March 26, 2020 37as Huntington’s book shows at length,
reflect an intellectual effort, shaped
by mathematical calculations, to make
sense of the way the universe is put to-
gether. But cosmograms that model the
world, throughout South Asian history,
frequently aim at transforming such
a world, whether a fully externalized
one (if such a thing exists in any South
Asian cosmology) or a largely internal
and imaginative one. Models, unlike
pure representations, tend to be built
around homologies, sympathetic reso-
nances, and recursive loops that gen-
erate, modify, and magnify the reality
they are felt to contain in miniature.
Here is one well-known example of
a psycho-cosmogram situated simulta-
neously inside and outside the human
body. Modern practitioners of yoga,
whether in India or the West, may
know about the invisible “subtle body”
that, in the medieval Tantric traditions,
exists in every human body along with
the less subtle, entirely palpable organs
and tissues. The subtle body has cen-ters of power, cakras, vertically stacked
from the base of the spine to the top of
the skull and linked to 72,000 invisible
channels, nadis, through which breath
flows in varying intensities; at the lowest
point, a snake-like goddess, the Kundal-
ini, lies sleeping. The Tantric yogi
seeks to awaken her, thereby achieving
profound delight and even, with luck,
liberation from the shackles of our nor-
mally painful and occluded existence.
The Kundalini is not a metaphor and
certainly not a symbol. She is a living,
if soporific, being. But how does the
corporeal model work on this sleeping
beauty? Two large channels, the ida on
the left and the pingala on the right, are
identified with the moon—a storehouse
of frozen ambrosia—and the fiery sun.
The human organism thus mimics or
contains a whole astronomy. Powered
by our breath, the heat of the internal
sun continually melts the ambrosia in
the moon channel, and this delicious
liquid drips intravenously down to a
pit at the base of the spine, anesthetiz-
ing the Kundalini. The inner sun also
soaks up the ambrosia in an ongoing,
homeostatic, metabolic process.
But all this can change on new-moon
day, when the sun and the moon—both
in the heavens and in our bodies—come
closest to each other. On that day, the
expert yogi can block normal metabo-
lism by holding his or her breath; this
dries up the pit down below and cutsoff the anesthetic, so that the Kundal-
ini, ravenous for ambrosia, wakes up
and, hissing like a snake, moves up-
ward through the energy channels to
bite the orb of the moon at the acme
of the subtle body, thereby flooding the
not-so-subtle body with ecstasy. This
can happen only once in every month,
when the stars above and the inner
planets are perfectly aligned.
However, as the medieval Orissan
commentator Lakshmidhara tells us,
following the logic of this cosmic system,
an advanced yogi can unilaterally cre-
ate a new-moon day at will, in his own
body and in the sky. He can thus pro-
duce total metabolic failure—no more
ambrosial drip and reabsorption—and
this physiological crisis, along with the
near coincidence of sun and moon in
the lowest cakra as in the heavens, cre-
ates a precious, fleeting moment for
potential existential change. This mo-
ment is also, by the way, when the urge
to speak, which is our deepest wish, is
fanned into flame and can burst forth,like the Kunda lini. Thus astral move-
ments overlap and resonate with physi-
ological and psycho linguistic events.
Clearly, cosmology is a useful sci-
ence. It’s not clear if, in this particular
case, the celestial realm models the
subtle body, or if the body models the
sky, or whether both are only echoes of
some latent, primordial sound indepen-
dently solidif ying into words. Be that as
it may, the commentator deftly arranges
these echoes in a single, practical, and
rational system. In general, complex
South Asian cosmologies operate along
lines such as these, with strong cor-
respondences among geographic and
geometric mapping, sonic and linguistic
registers, and mental processes aimed
at self- transformation. In the Buddhist
world studied by Huntington, modular
images of the cosmos are structured in
a manner conducive to enlightenment.
Mental and material domains tend to
be conflated—or, rather, material phe-
nomena, such as continents, oceans,
and mountains, may be extensions of
mental ones. Geography is a visionary
business, rife with consequence. For
the militant devotees of the god Shiva
in medieval South India, tortuous hells
definitely exist in the subterranean
sphere of the cosmos—but only for
those who believe in them. If you don’t,
you won’t end up there. The Himalayan
Buddhists have no compunction about
saying that the upper reaches of theirA mural showing the Cakravala cosmos, Zurmang Shedrup Monastery,
Sikkim, India, late twentieth centuryEric Huntington
America’s nonprofit publisher
http://www.loa.orgLibrary of America
The Center for American Studies at Columbia University
and Library of America present★★★★★★★★★★★★
ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM AND
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Revisiting the great historian
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