A Paper on Mormon Doctrine and Kundalini Yoga (Part 4): The Heart Chakra

The Baptisms and the Chakras: A Comparison of 2 Nephi 31:13 and Kundalini Yoga (Part 4 of 7)

Anahata (The Heart Chakra)

With the anahata chakra, associated with the element of air, we come into an association with our verse as it continues: “then cometh the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost.” [1] The name “Holy Ghost” was originally a translation of the Greek pneuma hagion, in which one can translate the word pneuma as not only “spirit,” but also more literally as “breath,” “wind,” or “air” (think of the word “pneumatic”). [2] With the notion of the Holy Ghost, then, comes associations not only with “spirit” but also the influx of divine breath in “inspiration,” the exchange between inner and outer we call “respiration,” the way we pant with desire after our “aspirations,” or even the blood-soaked “perspiration” of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. [3]

What can this tell us about the Holy Ghost and His baptism? Apart from the facts that 1) He is a personage without a body of flesh and bones, 2) He is a separate being from the Father and the Son, and 3) unlike Them, He can dwell in us, [4] we know surprisingly little about Him. For instance, there is the still unresolved controversy as to whether or not He is a “spirit son” of Heavenly Father, and the question as to whether He will ever “get a body” remains unanswered. But what can we gather about His nature from the symbolic and etymological observations listed just above? It’s clear that if the Holy Spirit is thought rather as the Holy or Sacred Breath, several consequences emerge. Namely, when we receive “inspiration” from God we are actually “breathing together” or “conspiring” with Him, a mutual exchange of breath in which the divine imparts spirit to us and we return spirit to the divine. The Holy Ghost would thus be the “breath of God,” that gust of inspiration He bestows to His children and expects to receive back. Knowing this connection, we can now perhaps understand why Parley P. Pratt called the Holy Spirit

" …the great, positive, controlling element of all other elements. It is omnipresent by reason of its infinitude, and it pervades all things. It is the agent or executive, by which God organizes and puts in motion all worlds, and which, by the mandate of the Almighty, or of any of His commissioned servants performs all the mighty wonders, signs and miracles ever manifested in the name of the Lord, the dividing of the sea, the removing of a mountain, the raising of the dead, or the healing of the sick." [5]

Like air, the Holy Spirit would thus be quick-moving and flexible enough to pervade everything, wiggling into the smallest keyhole and permeating the tiniest pore. Also like air, it is too “fine or pure” to be able to see with physical eyes,[6] but is nevertheless something we desperately need in order to live.

Let’s then imagine that a “baptism of the Holy Ghost” would involve participating in this divine “co-inspiration” with God, in which I become purified enough to receive God’s breath—His life, so to speak—into my heart and let it begin to animate [7] me from within. So doing, I not only have access to the Light of Christ (that is, the light that reveals things’ spiritual nature, just as physical light reveals things’ physical nature), but also to the “mind of God,” as the Lectures on Faith refer to the Holy Ghost.[8] More psychologically speaking, we might rephrase this by saying that a baptism of spirit involves an initial perception of the world from a more transcendent perspective. Says Carl Jung

"[In Anahata,] you begin to reason, to think, to reflect about things, and so it is the beginning of a sort of contraction of withdrawal from the mere emotional function. Instead of following your impulses wildly, you begin to invent a certain ceremony that allows you to disidentify yourself from your emotions, or to overcome your emotions actually. You stop yourself in your wild mood and suddenly ask, ‘Why am I behaving like this?’”[9]

With the perspective of the Holy Spirit, I no longer identify with any of my feelings. I gain the quickness and mobility of wind, able to evade the “fiery darts of the adversary”[10] with ease and finesse. Moreover, the “ceremony” mentioned in the above passage could very well apply to our weekly sacrament meetings, for in them we receive a symbol of Christ’s blood, another symbol of His life.

If the Spirit of God is the “breath of God,” let us further imagine this breath as an exhalation, a projection (of sorts) of God’s inner life into His creation. This would mean that the Holy Ghost is less a “spirit son” of heavenly parents than the medium through which “spirit sonship” (or “daughtership”) can take place at all. After all, when the angel tells Mary in the Gospel of Luke that “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God,” [11] is he not implicitly saying that the Holy Ghost is the medium, the “bridge” through which the Father can connect with and incarnate His divinity in the Son? The Holy Ghost, then, is the figure which unites the Father and the Son, the function which the Lectures on Faith refers to when it says that the Holy Ghost is their shared mind. [12] Nor does this conception of the Holy Spirit rule out His personal nature. Precisely this relationship of bridge between father and son existed in the Egyptian religious function of Ka-Mutef (an epithet for Amun), who—as the “ka” or life-spirit of the divine—transfers that divinity from the Pharaoh to his son through the womb of the royal mother. Though this “ka” is the “procreative power of the deity,”[13] he remains a personal being, one who was personified and worshipped as separate from the Pharaoh, Osiris, Horus, Isis, or whatever deity one can pick. Like any “ka,” we can thus imagine that the Holy Ghost could be the “double” of incarnated divinity, Who can leave the body as easily as a breath, to do the business of He who sent Him. [14]

