Beyond the Relaxation Response (Part 2)

The particular genius of Dr. Benson (see Part One of this post for background) lies as much in his packaging and marketing approach as it does in the actual process. The first two steps in his method, The Relaxation Response, discussed in Part One are common to most serious Western meditation methods imported from the East.

However, many teachers, including Dr. Benson, appear to gloss over or avoid one of the most challenging issues of all meditation methods and that is how to control wayward thought processes, the issue Dr. Benson identifies in his second step as "passively disregarding interfering thoughts."

Down time Is Self-Remembering Time

As opposed to the techniques in his method that he deems active, or "physical transformation processes," this process is defined by many, including Dr. Benson, as a passive process. He says so in the wording of his second step: "Passively disregarding interfering thoughts." Contrary to Dr. Benson, I believe the practitioner must take an active approach in quieting mental activity during meditation.

This uncontrolled mental activity has many names; one of the most colorful is Taoist expression: "the ten-thousand things." There are others like, the inner dialogue, monkey mind — all the crazy secret thoughts and schemes, the dialogs with ourselves interferes not only with meditation, they also stifle our endeavors to realize our full potential.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to control the mind directly, almost impossible to tell the mind to just "shut up" or try what Dr. Benson calls "passive disregarding." We need a kind of subterfuge or "handle" to stop the mind from running wild. Each teacher has his own approach. Yet frequently, the discussion over the best approach devolves into acrimony. I recommend two approaches to "handling" the 10,000 things. It’s an attempt to "sidestep" the mind completely by giving it something banal to do.

And that is letting the little voice in your head — what psychologists call “inner speech” — count your breaths to yourself as you breathe. So, in a series of four beats, you would count: On inhale, one-two-three-four; On hold, one-two-three-four; On exhale, one-two-three-four; On hold, one-two-three-four. Start over. Inhale-four, hold-four, exhale-four, hold-four. Start over. This counting activity occupies the mind just enough to forestall the 10,000 things. Some practitioners have even found that the counting drops away of its own accord after a while as diaphragmatic deep breathing becomes second nature.

A second approach to counting entails walking, that is, timing the breath cycle over a given number of strides, always breathing through the nose, of course. So you would time one breath cycle over a series of steps, for example, inhale one breath over four steps, hold that breath over four steps, exhale that breath over four steps, hold over four steps. Start over. In this way, the activity of walking and counting occupies the mind even more than inner speech alone does; it compounds its efficacy, especially if the practitioner lets himself become mindful of the oneness of nature and his being, the sights and sounds of nature come alive in him, thereby subduing the diversions of material life.

Now for the third transformational step and the physical changes it produces. Adding this next step takes the meditation process "Beyond the Relaxation Response." And it involves implementing “the backward-flowing method.”

My familiarity with the “the backward-flowing method” stems from extensive first-hand experience with Taoist meditation, detailed in my book Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time. Written in narrative form, the book describes how I was given a copy of The Secret of the Golden Flower by a stranger in Paris during the early 1970s.

I was a bad actor at the time, so I put this book away for over a year. Then one day, as my life began to spin further out of control, I picked up the book and began reading it. Soon after, I started to meditate. At first, I didn't understand the text. Slowly, however, I began to "figure out" what to do.

I became so involved in the meditation that I left Paris to live in a small village in the south of France. The experience was one day, one page at a time; I didn't know what to expect, had no idea there would be a dramatic outcome. I had never heard the word, Kundalini. This was 1972. And Gopi Krishna's book wasn't available yet, not in my tiny French village, that is.

St. Jean, The House Where I practiced GFM in 1972

Page by page I worked my way through The Secret of the Golden Flower until one day, while meditating, I noticed something different in my breathing. In Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time, I describe the moment thusly:

“Observing my breath as I sit one morning, I am aware that it has the property of direction. At each inhalation the hitherto imperceptible wind in my belly appears to eddy slightly at the bottom of my abdomen as it descends before taking an upward circular course. Or so it appears to me. Down the back, then up the front, in a circular motion.

"Something clicks. I remember the words ‘backward-flowing method’ in The Secret of the Golden Flower. Words I'd passed over a hundred times, never having a clue as to what they meant, never imagining they might be important. I break off to look for the passage. In two quick flips, I‘ve located the text, ‘At this time one works at the energy with the purpose of making it flow backward and rise, flow down to fall like the upward spinning of the sun-wheel…in this way one succeeds in bringing the true energy to its original place. This is the backward-flowing method.’”

Yes, diaphragmatic breathing is the key to stabilizing heart rate, but the key to causing the energy to flow upward to the brain is the ‘backward-flowing method.’ Again it works like pump-priming, that is, reversing the direction of the breath-energy begins the process of drawing a distilled form of seminal fluid (cervical fluid in the case of a woman) up the spinal column. This passage from my book describes what happened after I reversed my breath:

“I visualize a plumb-line and close my eyes half-way. I command the breath to change direction and it obeys. I am elated at receiving confirmation from the book. What I don’t yet realize is that this is the last time I will direct the meditation process. From now on I am on automatic pilot. I remember the words of Ram Dass: At first, you do it; later, it does you. Action to attain non-action.

“For a week I observe my breath circulate in the opposite direction without noticing any effect. I go back to my uninspired routine: walking, cooking, meditating. Then, two weeks later, about the length of time it takes the backward-flowing process to become permanent, there’s something new. On the day in question, I feel a sensation at the base of my spine like the cracking of a small egg and the spilling out of its contents. For the next month, I observe the fluid-like contents of the egg trickle out of its reservoir and slowly begin to climb my spine. What is this fluid? I can’t describe it exactly. It seems to emanate from the base of the spine and press upward. Each time I sit to meditate it has risen a half an inch higher.”

I believe — and I discuss it in detail in my book — that The Secret of the Golden Flower contains a safe, reliable method of taking one's meditation practice beyond the Relaxation Response, so much so that I have modernized it into a method for contemporary Westerners. I call it Golden Flower Meditation or GFM. Of course, there are many methods; it's impossible to know them all; some, it seems, are very close to GFM.

Now the ‘backward-flowing method’ may be the key to arousing kundalini. But it’s a big step to consider because there’s no turning back. I got confirmation of this fact first hand, for shortly after I willed my breath-energy (in men, a distilled form of semen) to change directions, the Kundalini activation process began. Yes, there were glitches, but overall using The Secret of the Golden Flower to activate Kundalini has been a restorative process — physically, mentally, psychically, spiritually. And I believe it can be so for others.

When I met with him in Kashmir during the summer of 1977, Gopi Krishna termed my experience, “One of the most far-reaching, permanent Kundalini awakenings I’ve encountered. Rare, very rare, indeed.”

The Backward-Flowing Method, The Secret of the Golden Flower (Routledge & Kegan Paul)

I ascribe the positive results I achieved in activating the restorative powers of kundalini to the secret “backward-flowing” technique in The Secret of the Golden Flower.

Adding this one extra step to the two-step Relaxation Response process awakens the hidden powers dormant in every body and primes the body for restoration, renewal, and an explosion induced by a flood of psychic fuel into the nervous system. So I prescribe a three-step transformational process:

1. The development of systematic diaphragmatic breathing.
2. The use of diaphragmatic breathing to control heart rate.
3. The moment you detect the property of movement in your breath-energy, change its direction by mentally guiding it — the backward-flowing method.

The transformations that results from employing the “backward-flowing method,” the secret techniques in ancient Taoist texts that I ultimately deciphered, were used by the ancients for reliable Kundalini arousal. In a future post, we’ll examine GFM from a scientific perspective and learn how it produces standardized results.