With regard to the main theme of this book, I think that I have written almost all the facts that have been revealed so far and the ‘hypotheses’ based on them in the flow leading up to the previous chapter.
From here on, I would like to write about various topics related to the Chakra (Wheel) existence that I have been personally contemplating during this time, and to land well toward a finale.
It could be an endless stream of associative images that intersect a subtle line between having or not having a direct relationship with the stick-rotating techniques of Indian martial arts and the chakra philosophy, at the same time, be my passionate love for the Chakra existence, as I have become a complete “Chakra-Freak” in the process of this exploration.
Well, I would be very happy if you could read it with ease and enjoy it.
Chakra design has been highly developed and loved in India, along with its background philosophy. However, in fact, this motif based on a circle and radiates out from the centre of it, has been used as a symbolic image with an extremely strong religious flavour in Western Christian culture and in Arab and Islamic cultures in the Middle East too.
A Chakra design, such as the rose window above, would also be quite suitable for the Buddha to carry on his back as a lotus flower halo.
I can’t quote it all, so anyone interested should have a look at this site: Delightful Domes
These Chakra designs (although they do not call them that…) have a strong affinity with the domed roof of the mosque or church and are often drawn on its inner ceiling. This combination is perhaps not so surprising, since the circular dome is a design that overlaps perfectly with the spoked wheel from a bird’s-eye view.
In fact, there are many possible historical correlations between this religious dome architecture in Europe or the Middle East with the chakra designs depicted inside it, and India.
Ancient Roman coins and other artefacts excavated from the ruins of port cities in southern India have already revealed the fact that India and the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf regions have been trading with each other since before Christ. Whether it was Westerners, Arabs or Indians were responsible for the voyage, it is certain that there was an exchange of culture and goods between the Mediterranean world and ancient India, and that this exchange continued over a long period of time (for example, there are records of the construction of a coliseum in the Roman territory around AD using workers with Indian names).
The centuries around AD were the most prosperous period for pan-Indian Buddhist stupa culture. Even if the interior was not hollow, the distinctive domed shape of the stupa is probably the oldest example of dome architecture in human history, and the originator of such designs.
The hypothesis that Stupa domes inspired the later dome architecture of the Roman Catholic Church and Islamic mosques is a plausible argument, don’t you think?
In addition, there were many Buddhist caves along the Silk Road from western China to Central Asia, where round halos of Buddha statues, lotus wheels on the ceiling, and dome paintings were created around the first century AD.
It is difficult to determine immediately which culture influenced the other, but it is certain that there was an early transmission and cross-interaction of Chakra design between the Indian world in the East and the Mediterranean world in the West, mainly facilitated by Buddhism.
As I have written before, in the western half of Eurasia, including India, there was a universal idea of the ‘Axis of the World’. It was called ‘Axis Mundi’ in Latin, and its original meaning could be none other than ‘Axle at the Centre of the World’.
This worldview of “Axis Mundi”, like the Chakra philosophy of the Indian world, probably has its original image in the turning wheel with the axle supporting it in the centre, and I believe that the original idea of it could have been derived from the “Chakra consciousness” of the Aryans, who were the first to develop the spoked wheel and spread their power over the surrounding region using their Ratha chariots equipped with the wheel.
Chariots in ancient Egypt and Assyria, which were dominated by Aryan-origin Ratha chariots, have been discussed many times in this book, but even in later Greek and Roman Europe, the Ratha chariot continued to be a symbol of military and divine power, and it was a universal practice to depict kings and deities riding on chariots to extol their greatness.
The people of the world around the Mediterranean Sea probably projected the image of the One God they worshipped onto the Axle at the Centre of the Wheel. This is exactly what happened in India, where Brahman, the Supreme One (Tad Ekam), was inevitably seen as Skambha, the Axle-Pillar of the Universe.
There are facts which seem to be the manifestation of such ‘divine authority’ vividly impressed upon their deep consciousness by the existence of the wheel.
St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City is the holiest place in Christendom, along with the Mecca in Islam, but St Peter’s Square, which spreads out in front of the cathedral and is filled with the faithful during major masses, has a beautiful, if slightly deformed into an oval, Wheel-like design.
At the centre of the square stands a stone pillar known as the Obelisk, which also overlaps with the central Axis of the world or Skambha Pillar, representing the Vatican as the one and only Axis Mundi. It is unclear whether the planner Bernini intended to symbolize a wheel when designing the square, but the obelisk at the centre of the Chakra-like design beautifully represents the ‘Axle God’ from which divine power radiates out into the world (There radiating eight spokes from Obelisk, reminiscent of the Buddhist Wheel of Dharma, although this might be a coincidence…).