What this observation consequently means is that when Christ tells His disciples that “If I depart, I will send him [the Comforter] unto you,” [15] we can think of the Comforter given to us as the same divinity that was born in Christ making itself known in our bodies. The Holy Ghost—as the “being-there” of God—would therefore exist in so many bodies at once, taking up residence in whatsoever heart will take Him. This at the very least makes sense of the Holy Ghost’s association with the Telestial Kingdom in D&C 76, [16] corresponding not to the single lights of the sun or the moon but to the infinitely manifold lights of the stars. Perhaps we can even use that to explain why there are no pictorial representations of the Holy Ghost as such—like any ghost, He is transparent to what lies about Him, showing Himself only through the memories, conversations, books, or coincidences which lie in His vicinity. In any case, with the baptism of the Holy Ghost we for the first time become part of the Godhead’s shared breathing, entering the respiratory relationship of inspiration and consecration in which the Comforter reveals Himself.

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[1] 2 Nephi 31:13

[2] See John 3 for a kind of poetic double-entendre between its different meanings as “wind” and “spirit.”

[3] Like pneuma, the Latin spirare, which means “to breathe,” has found its way into our vocabulary (as in each of these words).

[4] D&C 130: 22-23

[5] Pratt, Parley P.. Key to the Science of Theology, 44

[6] D&C 131: 7-8

[7] “Animate” comes from the Latin word “anima,” which can also be translated to mean “spirit.”

[8] The Lectures on Faith: Lecture Fifth

[9]  Jung, C.G.. Op. Cit., 38-39

[10] 1 Nephi 15:24

[11] Luke 1:35

[12] Lectures on Faith: Lecture Fifth

[13] Jung, C. G. Psychology and Religion: West and East. 2d ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969

[14] I have read that exactly such a picture of the Holy Spirit (as a “double” of Christ as an embodied God) occurs in the apocryphal Coptic version of the Pistis Sophia.

[15] John 16:7

[16] D&C 76:86

A Paper on Mormon Doctrine and Kundalini Yoga (Part 3): The Solar Plexus Chakra

The Baptisms and the Chakras: A Comparison of 2 Nephi 31:13 and Kundalini Yoga (Part 3 of 7)

Manipura (The Solar Plexus Chakra)

When our Book of Mormon verse proceeds by saying “then cometh the baptism of fire…,” [1] it corresponds nicely to the third chakra, given the name manipura. This chakra resides in the solar plexus, and it is traditionally associated not only with fire but also with “willpower” and “a sense of self.” [2] But if the baptism of water or of svadisthana refers to an encounter with unrestrainable desires, what does the baptism of fire or of manipura involve? Well, Carl Jung suggests that it, first of all, involves an encounter with divinity [3]—the sun rises, and I encounter the blazing glory of God (perhaps as a “burning in the bosom”). This is then the first encounter of something supra-personal, of something “which is both in us and more than us.” [4]

However, Jung suggests that the encounter with manipura has another, less pleasant, aspect. When I pass into the third chakra, he says,

"Desire, passions, the whole emotional world breaks loose. Sex, power, and every devil in our nature gets loose when we become acquainted with the unconscious….So it is just that—you get into the world of fire, where things become red-hot. After baptism you get right into hell—that is the enantiodromia [a sort of tension between opposing principles]." [5]

Think of that! Lust, greed, and envy not as a sign of distance from God, but as a sign that you are approaching Him! Though it sounds foreign, such a thought is not without precedent even in scripture. Says Paul in his Epistle to the Romans:

"…I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me." [6]

The law stokes the fire of lust. If no one told me to, say, not watch pornography, or at least if it weren’t taboo, I wouldn’t be nearly as tempted to look at it as I would be with that restriction. The tabooed nature of sin makes it seem dangerous and exciting, and so doing it inflames our desire for what lies outside the realm of virtue. Nevertheless, the law is right and good—it inflames the fire of lust so that it can get a person to be refined in that fire. Without such a tug-of-war of opposition between righteousness and sin, no development would ever come.

