The Chakra Images
(Scroll down to see the images. Mouse over the images to see a description of the chakra’s yantra.)
The more advanced chakra meditations (Chaktra Meditation Level 3 is just one of these) you will find on this site entail not only the use of bija or “seed” mantras, but also gently visualizing the yantra of the chakra. Yantras are sacred symbols that visually convey a higher, divine vibration of energy specifically related to each chakra and to the bija mantra for each chakra. After mastering the visualization of the yantra, you can add visualizing the lotus of each chakra. After mastering that, you can add visualizing other details, such as the bija mantra in Sanskrit within the yantra. Yantras and the chakras open the door to a world of inner exploration that is profoundly helpful to your growth. You will experience this for yourself. These will vastly accelerate your progress.
The images below are provided to help you with your visualization. They are literally visual mantras. Now the question arises, where did they come from? There are many varying concepts of the chakras. None are absolutely authoritative; it depends on the tradition. Also, today the popular colors and shapes of the chakras and yantras have ranged widely from any tradition that I know of. This is not wrong–imagination certainly plays a role in all this. However, as an assist to your meditation, and to ensure the best experience, I have made every effort to represent traditional images from a long-standing Indian Tantric tradition.
The images you see here were custom created to follow as precisely as possible the descriptions of the celebrated mystic and tantrik, Purnananda Swami of 15th century Bengal. The manuscript we followed is his Satchakra-Nirupana (Description of and Investigation into the Six Bodily Centers), as translated by Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe–an unparalleled Tantric scholar) in his famous work, The Serpent Power: The Secrets of Tantric & Shaktic Yoga. The colors and designs and shapes are as close as we could come to his descriptions.
As these are sacred images, please treat them respectfully. Study them, contemplate them, feel them, and then meditate. They will definitely help you and open the door to many wonderful esoteric practices I will be adding to the site in the future. They may be visualized as either two-dimensional or 3-dimensional, whichever comes easiest for you.
My gratitude to the artist who worked closely with me in creating them, Sean Callahan. He made their creation a mutual meditation.
Enjoy!
Ajayan
The images start with the root chakra at the bottom of this page. The sahasrara at the crown of the head is the top image.
Copyright © 2017 by Henry J. Borys (Ajayan) All rights reserved.
