Ajna and the Third Eye

Primary source

• Pūrṇānanda, with the commentary of Kālīcaraṇa, Ṣaṭ-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa, 1577, verses 32–33, the sixth chapter of the Śrītattvacintāmaṇi, in Woodroffe's EnglishThe ājñā lotus as the text describes it: between the eyebrows, two petals bearing the letters ha and kṣa, 'like the moon, beautifully white', the Śakti Hākinī within, the subtle mind (manas) seated there, and in verse 33 the praṇava, 'the first Bīja of the Vedas', inside the pericarp. Kālīcaraṇa's gloss gives the name its sense: 'Ājñā of the Guru is communicated here, hence it is called Ājñā.' No gland, no eye and no indigo appear in either verse or commentary.
• René Descartes, Les passions de l'âme, 1649, articles 31–32; the identification is already made in a letter of 29 January 1640That the pineal gland was named the principal seat of the soul by a French philosopher in the 1640s — the origin of the gland's standing as the organ where soul meets body, and the claim Blavatsky later invoked.
• Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, vol. II, 1888, Part I, 'The Races with the "Third Eye"', pp. 289–306; the pineal and the 'eye of Siva' at p. 295, Hatteria punctata at p. 296, Descartes at p. 298CITED FOR WHAT SHE CLAIMED, not as evidence it is true: that the pineal gland is the atrophied remnant of a once-functioning third eye — 'it has left behind a witness to its existence. This witness is now the pineal gland' — argued from Hatteria punctata of New Zealand, which she classes in her own period's terms as 'a lizard of the order Lacertilia' and which is in fact the tuatara, a rhynchocephalian; from Quain's Anatomy, Lankester and Haeckel; corroborated by naming Descartes on the pineal as 'the Seat of the Soul'; and tied to India only by her own gloss on the 'eye of Siva'. This is the document behind the modern equation, and it precedes Woodroffe by thirty-one years.
• Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe), The Serpent Power: Being the Ṣaṭ-cakra-nirūpaṇa and Pādukā-pañcaka, 1919, Luzac & Co., London; Ganesh & Co. from 1924. Some catalogue records and Wallis give 1918; 1919 is kept here to match the shipped sibling entriesThat the Sanskrit ājñā reached English readers in 1919, and in this translation — thirty-one years after Blavatsky had already identified a third eye with the pineal gland. Cited for what was printed and when, not as an authority on tantra.
• Purnananda Giri, Sat-Cakra-Nirupana, 1577, v. 31–38Purnananda provides the classic Sanskrit description of the two-petalled white lotus of Ajna.

Scholarship

• Dory Heilijgers-Seelen, The System of Five Cakras in Kubjikāmatatantra 14–16, 1994, Egbert Forsten, GroningenThat the five-cakra scheme sometimes set against the six belongs to chapters 14–16 of the Kubjikāmatatantra — the scope the monograph's own title fixes — and so does not displace the six-cakra series taught at 11.34c–37d of the same text. Cited for the location and extent of the five-cakra material, on the register's listing and on Mallinson and Singleton's note, not read at first hand.
• Gudrun Bühnemann, 'The Śāradātilakatantra on yoga: A new edition and translation of chapter 25', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 2011, vol. 74, no. 2, pp. 205–235That the Śāradātilakatantra was composed probably in the twelfth century by Lakṣmaṇadeśika, and that its chapter 25 is a comparatively early yoga text combining haṭha and mantra material — the ground for the dating spread reported in the attestation, which corroborates the tenth-century floor rather than setting it.
• Kurt Leland, Rainbow Body: A History of the Western Chakra System from Blavatsky to Brennan, 2016, Ibis PressThe documented assembly of the Western system between the 1880s and the 1990s: Blavatsky's matrix of correspondences as the root, and the spectrum of rainbow colours assigned to the centres by colour therapists in the United States and England between the 1920s and the 1950s — which is where an indigo brow comes from, and it is neither Sanskrit nor Leadbeater.
• Christopher D. Wallis, The Real Story on the Chakras, 2016, hareesh.org, 5 February 2016A Sanskritist's statement that the gland correspondences have no Indian warrant — of Wheels of Life: 'Each chakra, Judith tells us, is associated with a certain bodily gland' and 'None of these associations are found in the original sources.' Also that a simpler version of the same six-plus-crown scheme stands in the thirteenth-century Śāradā-tilaka, which itself acknowledges rival systems of twelve and sixteen cakras.
• James Mallinson and Mark Singleton, Roots of Yoga, 2017, Penguin Classics; chapter 5, 'The Yogic Body', §5.3.4, translating Kubjikāmatatantra 11.34c–37d; five-cakra scheme of chapters 14–16 at ch. 5 n. 16 (record)The tenth-century floor this entry's dateline rests on: 'Viśuddhi is in the region of the throat and Ājñā is between the eyes' and 'It is taught that the Ājñā has two divisions', from the c. tenth-century Kubjikāmatatantra, which their editorial text calls the first text to teach the cakra system that became far and away the most widespread blueprint for the yogic body. So the name ājñā, the placement between the eyes and the two petals are Sanskrit and pre-date the 1577 chapter by some six centuries. The same chapter's note 16 adjudicates the apparent conflict with Heilijgers-Seelen: the five-cakra list belongs to the same text's later chapters, is tied to the elements rather than to Kuṇḍalinī, and is a different scheme, not a rival count of this one.
• Kurt Leland, The Rainbow Body: How the Western Chakra System Came to Be, 2017, Quest 105.2 (Spring 2017), pp. 25–29The habit, in popular chakra literature, of printing the claim of Vedic or immemorial antiquity without sources — the claim this entry's dateline records; and that chakra balancing appears in no scripture. This is the Leland item the claim_source rests on, and the one both shipped sibling entries cite for it.
• Gert-Jan Lokhorst, 'Descartes and the Pineal Gland', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2021, Summer 2021 editionWhere and when Descartes made the claim: the Treatise of Man (written before 1637, published 1662–64) says almost nothing about the soul; the identification of the conarion as 'the principal seat of the soul, and the place in which all our thoughts are formed' is in the letters from 29 January 1640 and receives its fullest statement in the Passions of 1649.
• Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe), The Serpent Power, 1919, Ch. 5Avalon translates and explains the Kundalini chakra system to the Western world.

