Although a modern scientific investigation of Kundalini activation is essential in our scientific age, I don’t think we should forget the value of the ancient science, set out in the Tantras, The Secret Of The Golden Flower, and hermetical texts, that first elucidated the Kundalini event. We should acknowledge the importance of the seer/scientists of Tradition, because their insights are often a help in orienting oneself during the crises of a Kundalini awakening,
This is particularly the case with the guidance offered by the doctrine of the chakras and the Great Elements. A lot of people undergoing an activation experience visual disturbance and digestive problems. The two functions, sight and digestion, are related. The Tantric system explains this by allotting to the third, belly chakra the element of Fire, the influx from transcendence of a fiery, purging and consuming force. Modern man is very visually oriented. The cortices of the brain that deal with eyesight are dominant. This perhaps explains how an awakening can become painful if we seek to force the energy upwards too quickly without dwelling in the ‘darkness visible’ and emotional vortex of the belly. This can lead to hallucination, an impulsive driving of what is essentially unconditioned consciousness into visual images, a forcing of the energy outwards into material manifestations of the pingala nadi.
The importance of the fourth chakra, the Heart Centre, is obvious, as the ‘place’ or ‘state’ or ‘gear change’ where human centrality is revealed (the higher chakras being, in some sense, more-than-human.) If the rising Kundalini bypasses this chakra, which can easily be the case, as this ‘place’ feels like a loss of identity, then the higher influxes can become deranged. It’s said that, at the moment of death, the life force gathers in the heart before exiting through the top of the head. I don’t know anything about this from personal experience, but I'm convinced that preparing oneself for death, a healthy experiencing of ending in everything and at every moment, takes place in the heart chakra.
As a general rule, a lot of the problems reported with Kundalini activations, are the result of unresolved, outwards directed, conditioning being carried upwards into the higher chakras, where it runs amok under the sway of the increasing energy.
The throat chakra is a case in point. In the traditional system this is said to be the ‘place’ or ‘state’ where space/time enters the material world out of transcendence. This is obviously unsettling, because to experience the place and time I’m in (sitting on a balcony in Thailand) as — not my ordinary aggregation of eyesight, touch, taste, sound and thought — but as intense and unconditioned energy can be disorienting. It’s like being here and being nowhere at the same time. Rational constructs about how time and space are perceived, or analyzed ‘scientifically’, aren’t much help either.
The sixth, Brow chakra is called the Command Chakra, and there’s a stability and certainty here (the certainty that Kundalini isn’t a malfunction or hallucination), except that, according to the ancient tradition, the Command is not mine, it lies beyond my will, and has been working all along, and all the way up from the base of the spine, without my clear perception of it. ‘It (or ‘She’, I feel the ancients are right in making Kundalini female) does you.’ This, again, is challenging, because it could be seen as a denial of one’s free will. I want to participate ethically in the world, and be a force for good of my own free will, but how can this be if my mental, indeed physical, make-up and destiny is being formed by something whose essence is outside me?
Again, an ancient tradition — the doctrine of prenatal destiny — can help here. We have chosen this time and this place to be this particular person in a former state of being. This is most definitely not reincarnation as it’s ordinarily understood.
There can surely be no transference of the personal ‘I’ from one lifetime to another. The personal ‘I’ dies just as the body dies and the senses die. What carries over into the future, and out of the past into the present, is energy, and impersonal patterns of energy, which have their own form of will and choice. There seems to me to be a far greater chance of freedom in this traditional teaching — impersonal though it is — than in the modern neo-Darwinian reduction of life and evolution to the blind working of genes under natural selection. The denial of free will in much of modern scientism is an issue that the vocal advocates of neo-Darwinism sidestep. The ancient doctrines face the issue of death and ending more honestly than the selfish gene.
The importance of the fourth chakra, the Heart Centre, is obvious, as the ‘place’ or ‘state’ or ‘gear change’ where human centrality is revealed (the higher chakras being, in some sense, more-than-human.) If the rising Kundalini bypasses this chakra, which can easily be the case, as this ‘place’ feels like a loss of identity, then the higher influxes can become deranged. It’s said that, at the moment of death, the life force gathers in the heart before exiting through the top of the head. I don’t know anything about this from personal experience, but I'm convinced that preparing oneself for death, a healthy experiencing of ending in everything and at every moment, takes place in the heart chakra.
As a general rule, a lot of the problems reported with Kundalini activations, are the result of unresolved, outwards directed, conditioning being carried upwards into the higher chakras, where it runs amok under the sway of the increasing energy.
The throat chakra is a case in point. In the traditional system this is said to be the ‘place’ or ‘state’ where space/time enters the material world out of transcendence. This is obviously unsettling, because to experience the place and time I’m in (sitting on a balcony in Thailand) as — not my ordinary aggregation of eyesight, touch, taste, sound and thought — but as intense and unconditioned energy can be disorienting. It’s like being here and being nowhere at the same time. Rational constructs about how time and space are perceived, or analyzed ‘scientifically’, aren’t much help either.
The sixth, Brow chakra is called the Command Chakra, and there’s a stability and certainty here (the certainty that Kundalini isn’t a malfunction or hallucination), except that, according to the ancient tradition, the Command is not mine, it lies beyond my will, and has been working all along, and all the way up from the base of the spine, without my clear perception of it. ‘It (or ‘She’, I feel the ancients are right in making Kundalini female) does you.’ This, again, is challenging, because it could be seen as a denial of one’s free will. I want to participate ethically in the world, and be a force for good of my own free will, but how can this be if my mental, indeed physical, make-up and destiny is being formed by something whose essence is outside me?
Again, an ancient tradition — the doctrine of prenatal destiny — can help here. We have chosen this time and this place to be this particular person in a former state of being. This is most definitely not reincarnation as it’s ordinarily understood.
There can surely be no transference of the personal ‘I’ from one lifetime to another. The personal ‘I’ dies just as the body dies and the senses die. What carries over into the future, and out of the past into the present, is energy, and impersonal patterns of energy, which have their own form of will and choice. There seems to me to be a far greater chance of freedom in this traditional teaching — impersonal though it is — than in the modern neo-Darwinian reduction of life and evolution to the blind working of genes under natural selection. The denial of free will in much of modern scientism is an issue that the vocal advocates of neo-Darwinism sidestep. The ancient doctrines face the issue of death and ending more honestly than the selfish gene.
Paul, this is a great post. It's like the life progression goes Metaphysical > Physical > Metaphysical > Physical > Metaphysical.
ReplyDeleteThe Interplay of the Physical and Metaphysical
You start with the "doctrine of prenatal destiny," a Metaphysical event which forms embryo, fetus, gives birth, Physical events, back to the Metaphysical to awaken Kundalini, which per my previous post rearranges the Physical being, and, when fully and correctly installed, expands consciousness, the Metaphysical again.