But how does one rightly relate to manipura’s flame? Though it gives advice specific only to potential difficulties with chastity, a paragraph in Adam S. Miller’s Letters to a Young Mormon seems especially pertinent here:

"When you are alone and feel, as you often will, a growing hunger for sex, don’t always run away. Don’t automatically distract yourself from it or automatically lose yourself in it. Rather, try doing the one thing we’re often most afraid to do: pay direct attention to the hunger itself. Just watch. Acknowledge the hunger’s weight, autonomy, and reality. Notice that there is a difference between the images, fears, and fantasies that fuel the hunger and the physical sensations proper to the hunger itself. Then, instead of paying attention to the fantasies that stoke it, pay attention to the physical sensations that compose it. Become friends with them and watch patiently as their grip loosens. Don’t pour fuel on the fire by entertaining your fantasies, but don’t try to put out the fire either. Just watch the flames as they burn, on their own, back down to coals. Practicing chastity means caring for these coals. Practicing chastity means learning how to offer this hunger back to God as a prayer." [7]

Miller here advises the titular “young Mormon” to avoid identifying with the flame of lust. Recede from it, he effectively says, draw back from it enough that you can clearly see it as something that has its own life, as something that is distinct from you (perhaps as Kundalini herself?). And it is precisely this emotional maneuver that lets one develop out of manipura’s flame to the next chakra: anahata’s air or spirit. Indeed, one might even think of the whole endeavor of this fire as an attempt to “burn up” our literal attachments enough to release the air/spirit hidden in them and get it to ascend.

But before I get to a discussion of that chakra itself, I’d like to point out one more very important thing about the flame of manipura: that its manifestation as lust is inherently no less spiritual than the “burning in the bosom.” Says Carl Jung in his lectures: “There is the source of fire, there is the fullness of energy. A man who is not on fire is nothing: he is ridiculous, he is two-dimensional. He must be on fire even if he does make a fool of himself. A flame must burn somewhere, otherwise no light shines; there is no warmth, nothing.”[8] And that is the great secret: the fire we experience in lust is really the birth of spirit, spirit in its latent form. Indeed, if anything, an unmanageable sense of lust, greed, or envy might not be a sign that one is on the wrong track, but on precisely the right one! Maybe such a person is so “full of spirit” that it “spills out” unwillingly and before she can catch it. The Post-Jungian psychologist James Hillman implicitly argues this point when he says:

"We can understand why chastity and continence and other sexual mysti-tiques…belong archetypally to the discipline of the ‘holy man.’ It is not that he has less sexuality than others but more….The ‘holy man’ as ‘greater personality’ implies the endowment of greater sexuality; therefore, the transformation of it raises all sorts of problems, answers to which have been formulated in various esoteric techniques and disciplines, West and East…." [9]

The fire of lust is merely the fire of spirit in its un-contained form. The answer to any problems with chastity or pornography--currently very relevant to the LDS Church--is thus not to put out the fire but to contain it. So doing, one alchemically transmutes the unbearable fire of lust into “the everlasting burnings of God.”[10]

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[1] 2 Nephi 31:13

[2] Austen, Felice. Awake as in Ancient Days. Madison and West Publishing 2014,  43.

[3] Jung, C.G.. Op. Cit., 30-31.

[4] Miller, Adam S. Speculative Grace: Bruno Latour and Object-Oriented Theology. New York: Fordham University Press, 2013. 147

[5]Jung, C.G.. Op. Cit., 33-34

[6] Romans 7:7-11

[7] Miller, Adam S., Letters to a Young Mormon.

[8] Jung, C.G.. Op. Cit., 34

[9] Hillman, James. Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man. Berkeley, Calif.: Shambhala, 1971.

[10] Smith, Joseph, The King Follett Discourse

A Paper on Mormon Doctrine and Kundalini Yoga (Part 2): The Sacral Chakra

The Baptisms and the Chakras: A Comparison of 2 Nephi 31:13 and Kundalini Yoga (Part 2 of 7)

Svadisthana (The Sacral Chakra)

With the second chakra—located in the genital region and associated with sexuality, desire, and, most relevantly, water—we finally come to the verse with which this paper is concerned. Jung explicitly associates the svadisthana chakra with the Christian ritual of baptism in his lectures on Kundalini Yoga when he says:

"The way out of our muladhara existence leads into the water...Therefore, the very first demand of a mystery cult always has been to go into water, into the baptismal font. The way into any higher development leads through water, with the danger of being swallowed by the monster…So one would call the second cakra the cakra or mandala of baptism, or of rebirth, or of destruction—whatever the consequences of baptism may be."[1]

In Jungian terminology, with the Sacral Chakra we first enter into the waters of what is termed “the unconscious.” And so when our Book of Mormon verse says that we should “[follow our] Lord and [our] Savior down into the water,”[2] perhaps it means more than a simple exhortation to fulfill the literal ordinance of baptism. Not to say that this ordinance isn’t important, of course, but rather to suggest that, like any ordinance, the physical act of submersion corresponds to and symbolizes an event with repercussions in spiritual reality. Specifically, we could suppose that baptism as a spiritual event refers to a descent into the chaos and unformed-ness of water—in other words, our first encounter with a part of our existence that is fluid enough to escape our grasp and evade our control.

