At first glance, any comparison between the platonic ladder of love and Indian Kundalini yoga might look absurd since the latter seems to defy any relation to Western philosophy or religion.

Mathew V. Spano, Ph.D. Candidate, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey

At first glance, any comparison between the platonic ladder of love and Indian Kundalini yoga might look absurd since the latter seems to defy any relation to Western philosophy or religion. In fact, the "mysterious East" stereotype to which we have grown accustomed seems almost unavoidable when discussing the Kundalini. In the Neoplatonic system, one ascends by way of reason and logic while in Kundalini, as in other forms of yoga, the ascent is through meditation, concentration on the breath, and calming the mind to awaken the divine energy within. The Greek philosopher champions the rational mind, the individual mind, the ego as the central means of making sense of the world and discovering truth. The practiced yogi strives for the opposite; he aims to dissolve the ego, to perceive the individual self as a mere vehicle for Brahman. Furthermore, the Greek philosopher projects his thinking outward, to seeking truth in nature, politics, and the arts. The yogi, on the other hand, focuses all his energies inward in an effort to destroy any attachment to the phenomenal world which he considers illusory. The Buddha, for example, is tempted by the gods of love (Kama), death (Mara), and social duty (Dharma), but these forces cannot draw him from his immovable posture under the bodhi tree, for, as his mother, the earth, proclaims, Gautama has so given of himself through consecutive incarnations that there is no longer anyone present to be moved.

If we examine the Kundalini and the Neoplatonic ladder of love from another perspective, however, we find that these differences are not as substantial as they seem. Digging beneath apparent incongruities and rooting out the elementary paradigms upon which they are founded, we recognize that each system is more comprehensive than we initially believed: the Kundalini, for example, does not cast out worldly physical desire but acknowledges individual, passionate love relationships as a vehicle, a step toward enlightenment and ego dissolution. Those operating on the first three cakras direct their energies outward to fend off enemies, attract sexual partners, and conquer others; hence, Kundalini recognizes the cultivation of these energies in the outer world and later requires these same energies to be "turned about" or focused inward at cakra four. While it is also true the Greeks emphasized the powers of the individual, rational mind, this gets more complicated when we consider that the aim of love in the platonic and Neoplatonic systems is a mystical union with the transcendent. The concretized, rational arguments and discussions marshalled by Plato's Diotima in The Symposium and Castiglione's Bembo in The Book of the Courtier serve not as ends in themselves, but as vehicles to be subsumed in the final vision, the highest love which supersedes all rational cogitations. When we approach the Kundalini from the perspective of the elementary paradigm of sexual love open to the sacred (Walker, 1995, lecture), we find it less alien, more understandable; as a result, the "mysterious East" stereotype grows more transparent, and unanticipated, striking resemblances between the systems begin to emerge, particularly regarding the guiding female figure present in both.

Although Plato makes few, if any, references to the physical effects of Socrates' initiation in The Symposium, a transformation of sexual desire seems implied by his behavior at the party. Before he undergoes Diotima's initiation, Socrates seems to perceive his lovers from a cakra 2 perspective: "At the moment, however, you get so excited by seeing an attractive boy that you want to keep him in your sight and by your side for ever, and you'd be ready...to go without food and drink, and to try to survive only on the sight and presence of your beloved" (1994, p. 55). After Diotima's lesson, however, Socrates seems more the detached, enlightened thinker we've grown accustomed to. As Alcibiades tells us in the Symposium's final speech, Socrates seems to have progressed beyond sheer cakra two experience, unaffected by either Alcibiades' advances or drunkenness—unmoved by the Dionysian frenzy (pp. 66-67).

