Ray Sumner: The Yantra

Abstract

Ray Sumner: The Yaritra, Munich, Ost-West Verlag, 1975.

The yantra is one of those unique creations of the Indian mind. It may be possible to find parallels to the yantra in other cultures but only by forcing the analogy somewhat. Equally it is possible by accepting Jung to see in the yantra the expression of a collective unconscious as much within the western psyche as in eastern man. But regardless of the validity of Jung's perceptions, in India, and in those surrounding areas which have been influenced by the subcontinent, the yantra and its far less sophisticated mandala form are not part of a collective unconscious which must be sought through the haze of perception.

On the contrary. It is a highly conscious, highly organized, highly formalized patterning of lines. Its various shapes, squares triangles, circles, are the product of careful consideration as equally they are the expression of a long intellectual tradition. The shapes have precise symbolisms, definite meanings, albeit metaphysical and cosmological. When by extension and expansion, the meanings of the yantra become amorphous and discrete, this is not because of the reflection of any Jungian unconscious but rather because there are no verbal equivalents for the ideas which the yantra in its higher reaches has schematised. 

The shape is a microcosm of the macrocosm; in some cases, it is the macrocosm; in others, it is a guide to the macrocosm. Words, according to this
approach, are not suited to defining such reality which is to be perceived and realised. In so doing, the process set in train is one of mysticism, of the attainment of understanding through non-rational awareness. Herein lies the paradox of the yantra: at one level, it is a heavily intellectualised, abstracted series of ideas represented in diagrammatic form but at another level it is the very idea itself which is to be perceived and understood in a non-verbal and even, ultimately; a non-schematic form. It is both the symbol and that which is symbolised.