To progress from muladhara to svadisthana, then, involves a recognition that not everything is fixed, that some things do not fit my vision of the world as hospitable to my desires. I can hold a rock in my hand, yes; however, I cannot easily do the same with water. Likewise, though I can trust in the security of muladhara existence, the svadisthana phenomena of (maybe sexual) desire, (perhaps unrequited) love, and (occasionally insatiable) hunger catch me off guard; like a rushing river, they “sweep me off my feet” and risk drowning me. A baptism of water, then, causes me to purposefully submerge myself beneath the water of my unconscious, of the intangibility of my feelings. So doing, I move past the risk of drowning by willingly undergoing a symbolic drowning, one in which I escape alive. Baptism is thus not only a “similitude of the grave,”[3] but also a similitude of Jonah’s whale, Peter’s lack of faith on the Sea of Galilee, or even Noah’s flood, in which one escapes from oceanic disaster by a hairsbreadth but nevertheless emerge as a new person.

Moreover, as with any ascension from one chakra to another, it constitutes a motion on the part of Kundalini from lower to higher. In this case, she begins to “step out from the shadows” of the literal things in the (Muladhara) world—perhaps making me want something I can’t easily afford, have a crush on someone out of my league, or lust after an action that is sinful at present. Though these experiences are extremely frustrating, perhaps we can read them more positively as the initial impetus of my inner divinity to have me recognize my idolatry of the things in the world and begin to see divinity for what it is, and not to lust endlessly after it in worldly things that can never satisfy my desires.

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[1] Jung, C.G.. Op. Cit., 16-17

[2] 2 Nephi 31:13

[3] D&C 128:13

A Paper on Mormon Doctrine and Kundalini Yoga (Part 1): Introduction and the Root Chakra

The Baptisms and the Chakras: A Comparison of 2 Nephi 31:13 and Kundalini Yoga (Part 1 of 7)

The thirteenth verse of 2 Nephi 31 reads as follows:

"Wherefore, my beloved brethren, I know that if ye shall follow the Son, with full purpose of heart, acting no hypocrisy and no deception before God, but with real intent, repenting of your sins, witnessing unto the Father that ye are willing to take upon you the name of Christ, by baptism--yea, by following your Lord and your Savior down into the water, according to his word, behold, then shall ye receive the Holy Ghost; yea, then cometh the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost; and then can ye speak with the tongue of angels, and shout praises unto the Holy One of Israel." [1]

This verse is doctrinally significant for several reasons. On the one hand, it offers a basic “to-do list” for salvation, effectively saying that if one does this and this, she can do that and thus gain salvation. However, this verse contains a hidden significance, one that can only come about with deep investigation. I specifically mean that it offers not only a “to-do list,” but also a roadmap of both the road to exaltation and the structure of the eternities. And this has everything to do with bodies and temples.

Scripture repeatedly asserts that human bodies are “temples of God.” What does this mean, especially when considering the many things Latter-day Saints have learned about temples through revelation? For instance, is the body a “site” for sacred ordinances? Is it, like the temple, a microcosmic representation of the universe and the soul’s progression toward God? Though it may sound odd, many spiritual thinkers both outside the Church and within it have claimed exactly these things about the human body. For instance, the Swedish visionary Emanuel Swedenborg (with whose doctrines Mormons share not a little in common) declared that the human body is a microcosm of heaven, and that the parts of the body exist in an exact correspondent relationship with parts of the spiritual world. Moreover, Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland says in his talk “Personal Purity” that “ physical intimacy [that is, the bodily act par excellence] is not only a symbolic union between a husband and a wife—the very uniting of their souls—but it is also symbolic of a shared relationship between them and their Father in Heaven.”[2] Finally, the spiritual practice of Kundalini Yoga teaches that human bodies contain a series of “chakras” (centers of energy) along the spine, which also exist in a correspondent relationship to spiritual realities.

I mention all of this because the elemental imagery in the above verse symbolically resonates with precisely these chakras in Kundalini Yoga, and as such 2 Nephi 31:13 not only offers a site for comparative study between religions, but also allows us to let these traditions illuminate each other. Namely, the baptisms of water, fire, and the (Holy) Spirit (which in Greek is “pneuma,” a word synonymous with air), correspond to the second, third, and fourth chakras, respectively. Moreover, the “tongue of angels” mentioned immediately afterward reminds one of the fifth chakra, specifically associated with the throat, the mouth, and speech in general. If one is to regard the conceptual framework of Kundalini Yoga as valuable (which many do [explain who]), this comparison suggests that the above verse portrays not just a list of spiritual concepts, but rather describes a progression to God in various stages.

