Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
The Kundalini serpent is, however, also a Devi-Kundalini, a chain of glittering lights, the “world bewilderer.”
By creating confusion she produces the world of consciousness, the veil of Maya.
It is the anima, the Devi-Sakti, which has conceived the world. (This is, of course, a view which corresponds
to male psychology. Seen from the woman’s point of view the animus devises the world.)
Siva emanates Shakti. Shakti begets Maya.
Maya is desire and thereby error: she is the fire of error.
The desiring consciousness confronts the purely contemplative consciousness.
The visual portrayal of this emanation can take place horizontally as well as vertically.
In the first case the earlier-mentioned mandalas appear.
Maya is there depicted as a glowing circle of fire (honeycomb blaze).
In the second case one finds portrayals in which are indicated the darkness and confusion below and the pure power and light above.
This vertical arrangement of levels of consciousness in the image of worship corresponds to the teaching of the different cakras in the human body.
In the oldest Upanishads the heart (four ventricles!) is the seat of the soul or of knowledge, of waking consciousness.
It is the root of all limbs and the seat of prana, the breath of life. Prana is vaju. Vaju comes from muladhara, the root support.
The Hangsa Upanishads teach: in the heart region there is an eight-leafed lotus.
The eight leaves correspond to the compass and portray both moral and psychic states.
At the center lives Vairagya, passionlessness, disinterest, and detachment (cf. Meister Eckhart). The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Appendix 1, Page 74.