Liber VIII · Eastern Mysticism · Chapter I: Chakras & Subtle Body
Anahata: The Heart Chakra in Tantra, Yoga and History
Anahata, the heart chakra: the unstruck sound, its twelve-petalled lotus, bija mantra YAM, air element, Isha and Kakini, and the modern green heart chakra.
Anahata (Sanskrit anāhata, "unstruck") is the fourth of the six centres of the classical tantric chakra system, a twelve-petalled lotus in the heart named after the "unstruck sound" that yogis claimed to hear there. In the Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa (1577), translated by John Woodroffe, it holds a smoke-coloured six-pointed star of air, the seed syllable yaṃ riding a black antelope, the god Īśa and the goddess Kākinī, together with a golden liṅga and the individual self pictured as a steady flame; the green "heart chakra" of love and compassion in modern books is a twentieth-century Western interpretation.
Name and Meaning of Anahata§
The word anāhata is formed from āhata, "struck" or "beaten", with the negative prefix an-. Ordinary sounds are produced when one thing strikes another: a drumstick on a drum, breath against the throat. The anāhata sound, by contrast, is said to sound by itself. The Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa explains that the sages call the heart lotus by this name because the sound-Brahman (śabda-brahman), the primordial vibration from which speech and the world unfold, is heard there without striking. Many texts also use the plain names "heart lotus" (hṛt-padma) or "heart wheel" (hṛdaya-cakra).
In the standard six-centre series Anahata is the fourth counting upward, the centre of air between the fire of Manipura below and the ether of Vishuddha above. Placed in the middle of the seven, it is often treated in modern teaching as the hinge between "lower" and "higher" centres, an idea with roots in Jung's reading discussed below rather than in the Sanskrit text.
Place in the Body: The Heart§
The Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa says only that the lotus is "in the heart", within the central channel. The heart in Indian religious thought is less an organ that pumps blood than the inner centre of the person, and the chakra is placed on the line of the spine at heart level rather than on the left side of the chest. Modern teachers usually point to the middle of the breastbone.
The idea of the heart as the dwelling of the self is far older than the chakras. The Chāndogya Upaniṣad describes a small lotus-shaped house within the "city of Brahman" that is the body, containing an inner space as vast as the universe. The Kaṭha Upaniṣad speaks of a person the size of a thumb who dwells in the heart, and says that of the hundred and one channels of the heart one rises to the crown of the head, the route of the liberated at death. The Bhagavad Gītā (18.61) declares that the Lord abides in the heart of all beings. The tantric heart lotus inherited all of this. For the earlier texts, see the Vedas and Upanishads.
The Lotus: Petals, Syllables and Bija§
Anahata has twelve petals, which the text likens to the red bandhūka flower. On them shine twelve letters in vermilion: kaṃ, khaṃ, gaṃ, ghaṃ, ṅaṃ, caṃ, chaṃ, jaṃ, jhaṃ, ñaṃ, ṭaṃ and ṭhaṃ. With the letters of the other lotuses they complete the fifty sounds of the Sanskrit alphabet, which tantric theory regarded as the body of the goddess of speech.
Within the pericarp lies the hexagonal region of air (vāyu), smoky in colour, formed from two interlaced triangles. In Indian ritual diagrams this six-pointed figure (ṣaṭkoṇa) signifies the union of Śiva and Śakti, the upward and downward triangles; its resemblance to the Jewish Star of David is a geometric coincidence, not a historical connection. The seed syllable (bīja) of air is yaṃ, smoke-coloured and four-armed in the visualisation and seated on a black antelope, an animal of speed suited to the restless, moving element.
The linga, the flame and the wish-fulfilling tree§
The text also places in the pericarp a triangle of the goddess, radiant as ten million flashes of lightning, containing a golden liṅga of Śiva called Bāṇa. Here too, in the reading followed by Woodroffe, dwells the individual self (jīvātman), compared to the steady, tapering flame of a lamp in a windless place. Woodroffe's notes, drawing on other tantras, add a separate small lotus of eight petals just below Anahata, containing a wish-fulfilling tree and a jewelled altar, where the practitioner mentally worships the chosen deity (iṣṭa-devatā). This inner shrine of the heart is one of the clearest links between chakra meditation and ordinary Hindu devotion.
Element, Deity and Shakti§
Air (vāyu) is the fourth of the five elements. In Indian natural philosophy its qualities are movement and lightness, and its sense is touch. In the body, air means breath and the vital winds (prāṇa), and the chest is the seat of prāṇa in the narrower sense, the inward-moving breath. The association of the heart centre with air thus ties it closely to the breath disciplines described in the article on nadis, prana and the subtle body.