For the rest of this paper, I will follow that progression step-by-step, from one chakra to the next, all the while explaining the significance of comparing the conceptual frameworks of Kundalini Yoga and Mormon thought. I will utilize the writings of commentators in this process, specifically relying on the writings of Carl Jung, James Hillman, and Mormon author Felice Austen to explain the symbolic and comparative implications of the chakras. In doing so, I hope to show how the doctrine of a foreign spiritual tradition can enlighten Mormonism’s own doctrines, even revealing things in our own system of thought that most pass over.

Muladhara (The Root Chakra)

Though the muladhara chakra, as the chakra corresponding to the earth, doesn’t appear per se in 2 Nephi 31:13, that doesn’t stop earth symbolism from popping up quite often throughout the Book of Mormon’s text. Especially relevant is the symbolism of dust. I quote here from several passages in the work:

“Awake! and arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling parent…”[3]

“And it shall be as if the fruit of thy loins had cried unto them from the dust; for I know their faith. And they shall cry from the dust…”[4]

“But the book shall be delivered unto a man, and he shall deliver the words of the book, which are the words of those who have slumbered in the dust…”[5]

“I speak unto you as the voice of one crying from the dust: Farewell until that great day shall come.”[6]

“And they had viewed themselves in their own carnal state, even less than the dust of the earth.”[7]

“And they did humble themselves even to the dust, subjecting themselves to the yoke of bondage…”[8]

“…those saints who have gone before me, who have possessed this land, shall cry, yea, even from the dust will they cry unto the Lord…”[9]

“Did I not declare my words unto you, which were written by this man, like as one crying form the dead, yea, even as one speaking out of the dust?”[10]

Evidently images of earth such as these are very important to the text, since several of these verses (specifically those in Nephi’s and Moroni’s farewells) come in places crucial to the Book of Mormon’s rhetorical purposes. One might also find earth imagery in Alma 32’s declaration that the Word is a divine seed which can be planted in one’s heart, as if I as a living, thinking, and feeling person am a type of soil. Finally, one could tie all of these threads together by recalling the Book of Mormon’s origin story, one which Joseph Smith poetically paraphrased in the following quotation:

"Let us take the Book of Mormon, which a man took and hid in his field, securing it by his faith, to spring up in the last days, or in due time; let us behold it coming forth out of the ground, which indeed accounted the least of all seeds, but behold it branching forth, yea, even towering with lofty branches and God-like majesty, until it, like the mustard seed, becomes the greatest of all herbs. And it is truth, and it has sprouted to come forth out of the earth, and righteousness begins to look down from heaven, and God is sending down His powers, gifts, and angels to lodge in the branches thereof." [11]

In other words, the Book of Mormon itself was planted in the earth, and it could only “grow” enough to be fruitful by being interred in the ground for so long.

One can find all of this imagery and more implicit in the muladhara chakra’s symbolic associations. This chakra—commonly called the “Root Chakra”—is the lowermost of its siblings, and it is located around the area of the buttocks. As the chakra of the earth, it symbolizes the terminating point of the uppermost chakra’s “presence” or emanation of itself; the ultimate, universal “Self” or Brahman of Hinduism corresponds to that uppermost chakra as it exists in itself, though this Self also dwells in lower chakras. Though I shall explain more on this point in its own section, I will equate this “Crown Chakra” with pure intelligence or being as it is in itself, and as such insist that my true self “lives” there. As for the muladhara or Root Chakra, however, it corresponds less to my true self as to my physical body or, less literally, to the “natural man” who is to be tamed. Carl Jung explains this point well when he says: “Muladhara is characterized as being the sign of the earth….Then the name muladhara, meaning the root support, also shows that we are in the region of the roots of our existence, which would be our personal bodily existence on this earth.” [12]

As the “root support” of my bodily existence, that which grounds me, supports me, and lets me stand up with a confidence in my own footing, the muladhara chakra not only represents my physical body but also, less literally, the condition that roots me to this world and its realities. As such it has both positive and negative aspects. On the one hand, the Root Chakra represents embodiment and the blessings it brings in the plan of salvation, but with such groundedness can come worldliness—the sin of being not only in the world, but also of it. Carl Jung expresses a similar sentiment when he says that the muladhara chakra “is a place where mankind is a victim of impulses, instincts, unconsciousness, of participation mystique [a state of unconscious identification with an outside entity], where we are in dark and unconscious place. We are a hapless victim of circumstances, our reason can do very little.” [13] A person thus trapped in the Root Chakra would drift along helplessly with the world, satisfying every hunger and living out every instinct, fantasy or passion—the image par excellence of the Book of Mormon’s “natural man.”[14]

