It is I Who AM the ALL

"It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the all. From me did the all come forth, and unto me did the all extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there." ~ Jesus Christ 

"We are all different expressions of one reality, different songs of one singer, different dances of one dancer, different paintings — but the painter is one." ~ Osho

"We live in succession, in division, in parts and particles. Meantime, within man, is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I am the source of all spiritual and material worlds. Everything emanates from Me. The wise who perfectly know this engage in My devotional service and worship Me with all their hearts." ~ The Bhagavad Gita

One of the things I have not been able to convey adequately in my posts so far is the sheer bliss one feels on a daily basis as a result of a kundalini awakening. As I read through my posts I realized that I have made a mention of the agony and pain of the cleansing way too many times without making a mention of what one receives as a result of going through the agony.

As your blockages are removed, you reveal more and more of your true self and your true self is happier, calmer, more at ease being yourself. You grow more and more blissful. This bliss is not a contrived happiness, it is your original state. The misery was contrived and created by the mind. 

The Lone Explorer is Not Alone

A common after effect of the first LSD experiments conducted by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert was that the test subject would become "God intoxicated," completely transformed into a spiritual seeker. Not necessarily someone that wanted to repeat the LSD experience, but someone that longed for the divine experience gained through the use of acid and wanted to get back to THAT. Many of these people later became meditators and Yogis. Alpert himself became the mystic Ram Dass.

Something very similar happened to me as a result of my kundalini experience. During the initial experience and for a year afterwards, I was in divine ecstasy. Literally in heaven. Heaven is the state of absolute union with no ego constraints on the conscious mind, no control mechanisms intruding between the soul and its communion with the higher self. From the day I had my first experience, I became obsessed with spirituality. This experience is so amazingly beautiful that one naturally wants to spend his entire time in this state.

Web of Life

Once experienced, there is no going back to just being your old self again. Two things have happened. You have been introduced to a different reality and know it exists. It's yours for the taking, complete with instruction manuals left behind by others who have been there. We call them holy books.

Prior to my awakening experience, the methods in those books, "do not covet" "do not steal" "do no harm to others" "let go of anger" seemed like formulas for a goody-two-shoes, meek individual. More like a social control mechanism using God as a bogeyman to scare you straight.

After my experience, I saw the books for what they were: codes of conduct the individual could use to focus on the task of attaining THAT and removing the temptations that keep you in the illusory state of everyday existence. It was simple; the awakened ones had provided you with the tools for removing the blindfold.

I just read the wonderful post The Broken Rosary by our newest contributor, Metaphysical MD. I was blown away. A touching and beautiful story and so relevant to the post I was about to write. This is exactly what Bhakti Yoga is all about. To have a longing for the divine and give your heart and soul to the quest. Instead of writing about Bhakti Yoga in a theoritical and clinical way, she has expressed the beauty of surrender and being enveloped by His grace when the boundaries fall apart and the seeker becomes one with THAT. I cannot hope to add anything better to the subject. So I decided to write a totally different post. 

Intersecting Ripples: the Vibrations We Give Off

In his previous post, JJ made a case for separating the experience of kundalini from the experience of the divine and to be objective and scientific about it. While I agree that one needs to be objective and not get carried away by each and every sensation and experience, I also realize that each experience is different. Kundalini experiences come in many flavors but connection to the divine and removal of a blindfold to show you the true nature of existence — as an emanation of that Higher Mind — is definitely one of them. At least in my case, I echoed the same sentiment as Ramakrishna's response when asked, "Have you seen God?" He said to the questioner, the person who later became Vivekananda, "I see him right now, as I see you, only clearer."

One does not "see" God. One realizes that there is nothing but God. He is not a person who looks like Santa Claus with a long flowing white beard. He is not a big shining light. ALL of creation is an emanation of the divine. It is this realization — as clear as day — with no possibility of doubt that is validated by ancient texts, both eastern and western. After that, regardless of whether I am in the state of samadhi or not, I always have an intellectual understanding that everything IS God.

Osho likens it to a fish that has never been out of water and is looking for this mystery substance called water. Until someday he is pulled out by a fisherman, the fish never knew he was swimming in water all along. Now that he is out of it, he realizes he was always in water. It's an analogy that can be applied to the human being that is in a quest for God except that in case of the human being, there is no possibility of being "pulled out of water." You cannot be pulled out of God, because everything that exists is a manifestation of that supreme universal Mind. 

You can be fooled by the senses into believing that you live an individual existence, separate from the rest of the universe. A kundalini awakening, an LSD experience, a near-death experience or shaktipat all act like the fisherman pulling you out of water and give you a glimpse of things as they really are, that Atman and Brahman are the same, one connected continuum, never separated, that you were swimming in the divine ocean all along. Unlike the fish that now knows water because it is outside of it, you glimpse the higher reality because the imaginary boundaries of the mind have fallen away momentarily, showing you that you were never separated from THAT.

Eventually you settle back down into the limited feeling of individuality in the physical body, but now, with a memory of the ecstatic experience, and now you want more of it. This is how one becomes a mystic, a spiritual seeker on the path.

Jesus said "When there are three Gods, they are Gods. When they are two or one, I am with Him." You don't see God, you become One with Him. It is reality we now perceive. It is the separation that was a myth.