Kundalini and the Blood System

At a certain point, when Kundalini irradiates the head with light and the presence of other universes are felt, the beating of the heart suddenly absorbs consciousness. Prana, which is registered as a lifting light, gives way to a sensation of being sucked into, and overwhelmed by, one's own heartbeat in a way that's different from our sporadic, everyday awareness of the pulse. The steady pumping pressure is accompanied by a feeling of being gripped and driven forward through space and time without our choosing it. Sometimes the sexual organs become engorged without any sexual contact or even consciousness of sex. If one is fortunate enough to be embracing one's partner at the time, his/her visual impact — the sexy eyes, alluring features and comely figure that so entranced and overpowered us a moment ago — are swallowed by this magnified beating of the heart. They literally disappear in the presence of the enhanced heart rhythm. And, strangely, ejaculation becomes impossible.

Kundalini awakes when there is a suspension — or at least a stilling, and a natural control — of bodily processes that are normally autonomic. Initially, this occurs in three areas:

• Neural activity (experienced as thought)
• Breathing
• Ejaculation.

Processes which usually occur automatically are absorbed into a conscious stillness that generates great heat and energy. In all three areas, there is a reversal of "reality" as reality's transcendental source draws near. We experience the fact that consciousness creates the brain, and not vice-versa; that consciousness creates the lungs and respiratory system, and not vice-versa; and that consciousness creates the nervous and reproductive systems, and not vice-versa. And that prana and Kundalini are the "tools" it uses to do so. In effect, all of human biology — whether visible like the vascular system or concealed like Kundalini — is but an expression of consciousness.

Something similar happens to the heartbeat and to the circulation of the blood at those moments when we are absorbed into it. There's something about the heartbeat that's harder to approach, and to still, than breathing or even orgasm. There's a blind thrust that's nearer to the life force, and yet seems to bear no relation to our conscious, everyday being. The far-fetched metaphors of traditional love poetry take on a literal truth: the steady, spondaic pressure in our chests could as well be another person's heartbeat or our own, and, in a sense, it is. One hears the beating heart and feels the blood pumping through the body of a being who is as much the other person — any other person — as it is us. We approach the Atman, or Real Self, who is also everybody else. Love becomes the path to transcendence.

How one gets a handle on the heartbeat and stills the circulation of the blood is difficult to say. There are hints in traditional literature. The "albedo" or "white work" in alchemy, which refers to the action of prana, is superseded by the "rubedo" or "red work" on deeper physical structures through the action of the blood and "seeing with the heart."

Rudolph Steiner speaks of the "etherisation of the blood." "Tummo," the "blessed, inner heat" of Tibetan yoga is an authenticated physical fact. Milarepa meditated naked in the Himalayan snow and melted it for six feet around him by transferring heat from his blood system to the surface of his skin. These indications may help us, but, as with the other autonomic processes (thought, breath, and orgasm) it's best simply to let Kundalini bring one there, take one into it, and do it.