However, the Root Chakra need not be a source of evil; it is only so when it serves as an end in itself, an idol to the light shining from the higher chakras resonating within it. Let us, then, go along with this elemental symbolism by imagining that our intelligences—which were “also in the beginning with the Father”[15]—are seeds of divine light that can only grow into their fullness by rooting themselves in the earth’s (or the muladhara chakra’s)  matter and solidity. The divinity which exists in us as latent potential can here become actualized; the earth would thus be the matrix which allows intelligences to grow and blossom into “trees (of life).” One should also not overlook the feminine symbolism inherent in this idea. As Mormon scripture indicates, the earth is the “mother of men.”[16] We can take this as more than poetic flourish if we remember that the classical imagination saw the earth—as what receives seeds and allows them to grow—as a correspondence of the womb, which receives the man’s “seed” and allows it to grow. The earth would then be our mother in a very real sense, for it/she nourishes our intelligences with the matter[17] that lets them grow into the fullness of their being. Nor would this necessarily rule out this mother’s personal nature, as several religious traditions speak of ways in which the earth—less as the physical planet than as our current level of existence—can “emanate” from a personal being.[18]

As a final note to my comments on this topic, could we perhaps take Joseph Smith’s above comments on the Book of Mormon as a suggestion that it also germinated in the earth’s womb, that it too grew from a kind of seed-like intelligence? Maybe then we could read phrases like the “great things the Father hath laid up for you, from the foundation for the world” [19] less as a comment on literal treasures than as evidence that the intelligence of truth, knowledge, revelation, etc. can also germinate in the earth’s womb, to come forth (read: be born) at a later time. Thus, when Paul says that “the whole creation has been groaning in labor until the now—and not only the creation, but we ourselves also, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan in ourselves, eagerly longing for sonship, the redemption of the body,”[20] we can suppose that the earth has been continually “groaning in labor” with “the things the Father hath laid up” for us, until the time when she rests, when the labor is done. Going along with the Pauline comparison, I hypothesize that this time will be in the earth’s exalted state, when the record of all things will be “read upon the house tops,” [21] when the earth will become as translucent as glass to the glory that shines through her.[22]

But notice that I am not saying this mother is identical with the muladhara chakra; instead, I suggest that she merely dwells there. This has considerable precedent in Kundalini Yoga itself, for the word “kundalini” refers to “a microcosm or representation of the primordial Energy, or Shakti [the Hindu name for the Divine’s feminine principle, especially when personified].”[23] According to the conceptual framework intrinsic to Kundalini Yoga, Kundalini as the bodily incarnation of Shakti dwells in the muladhara chakra, coiled like a serpent at the base of the spine, and the various exercises of this yogic school exist entirely to raise Kundalini up the various chakras in the spine until she rejoins her divine “husband” Shiva in the upper chakras. [24] Such an idea recurs in other spiritual traditions as well; in many Gnostic systems, it is said that Sophia (the feminine principle of God) was cut off from God the Father and “trapped ” in the world’s matter.[25] Though such ideas may strike the Latter-day Saint as odd, we may glean from them important truths, namely the observation that if we are a “bride” to a divine “bridegroom,”[26] the act of ascension to God is essentially one of reuniting a separated divine couple.

Moreover, if Kundalini Yoga is correct in its conviction that Shakti or Kundalini should be raised from muladhara to the higher chakras, then such spirituality would necessarily involve removing the identification of divinity with matter, for one can only free a God trapped in the earth if one can tell the two apart. Perhaps this is the true meaning of the commandment warning against idolatry: that idols imprison Kundalini in physicality, preventing the divine mother from giving birth to the treasures hidden in our unenlightened, opaque perception of the world. Maybe when Nephi and Moroni “cry from the dust,” the dust from which their cries resound is really the obfuscation of our idolatry, our unwillingness to “see through” the matter of the world to the divinity, intelligence, and seeds of light latent within it.

[1] 2 Nephi 31:13

[2] Jeffrey R. Holland, “Personal Purity”

[3] 2 Nephi 1:14

[4] 2 Nephi 3:19-20

[5] 2 Nephi 27:9

[6] 2 Nephi 33:13

[7] Mosiah 4:2

[8] Mosiah 21:13

[9] Mormon 8:23

[10] Moroni 10:27

[11] Smith, Joseph. Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, Chapter 11

[12] Jung, C. G. The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga: Notes of the Seminar given in 1932 by C.G. Jung. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999, 23-24

[13] Ibid 15

[14]Mosiah 3:19

[15] D&C 93:23

[16] Moses 7:48

[17] The word “matter” is actually  a cognate of words meaning “mother,” such as “maternal,” “matriarch,” etc.

