Transpersonal psychology has long been wary of traditional psychiatry and psychology's insistence on making diagnoses. Many feel that the process somehow programs a therapist to follow predetermined lines of thought that may not reflect the essential reality of those who come to them for care. Diagnoses, they argue, are impediments to authentic I-Thou relatedness.
Others follow the reasoning of R.D. Laing and his radical anti-psychiatry movement of earlier decades. Laing argued that a diagnosis dehumanizes a person experiencing spontaneous alterations of consciousness insidiously creating an iatrogenic disease by pressuring vulnerable psychiatric patients to conform to expectations that they assume a deviant role.
A third and more synoptic line of reasoning is that orthodox diagnostic categories are simply not broad enough to encompass the astonishing range of experiences inherent within the full human potential, which includes mystical and transcendent states of consciousness. This latter argument moves away from the first two, which would simply eliminate the practice of classifying clusters of symptoms, but which also cut off the therapist from the hard-earned experience of others who have treated similar maladies. More practically, therapists who refuse to diagnose their patients/clients remain hopelessly isolated from parties who pay the bills of all but the very wealthy.
If transpersonal psychology is to remain relevant to the real world in which therapists earn their living by treating people who suffer from a wide range of afflictions - from the primitive to the exalted - it follows that we cannot abandon the venerated diagnostic process. A holistic transpersonal view instead recognizes that we need more diagnoses rather than fewer, that we must expand our categories to include impediments to spiritual growth from the rudimentary consciousness of early childhood, through ego-based stages, to phases in which an individual struggles to free himself from personal and social obstacles to spiritual advance.
Two important transpersonal philosophers, Ken Wilber (1983) and Michael Washburn (1988) have written cogently about discrete stages or levels of personal & spiritual growth. Although they disagree about several important details, both hold than an individual must develop a healthy and strong ego before he an successfully transcend that ego, and that failure to do so results in a pathological state, often accompanied by great subjective distress. Both also agree that a well prepared individual can progress to trans-egoic states that foreshadow ultimate reunion with the Absolute.
Wilber's and Washburn's ideas form a strong foundation for a transpersonal diagnostic system based not only on pathology but on transcendence, one that can distinguish psychoses based on metabolic disorders of the brain from superficially similar spiritual emergencies in which a person may temporarily regress before continuing his spiritual progress.
I have found that the system of the seven chakras from ancient Tantric Yoga provides a near-ideal way to determine an individual's level of personal and spiritual growth. Using this system, modern transpersonal therapist can respond to their patient's spiritual stumbling blocks with techniques that are specific to that level, techniques that neither demand more of a patient that he can accomplish nor devalue the higher strivings of spiritually advanced individuals.
The Chakra System
The system of the seven chakras - a three-thousand-year-old way of integrating body, mind, and spirit - is an ancient idea that has passed the test of time. Originally intuited by contemplative sages involved in the disciplined practice of Tantric yoga [a mystic & ascetic discipline by which one seeks to achieve liberation of the self & union with the supreme spirit or universal soul through intense concentration, deep meditation, and practices involving prescribed postures, controlled breathing, etc.], it remains an integral part of modern esoteric Hinduism and Buddhism and forms the theoretical bedrock for acupuncture, a proven technique of healing throughout much of the world.
Caught up in a narrow materialistic world view, Western psychology tends to systematically exclude humanity's spiritual aspects from its models of the psyche. This omission causes it to ignore what is arguably the most important dimension of our full human potential: the study of consciousness - Spirit - itself. Fortunately, Eastern psychological systems have avoided this error, so they offer us a more complete view of our authentic nature as participants in a universal mind with purpose and meaning. Because of its demonstrable usefulness, the time is right for us to integrate the chakra system into Western models of biological science and psychology.
In Oriental medicine, the chakras are considered to be real physical centers that tap into a subtle form of energy that vitalizes the human body. These lotus-like "wheels," each with a specific location in the human body, are said to be vortexes for accumulating life force - prana - from a universal source. But for the purpose of this discussion, we will consider the chakras as metaphors for psychological stages of development, both for individual humans and for humanity as a whole.
In this psychological sense, the chakras are archetypes - comprehensive themes around which human life revolves, discrete states of consciousness that guide physical, mental and spiritual growth throughout life. Specific psychological symptoms accompany difficulties in passage through each of these life stages. Because each chakra level has a unique mode of cognition, relationships, ethics, values, religious attitude, drug preferences, and psychotherapies, this system can be used as a sophisticated diagnostic system that can guide us in developing level-specific therapies to aid ourselves and others in our life-long quest for spiritual growth.
The Eastern philosophy from which the chakra system arose offers the Western mind an opportunity to reconsider the mysterious connections between body and mind. Western materialism holds that matter is superior to mind, and that consciousness (Spirit) somehow arises from the molecular activity of the brain, akin to the way the kidneys secrete urine.
In contrast, the Eastern view assigns consciousness a primary place in the universe, with matter partaking of the eternal play of Spirit at the lowest and grossest level of a great chain of being. The brain is a unique and complex organ that attracts rather than generates consciousness, imparting to amorphous Spirit the unique shapes and forms that allow a human being to survive and reproduce on the surface of this third planet from the sun.
By reflecting a more comprehensive view of human nature, the chakra system elegantly maps the progress of personal consciousness from its first quickening within a living embryo, through its painful separation from its universal Source as it forms a worldly ego, to its struggle to transcend that ego and return to a state of unity with the spiritual ground of its being.