In fact, this kind of floor decoration with chakra patterns is also widespread in Christian cathedrals along with that on the ceiling, where the radiating pattern of eight divisions is also a central motif. St Peter’s Square could be a gigantic and externalised version of this.
The symbolic stone pillars, Obelisk, were taken by the Roman Empire from overseas colonies such as Egypt and were not originally from the Europe. Egypt also has a history of being swept away by the military might of the Ratha chariots in ancient times, so this may have originally been a ‘world axle pillar’ as well.
There is another example in Christianity regarding the central axis of the circular chakra. The stained glass called the Rose Window of Notre-Dame Cathedral in France was shown at the beginning of this article, where a number of Rose Window can be seen with Christ in the central part of this composition.
Below, we can see the same kind of French Rose Window stained glass in Chartres Cathedral, where the Infant Christ, held by the Virgin Mary, is placed at the centre of the Chakra design.
The Virgin Mary is also known as the ‘Rosa Mystica (or Mystical Rose)’, and rose windows in churches and cathedrals often alluded to the Virgin Mary, sometimes with elaborate imitations of roses. However, the term ‘rose window’ was not used before the 17th century and probably derived from the Old French word ‘roue’ (wheel, gear). Therefore, the idea of associating the Virgin Mary with roses and rose windows, in particular, is usually unlikely to have existed before the Middle Ages.
Wikipedia
From the above description, it can be estimated that the design of this rose window was essentially a ‘wheel based’ and that Christ was positioned on its axle. There are several other similar rose windows in Chartres Cathedral, where it also was Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, who was placed on the central axle.
(The fact that the Virgin Mary was superimposed on the wheel-like rose window coincides with the fact that in India the lotus flower wheel was superimposed on the Goddesses (Devis), which may be coincidental, but is very interesting)
Indeed, many of the circular paintings on the dome ceilings also depict God or Christ at their centres in the same way. These domes are probably a metaphor for heaven as the highest place on the celestial sphere, as in Indian thought, but at the same time, they are a sure sign that the idea and sensibility that ‘the axis of the world = the one God’ existed at the base of the Christian world as well.
In another pattern, the centre of the circular chakra decoration is a simple skylight through which sunlight shines like a spotlight. Is this an image of ‘divine light’ coming down from heaven? If the pillar of light were to reach the floor vertically from above, it must look as if it were an axle passing through the hub hole of a wheel.
Although this is apart from religion, many of the planned cities built in Europe since the Middle Ages, up to the modern and contemporary periods, have used the wheel-like shape as their grand design. This is a major indication of their great passion for this motif.
Interestingly, a similar ‘Chakra phenomenon’ can be seen in the pilgrimage to Mecca “Hajj” in Islam which shares the same dome ceiling and chakra paintings. Built in the centre of the holy Masjid Haram, the Kaaba building itself is a cube, but the millions of devotees worshipping in groups around it beautifully depict a huge circular Wheel.
After the seated service, the people rise in unison and begin to make their rounds around the Kaaba in an anti-clockwise direction. Looking down from the sky, it seems as if the changing phenomenal world was revolving around the immovable axle of Allāh.
The images below show that the Kaaba Mosque, in its original form, already had the image as a complete centre of the circle, and that its present form is in the process of fully restoring this original image in the future.
If the concentric circular sanctuary of the Kaaba being shown in the expected completion plan of the renovation in 2030, were to be completely covered with the huge dome ceiling regularly used in mosques, would it not have the shape and structure of a Buddhist stupa? (There is even an eight-spoke-like structure!)
Basically, Buddha relics were consecrated and buried underground in the inner center of the Stupa, and the devotees go around such stupa in a clockwise direction. Although the direction of rotation was the opposite, it is exactly the same as the position of the Kaaba, i.e. Allah, and its relationship with the pilgrims of Hajj.
Other wheel-axle-like grand design in Islamic holy sites have also been identified, such as the Mausoleum of Imam Reza, and it is likely that there is a solid background ideology there.
Sacred Chakra design based on a circular wheel shape that develops radially or concentrically from its central axle, and the rotating image created by the wheel. It developed specifically in India in connection with the idea of the Sacred Chakra=Wheel, but it was by no means the exclusive domain of the Indian religion.
This shows how important the ancient chariot and its spoked wheels, which the Indo-Aryans called Ratha and Chakra, were in the western half of the Eurasian continent, from Europe and the Mediterranean to India, and how greatly they influenced the spiritual world of the people there.
However, it seems that Christianity and Islam have never developed their chakra philosophy in such a deeply complicated and diverse way as in India (I won’t go into this because it’s ‘outside my area of expertise’, but I think it’s an interesting topic). This was still a crucial difference to India, the Land of Holy Chakras.
