Debashish Banerji, PhD, is Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures and Chairman of the East West Psychology Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He is author of Seven Quartets of Becoming: A Transformative Yoga Psychology Based on the Diaries of Sri Aurobindo and also The Alternatate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore, a book about his great grandfather. He edited an anthology about his great uncle, Rabindranath Tagore in the Twenty-First Century.

Here he suggests that the current systems of chakras have antecedents going back to the Indus Valley civilization over 5,000 years ago. Much of our contemporary understanding can be traced by to a sixteenth century manuscript that was translated into English by Sir John Woodroffe as The Serpent Power. The discussion focuses on the deities, geometric shapes, mantras, and yantras associated with each of the chakras – as well as the koshas or sheaths that encompass the physical body. He notes that there are many different ways to count the number of chakras.

(Recorded on October 31, 2020)

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Published on April 28, 2026