Beings of the Cosmos

I get jacked up when I hear people speak of fear. When they are going through pain and suffering while this Kundalini Fire is purging them from the inside. Reason is I know what is happening; I know the end result. I know where it's headed. I know how the system works. It's all part of the master plan. And once you know the master plan, the fear just vanishes. It's like you're stuck on a scary ride in an amusement park. You're strapped in, but you've never heard about what happens when you're dropped from 200 meters in free fall.

The ego wants to know. It wants to calculate so that it can have a nice bow wrapped around its conclusion and say, "I saw it all along." Well, the thing is this is a process the ego can't know about. In fact, the ego is the only variable inside you that cannot know where things are headed. Because it's slowly dying. Not in the true sense of death, but in the sense of new life. All things must be destroyed in order to be renewed. Such is the law. Fact is when you are dropped from a 200 meter height, yes, you're strapped in, but you still feel the fear of uncertainty. And this fear must go. In removing fear, you develop faith.

How are you to heal others, speak in God's good name, and speak the inner truths of the universe, unless you have faith. In yourself. Yes. The process is to build Willpower. Without willpower, your inner powers are nothing. Willpower moves everything, from your thoughts, to your emotions, to your life. And now you've dropped! You're diving down 200 meters in free fall, feeling the fear in the pit of your stomach. And boom. You survived. And lived to tell your story.

Way up high, you couldn't know about it. That's the secret. The secret is that you are safe. You are safe in the mind of the All, which is God, where you are its thought in its eternal dream. You are safe. You can't die, you won't die. Nay, your life is important cause you are going to change everything. By becoming the change, you will induce change in the lives of hundreds of people. You will communicate. To thousands.

You weren't born a prince, but you will end up a king. Never fear. Fear binds the ego and feeds it illusive thoughts. It lowers your vibration, lowers your emotion, lowers your Willpower. And most importantly, lowers your inspiration. Inspiration is the key to going through this process. If you are inspired, in-spirit, you will resonate a higher frequency of thought and emotion. you will induce others, put a smile on their faces, raise their vibrations. You will change everything. You are a warrior in God's army. This is a fact. But you are in training.

Alex Grey's depiction of the Kundalini awakening event

You're Neo in the Matrix. But even Neo had to learn to control his powers in order to use them. A quote from Spiderman always resonated with me. "With great power, comes great responsibility." How are you measure up to this great responsibility until you learn to control your power.

And fear is your test. It will test you for a long time. New doors will be opened, new karmas thrown your way. Why? So you can learn to defeat your fear. Listen. You were never born, you will never die. This world is an illusion. This is a fact corroborated by modern science. Everything around you is empty space, including you. You are a point of consciousness localized in a physical body, in a material universe. The kundalini raises your vibration, thereby raising consciousness and making you  able to see beyond your normal frame of mind. You start to see like a Demi-God. Now that's a lot of responsibility. Cause now you have a mission. Your mission is to tell others about this. Ones who are poor, who are suffering, who are hungry. Who are down on their faith. They need YOU. And you will change everything. Give it time.

Hindu Chakra System, Kabbalistic Tree of Life, and Egyptian Caduceus

The human body's spiritual framework works like this. Your aura has layers. These layers contain different subtle bodies. Physical body first, then astral body with the emotional nature of karma, then your lower mental body partaking in the moving of the astral, then higher mental, partaking in the lower spiritual body and its connection, and finally your spiritual body of light. The Qabalah is the blueprint of all existence. It contains within itself everything in this Solar System. The 4 elements, 12 zodiac, 7 ancient planets. It states that this World consists of 4 worlds in one, all existing at the same time. These worlds are as follows: Earth, the physical universe; Air, the mental or rational universe; Water, the astral or emotional universe; and Fire, the spiritual universe or White Light.

So the human being is a totality of the 4 elements. These elements are found in the lowest 4 chakras. Kundalini awakens all the chakras since the "snake" travels upwards through the spinal column terminating in the head. And the charkas are found in the subtle bodies along the points of the spinal column. Once fully awakened, the chakras are all awakened and function at top speed.

Hence the emotional and mental turmoil after awakening that continues for years. It's basically too much for the old ego to handle all at once. Coupled with the spiritual heart awakening and boom, you have a whole lot of skeletons in the closet that appear quite scary because  you experience them in real time. Every thought is as real as you and me. Scary stuff for the ego cause it's been hiding a lot of demons for a long time. So look at the elements in isolation. The Qabalists termed the name of God to be YHVH, otherwise called the Tetragrammaton in the Qabalah. Yod-fire, Heh-water, Vav-air and final Heh-earth. Four elements, seven chakras.

The Tetragrammaton-YHVH

The four elements are found in the lowest four chakras. The highest three chakras are of the Aethyr variety. What is Aethyr? Spirit. A kundalini awakening is essentially an awakening of the Spirit. Hence the awakening of all of the chakras at once. Your ultimate goal is the crown. The crown is non-dual, hence it doesn't contain karma. The chasm between the ego and Higher God-Self is called the Abyss. Ego disappears once you have crossed the Abyss. Everything below the Abyss contains the ego. The Abyss is the place where the so called "Devil" exists. He guards the abyss. The "Devil" is duality. If there is God, and there is God, then in terms of duality it must also mean that its arch-nemesis exists as well. The Devil! But he only exists in the mind.

