<center>“In spiritual traditions worldwide, mandalas focus and reflect the spiritual content of the psyche for both maker and viewer. They are used as a healing and transforming art in Native American sand painting, Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist rituals, and modern psycho-therapy. In Jungian psychology, the mandala brings about healing in a type of psychological event called a crisis of transition. Here the ego fragments and is in danger of collapsing; the mandala forges a new relationship of the ego to the Self.”

Source: Mandala: Luminous Symbols for Healing

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According to the psyche's purposes, in order to break out of the security of solid consensus and convention, one must encounter the experience of the death process in psychic depth, and also at the same time the dissolution of the familiar, accustomed worldview. Though all this demand might seem at first glance overly drastic, it consists actually of the death of the familiar self-image and the destruction of the world image to make room for the self regeneration of each. These two images move together in the process, each an aspect of the other, and both assume the form of the mandala images.

-- John Weir Perry

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<blockquote>In his writings on mandala symbolism, Carl Jung refers to the mandala as "the psychological expression of the totality of the self." Within everyone's psyche, to one degree or another, can be found the seed-center of the self surrounded by a chaotic maelstrom of issues, fears, passions and countless other psychological elements. It is the very disordered state of these elements that creates the discord and emotional imbalances from which too many of us suffer on a regular basis. The mandala is a template for the mind, a state of peace and order, a resolution to the chaos within. In Jung's words, "The severe pattern imposed by a circular image of this kind compensates the disorder and confusion of the psychic state -- namely, through the construction of a central point to which everything is related."

This central point is the absolute seat of the self, the anchor for all the extraneous elements of your environment and psyche. I refer to your environment and your psyche as if they were separate entities, but in reality the two are inextricably linked. The world within and the world without are indistinguishable as far as your self is concerned. Internal elements (ideas, emotions, obsessions) interact freely with external elements (news, relationships, taxes) in the interface that is your mind. In this way we can understand more clearly how certain patterns and symbolic elements from our most ancient origins have been internalized and carried through the ages, only to be unconsciously externalized in the beauty of the mandala.

Ritualistic mandalas from specific cultures display a style and variety of elements with specific significance to that culture. There are nearly as many types of mandalas as there have been societies in the history of Humankind. But the essence of the pattern of the mandala, the "squaring of the circle," is a basic motif in the architecture of so many dreams and fantasies whose unifying similarities stretch across the ages. The quaternary pattern imposed upon the circle symbolizes the application of a specific architecture upon the infinity of the cosmos. It gives the psyche a safe place upon which to stand, a solid foundation upon which it can gather itself to achieve completeness and harmony. Furthermore, the central point, or bindu, is the reference point for the self to identify with. Jung refers to this pattern as the "archetype of wholeness."

This ordering effect on the human psyche is not, Jung stresses, the result of conscious reflection or cultural effort. It is a pre-existing condition of consciousness that such patterns help bring it into focus or return to an earlier, more peaceful state. This is why Jung found the mandala to be present in so many cultures and mythologies spanning the globe as well as the history of Humankind itself. It is an integral part of the collective unconscious that is shared by every person that has ever lived. The mandala is an unconscious state in which all opposites come together and are united, where the polar aspects of both cosmos and personality can become one. This union of opposites is the very process by which we become whole, through which we find peace.

Source: <a href=http://www.mandalazone.com/essay-0302.html>Archetype of Wholeness</a>

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[b]See also:
[*] The Mandala Experience: Schizophrenia & Self-Disintegration[*] Mandala Coloring Books[*] Mandala Images