But come to think of it, even outside the context of the ancient chariot wheel and its religious developments, the geometric circle-radius design, similar to the lotus wheel, the sun wheel or the rose window, is perhaps one of the most beloved motifs in the world.
Its captivating and striking visuals have also won the hearts and minds of the Japanese, who have been less influenced by the ancient chariot. For example, the Imperial Chrysanthemum Crest of Japan introduced earlier, is a typical chakra-wheel design.
Throughout East Asia, from China to Japan, there are also circular cast sculptures called bronze mirrors, which are said to have been used in some kind of religious ritual.
Further around the world, the ancient Aztec civilisation in Central America has a huge chakra-design sculpture called the “The Sun Stone”, with an eight-pointed design reminiscent of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path or Ashtanga of Yoga, representing the eight directions or the whole world.
In the same Aztec culture, there are also stone sculptures in chakra-like designs called the Tisok Stone and the Moctezuma Stone. Both of them have a hole in the centre, as if to pass an axle through, and it is believed that this is the place where the heart of a human sacrifice was offered. But how could they have acquired such a wheel-like, round-radius image if they did not have a wheel culture as a means of transport?
Ethnic design from Central and South America is full of such circle-radial patterns, which can be found by searching for ‘Aztec Circle Pattern’ and so on.
So what about the ethnic art of the North American Natives, once called Indians (!)? A search revealed that there, too, the chakra-like circle design has an extremely striking presence.
The Dream Catcher, an amuletic charm in the shape of a spider’s web, was traditionally used by the Ojibwa minority in northern North America and later spread to the various tribes during the pan-Indian movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Below is a chic chakra designs on North American Native folk art vessels and plates.
The image below shows the wheel-like symbol in a cave mural probably dating from around AD by the Chumash people, who have inhabited the Central Coast region of California for over 10,000 years.
I was particularly impressed by the sacred ritual sites built on the earth ground, called Medicine Wheel. Like the rock paintings above, I wondered how the people who did not have a wheel culture, same as those in Central and South America, came up with such wheel-like motifs.
The Medicine Wheel/Medicine Mountain National Historic Landmark (formerly known as the Bighorn Medicine Wheel) is located in the Bighorn National Forest, in the U.S. state of Wyoming. The Medicine Wheel at Medicine Mountain is a large stone structure made of local white limestone laid upon a bedrock of limestone. It is both a place of sacred ceremony and scientific inquiry. In Native Science these uses are not distinguished as separate as they are in Western science.
The cultural history of the Big Horn Mountains, home to the Big Horn Medicine Wheel, dates back over ten thousand years.
Wikipedia
It is said that these wheel-like ceremonial sites were used for astronomical observations such as the sun, but further research suggests that this wheel-like geometric circle motifs, along with the Chumash rock-painted wheels, were deeply connected to a unique indigenous spirituality known as Vision Quest.
Vision Quest, supernatural experience in which an individual seeks to interact with a guardian spirit, usually an anthropomorphized animal, to obtain advice or protection. Vision quests were most typically found among the native peoples of North and South America.
The specific techniques for attaining visions varied from tribe to tribe, as did the age at which the first quest was to be undertaken, its length and intensity, and the expected form of the guardian spirit’s presence or sign. In some tribes nearly all young people traditionally engaged in some form of vision quest, as participation in the experience was one of the rituals marking an individual’s transition from childhood to adulthood. In other groups vision questing was undertaken only by males, with menarche and childbirth as the analogous experiences for females. Some groups, notably in South America, limited vision quests and guardian spirits to shamans (religious personages with powers of healing and psychic transformation, see shamanism).
Usually an individual’s first vision quest was preceded by a period of preparation with a religious specialist. The quest itself typically involved going to an isolated location and engaging in prayer while forgoing food and drink for a period of up to several days; some cultures augmented fasting and prayer with hallucinogens. In some traditions the participant would watch for an animal that behaved in a significant or unusual way; in others the participant discovered an object (often a stone) that resembled some animal. In the predominant form, the initiate had a dream (the vision) in which a spirit-being appeared. Upon receiving a sign or vision, the participant returned home and sought help in interpreting the experience. Not all vision quests were successful; religious specialists generally advised individuals to abandon a given attempt if a vision was not received within a prescribed period of time.
Britannica: Vision Quest
Going on, let’s refer to another site.
The practice of spirit travel (or soul journeys) by the healer while in an altered state of consciousness distinguishes shamans in the rest of the world from most Native American medicine people. However, there is not necessarily a clear demarcation between shamans and Native American healers, since Native American healers also use rituals and ceremonies that invoke a spiritual realm and utilize altered states of consciousness.
