Kundalini as a Symbolic Journey in Campbell's Lectures
Kundalini as a symbolic journey concerns Joseph Campbell's comparative reading of an ascent through centres of the subtle body. In “Kundalini: The Serpent Power”, a lecture delivered at the Asia Society on 30 November 1967, Campbell interprets the sequence through changing orientations towards life, desire, power, religious experience and identity.[1]
This page explains Campbell's interpretation. It is not a guide to practice or an anatomical account of the nervous system. The traditional religious setting and Campbell's modern psychological comparisons remain distinct levels of description.
The religious and visual setting
The British Museum's introduction to Tantra describes traditions in which the body becomes a means of spiritual transformation, with imagery of kundalini rising through centres represented as lotuses. It places these images within diverse Hindu and Buddhist histories, texts and practices.[2]
Such imagery has a particular setting. It should not be reduced to a general statement that every upward movement means spiritual improvement. Nor should one diagram be assumed to represent every tradition's account of the body.
Campbell approaches the material as a comparative scholar. In the lecture, he explicitly distinguishes his ability to discuss the symbolism from a claim to have personally undergone the experiences described.[1]
Campbell's sequence of orientations
The following table condenses Campbell's psychological reading of the sequence. Its descriptions are his interpretive emphases, rather than exhaustive definitions of the centres in their original traditions.[1]
| Position in the sequence | Emphasis in Campbell's discussion |
|---|---|
| Root or base | Clinging to existence and holding on |
| Sexual centre | Desire and the pursuit of pleasure |
| Navel centre | Assertion, acquisition and power |
| Heart | The opening of a religious dimension beyond those earlier aims |
| Throat | Discipline directed towards spiritual realisation |
| Brow | A vision in which the beholder and the divine object remain distinguishable |
| Crown or culmination | A proposed passing beyond the division between subject and object |
The sequence combines position with a change in what organises experience. In Campbell's reading, a later centre does not simply provide more of the same capacity. The terms through which the person relates to life change.
Ascent and the limits of a ladder
A vertical arrangement makes sequence easy to grasp. It can also encourage an overly simple ranking of people as higher or lower. Campbell's discussion concerns orientations and symbolic relationships; it does not provide a measurement for classifying another person's worth or development.
The ladder image also needs to be examined at the point where the account proposes going beyond distinctions. A ladder preserves separate rungs and an individual climber. A culmination described as the disappearance of subject-object separation no longer fits that structure straightforwardly.
This is an example of a metaphor reaching its own limit. The image can guide an account towards a point at which its initial arrangement no longer supplies an adequate description.
The glass barrier
Campbell describes the relation between a beholder and a divine object through the image of a separating glass barrier.[1] The barrier permits perception while preserving difference. Removing it changes the relationship more radically than improving the clarity of the view.
For metaphor analysis, this distinguishes seeing, approaching and identifying. Seeing something more clearly does not ordinarily make observer and observed identical. Campbell's comparison depends on moving between these different relations, so the transitions should be stated rather than treated as obvious consequences of one another.
Descent and participation
The lecture turns from ascent to descent, bringing in Campbell's reading of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and then a comparison involving a ferry and its destination.[1] These are additional traditions and images introduced into his comparative argument, not parts of one undifferentiated text.
The ferry image distinguishes a means of passage from the place to which it leads. It also introduces the possibility of becoming attached to the practices of travelling. Someone can become skilled at being a passenger or sailor while losing sight of the destination.
Campbell then complicates the two-shore arrangement through an account in which the initial opposition no longer holds. Campbell's Comparisons of Eastern and Western Traditions examines how such examples operate in his wider lectures.
Comparisons with psychology
Campbell links parts of the sequence with simplified accounts of Freud, Adler and Jung. In the podcast's later commentary, Bradley Olson notes both the usefulness and the limitations of these broad comparisons, including the diversity of ideas about the self within Asian traditions and Western psychology.[1]
A correspondence proposed by Campbell should therefore be reported as a comparison. It is not evidence that a psychological theory and a religious teaching are identical, or that either proves the other.
The most useful reading follows the relationships carefully: what is desired, where attention is directed, what separates the participants, and what changes when the account moves to another image.
Related pages
- Joseph Campbell: Reading and Listening Guide
- Serpents in Myth: Renewal, Knowledge and Danger
- Myth and the Body
- Stairs and Ladders
- Elevation
- Heinrich Zimmer and the Interpretation of Myth
- The Return Journey: Bringing Experience Back into Everyday Life
Sources
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Joseph Campbell, “Kundalini: The Serpent Power”, Pathways with Joseph Campbell, episode 11, archival lecture with later commentary by Bradley Olson.
- ↑ Imma Ramos, “What is Tantra?”, British Museum (23 January 2020), discussion of the Tantric body and kundalini.