Tummo and Inner Alchemy

Tummo (chandali) is one of the so-called “Six Dharmas of Naropa”, a practice aimed at bringing order and purity to the mind through working with the “red light” — the “activated” life energy, which is the direct support and the field for the mind’s manifestation.

However, despite being known primarily as a “practice of inner heat,” tummo is an integral path of inner alchemy, in which the physical, energetic, and psychic aspects of the human psychophysical complex are united, leading to purification, liberation, and the awakening of the mind. This practice is often called the “practice of the fierce woman” (चण्डाली — the fierce goddess of heat and passion), which emphasizes its connection with the feminine, wild, yet purifying and uplifting aspect of sacred energy — shakti or Shekhinah.

Technically, tummo involves working with the system of energetic channels (nadi), life “winds” (lung), and energetic “drops” (tigle). The central channel (avadhuti) runs from the crown to the base of the body and serves as the axis and support of body and mind. The task of the practice is therefore to bring the life winds (tonic pneuma, the active life force) into this central channel and retain them there. When this occurs, the psyche — whose processes are closely linked to the movement of the “red light” — also stabilizes, is purified, and shifts into a natural, i.e., ‘enlightened’ state. The main energetic center of tummo is the chakra in the navel area, where the syllable “A” is visualized as a tiny flame. Through the practice of “vase breathing” (kumbhaka), retention, and visualization, the fire of tummo is kindled from below, rising along the central channel and melting the tigle drops in the chakras: below the navel, in the heart, in the throat, and in the crown. This is accompanied by the manifestation of four levels of bliss, each of which is united with awareness of the empty nature of the mind.

Just as in the alchemical work the transmutation of matter leads to the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone — a substance capable of transforming any “impure” medium, tummo leads to a restructuring of the psychophysical complex of a being, making it capable of transforming itself and the world around it.

The role of the alchemical furnace — the athanor — in the practice of tummo is enacted by the human body, and the transforming fire is the kindled inner heat. The navel chakra is the retort in which the “sulfur” of spirit (awakened energy) flares up. Vase breathing, retention, and visualization of the syllable “A” are inner alchemical operations that lead to the heating of the substance, i.e., to the initial calcination.

When the bindu drop melts and descends along the central channel, it “awakens” each chakra, generating a special bliss within it. At that point, it is important to return the drop upward, completing the full alchemical circuit: from Earth (navel) — to Heaven (crown) — and down again, already transformed. Such a cycle corresponds to the alchemical “solve et coagula” — dissolution and coagulation — through which the magical body of light is born.

The very structure of the practice of tummo corresponds quite precisely to the classical stages of the Great Work: nigredo (the darkness of ignorance), albedo (illumination), rubedo (the fire of transformation), and the golden body (enlightenment).

The initial stage, when pranas (lung, “winds”) begin to enter the central channel, is accompanied by the disintegration of former mental and energetic bonds, which corresponds to the stage of nigredo. All ineffective modes of thinking, automatic reactions, and bodily tensions begin to melt and disintegrate under the pressure of the fire of awareness.

At the next stage, when the fire of tummo stabilizes and the bindu drops begin to melt, they release karmic traces, hidden tendencies, and emotional patterns. This is the purification of the “substance of mind” from its layers, corresponding to the stage of albedo, the stage of separating pure substances: sulfur (the active principle) is separated from mercury (the passive, receptive). In tummo this stage corresponds to awareness of bliss and emptiness as two sides of the single nature of the mind.

When the mind begins to move freely between states without losing clarity, when bliss becomes a constant background, the stabilization of the new state takes place. In tummo this corresponds to stable abiding in clarity, to recognizing all phenomena as manifestations of the mind. This is — citrinitas, the state of golden radiance, of emerging inner balance.

When the energy of awareness, purified and ordered, unites with emptiness in the experience of Clear Light, an alchemical union of sulfur and mercury occurs in perfect salt. In tummo this is the stage when bliss unites with videnie, and the Philosopher’s Stone of the mind arises: a mind that has itself become the space of realization, a vessel that needs no support. This is the red stage, the stage of rubedo, in which the mind can transform any polluted, obscured, or “base” states.

Quite obvious correspondences can be found between the “classical” alchemical stages or processes and the stages of the practice of tummo:

Calcination — the calcining of the navel center; kindling the primary heat.

Solution — dissolution of bindu in the heat, transition to a fluid state of mind.

Sublimation — the ascent of energy upward through the central channel; experiencing visions of light.

Coagulation — the unification of the melted drops in the navel, experiencing the four blisses.

Fermentation — the beginning of spontaneous radiance, the penetration of the Clear Light.

Exaltation and projection — the ability to radiate awareness into the outer world, to influence it in a transforming way.

Of special significance is the final act, often forgotten: projection. In alchemy, this is the transmission of the stone, its activation in the world; in tummo it is the ability of the mind to act in the world as a force transmuting the medium. At this stage the practitioner becomes a bearer of videnie (gnosis, prajna), capable of inducing transformations in others — as if “scattering light” effortlessly.

From the point of view of tummo, the “Philosopher’s Stone” is the ability of the mind to be empty and radiant, blissful and non-attachment. It is the capacity to transform obscurations into wisdom. And just as the Philosopher’s Stone can confer “nobility” on base metals, the practice of tummo can turn suffering, obscuration, anger, and greed — into fuel for light.

At the same time, as already noted, in the Tibetan tradition tummo is a practice of awakening the sacred hypostasis of Chandali — a wild, fierce, but wise aspect of Shakti, analogous to Uadjet, Lilith, Morena, or the awakened Shekhinah.

Just as classical Western alchemy regards the sulfur of the philosophers as the first principle, the energy of tummo can be regarded as the “flaming” hypostasis of the Shekhinah — its active, descending aspect operating within the medium. This is the energy that “tears the veil,” the womb of the universe in which the flame of birth and death flares up.

Like Hathor-Uadjet in the Egyptian tradition, Chandali does not submit to social or moral norms. She is a wild mother, a fire that demands from the practitioner complete openness and fearlessness. And therefore any approach to this energy is always an act of crisis, initiation and purification. Accordingly, the awakening of tummo is the awakening of that destructive-creative Wisdom that destroys the ego and burns illusions. Only through the fire of this wild Wisdom can the mind pass into a new phase — the state of pure perception, freedom from conditioning and false identities. From a Hermetic point of view, the fire of tummo is the response of Epinoia (the energy of revelation) to the call of Pronoia (divine thought).

The key moment of tummo is the concept of bliss, which is perceived in its highest sense — as the primordial, pure state of the mind. It rends illusions, transforms perception, and burns duality. It is precisely this ecstatic experience — bliss united with emptiness — that serves as the state in which the mind can comprehend Mahamudra, the Great Seal, sealing reality as a continuous and divine play of mind and energy.

Therefore tummo can be called the Tibetan form of a universal talismanic practice: working with the body as a vessel of manifested energy, in which Heaven and Earth, mind and Medium are united. The inner fire is both the alchemical furnace and the Sun of spirit, which dries up the waters of chaos and gives birth to a new gold of awareness.

Thus, tummo is the practice of turning the human being into a vessel of light, which requires purification of the channels, dissolution of the “drops,” and, consequently, the transformation of the inner fire into a radiance that dispels obscurations, converting their energy into wisdom and bliss.