The entry into an altered state of consciousness for healing can be facilitated by many practices. To prepare for healing, native healers may go for a day or more without food, sleep, and even water. They may also spend extended time in solitude, contemplation, and prayer, and subject themselves to extremes of temperature in cold streams or hot sweat lodges. Techniques for inducing altered states of consciousness include intense rhythmic stimulation such as chanting, singing, dancing and drumming; any of these techniques may be sufficient to alter the state of consciousness of the healer and/or the patient (Walsh, 1996).
While the specific form of the vision quest varies from group to group, it usually involves isolation in a secluded place outdoors, such as on a sacred mountain, without food or water for four days and nights. It is easy to understand that given this preparation and the set and setting of the person pursuing a vision, it is highly likely that a vision would be seen.
Another example is the communal ritual of the Sun Dance of the Lakota Sioux, which involves rigorous fasting and dancing and “the intense pain of wooden pegs piercing the flesh of the dancer’s chest and attached by strong cord to the central pole . . . . as the pegs tear through his flesh, the dancer is in ecstatic union with his sun father” (Sandner, 1996, p. 151).
Cuyamungue
It would be very interesting to hear that if ‘Chakra Visions’ are experienced during these quests in isolated settings, which overlap with Pan-Indian (Bharatiya) spiritual practices such as fasting, extreme suffering, hallucinogenic drug use, and trance-like singing and dancing, in addition to extremely concentrated prayer (meditation).
I was particularly fascinated by the term ‘central pole’ in the description of the Sun Dance, and upon researching it, I found the following explanation.
Once, I went to pray at the top of the sacred mountain of my ancestors.
As I climbed to the top I heard voices singing as the wind blew the leaves.
At the top I saw, made from many stones, a large circle with a cross inside.
I knew from my teachings that this represented the circle of life and the four directions.
I sat down by the edge of this circle to pray.
I thought this is only a symbol of the universe.
“True,” a very soft voice said.
“Look and you will see the Center of the Universe.
Look at every created thing.”
As I looked around I saw that every created thing had a thread of smoke or light going from it.
The voice whispered, “This cord that every created thing has is what connects it to the Creator.
Without this cord it would not exist.”
As I watched I saw that all these threads, coming from everything, went to the center of the circle where the four directions were one place (the center of the cross).
I saw that all these threads were tied together or joined here at this spot.
The voice spoke again, “This is the Center of the Universe. The place where all things join together and all things become one. The place where everything begins and ends. The place inside everything created.”
That’s when I understood that all of creation, the seen and the unseen, was all related.
The voice spoke one last time, “Yes, now you know the Center of the Universe.”
Cristal Vision Quest
They did not have a wheel culture, but in this quest, they intuited a vision of a circular world of creation and a central ‘Creator God’. The wheel form of the murals and medicine wheels represented a cosmology of the circular world in which the creatures were connected to the central ‘Axis God’ by spreading out spiritual codes.
It might be connected somewhere in the depths of the soul with the magnificent ‘Chakra Worldview’ that Indian (Bharatiya) thought has created in a complex and elaborate way, even though it was extremely simple.
Next, turning my attention to the continent of Africa, where the ethnic motifs were also centred around the chakra-like circle design. The flood of Chakras, so vividly African, is making my eyes dizzy.
In this flow, it seems quite natural that in many African countries, chakra-designed dresses are much loved, especially as a local fashion for women, as in India.
Such a fashion sense, with large chakra motifs on vibrant primary-colour backgrounds, seems to be very popular in tropical and subtropical regions of the world, particularly around India and Africa, according to a quick search on the internet.
Finally, let’s look at the art of the Aborigines people of Native Australia. These are drawn with dots of intense colours that evoke a very primitive sensibility, and while there are various animal motifs that represent totems, it is the chakra-like circle design that has a striking presence.
There, the overlapping concentric circles are often emphasised, with a pattern of cord-like radial images developing outside of them.
Interestingly, this image, which emits a very psychedelic vibration, is said to be derived from the traditional mythological vision called “Dreaming (or Dreamtime)”.
It was an inner trip in search of the original landscape of the soul, overlapping somewhat with the Vision Quest inherited by the native peoples of North and South America.
The English word ‘Dreaming’ is a common translation for the local word such as “Altjira”, which has been given various interpretations by tribes themselves and Western scholars, including ‘dreamtime’, ‘eternal existence without beginning’, ‘dawn of the world’, ‘seeing God’, ‘eternal creator of the world and humanity’ and ‘Supreme Being’.