Muladhara - The "Root" Chakra
As a human sperm penetrates the ovum, merging its millions of genes with an equal number awaiting it, a soft whisper gently permeates the background hum of consciousness that fills the universe. A new being is forming within its essence.
As the cells of this tiny new being divide and multiply, they act as a vortex of Spirit, condensing it and imparting the unique attributes that comprise a human personality. At this point, the rudimentary awareness of first chakra consciousness begins to guide the destiny of a unique individual.
First chakra consciousness forms the cornerstone of human life. During the crucial three-year span that follows conception, the foundations of selfhood fructify within what was initially an unbounded field of consciousness. As elementary psychic boundaries gradually separate self from its universal Source, they form a supporting framework that later bears the weight of human emotions, reason, and relationships. When these self-boundaries are poorly formed because of genetic flaws or unsound
parenting, the outcome if often a tenuous grounding in the shared realities of a culture, or even psychosis.
Traditional Tantric charts place the physical location of the first chakra in the perineum, between the anus and genitals. It is said to govern the legs and intestines, grounding the individual on earth and governing what Freud called the oral stage of life. The primary mode of first chakra consciousness is survival, and the principle way of relating to the world is through the mouth. A primitive ethical system imbues the infant with the simple rule that whatever fosters survival is good, whatever imperils it is bad.
Western psychologists such as Jean Piaget (1954) and Margaret Mahler (1975) have described this stage in meticulous detail. Their contributions stand as pillars of scientific psychology. Mahler called it the "symbiotic" stage to emphasize the child's psychic merger with its mother, and Piaget called it the "sensorimotor" stage to describe an infant's primary mode of relating to the world through instinct and
reflex. However, both fall short of giving us a complete picture of infant development because they fail to take into account that an infant is already nine months old when he/she is born. We don't know exactly what kind of learning takes place in the womb, but it seems certain that Western psychologist habitually underestimate it. Many sensitive women feel aware of a subtle telepathic rapport with their unborn child, a kind of sub rosa conversation in which they feel the fetus's presence deep within their own being. Obviously, this subtle communion can be for better or worse.
In his landmark book "Beyond the Brain" (1985), Stanislav Grof described how an infant's passage through the birth canal leaves permanent impression on its vulnerable psyche, and how various kinds of impediments to a smooth birth can distort one's personality for a lifetime. Immediately after birth, a crucial stage of bonding takes place, a symbiosis in which infant and mother temporarily share their
self-boundaries.
The essential first-chakra task is for the infant to emerge from its primal, undifferentiated unity with Spirit into early stages of selfhood. The child discovers that when he bites his thumb there is pain, but when he bites his blanket there is no pain. When he feels movement in his arm, his hand waves before his eyes, but his
teddy-bear's hand remains still. This early "I/Not I" split creates a rudimentary psychic "membrane" that parts his fledgling self from the universal consciousness of its Source. He connects these first sensations of selfhood with his physical body, an identification that persists until an ego forms much later in life.
The next step is for the infant to separate from his/her mother, or other primary caretaker, to rupture his/her symbiotic merger and form a self that is not only apart from its Source, but also apart from his/her parents. Innumerable repetitions of what Mahler (1975) called "separation-individuation" experiences cleave the mother-child dyad from the fourth month of life through the transition to second chakra consciousness early in the third year. As he/she approaches the final stages of this period, the ever-more emboldened child repeatedly wanders away from his/her mother, then hurriedly returns seeking the solace of her consistent presence. If she handles her child's initial thrusts toward individuation sensitively, he/she will gradually and contentedly form his/her own self-boundaries separate from hers. There will always be a shared area of the psyche, however, where the feelings of one resonate with the feelings of the other. Self-psychologist, Heinz Kohut (1977) called these permanently overlapping boundaries "self- object" to indicate that our selfhood is never quite powerful enough to stand completely unsupported by others.
Although so-called borderline personalities, who are exquisitely vulnerable to self-fragmentation and transient psychoses, may solidify during one's passage through the root chakra, it is unlikely that psychoses so profound as schizophrenia can be attributed solely to poor early parenting without a hefty contribution from one's genes. Yet sometimes, severe psychotic regressions can cause a fragile psyche to revert to this primitive stage of life.
An adult whose consciousness descends to the first chakra is painful to behold. He/she will be preoccupied with food, coffee, or endless cigarettes consumed obsessively without savor. His relationships with others are dependent and clinging. Such oral and anal fixations are appropriate for an infant struggling to survive the first years of life, but when an adult carries back dislodged patterns of higher-chakra consciousness, they are inevitably cast in a grotesque light.
A psychotropic drug that typically operates on first chakra consciousness is Thorazine, or related anti-psychotic medicines. By restoring certain chemical balances in primitive parts of the brain, these agents may partly restore one's grounding in a reality shared by most adult humans. As I wrote in some detail in my book, "Healing the Split" (1994), such powerful medicines have serious side-effects and must be used with requisite artfulness, even in the most severely psychotic individual.
Appropriate therapies at the first chakra level include simple behavior modification techniques or other methods that improve one's social skills, ability to delay gratifications, and firm self-boundaries. Higher level therapies will generally be counterproductive or confusing for both patient/client or healer.