[18] See Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, by Henry Corbin.

[19] Ether 4:14

[20] Romans 8:22-23 (Translation from For Zion: A Mormon Theology of Hope)

[21] 2 Nephi 27:11

[22] D&C 130:7

[23] Feuerstein, Georg. Yoga: The Technology of Ecstasy. Wellinborough 1990., 264

[24] Jung, C. G.. Op. cit., xxv.

[25]Von Franz, Marie Louise. The Golden Ass of Apuleius: The Liberation of the Feminine in Man. Rev. Ed., 1st Shambhala ed. Boston: Shambhala, 1992.,104.

[26] See, for instance, Matthew 9:15

Peter Breaks Through: The Mystical in "Peter Pan"

Since before I can remember, J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan story has both captured my imagination and touched my heart. As to why this is, I'm not sure. It might be because the first stuffed animal I bonded with was a version of the crocodile from Disney's rendition of the story. It might also be because of my Asperger's Syndrome diagnosis, and because other "aspies" have taken to saying that they are from the "wrong planet," as if we too came from the sky.

But the more I reflect and observe, the more I realize Peter Pan's significance for us all. In fact, Peter Pan is a spiritual archetype deeply embedded in our souls. We know him by other names, yes--the Greek god Hermes, the Little Prince, or even the Doctor from Doctor Who (particularly 11)--but his bursting life, his simultaneous innocence and cheek, and his eternality have always "broken through" to our collective consciousness in one form or another. We see it in myth: Icarus and Phaethon trying to reach and break through the utmost limits of the sky. He, surprisingly, also breaks through in history: think of Michael Jackson and his dance steps that seem never to touch the ground, of Mozart and his soaring melodies. But notice that in each of these cases, Peter ends in tragedy. Icarus plunges into the sea (much as the pilot and author Antoine de St. Exupery did just a year after penning The Little Prince) and Phaethon burns up; The Doctor can't stop dying and regenerating; Michael Jackson, Mozart, and countless other young prodigies die young and tragically.

 Jungian psychology has a name for this archetype: the "puer aeternus" or "eternal child," "puer" for short. Writing on the puer and the above topic, the master psychologist James Hillman writes:

"[The puer] must be weak on earth, because it is not at home on earth. The beginnings of things are Einfalle; they fall in one one from above as gifts of  the puer, or sprout up from the ground as daktyls, as flowers. But there is difficulty at the begining; the child is in danger, easily gives up. The horizontal world, the space-time continuum, which we call 'reality,' is not its world. So the new dies easily because it is not born in the Diesseits, and this death confirms it in eternity. Death does no matter because the puer gives the feeling that it can come again another time, make another start. Mortality points to immortality; danger only heightens the unreality of 'reality' and intensifies the vertical connection." -"Senex and Puer:  An Aspect of the Historical and Psychological Present," James Hillman

Peter flies because he is not at home on earth; he knows that if he were to try walking, he would have to hobble. For the glow of his fairy dust is really the light of eternity shining through. Peter Pan is eternity as it manifests in time--like its status beyond history, Peter seems unconcerned with schedules and deadlines, delaying his return to Wendy's house by as much as a generation. And of course he never grows old--time seems not to leave a mark on him, and the innocent naivete of childhood persists through his life as though the cruelties of history did not exist. 

We can see Peter in anyone who seems ill-adapted to life, but who harbors a well of talent that seems unbounded. We all know the type: the socially awkward math genius, the chess savant, the neurotic musician or painter. Even I--as someone with high-functioning autism--suspect his role in my life and that diagnosis. These people may be unable to deal with society's demands, but you can bet your life that society would not be able to survive without the regular influx of fairy dust that Peter provides. The puer's wounds--whether it be the Doctor's regeneration energy or Christ's blood (Christ, as the Son, being a kind of eternal child)--sustain and nourish the world. If we didn't have Mozart's symphonies, Turing's computer, or Kurt Cobain's Nirvana (nirvana as, of course, the puer's escape from the wheel of history), the world would be a sadder, lonelier place.

