Does Truth Drive You Crazy?

What are thoughts? Particularly the intuitive eye-openers that change one’s life? The place of Intelligence is in the heart, not the brain. Truth is first experienced in the chest region, not the head. This can be scary, because when Kundalini is first awakened, Her most immediate and explosive impact is felt in the brain and in the general area of the head — crushing pressure from the back of the head, needle-like darts of energy from under the face. The region around the chest and heart seems to get by-passed. This accords with the Tantra, which say that the heart center is difficult to open, and is first experienced as a “darkness blotted out by smoke.” Yet the heart is where truth is manifested, and where Intelligence awakens.

When the heart center opens a curious reversal takes place. The brain becomes still. The brain remains immensely alive biologically, but it floats, in a state of suspension that must have something to do with the effect of Kundalini on the cerebro-spinal fluid. Instead of creating thought — the limited, repetitive treadmill of what we think 24/7 — the brain is able to wait. In this state of suspension, packets of energy rise from the chest region. They can literally be seen coming, like tiny explosions from the surface of the sun, moving upwards from the heart.

Heart Chakra Goddess

The brain knows what these quanta of intelligence mean before it registers them as thought. There is great power in this state of neural suspension. Angry or fearful energy can be simply seen coming, left unregistered, and turned into free energy. Influxes of truth from the heart center can be allowed to flower into words and ideas. These words and ideas, however — and this is the problem — may well strike one, later on, as crazy. We may feel that they open us up to a reality we’re not used to and don’t want any part of. Truth that rises from the heart center and flowers into neural structures — these new words and ideas — can go against everything we’ve been taught, and everything that we think about ourselves. For instance:

1. Other people don’t exist. Other people are the mere product of my senses. This seems a horrible thing to assert, and not good for one’s career, social well-being, or love-life. In fact, it’s unforgivable, unless I accept the less easy truth that I don’t exist. I am a mere product of my senses.

2. My male body is female. It craves women because women are closer to its real center than it is. This one perplexes me so much that I’ve never been able to figure out how it works the other way round.

3. The universe pours out of my face:

• I know that if I dare
• Look at it, I’ll see her eyes.

4. I’ve just died, and come back to life, but I can’t remember it.

The Tantric texts speak of two subtle channels that lie inside the susumna nadi, the central spinal channel, one inside the other. They must have something to do with the passage of Kundalini through the cerebro-spinal fluid. The first is called the brahma nadi, and the second, even subtler channel is called the citrini nadi. They are the conduits of upwards-rising, pure consciousness, the pathways of intelligent energy as it pulses upwards from the heart.

When heart energy flowers in the brain, the things we think seem crazy. This is why Kundalini teachings are traditionally accompanied by danger warnings. The risk of insanity is real, particularly as pertains to fantasies of self-aggrandizement. Stillness is essential. The state of neural suspension, of letting intelligence rise from the heart, must be carried over into everyday life so that we remain balanced, even when we are facing difficulties.

In Sanskrit, the forehead chakra is called Ajna. Ajna means “command,” not in the sense of rigid control, but in the sense of maintaining our balance as crazy truths keeps striking us.