Svadasthana - The Sexual Chakra
Transpersonal philosopher Ken Silber (1983) has called the consciousness of the second chakra "typhonic," after the Typhon, a mythological being who is half-serpent, half-human. This is an apt symbol for a time of life when a child rises from the murky realms of undifferentiated selfhood to form that uniquely human, but ultimately self-limiting psychic organ, the ego. Although many spiritual disciplines teach that we must eventually vanquish the ego, if we are to regain our connection with Spirit, it is certain that we must first fully develop this essential faculty, if we are to survive as members of civilized society.
Traditional Hindu texts place the second chakra just below the navel, where it is said to govern the sexual organs. It is not surprising, then, that the classic Freudian Oedipal conflict takes place during this stage of life, when a toddler first identifies himself as a person with an individual identity and gender. In common with adult sexuality, the consciousness of this phase of life is characterized by a magical world of wish-fulfilling fantasy that is only partially affected by socially defined reality. The primary mode of second chakra consciousness is desire, as the child gradually turns away from unlimited communion with Spirit and toward objects and people of the material world.
Although emotions rule the consciousness of the second chakra, a kind of thinking and logic first becomes possible as a child grows toward adolescence, although it is not as disciplined and precise as that of the higher chakras. A child tends to make logical connections by linking similarities as if they were identities. For instance, he/she may conclude that a stuffed doll has the same thoughts and feelings as a live baby.
There is a concreteness to thought at this stage that might cause a child to interpret the meaning of a proverb such as, "People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," as, "Of course not, they'd break the glass." Adults who regress to this level often make similar errors in reasoning that lead to outright paranoia: "The FBI follows guilty people, I feel guilty. Therefore the FBI is following me."
Relationships during this phase of life are idealized and tinged with fantasy. Imaginary playmates are common. The child views others as larger than life and superhuman in their capacities for good and evil. Like the notorious borderline personality that has become fixated at this level, the child tends to cast powerful people in his life as either all good or all bad, with very little gray area, although people can change from friend to foe with little provocation. Ethics are based on fulfilling desires as expeditiously as possible, the chief ethical maxim being: Don't get caught. Religious feelings take form as fantasies of an all-powerful protector and ethical enforcer, an imperious male God vaguely located in the sky.
People who have advanced beyond the second chakra, and then for some reason regress to this level, may experience other-worldy hallucinations, as if they have opened an inner door to a netherworld populated by beings of relentlessly malign intent. As one's ability to share the realities of an adult, third chakra world slips away, bizarre delusions, usually with a paranoid cast, can form around such hallucinations. When abused, drugs such as alcohol, barbiturates, or opiates reactivate second chakra consciousness by blurring the line between fantasy and consensual reality and releasing unbridled primitive emotions.
Representative second chakra figures include novelists Stephen King and J. R. R. Tolkien, the cartoon character Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes, Alice in Wonderland, the early Beatles, and the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Appropriate therapies for individuals whose self is based in the second chakra includes behavior modification or other socializing and ego strengthening techniques that foster one's ability to get other to conform to his worldly aspirations. For all their drawbacks, anti-psychotic medicines can act as agents of mercy for people who have regressed to the second chakra.
Manipura - The Power Chakra
The consciousness of the third chakra, located in the solar plexus, infuses a young adult throughout his/her quest for a career and a suitable mate as he establishes himself as an effective and competent force in the world. The primary mode of this phase of life is power and control. The ego inflates to its utmost strength, with maximum alienation from Spirit as it turns away from its inner roots to focus on manipulating people and physical objects to its own ends. As Michael Washburn (1988) put it, the ego's task is to keep the psyche myopically close to the five senses and blind to Spirit.
At this historical epoch, a majority of human beings on Earth have evolved to the third chakra and are deeply involved in the countless variations of giving and getting that make up the acquisiitive world of commerce. An individual in this stage of life tends to take life as it comes without wondering much about its meaning, worth, or purpose. He/she seeks enjoyment through the senses, or by cultivating emotional pleasures, material security, or achievement of personal ambition. Because of the limited view afforded by ego-based consciousness, he/she believes that the only reality is that of the physical world, and therefore he/she is strongly attached to earthly goods. (See Assagioli 1986).
Thinking and logic take a quantum leap forward as a young adolescent first rises above wishful fantasy and engages a world of science, technology, and fierce competitiveness for wealth and desirable sexual partners. This is the stage that Piaget called "formal operations," indicating one's expanding ability to manipulate ideas as well as objects. Thinking becomes linear, bound to syllogism that have governed clear reasoning since the time of Aristotle:
A is always A, never B; A must either be A, or not be A, with no intermediate state allowable; A cannot be A and not-A at the same time and place. Therefore, five strawberries do not make an apple, frogs do not become princes, and modern mental patients are not Napoleon, no matter how intense their wish to be powerful and famous. Children are suffered to bend these rules, but when adults tamper with them, they are considered flaky at best, psychotic at worst.
As we gain capacity to reason accurately and reflect upon various outcomes before committing ourselves to action, another new capability comes to the fore: Free Will. This is a power that has only recently emerged in human evolution, one that is not held in equal measure by all men and women.
Our legal system is embarrassingly confused about the limits of will, but it is clear that a modicum of reflective reason is necessary for free choice. People whose mental capacities have regressed below the third chakra should not be considered fully culpable for all their actions.
