My former student, Lila, likes to challenge most
every post on Facebook, saying I misunderstand Shakti, Kundalini, etc., and
then tells the story of her current unfolding, as if it were different from
what I am teaching. This is her way of
staying attached to me, yet rebelliously separate.
But, as the story of my own three years of Kundalini
experience may be relevant for some within the context of Advaita or that of
someone on a Bhakta path, I’ll recount a little of it below.
Lila asked on FB how I can talk about a Kundalini
path, if, as I said, the Kundalini snake ascended up the right spinal channel
instead of the central channel, and all Kundalini phenomena disappeared as soon
as I went to Mt. Baldy to study with Sasaki Roshi. Her current guide, Jan Esmann,
had said if the Kundalini ascended in any channel except the central channel,
it was a mistake.
My
response:
Lila, surely I can speak about the three years of Kundalini
awakening and experience that happened to me back in the late 1960s. The right channel was only the wrong channel
based on something Jan Esmann said. For me, Kundalini ascended in the right
channel, and it was painful, especially when it ran into my heart chakra. It repeatedly got stuck there for most of six
months or more, and was incredibly painful.
Even though the full body of the Kundalini snake could not rise through
the heart during that period, some slender strands of energy did continue up my
spine, into my brain and skull.
Later, the full Kundalini worm bore into my brain
and upwards to a point at the top of my skull, and then penetrated through my
skull into the space above.
At this point, the Kundlini began circulating
downwards, through my face, into my heart, gut and root chakra. It arose in the
root chakra, ascended into the brain, penetrated the skull and went outwards
into the space above, and from there began a return circulation through my
forehead, face, mouth, throat, into my heart, and downwards into my gut ending
up again in my root chakra.
However, it was the other associated experiences
which were most remarkable, not the actual Kundalini "snake" itself
moving up my spine. I have no evidence that ascending through the right channel
was wrong in any way.
During this two year period following ascension
into my brain, I became extraordinarily sensitive to the earth's electromagnetic
field, and to electricity in wires in the walls. I became very sensitive to the
electromagnetics from the coils in the mattress. I had to sleep on the
floor. I had to sleep always oriented in
a certain way to the earth’s magnetic field.
I could see in absolute darkness. It was as if I
had infrared vision. A starless, moonless deep black night was as if it were a
bright day for me. The moon's energy was cold and blue, and exposure to the
moon’s rays seemed to pull the life energies out of me. I had to hide from the moon’s rays around the
time of the full moon.
I could
feel the life energies in trees, grass and plants. I could “commune” with trees and plants,
something I can still do today. I could “align” to their energies. The same with animals; I could feel what it
was like to be them and to experience their experiences.
I had a strong and sustained illusion that I had
become a woman giving birth to a truth child. I literally felt the fetus and
the birth process. Colors and sounds were vivid and stood out in marked
contrast to the way I had experienced them prior to Kundalini. All feelings were intensified also. Everything was intense, because everything
was now experienced thoughtlessly, without the filters of mind.
I was awash in uncontrolled energies everywhere,
inside my body and outside in the environment and I felt assaulted and
overwhelmed by them. I didn’t know how
to handle their intensity.
I did nothing to manipulate these energies, I only
experienced them. My practice then was straight Ramana-style, self-inquiry,
trying to find the origin of the I-thought.
This was my only practice.
Almost all of these Kundalini experiences disappeared
the day I stepped onto Mt. Baldy, except for occasional movements in the spine
and sensitivity to the energies in life forms. What happened then, almost from
the first moment of formal sitting in the Zendo, is that I would go into a
no-self Samadhi, a unity experience with the totality of the world, within minutes
of beginning meditation. This continued for the entire three months I was at
Mt. Baldy. “I,” Ed Muzika disappeared,
and “I” became the world: the trees, the sound of the wind, the blue sky. I no longer had a body or mind; I was the
entirety of space and of everything in space.
I was the totality of the world.
Thus, the subjective Kundalini experiences
vanished, and in its place was the constant experience of space and unity with
all phenomena within that space. At Mt. Baldy, I learned to go into samadhi
almost immediately, and experienced that hundreds of times when there and
thousands after I left. The Kundalini process as experienced then disappeared
and became no-self, I am everything experiences.
I was well on the way to an identification of me
or self with emptiness, the space inside and outside the body, and the phenomena
of the world. One more step was to come
later with Robert Adams, which was to obtain a permanent identification with
emptiness as a primary identification, and then with that which lies beyond
emptiness, the absolute, the noumenal.
Lila, it is in this circumstance that I can speak
of my Kundalini awakening and experiences over 40 years ago. It is old news. New for you, old news for me.
However, during this period I lived in a world of
energies, of magic, where the walls and ceiling breathed and was alive. Where everything in nature was radiant and
had energies associated with it that gave it a sense of sentience, of personal relatedness
to me. In a sense it was all me, but
none of it looked or felt like it did before the Kundalini experiences. The
entire world was alive, sentient and interacted with me.
This is why I find Deeya and Myron’s experiences
so enticing, because I lived in that world for three years, and can still feel
it around them, once again: the world of magic and cocreation, where it and I
were not separate, one experiencing the other, but of collaborative experience.
who was the me here?
ReplyDeleteIn a sense it was all me, but none of it looked or felt like it did before the Kundalini experiences. The entire world was alive, sentient and interacted with me.
The Ed me or the Self me?
Thanks for clarifying.