ABSTRACT
Later on this rubbing was replaced by a sort of mental rubbing against a thing. In my book Psycholor;y of the Unconscious you will find the development of this idea of the transformation of symbols and libido in etymology and history. I speak there of Prometheus, the fire-bringer (from the Sanskrit root-word manthami, from which is derived the word mathematics and also the word thinking).3 That was the original rubbing, shaking it to and fro in one's mind, constant movement, rhythmical movement; but translated now into the needed spiritual form, meditation. So when the believer is meditating on the yantra, it is the same as rubbing the churinga. I must again point out that when I call the mandala a yantra, as it is in the East, it means something quite different from its meaning to us. The mandala has to us the meaning of a product, an expression, and its specific value is that it is an expression, and not that one uses it as a finished instrument, a traditional dogmatic form sanctioned by time, and serving as a ritual symbol or yantra. Its importance to us is just the reverse. There is a tremendous difference between the symbols of the East and the West. To produce them is all-important for us, it is a means of expression; and it would be poisonous for us to use the finished products of the East to bring about a transformation of our libido. If it works at all it is not for the good and it has a sterilizing effect, because first of all we have to build our unconscious up to symbolic expression. Perhaps in two thousand years or so we shall use these symbols when they are in a finished condition as yantras, but there is no possibility of that for the present.