Third chakra religious beliefs are outward and conventional, with a preference for authoritarian and dogmatic religions. The ego perceives God as separate from the self, wholly other, watching and making judgments from "on high." Once a person feels that he/she has conformed to the i
Third chakra religious beliefs are outward and conventional, with a preference for authoritarian and dogmatic religions. The ego perceives God as separate from the self, wholly other, watching and making judgments from "on high." Once a person feels that he/she has conformed to the injunctions of his/her church and shared in its rites, he/she concludes that he/she has accomplished all that may be expected of them spiritually, and that no further growth is possible. He/she usually notices a vague discomfort when in the presence of people who speak of higher realms of spirituality, and he/she usually does not cultivate their friendship.
The inflated ego assumes a throne located vaguely behind the eyes, where it struggles to override the body's incessant strivings by means of a sexually repressive morality. The ethics of third chakra consciousness is simply: Don't Lose!
A classic power chakra drug is cocaine, which fuels the aggressiveness and exuberant acquisitiveness that characterizes a materialistic orientation to life. Traditionally, the aggressive third chakra is considered a yang, or masculine phase of life. Representative third chakra figures include Donald Trump, John Wayne, Sadaam Hussein, and Lyndon Johnson.
Appropriate power chakra therapies include psychoanalysis, which traditionally focuses on removing lower chakra impediments to successful work and mating, and other rational therapies that employ cognitive strategies and intellectual insight to aid an individual to become more "mature" and effective within social hierarchies.
Anahata - The Heart Chakra
An exquisite galloping antelope adorns the mandala of the Anahata chakra as depicted in ancient Tantric texts. It is said that this shy, fleet, and graceful animal symbolizes spiritual experiences that move quickly from the ego's eye, vanishing before it can grasp them.
Traditionally depicted in mid-chest, the Anahata Chakra opens the heart to universal love that transcends the impetus to possess or manipulate that characterizes relationships in the second and third chakras. The ancient Greeks honored this dichotomy through their god Eros, who appears in two manifestations, the worldly and the heavenly. Agape - their word for universal love - was distinguished from romantic raptures of the second and third chakras that are characterized by seduction and jealousy, dominance and dependence, and attachment to an idealized object. The aim of lower chakra love is to quell a feeling of emptiness. But at the heart chakra, love is no longer tainted by need or craving; instead, one feels an inner abundance that saturates the self with a desire to share freely for the good of all.
The heart chakra is the center of healing that, in turn, depends on two qualities, empathy and compassion. By itself, an empathic ability to imagine oneself in the place of another is not exclusively a heart chakra attribute, and it can even be used to manipulate others. But coupled with compassion, empathy becomes the most potent force of healing known.
Compassion is a readiness to respond to the pain of another without aversion of resentment. It includes a compelling impulse to relieve the suffering. Unlike pity, which is really a defense against pain, compassion acknowledges all human suffering as a reflection of one's own anguish. Compassion embraces the other's sorrow and shares his wound as a reflection of shared humanity. Yet this is not a passive or impotent act but one that mobilizes healing love from one's deepest spiritual connection.
At this point in life, an urge spontaneously arises for commitment to something beyond the ego, perhaps a social cause, a spiritual path, or another person. Relationships at the heart move beyond competitiveness and self aggrandizement to become selfless and magnanimous. The self starts to transcend its exclusive identification with the ego and begins to identify with humanity as a whole. Once empathy and compassion enter one's life, there can be an overpowering sense of guilt for past acts of selfishness towards others. With this comes a strong temptation to step back, to reaffirm materialistic values, to muffle the beckoning call from above, often with alcohol, cocaine, or other heart-numbing drugs.
Opening the heart chakra heralds yet another advance in thinking, which changes from predominantly linear to lateral. The "first A, then B, then C ..." rationality of the third chakra yields to a loosely connected, zigzag flow of ideas, something like the way a knight moves on a chessboard. Formal operations thinking - thought by some to be the highest human capability - thrives on distinctions and polarities. But fourth chakra reasoning transcends this undeniably useful way of thinking by reaching beyond polarities toward reconciliation and synthesis, toward a higher logic that condenses opposites into mutually sustaining unities.
For instance, instead of seeing mountains and valleys as opposites, the higher thinking conceives a "mountain-valley" as a unitive whole, neither of its parts existing independently of the other. Other polarities - good/bad, liberal/conservative - also yield to this unifying logic of reconciliation.
At this state, awe replaces fear as the primary religious emotion. God no longer seems so distant from self, and a "higher power" is felt to reside within. Ethics are not based on the "golden rule," which guides us toward an empathic appreciation of the responsibility we all share toward each other. Every religion provides a symbol for heart chakra compassion. In Christianity, it is the Virgin Mary. In Buddhism, the Bodhisattva, and evolved soul who reaches the threshold of nirvana, but then chooses to remain in the world to teach and heal as long as there is ignorance and suffering. Saintly figures like Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, and the Dalai Lama epitomize the consciousness of the heart chakra.
Because the fourth chakra is the first spiritual level, representing the initial tentative step back to communion with our Source, meditation now becomes possible, or even mandatory, as a therapeutic technique, if a seeker wishes to progress on a spiritual path. This powerful tool for overcoming the constraints of the ego would also be helpful for third chakra individuals, but most are unable to muster the motivation or discipline for contemplative practice, finding it boring or a waste of time. Meditation is often harmful and generally contraindicated for people who selves have been arrested at, or regressed to, pre-egoic levels.