Aboriginal people disclose their Dreaming stories to pass on imperative knowledge, cultural values, traditions and law to future generations. Their Dreamings are passed on through various customs such as ceremonial body painting, storytelling song and dance.
The Australian Indigenous people have over thousands of years maintained a link with the Dreamtime and Dreaming stories of the past to the present. Due to their customs and beliefs they have sustained a rich cultural heritage.
None of the hundreds of Aboriginal languages contain a word for time. When we try to explain in English their philosophy we are perhaps best not to use the term ‘Dreamtime’ but use the word ‘Dreaming’ instead.
It conveys better the timeless concept of moving from ‘dream’ to reality which in itself is an act of creation and the basis of many Aboriginal creation myths.
Aboriginal spirituality does not think about the ‘Dreaming’ as a time past, in fact not as a time at all. Time refers to past, present and future but the ‘Dreaming’ is none of these.
The ‘Dreaming’ “is there with them, it is not a long way away. The Dreaming is the environment that the Aboriginals lived in, and it still do today. It is important to note that the Dreaming always also comprises the significance of place.
The Dreamings explain the creation process. Ancestor beings rose from the earth and seas and roamed the initially barren land, created the land’s features and then returned to the land to become part of its features in the form of rocks, waterholes, trees etc. These became sacred places, to be seen only by initiated men.”
The spirits of the ancestor beings are passed on to their descendants, e.g. shark, kangaroo, honey ant, snake and so on and hundreds of others which have become totems within the diverse Indigenous groups across the continent.
Aboriginal families and individuals identify with a specific Dreamings. It gives them identity, dictates how they express their spirituality and tells them which other Aboriginal people are related to them in a close family. They can share the same Dreamings so this means that one person can have multiple Dreamings.
“Stories of the Dreaming” have been handed down through the generations, they are not owned by individuals but belong to a group.
Artlandish
Aboriginal people in Australia, especially boys, have unique coming-of-age rituals where the Dreaming Story is traditionally told to them through the unforgettable sounds of the didgeridoo and symbolic images, accompanied by song and dance.
It is interesting to note that many Aboriginal people also use the term ‘Dreaming’ to refer to their concepts about spirituality. This might be because some of them find ceremonies or songs in a state of dreaming, a state between sleeping and waking. Strictly speaking, dreaming and mythology can be considered as the same thing: the deep mental archetypes and images of wisdom which we take on to be guided by them when the conscious mind is in a state of quietness.
Each form shares the spirituality from the ‘Dreaming’. It is during ceremonies that the trance-like dreaming state seizes the Aboriginal people and they connect with the ancestral beings.
Source: What is the ‘Dreamtime’ or the ‘Dreaming’? – Creative Spirits
It’s a little difficult for modern civilized people to fully grasp the concept of “Dreaming”, but perhaps, it’s somewhat proximity to that vivid imprint of the Chakra Vision I experienced during meditation at a Theravada temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
At the same time, it reminded me of the fact that the ancient Indian Rishis, the poet-saints, took the words of the Vedic hymns overflowing from their mouths (perhaps, while in a trance on soma liquor) as “God-given revelations”.
The Aboriginal art was the output contents of these Dreaming visions in trance. The video below is a good example of a simulation of this, and I urge you to watch it carefully and enjoy it.
I still remember the day when I first saw the Indian stick-rotating art on the TV screen, I had an intuition of the ‘Turning Dharma Chakra’, as if by the revelation at that moment.
Since then, I have been wandering around the land of India as if possessed by something, reading ancient Vedic scriptures and submerging myself in the virtual space of the internet in search of the origin of Chakra thought, so perhaps, from the worldview of the native tribes, I might have been practising a Dreaming or a Vision Quest as a “Chakra Tribe”.
So far, starting from the Indian subcontinent, we have identified the representation of the Chakras in the underlying cultures of the world, running from the Christian world of Europe, the Arabic Muslim world of the Middle East, Japan and East Asia, the native peoples of North and South America, then to the African continent and the Aboriginal people of Australia.
Whether or not we have a history with the Ratha chariot, there is the fact that we have been attracted to and loving Chakra designs that develop radial patterns from the centre within a circle, as if driven by some sort of ‘deep subconsciousness’ sensibility vector on a level of all humanity.
I have stated before that India is the “Sacred Chakra Empire”, but now it seems to me that the planet Earth, with its eight billion people and diverse flourishing cultures, is essentially ‘Planet Chakra’. So much so, that Chakra design has become a universal motif, overflowing into our world.
And of course, this was not just limited to the human world.
~to be continued~
INDIA~The Land of Holy Chakra 