Where this claim originates

• C. W. Leadbeater, The Chakras: A Monograph, 1927, Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar; ten colour platesThat the Theosophist who attached glands to chakras assigned them the other way round from the modern chart: 'Centres 6 and 7 stand apart from the rest, being connected with the pituitary body and the pineal gland respectively.' His brow centre is not indigo either — one half 'chiefly rose-coloured, though with a great deal of yellow about it', the other 'predominantly a kind of purplish-blue' — and he counts its spokes at ninety-six, not two.
• Anodea Judith, Wheels of Life: A User's Guide to the Chakra System, 1987, Llewellyn Publications, St Paul; revised 1999The codification in which the sixth chakra is indigo and is identified with the pineal gland, the pituitary going to the seventh — the reverse of Leadbeater's assignment of 1927, and the form in which the correspondence reached the general reader. Cited for what the book sets out, on the reports of Wallis and of the Cosolargy review series, not as evidence the correspondence holds.

Linked entries

• Part ofThe Chakra SystemAttested

  Ājñā is the sixth lotus of the six-plus-crown series, and the only one of the six the modern chart renames — everywhere else the Sanskrit word survives, while here 'third eye' replaces 'command'.

• Derives fromṢaṭ-Cakra-NirūpaṇaAttested

  The description every modern account paraphrases — two petals, ha and kṣa, white as the moon, between the eyebrows — is verses 32 and 33 of Pūrṇānanda's chapter of 1577, with Kālīcaraṇa's gloss on the name.

• Set againstThe Yoga Sūtras of PatañjaliAttested

  The text most often opened as yoga's charter has no brow lotus at all: its one cakra is of the navel, at 3.29, and it is some five centuries older than the Kubjikāmatatantra, the earliest text to teach the six-cakra series ājñā closes.

• Often confused withThe Rainbow Chakra SystemA modern connection

  Ajna was assigned the color indigo in the 1970s Western rainbow chakra system.

• Received fromAbhinavaguptaAttested

  Abhinavagupta explicates the subtle energy channels and non-dual awakening in Tantraloka.

• Set againstThe Medicine WheelA modern connection

  A modern colour chart read back onto an older tradition in each case - Leadbeater's rainbow chakras from 1927, Storm's coloured quadrants from 1972.

• Set againstNeidanA modern connection

  Both chart a body no dissection finds, but the maps do not match: neidan works with three cinnabar fields and two vessels running up the back and down the front, a scheme with no chakras in it, however freely modern energy-body writing merges the two.

• Set againstOne Hundred and EightAttested

  Both numbers are received as immemorial and neither is fixed where readers assume: the six-or-seven chakra scheme in English comes from Woodroffe's 1919 presentation of a single sixteenth-century text, and the mālā's 108 from a Chinese scripture of the fourth or fifth century.

• Set againstIsangoma and UkuthwasaAttested

  Both name a seeing beyond the senses, but the ājñā centre is reached through a text and a diagram, while ubungoma is conferred by an illness nobody chooses and cannot refuse without cost.

• PractisesModern Postural YogaA modern connection

  Modern postural yoga integrates brow-center focus during pranayama and meditation.

• Received fromGaneshaTraditional

  Ganesha rules the Muladhara and directs subtle energy toward the crown.