These people need to consolidate their ego rather than impoverish it. We can't transcend what we never gained. A representative fourth chakra drug is MDMA, sometimes called Adam, or XTC. This "empathogen," which until recently was summarily banned even from legitimate research in the United States, has potential to open new realms of compassion, if used therapeutically by skilled practitioners who have been trained in its benefits and pitfalls. Like all higher chakra medicines, it has potential for harm if used casually or chaotically.
Appropriate therapy at the heart level is designed to increase awareness of subtle inner feelings, body states, and connectedness to our fellow humans on a deep compassionate level. Meditation, Bhakti yoga, and other devotional practices can aid a spiritually opening individual toward the first steps in overcoming the worldly constraints of the ego while deepening his connection with spirit.
Vishudda - The Inspiration Chakra
In ancient Tantric texts, the fifth chakra is located over the throat, where it governs the organs of self- expression. This chakra of visionary artists and philosophers is associated with higher creativity, grasping the "big picture," opening to inspiration that seems to flow from an other-worldly source. Its primary mode is a kind of grace that commits one to a path that identifies the self not just with humanity, but with all living beings.
Many artists and profound thinkers describe a distinct feeling that their creations do not arise from within their ego-based selves, but come through them from a higher-source, as if their awareness has been fine-honed into an antenna attuned to archetypal knowledge beyond reach of the senses. This is especially true for improvisational artists, such as jazz musicians or Indian classical musicians, who often spin their intricate webs of sound while in a kind of a trance with eyes closed.
Thinking and logic undergo another significant expansion at the throat chakra, one that incorporates synergy, a word that describes complex systems in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Once synergistic thinking is in gear, relationships among events are neither proportional nor additive but are intimately interconnected in a way that suggests an emerging global order. Meaning no longer emerges from definition, but from interaction, from process, in what Buddhists call "pattica samuppada," a merger of self and object at the heart of reality. (See Macy 1991.) And the very act of playing the game has an unsettling way of changing the rules.
Like the view from an orbiting spacecraft, fifth chakra thinking enables a person to mentally soar above any system of which he/she is a part, so that she/he may contemplate the whole from a vantage inaccessible from within that system. Once informed about the nature of the whole, she/he can devise way to manipulate that system once she/he is back inside. Because she/he no longer interprets events in terms of his personal feelings about them but where they fit into the grand scheme, she/he gains a long view of human affairs - a historical perspective so often lacking in our political leaders. A prime example of fifth chakra thinking is the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock that envisions the earth and its ecosystem as a single, interdependent living organism.
To illustrate further, when an altruistic person centered in the fourth chakra is confronted with the specter of people starving in Ethiopia, his/her immediate reaction is to take steps to bring food to that unfortunate region in order to directly relieve the suffering of the refugees. In contrast, a fifth chakra perspective includes a compassionate desire to directly reduce suffering, but one' reaction would also require an in-depth analysis of the cause of famine in that region. Do the people there need training in modern agricultural techniques or population control measures? Has the climate permanently changed so that we would achieve a higher good by directing our resources to relocating the refugees to another part of the world? These kinds of questions naturally arise from assuming a whole systems view.
At least since the time of Plato, the fascinating connection between madness and creative genius has intrigues thinkers who observe the troubles lives of many philosophers and artists, some of whom would be certifiably psychotic by today's standards. Recent refinements in definitions of mental disorders clarify this enigma somewhat. People who work "in the trenches" with the mentally ill will quickly recognize that patients who conform to modern definitions of schizophrenia have regressed to the pre-egoic second or first chakras and are seldom creative except in
a bizarre and generally incomprehensible way.
But other research reveals a strong connection between the manic phase of manic-depressive disorder and extraordinary creativity. Such luminaries as Ernest Hemingway, Vincent Van Gogh, Winston Churchill and Robert Schumann were probably manic-depressive. However, bio-chemical changes in the brain that accompany these troublesome states often open the self to infusions of high chakra consciousness before an immature, ego-based self is ready. The natural timing of a first manic shift is in the early twenties, a time when most individuals are appropriately absorbed in third chakra tasks. This accounts for the well-known psychological turbulence that can accompany breakthroughs in the arts and sciences, predisposing many avant-garde iconoclast to tumultuous lifestyles (See Redfield - Jamison 1993.)
Ethics at the fifth chakra expand toward an active commitment to uplifting the consciousness humanity. Nothing is undertaken that does not foster spiritual growth, either at an individual or collective level. During this phase of life, religious feelings are based on a direct connection with a guiding force in life and a willingness to surrender to that power as one's personal destiny. God is brought down from the sky and perceived as residing "within the self", but there is not yet a radical identification of self with deity.
Premature opening of higher chakra consciousness can be extremely disruptive to one's pattern of spiritual growth and can foster a severe life crisis. Yet when the chakras open sequentially with an adequate foundation in place for each new stage, an individual does not lose the capabilities of the lower chakras when he/she reaches a higher place.
Like a nest of Chinese boxes, each stage incorporates the lower stages, surrounding them with a larger and more comprehensive field of awareness and possible choices. A person may still fall back on a lower chakra response when a particular situation calls for action on that level. For instance, a fifth chakra philosopher might still give direct aid to the downtrodden (fourth chakra), or aggressively promote his books for profit (third chakra), or enjoy passionate sexual relations with his beloved (second chakra), or eat joyfully when hungry (first chakra). It is just that these lower-level responses are no longer his/her primary mode of relating to people and things.