The presiding god is Īśa (or Īśāna), "the Lord", a calm form of Śiva who shines like the sun and makes the gestures of granting boons and dispelling fear. After the triad of Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Rudra in the three lower centres, his appearance marks a shift from the gods of cosmic function to increasingly transcendent forms of Śiva, culminating in Sadāśiva at the throat. The goddess of the centre is Kākinī, yellow like fresh lightning, three-eyed, wearing a garland of bones, holding a noose and a skull and making the gestures of boon-granting and fearlessness; the text describes her heart as softened by nectar. For the theological background, see Shaivism and Shaktism.
The text's closing praise says that the meditator on the heart lotus becomes foremost among the wise, a master of speech and of the senses, and dear to all, conventional statements of the fruits (phala-śruti) of practice. In the dissolution of the elements described in bhūta-śuddhi and in the account of Kuṇḍalinī's ascent, the fire of the navel is absorbed into air here, and air in turn into the ether of the throat.
How the Texts Differ§
The heart is the oldest and most widely shared centre in Indian contemplative traditions, and almost every system gives it a place, but not always the same one.
Kashmir Shaivism and the heart of consciousness§
In the non-dual Shaivism of Kashmir, the "heart" (hṛdaya) is less a lotus in a sequence than a name for consciousness itself. Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1016) used the term for the pulsating core of awareness in which the whole of reality is contained, and his tradition describes meditations on the heart that do not depend on a ladder of centres. Paul Muller-Ortega's The Triadic Heart of Śiva explores this doctrine in detail.
Buddhist tantra§
The Buddhist Hevajra Tantra and related texts place the "wheel of dharma" (dharma-cakra) at the heart, usually with eight petals or channels. In Tibetan subtle-body teaching the heart holds the "indestructible drop", in which the most subtle consciousness is said to abide until death, and the syllable hūṃ is visualised there. The details are covered in Vajrayana Buddhism.
Nath and hatha yoga lists§
The Haṭhayogapradīpikā (fifteenth century) connects the heart with the inner sound (nāda) rather than with a lotus of fixed form. In its account of meditation on sound, the first stage begins when the first of three knots (granthi) is pierced and the anāhata sound is heard in the space of the heart. Other works locate that first knot at the base of the spine, so even the identity of the obstacles varies between texts. The Nāth Siddha Siddhānta Paddhati, which counts nine centres, is usually read as describing the heart centre as an eight-petalled lotus facing downward, closer to the Upaniṣadic image than to Pūrṇānanda's twelve petals.
The Modern Western Layer§
The modern heart chakra is green, sometimes with pink as a secondary colour, and governs love, compassion, forgiveness, relationships and the balance between body and spirit. C. W. Leadbeater's The Chakras (1927) described a heart centre of twelve "spokes" seen clairvoyantly and associated it with higher feelings. C. G. Jung, in his 1932 seminar, treated Anahata as the point at which a person first becomes aware of the Self beyond the passions of the lower centres, the beginning of reflection and of individuation; this reading is a large part of why the heart is now presented as the bridge between lower and higher chakras.
As traced in chakras in the West, green came from the 1970s practice of laying the rainbow along the centres, which put it in fourth place. Anodea Judith's Wheels of Life (1987) gave the heart chakra the "right to love and be loved" and named grief as its characteristic block. Popular systems connect it with the thymus gland, rose quartz and similar correspondences, and different authors propose different lists. These ideas have become meaningful parts of contemporary spiritual practice, but none of them comes from the Sanskrit sources, in which the heart lotus is red, crowded with letters and deities, and a stage in a ritual of dissolution. There is no scientific evidence that chakras exist as physical structures. The modern synthesis is followed further in the article on the New Age.
Frequently asked questions§
What does Anahata mean?§
Anāhata means "unstruck" or "unbeaten". It refers to the inner sound, identified with the sound-Brahman, that the texts say is heard in the heart without any physical striking.
What is the bija mantra of the heart chakra?§
The seed syllable of Anahata is yaṃ, the mantra of the air element, visualised within a smoky hexagram and seated on a black antelope. The twelve petals bear the letters from kaṃ to ṭhaṃ.
Why is the heart chakra green?§
Green is a modern convention that comes from mapping the colours of the rainbow onto the seven chakras, a practice popularised from the 1970s. The Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa describes the twelve petals as red like the bandhūka flower and the region of air as smoky.
Is the six-pointed star in Anahata the Star of David?§
No. The hexagram in the heart lotus is the Indian ṣaṭkoṇa, the interlocking of an upward and a downward triangle that stands for Śiva and Śakti. The shape is shared, but the two symbols have separate histories.
Sources and further reading§
- The Serpent Power — Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe), 1919
- Upaniṣads — Patrick Olivelle, 1996
- Hatha Yoga Pradipika — Svatmarama, 15th c.
- The Triadic Heart of Śiva — Paul Eduardo Muller-Ortega, 1989
- Kundalini: The Energy of the Depths — Lilian Silburn, 1988
- The Chakras — C. W. Leadbeater, 1927
- The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga — C. G. Jung, ed. Sonu Shamdasani, 1996
- Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System — Anodea Judith, 1987