But where does Peter, the puer, call home? If he longs for nirvana--an escape from history, complication, attachment--where can he finally put his feet up, stop fidgeting, and relax? Of course, the answer is Neverland. Neverland is the land that refuses to be pinned down or mapped, that place where you can "never land." To put it differently, Neverland is the place beyond place, or better, the place hiding between places. Perhaps the philosopher Henry Corbin puts it best when he describes the Sufi concept of the Na-koja-Abad, translated as--interestingly enough--"the land of No-where":

"The word Na-koja-Abad does not designate something like unextended being, in the dimensionless state. The Persian word abad certainly signifies a city, a cultivated and peopled land, thus something extended....Topographically, he [Sohravardi] states precisely that this region begins 'on the convex surface' of the Ninth Sphere, the Sphere of Spheres, or the Sphere that includes the whole of the cosmos. This means that it begins at the exact moment when one leaves the supreme Sphere, which defines all possible orientation in the world (or on this side of the world), the 'Sphere' to which the celestial cardinal points refer. [Mormons reading this; notice connections to Abraham 3's discussion of Kolob and other "planets"] Thus the name Na-koja-Abad; a place outside of place, a 'place' that is not contained in a place, in a topos, that permits a response, with a gesture of the hand, to the question 'where?'" -"Mundus Imaginalis," Henry Corbin

(Devoted readers of my blog will perhaps notice a connection to Swedenborg's description of heaven, which Henry Corbin was not hesitant to point out. Swedenborg's heaven, too, is a "never-land"--a place that exists beyond all place, one that cannot exist within the confines of earthly (or astronomical) maps or charts. I think that the same archetypal power influencing Swedenborg and J. M. Barrie persisted even in the creators of the 1954 musical version of Peter Pan; Swedenborg's heaven is also "a place where dreams are born," "where time is never planned" and one that your heart can reach if it "thinks of lovely things.")

Peter is at home beyond all space and time, and so distance and duration threaten him. The knots of indirection, discipline, and patience upset him. He wants freedom, direct flight, soaring transcendence of limitation. But of course the world doesn't work like that. Is Peter doomed to die young whenever he pops up in the world? Must he always return, like the Little Prince, to his star? Though events seem to suggest that he must, I think there is another way. Peter should neither flee back to Neverland or become a "grownup;" there is a third option, and I want to discuss it for the rest of this post.

Peter Pan longs for a mother. For some reason, though he disdains the idea of grownups, he feels that something is missing from his life, and that something is precisely the care and comfort that a mother provides. And while not a mother, the Little Prince's flower also provides a feminine presence that proves indispensable to a puer. You see, the puer is caught in a dichotomy between boy and man, Peter Pan and Captain Hook. He never stops to consider that this dichotomy--as exclusively masculine--ignores a third position that embraces and contains both perspectives. This perspective is that of the mother--the symbolically feminine receptivity that is neither flighty child nor workaholic grownup, but the link between them. 

This can all be further symbolized by the most distinctive part of feminine anatomy: the womb. The womb as a vessel both receives life and gives it; it acts as a bridge between the opposite polarities of boy and grownup, Peter Pan and Mr. Darling, stickler and pick-up-sticks. Instead of bitterly holding secrets in (grownup) or spilling them out to whomever will hear (puer), it bridges between openness and secrecy through an alternation of flow and containment. Peter might long for a mother, and surely a mother's love would give him this peace that lies beyond duality to an extent, but there is another way for him to access feminine receptivity: Peter must be wounded.

For the puer, wound=womb. The pain and suffering that one might delay until a tragedy at the end of life then comes early on, and stays with him as a a scar--a reminder of his vulnerability, this opening as an invitation toward inwardness and containment. Thus being wounded, Peter Pan would become like Christ, whose wounds enabled him to succor his spiritual children, or the Little Prince, whose injury by snake bite enabled him to reunite with his beloved rose. Peter Pan's wound would then be a mother for him, enabling him to deal with the stresses of life without having to sacrifice his vivacity and eternal spirit.

For that is the secret: grownup and boy are united in the feminine principle. Luce Irigaray was surely touching on this principle when she referred to the female sex as "the sex which is not one"--comfortable with multiplicity and unresolved duality. This means connecting the vertical and the horizontal (Christ's cross), eternity and time, nirvana and samsara, Neverland and Terra Firma. We might remind ourselves of the Doctor and his two hearts--he who is himself two, capable of compassionate duplicity, of being both human and alien, old man and boy, here and there (we might also recall the Tardis as a feminine being, both as referred to and in its internal similarity to a womb). For like the Doctor, Christ, the Little Prince, or even Odysseus and his wound, every instance of Peter Pan's breakthrough must temper itself with receptivity and containment, seeing the kiss in the thimble. He must learn to have his hurts mother him, to stop running from danger but to embrace the salt and blood of life as a teacher and a nurturer. He then, in a way, grows up, but not irrevocably; he maintains the life and dexterity of the puer while also having the earthiness and sustainability of the old man or "senex."

But above all we must remember Peter's necessity. Even if he never learns to grow up, none of us should ever forget the value of his breakthroughs, his infusions of fairy dust into the dirt and sweat of life. Without him as a guide, we are lost even more irrevocably than we have ever been. For Peter is always there at the window--to Neverland, to Asteroid B612, to eternity--and we will always need him.