Examples of those rather rare individuals who have fully integrated fifth chakra consciousness in their lifetimes include Albert Einstein, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig van Beethoven, Sigmund Freud, and Mikhail Gorbachev, geniuses who broke through the restraints of conventional mentality to radically alter the course of human thought and history. Examples of fifth chakra drugs include low doses of psychedelics, such as peyote or psilocybin, and marijuana, although the latter agent can also inhibit creativity because of its unfortunate propensity to diminish memory, concentration, and will. Amphetamines and similar psycho stimulants can temporarily enhance creativity by inducing a manic- like state, but few people who have evolved to this level would take these drugs because of their well- known toxic effects.
Appropriate fifth chakra therapies aim at disrupting the last remnants of narrow, ego-based thinking, opening the individual to direct perception of archetypal forms and enhancing awareness of long-term, cause and effect relationships. While a fifth chakra sage certainly does not close his heart, he/she disciplines him/herself to look beyond his/her immediate urge to relieve suffering toward reviewing static, habitual attitudes and norms that created it. Zen koan study, contingence "brainstorming," insight meditation (Vipassana), practicing deep ecology, and rigorous analysis of history and philosophy foster the forms of higher consciousness that mark one's passage through the throat chakra.
Western psychology accepts and includes these first five states of consciousness and, in many ways, characterizes them more precisely than Eastern psychology. Yet Western models usually hold that fifth chakra consciousness represents the highest human potential, so they tend to pathologize the higher two chakras and exclude them from study. To correct this persistent error, we must turn to ancient Eastern models of the psyche to explore the higher reaches of our human potential.
Ajna - The Shamanic Chakra
A striking aspect of the ancient Egyptian death masks that signified royalty and priesthood was the head of a cobra projecting from mid-brow at the location of the Ajna chakra. This symbolized opening the "third eye," awakening spirit within the domain of secret knowledge. A person so evolved was said to have gained power to alter consciousness - and therefore reality - at will.
Traditional Western religions tend to abhor manifestations of the higher two chakras, either attributing their appearance to works of Satan, or simply holding that such lofty powers are too godlike for human aspirations. Orthodox psychological schools generally ignore them, usually denying their reality without further investigation. In contrast, adepts of ancient Eastern traditions held quite a different view. Although they rarely wrote of their arcane practices, they passed them on from generation to generation through oral teachings and direct transmission. Certain shamans and medicine-men of ancient pre-literate cultures also gained access to their powerful level of awareness, which they transmitted to their tribe through ritual, healing, and prophecy.
The primary mode of sixth chakra consciousness is intuition, which essentially replaces observation and logic as a reliable means of apprehending reality. The seer who operates at this level makes direct contact with universal archetypes that underlie reality, bypassing the ordinary senses. My manipulating these archetypes, he changes reality in ways that seem miraculous - outside the laws of physics - to less evolved beings. Although traces of ego-based consciousness persist through the fourth and fifth chakras, at the Ajna chakra the ego is transcended, just as the dependent connections between consciousness and brain, which Western materialist scientists insist are necessary for even rudimentary awareness.
As Arthur Koestler (1972) pointed out, not to believe in the existence of paranormal phenomena like telepathy and precognition implies a conspiracy to deceive the public among hundreds of reputable scientists using time-honored tools of empirical science in dozens of universities around the world. What confuses many Western thinkers is that most people experience these capabilities erratically and inconsistently, like many other higher chakra breakthroughs that surprise people who operate within lower levels. The difference is that a sixth chakra adept gains full and conscious control over these faculties and calls upon them æat will'.
When people who lack grounding in the first five chakras experience spontaneous breakthroughs of powerful intuition, telepathy, or premonitions, they can become stunned and confused, recoiling from them in fear. Sometimes an acute manic episode can expose an unprepared young adult to startling insights about fundamental workings of reality, but this nearly always deranges an ego-based psyche and can be followed by rapid psychotic regression to second chakra consciousness until metabolic balance within the brain is restored. Careless or de-ritualized use of certain shamanic plant medicines can have a similar atavistic effect.
The higher compassion of the Ajna chakra surpasses that of lower levels as it embraces not just humanity or all living beings but the entire breadth of creation, for it recognizes that even material objects are manifestations of a single universal Spirit. Religious expressions are this level are personal, deeply contemplative, and usually solitary. A sixth chakra seer may withdraw from the social world, the better to quietly uplift the consciousness of humanity from within.
Sahasrara - The Unity Chakra
The seventh chakra represents the crowning evolutionary goal of humanity, the culmination of our long and painful exile from, and triumphant return to our Source. At any given time in history, only a handful of human beings exist who have reaches this exalted level of development.
Whereas the lower chakras are bursting with uncountable bits of information about the physical world and its endless chains of cause and effect, the sage consciousness of the seventh chakra is nothing if not simple. No longer is there an ego to maintain the illusion of separate self-hood that parts one from All. No longer does time split the present from eternity, not does space part here from everywhere. At this level,
there is perfect Unity, known through an absolute "within-ness" that paradoxically encompasses the entire sweep of creation. When the self confronts this, all it can do is surrender to the irresistible power of the Absolute.
The hallmark of the Sahasrara chakra, found at the crown of the head, is the mystical experience, described with remarkable similarity by saints, sages, monks, yogis and contemplatives throughout the ages. It even occasionally happens to ordinary people centered in lower chakras, inevitably transforming their lives.