It is Diotima, the strange female figure, the master of many teachings who is supposed to have repelled a plague for ten years, who is responsible for this special knowledge and the transformation of love's energies, but exactly who she is or where she comes from are not known for sure. When describing the ascent of love to Socrates, she speaks of "initiating" him into certain "mysteries": "Now, it's not impossible, Socrates, that you too could be initiated into the ways I've spoken of so far. But I don't know whether you're ready for the final grade of Watcher, which is where even the mysteries I've spoken of lead if you go about them properly" (p. 53). Here, Plato seems to suggest Diotima's role as initiatrix in the Mystery Religions of Eleusis. In Diotima, in fact, Joseph Campbell (1964) sees a reference to "an earlier, pre-Hellenic wisdom, from the world of the serpent queens of Crete, of Circe also, and Calypso" (emphasis added) (p. 230). Campbell argues that Diotima functions as a resurrection of the Mother Goddess Mystery Cults, the other side of the "embalmed pedagogical atmosphere" of Plato's Greece where the male mind, undisturbed by earthly, feminine, seriousness and commitment, cultivated in a playful manner notions of ethics, philosophy, science,and athletics: in other words, the world of Logos (p. 229). Such an atmosphere in fact pervades Plato's Symposium. Campbell further quotes Juvenal on secret women's cults: "Nothing will there be imitated as in play, everything will be in earnest..." (p. 229). And we can imagine that these rites were serious, probably emphasizing an experience of serpent knowledge, of the energy and rhythm of the world that puts on forms and sheds them as a serpent sheds its skin, as the earth sheds its harvest, as the moon sheds its shadow, as each successive generation throws off death, as a woman menstruates—the womb and tomb dynamic of the universe.

Granted, Diotima has been stripped of any physical presence in Plato's dialogue; she seems more a spirit or disembodied voice than a living, breathing being like Alcibiades. The female physical presence has been cast out with the pipe girl in the Symposium's opening: "...Eryximachus said, 'my next suggestion is that the pipe-girl who's just come in is allowed to go; she can play for herself or, if she prefers, for the women in their quarters. But today let's spend our time together in conversation" (p. 9). Hence, masculine conversation, philosophy, and reason has been polarized from feminine physicality and procreation, for in addition to creating music, the pipe girl also became a sexual partner at such gatherings. It is conceivable that the feminine force is reintroduced in Diotima. If we associate the rational, philosophical Diotima with the Eleusinian mysteries and with the earthy pipe girl, the other female figure in the dialogue, her figure begins to suggest a compensatory figure which heals the rift. She seems to offer a broader consciousness to Socrates, one which goes beyond the reasoning individual to the universal tide which puts on these reasoning forms and throws them off: "a person," she instructs him, "never possesses the same attributes, but is constantly being renewed and constantly losing other qualities..." (p. 50). Diotima unites for Socrates individual intellectual ability and serpent wisdom in the same way the moon can be seen to cast its own light or act as a vehicle for solar light, or a serpent can be identified with its skin, its phenomenal appearance, or with the energy that informs that skin (and all previous and subsequent skins as well). In short, she guides Socrates to broader consciousness, a union of lunar and solar consciousness.

In the same light, we may consider the Kundalini a feminine, serpent-guide of sorts. Intertwined around sushumna, the central spinal channel , two intertwining nerve passages form a kind of spiral staircase, the landings of which form the seven cakras. These passages, the ida and pingala respectively, may be said to represent lunar and solar consciousness, united by the Kundalini serpent in its ascent up the cakras to Svadhisthana, and a central realization of this yoga is the initiate's understanding of these two forces as one within:

You can't bring the Kundalini up the center until you have recognized that these are simply two aspects of the one consciousness. The light of the moon is the reflection of the light of the sun. The light in your body, the consciousness of your body, is immortal, eternal consciousness in you. Consciousness first, then you. You represent the specification of the consciousness in time and place. Through the specifications of your personal life you are to abstract the immortal. To experience your eternity through the vicissitudes of your mortality, that's the total goal. (Campbell, 1982, p.142)

To experience life as a whole, then, one must understand its dark, serious, feminine activating principle, and the yogi reaches this experience by locating and assimilating the serpent knowledge in himself, something James Hillman (1971) emphasizes as he comments on the extraordinary experiences of Gopi Krishna, a Hindu mystic: "... this [is] a central point of his work, recognizing from the first that the Kundalini is feminine, a Goddess" (p. 158). The Goddess, however, has many faces and it is important for the initiate to recognize and assimilate her different qualities: "According to Bharati's translations the female pole can mean 'wanton woman' as well as 'nature' and 'intuitive wisdom'" (p. 157). Likewise, we see these different faces depicted in the Greek mythological system where "Aphrodite's wanton promiscuity finds place as does Athene's intuitive wisdom" (p. 157). Socrates also appears to experience the 'wanton female', the pipe girl, as well as the 'intuitive wisdom' of Diotima, a wisdom which encompasses generativity and physical procreation as well as reason and spiritual ascent. Curiously, Socrates does not debate with Diotima as he has done before with so many opponents; instead, he submits entirely to her authority and wisdom: "...that's exactly why I come to you, Diotima, as I've told you before, because I'm aware of my need for teachers. So will you explain it to me, please—and also anything else I need to know about the ways of love?" (p. 50). It would be a mistake for the masculine, rational force to try and control or subsume the female, for the serpent wisdom pre-dates the development of reason. Rather, the initiate, like Socrates, should allow the feminine its own path of expression unhindered by critical questioning:

So, artists and writers put themselves at the disposal of the feminine muse, that white Goddess, who shows herself, when beneficent, in beauty, love, and inspiration. Through the Goddess, as when a man comes under her spell by falling in love (the most common of all experiences of the archetypal anima), things are 'seen in a new light', one's 'senses are sharpened' and the push of the pingala seems irrelevant. (Hillman, 1971, p. 157)

In his account of the later stages of his Kundalini experience, Gopi Krishna (1971) describes this 'new light' about the head, the result of the Kundalini's union with undifferentiated consciousness at cakras 6 and 7 (p. 155). Similarly, Castiglione's famous courtier Bembo, using the images of lover and beloved, hopes that "[he]...like [a true lover] can be transformed into the object of [his] love" and prays for the guidance of a divine light: "So let us direct all the thoughts and powers of our souls towards this most sacred light which shows us the path that leads to heaven ... Consent, then, O Lord, to hear our prayers, pour yourself into our hearts, and with the radiance of your most sacred fire illumine our darkness and like a trusted guide show us the right path through this blind maze" (1976, pp. 342-43). Again, we notice a link between the luminous female power and transcendent experience. James Hillman explains this "new light" or, to use the alchemical term whitening or purification as in white Goddess, as symptomatic of an expansion of consciousness made possible by the female guide or anima (p. 156).

Although it can have a devouring, negative aspect, the anima, Jung's term for the male's contrasexual side, often functions as a guide to expanded consciousness. In fairy stories, the devil's daughter will appear as the four-faced universal mother, and the prince will save himself by allowing her to transform him four times to escape her father; the prince saves himself "by ceasing to manifest masculine authority or judgement and subordinating himself in intuitive trust to his unconscious psyche, which in man has markedly feminine characteristics" (von Franz, 1967,p. 114). Ultimately, she transforms him into a duck which is at home "in all three realms...and a symbol of the soul" and also an image of the sun, the "golden duck, [which] swims in the celestial pond" (p. 115). This seems to be the same luminous, feminine energy Gopi Krishna experiences when Kundalini unites with the thousand petaled lotus, the same beloved, guiding light Bembo hopes to unite with, augmenting his former consciousness, for "to realize one's anima is to begin to integrate the power of Eros into one's life and to gain some glimpse of the secret of "the love that moves the sun and other stars" as Dante exclaims at the end of the Divine Comedy" (Walker, 1995, p. 50).

References

Campbell, Joseph. (1964). The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. New York: Viking Penguin Inc.

Campbell, Joseph. (1982). Transformations of Myth Through Time. New York: Harper and Row.

Castiglione, Baldesar. Trans. George Bull. (1976). The Book of the Courtier. Bull. New York: Penguin.

Hillman, James. (1971). "Psychological Commentary" to Krishna, Gopi. Kundalini: Evolutionary Energy in Man. Berkeley: Shambala Publications.

Krishna, Gopi. (1971). Kundalini: Evolutionary Energy in Man. Berkeley: Shambala Publications.

Plato. Trans. Robin Waterfield. (1994). Symposium. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994.

von Franz, M.L. (1967). "The Problem of Evil in Fairy Tales," Studies in Jungian Thought: Evil, ed. The Curatorium of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich. Evanston: NorthWestern UP.

Walker, Steven F. (1995). Jung and The Jungians on Myth: An Introduction. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995.

Walker, Steven F. (1995). Lecture: Sacred and Profane Love. New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ.

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Copyright 1996 Mathew V. Spano. All rights reserved.

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