not the elements) in a way that wasn’t found in the ancient texts. 

The traditions that did work with the bhutashuddhi (5 element) practice, would probably have used them in connection with a 5 chakra system. And, across the different lineages and systems, the elements were connected to different chakras (but always in the same order- that they got right.) 

So in some systems the water element might have been in the navel or heart. The wind element in palate chakra. 

Because New Age chakra-philes had no reference to these other lineages or texts, they assumed that the bija mantras and elements were cemented to the chakras in a way that was fixed. They assumed that the mantras were for the chakras. Which they weren’t.

Secondly, the way the Tantrik texts were written was in a kind of code that would prevent non-initiates (for example Arthur Avalon who wrote the Serpent Power in 1910) from understanding them.

They did this through a system that use complex cross referencing. So when describing a mantra or practice, they wouldn’t outline it clearly, they would reference other texts, other parts of the same text, the Sanskrit alphabet and also use analogies and cultural references that are now anachronistic. 

Why am I telling you this? Because the mantras Lam, Vam, Ram, Yam & Ham are also fundamentally incorrect. When you return to the Sanskrit texts where these exact bija mantras for the 5 elements are outlined, they use this complex referencing system, that, until recently, hasn’t been correctly translated.

So what are the correct mantras for the 5 Elements? Well sorry I can’t give them to you, unless under initiation. These mantras a very powerful and so despite being available through a few Sanskrit scholar practitioners, aren’t going to be found anywhere within easy access on the web.