Because its primary mode is unity, an authentic mystical experience transports us far beyond the distinctions necessary for language, logic and ordinary communication. With ego suspended, perceptions, thoughts, and actions happen of themselves, with no doer, no see-er, no hearer, only doing!, seeing!, hearing! Personal selfhood given way to the power of a much larger identification - the entire universe. Logic yields to a state of pure knowing beyond need for rational demonstration. The state of virginal consciousness, empty of form or content, directly reveals the Ground of Being, transcending even the naked archetypes of the sixth chakra.
Of course, suddenly forfeiting one's individual identity would make it difficult to write an article or drive on the freeway. But a seventh-chakra sage does not live in a state of perpetual transcendent rapture, unable to get along in the world because he/she is busy merging with the cosmos. Far from it. Because the higher chakras surround and include all the capabilities of lower ones, she/he commands the full range of human potentials, which confers a distance advantage over people able to call upon only a fraction of those potentials. What is unique about him/her is that he/she has integrated the mystical experience and identifies with Spirit itself, not merely with a split-off part, like the ego, or even an individuated self. From this vantage, he can operate from the whole, if that is appropriate to the situation, or from any part, depending on the circumstances.
The mystic now readily relinquishes any need that she/he once may have had to renounce the world; it is enough that she/he severs her/his ego's attachments to it. With this freedom the sage lives in society with unblemished integrity, but is no longer of the social world and its customs and rules that can be obstacles to enlightenment. From her/his passage through the sixth chakra, she/he clearly perceives repetitive archetypal patterns underlying these social conventions; from the fifth she/he has learned how to creatively symbolize those archetypes for the benefit of all; from the fourth she/he draws upon her/his heartfelt commitment to her/his fellow men and women; from the third she/he grasps the rules, customs and expectations of society, which she/he chooses to follow when there is no reason not to; from the second he is playfully receptive to her/his unconscious mind, but never rules by it; from the first she/he maintains a firm grounding in the world of objects and people.
Although many people throughout history have had mystical experiences, very few integrate these to the point that they can operate from the seventh chakra by choice. To the best of my knowledge, there are no drugs that can reliably confer seventh chakra consciousness, although some people gain intimations of this highest level following intensive periods of fasting and meditation. These experiences can lead to significant personal growth. Because the sage has reached the ultimate epiphany of human experience - radical reunion with the Absolute - therapy in no longer necessary.
Spiritual Growth and Regression
Spiritual growth does not necessarily mean meditating for long hours, entering altered states of consciousness, or cultivating mystical experiences. Spiritual growth means actively engaging tasks appropriate to one's chakra level that foster movement to the next higher chakra. For a small child, this may mean learning to brush his/her teeth and play peacefully with peers. For a teen it may mean ego-building tasks related to social skills and gaining material security. It is only in the late stages of the third chakra that ego-transcending strategies first become appropriate. Prior to that time, such techniques can be harmful.
In an ideal lifetime, the chakras open in sequence, each standing firmly on the lessons and growth experiences of the last. But in reality, life seldom follows this ideal script. When chakras open prematurely out of sequence, or when an unfortunate person undergoes regression - a backward motion to an earlier, more primitive stage of development - the results can be extremely disruptive. Stanislav and Christina Grof (1989) coined the term spiritual emergency to describe such untimely derailments. These can take various forms, from full-blown psychoses to "mini-regressions" that briefly slow spiritual advance in order to marshal strength for the next step upward.
People whose selves have expanded only to include the three lower chakras usually lack adequate grounding to integrate spontaneous intrusions of higher chakra consciousness. When these suddenly flood one's consciousness, such as during a manic episode, an individual may desperately struggle to make sense of his uncanny insights by casting them in the symbolism of a lower level. The result in usually bizarre and often frightening to others.
For instance, following a feeling of union with the Divine (seventh chakra), such an individual may conclude that he is Jesus (but other people are not). He may interpret telepathic inputs (sixth chakra) as witchcraft or government thought control. The universal symbolism of popular songs (fifth chakra) may communicate "personal" message that suggest a grand conspiracy. Overwhelming feelings of compassion (fourth chakra) might lead a college student to give away his/her meager possessions to the homeless. Although most observers would find such assumptions merely weird, they also impart to many psychotic states a paradoxical appearance of having both regressive and mystical characteristics.
The Pre/Trans Fallacy
There are other ways in which pre-egoic lower chakra states can be confused with trans-egoic, higher chakra ones. For instance, the first and seventh chakras may seek alike because both a selfless infant and self-transcended mystic bask in blissful unity with their Source. But an infant has no choice but to surrender to the immense power of Spirit, while an evolved sage willfully regulates its flow so that he can function in the world in an uncommonly effective way. During his/her passage through the lower chakras, a mystic suffers the exquisite pain of separateness and alienation, both of while he/she finally transcends.
The second and sixth chakras bear a similar relationship. Both are stages in which self-boundaries are semipermeable, relatively open to free communion with pure Spirit. Both the accomplished seer and the pre-adolescent child rely on feeling and intuition rather than logic to guide them. But the similarities end there. The child has little control over his emotions, instincts, or visions, and he uses logic based on wishful thinking as his primary means of processing information. The self-realized adept, in contrast, is a master of logic, which he/she willfully transcends in favor of a kind of awareness in which reason no longer separates him from an intuitive grasp of reality. He alters his consciousness at will, engages paranormal powers with precision, and asserts his/her will over emotions and instincts, which he/she nonetheless values as important sources of information.
The third and fifth chakras also bear superficial similarities. When a creative thinker reaches the fifth level, he/she has begun to transcend the ego, but is far from completing that task, as a short conversation with some of our most creative and scientists quickly demonstrates. Both the power chakra (third) and the inspiration chakra (fifth) confer skill for manipulating concepts and objects, but in the former case the focus is on obtaining material security, while in the latter case creativity is a means of high self-expression to benefit humanity.
The fourth chakra stands along at the capstone of the pyramid. (See Campbell 1974). It is, paradoxically, a stage of maximum ego differentiation and a momentous turning point when the self tentatively reopens to Spirit, allowing its essence - universal love - to flow inward and alter the course of life. This agape love, directed first toward humanity, then towards one's own higher Self, then finally toward all of creation, quickens the journey back to our Source.
The important point is that one must possess a strong and whole ego before one can begin to transcend it. Transpersonal philosopher Ken Wilber (1983) has aptly named the failure to distinguish between pre and transpersonal levels the Pre/Trans fallacy. The common error has long bedeviled the anti-psychiatry movement and its apologists, such a R. D. Laing and Thomas Szasz, who blurred the distinctions between madness and transcendence. Powerful egoic techniques, such as intense meditation or unguided used of powerful psychedelic drugs, can be harmful to individuals who either have not fully integrated third chakra tasks, or who have tentatively done so but later regressed below this level, such as schizophrenics or borderlines. Authentic spiritual growth is possible only through persistent exercise of universal love that flows through the heart chakra at the peak of one's estrangement from the Source. This simply may not be bypassed.
A rebirth of Feminine Ideals
Ancient yoga texts assign a yin or yang, feminine or masculine characteristic to each chakra. The first chakra, in which the fetus penetrates into the world and struggles for survival, is a yang, or masculine level. The second chakra, a stage of passively receptive fantasies, playful openness to worlds beyond that of consensual reality, is yin, or feminine. The third, characterized by competitiveness and the warrior Spirit, is masculine, rules by patriarchies and competitive values, as are most cultures in the world today. The fourth, the opening of the compassionate heart that is receptive to the suffering of the world, is feminine. The seminal creativity of the fifth, or throat chakra, reaffirms masculine values; the intuitive receptivity of the sixth is feminine. The seventh, of course, resolves the yin/yang dichotomy in non-dual unity that is beyond such polarities, beautifully symbolized in Hindu mythology as the cosmic merger of Shiva and Shakti.
Just as earlier epochs offered women few role models for third chakra empowerment within the competitive world of masculine values, men now find few role models to guide them in opening the feminine heart chakra. Opening one's inner self to compassion often means confronting leftover guilt for manipulative and exploitative behavior that once seemed proper during a stage of lower consciousness. Men are faced with a great temptation to retreat and numb the heart through addictions to alcohol and cocaine, both of which release mindless aggression and acquisitiveness.
Many naturally creative men simply skip the fourth chakra, catapulting ego-bound into the fifth. Lacking empathy and compassion, they direct their higher reasoning capacities toward selfish ends, or in other cases become egomaniacal artists who lack the inner balance of the anima.
Woman face similar pitfalls, sometimes skipping the male-oriented tasks of the third, or power chakra, making a quantum leap from the second to the fourth chakras. Lacking empowerment and a warrior ethos, they become impotent "bleeding hearts," or co-dependent "women who love too much," identifying with the downtrodden but lacking sufficient personal resources to heal suffering in the world.
In the waning stages of the second millennium, the most evolved democratic societies on earth have now progressed to the upper reaches of the third chakra. Yet there are still many theocratic cultures that operate predominantly from second chakra consciousness, just as did the Western world during the Dark Ages. A few subsistence oriented first chakra cultures still exist in isolated areas of the world. Modern societies
generally regard the behavior of these cultures as "crazy," just as we define individuals from our own culture as insane when they regress to the first or second chakra. Of course, there are many people within any culture who are well above or below the mean of their culture's general stage of evolution.
Biologists know that personal development within an individual parallels the evolutionary development of the human species as a whole. The historic first chakra that spanned tens of thousands of years of pre-civilized human existence ended when primitive humans relinquished their arboreal isolation to forge social communities. This momentous advance forced the naive consciousness of our animal Spirit into new and complete patterns. Humanity's second chakra phase ended about the time that the ancient Greeks and related cultures wrested the Goddess from the earth, changed Her sex to male, and put Him in the sky. We now stand at the closing stages of a masculine historical epoch, led by patriarchal warrior sky-gods who tamed nature while simultaneously generating the means to sterilize the surface of the mother planet through gradual toxic pollution or cataclysmic nuclear holocaust.
If we are to participate meaningfully in the next evolutionary step for humanity - opening the heart chakra and renewing our Earth-mother Gaia - clear challenge awaits us: We must reaffirm feminine values. This means moving from competitiveness to cooperation, from conquest to affiliation, from custodians of Earth to participants in its natural evolution, from fighting each other to nurturing each other. Once we accept this task, we will joyfully realign ourselves with the supreme evolutionary mission of
humanity: Fostering growth of personal and collective consciousness toward reunion with our Source.
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