Once you have crossed the duality of the mind, the Devil and his demonic minions (fallen angels) disappear. Fact is they never even existed in the first place. Only in your head, only in your mind.

The ego developed as a result of that illusion, to separate good from evil. Ego feeds on fear, fear feeds on karma and karma exists as a part of past conditioning. Past conditioning is found in memory. Memory is found in events. Events are found in time and space. And at the root of it all we have nothingness and its opposite, pure unlimited potential. The Holy fire. The White Light. This limitless existence is only limited by the degree of consciousness within you. And the degree of consciousness and its vibration is limited by the perceptions of the ego.

The name of Jesus, the Pentagrammaton-YHShinVH

The name of Jesus is very peculiar and symbolic in nature. Jesus is essentially the prototype of the kundalini awakening process. His Hebrew name is Jeshua, spelled YHShinVH, otherwise called the Pentagrammaton in the Qabalah. In other words, Fire, water, Hebrew letter Shin, Air, Earth. The four elements with the letter Shin as the reconciler. Now what is the Letter Shin, this letter symbolizing the element of the Holy Fire in the Qabalah? Therein lies the answer to who Jesus really was and why now you are assuming the role of Jesus. As he prophesized when he said he would come back. The letter Shin consists of three strokes symbolizing three flames. These three flames are termed the threefold flame of the soul in the Qabalah. In other words, the KUNDALINI. Ida on one side, Pingala on the other and Sushumana in the middle. So when Jesus said he would return, he basically said that all the world will eventually evolve and have a kundalini awakening and transformation as he did.

Simple stuff, veiled in allegory, found in symbols and numbers. All of this is God's master plan. And you are part of it. In fact in a microcosm, you are the universe. Every human being is a microcosm of the macrocosm. The macrocosm is the solar system we are in, with its center as the sun, the source of Light. The sun's power is found in your chest in the spiritual heart centre. This is our soul (Sol) and its connection to the Light of the Sun. Around the sun are the powers of the planets of our Solar System. Kundalini awakening opens up the powers of these planets inside you. These are the powers of the Higher Self, or God-Self. With Aethyr as the medium of thought and vibration you become an antennae to the vibrations within this solar system.

But first, you gotta go through a lot of cleansing. Remember, great power, great responsibility. God wants you to be a King or Queen; it's just a matter of time. A matter of cleansing, a matter of testing, and a matter of building you up to be a vehicle for this higher power. So never despair, never fear, it's all an illusion. It's Maya. This world you see and perceive is not real. What is real is the power and light inside you. And once you've traversed the path, and opened up your own inner universe, attained to the higher powers, unleashed the psychic powers of the chakras through hard karmic work, you will see the ultimate light, you will see the end of your journey here. And at the point of your physical death awaken in a different solar system to learn of its lessons. This is truth, let those with ears hear.

Casting Pearls Before Swine

For some reason I have not been able to read and forget the second paragraph of Neven Paar's last post, Spiritual Evolution. It’s hung around in my brain and while I did write a comment to his brilliant post, something more begs to be written. In the second paragraph of his post he writes: “Don't bother explaining yourself. You will be persecuted if you do. People are afraid of things they don't understand and base their judgments on their fears. Instead, don't speak about the light; BE the light. Become the source of light and lead the way. Others won't understand, but they will be intrigued, inspired. They will follow. Become special through your actions and others will be convinced. You can speak of riches all you want, but once you share them with others, only then will they believe you. Only then will they want to have the riches for themselves, too. This is your purpose. This is why you had an awakening. To open the eyes of others so that they too might see the light as you do. Only then will you be fulfilled. You will find the unity which you seek.”

I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with the first three sentences because it is true that actions, not words lead the way. Jesus said, “By their fruits you will know them.” He didn’t say by their words or what they share. People are afraid of things that they don’t understand and that fear takes many forms — dismissing, rationalizing, faulty logic, strategies the ego uses to prevent the individual who has awakened from recognizing the dream of who they thought they were. Just try saying to someone “You are not who you think you are” and, at least in my case, you will met with some very funny looks. The safest way to navigate through an awakening — until the awakening experience achieves critical mass — is to BE. Gandhi knew this, “BE the change you want to see in the world.” He didn’t say speak about, or share this change. He said BE THE CHANGE.

Where I find myself disagreeing with Neven’s post is in the following three or so sentences: "Become special through your actions and others will be convinced. You can speak of riches all you want but once you share them with others, only then will they believe you. Only then will they want to have the riches for themselves, too."

In my experience, sharing with others doesn’t mean others believed me. I am very careful to limit my sharing to what I have experienced, namely the rising of energy up through my spine on two occasions and the corresponding effects. I will write more about this later in the post.

But the final three sentences beginning, “This is your purpose…” stuck with me. There have been times in life when I have read something and it’s like the words screamed out at me from the page. Reading these last three sentences was like that. I read them and my soul cried YES. At some level I know this. At the same time my ego groaned inwardly as it sensed that, having given up on attempting to touch, move and inspire people with my experience concerning the transformative energy within all of us, I just might now try again. Reading these last three sentences hit at my very core and woke me up from a tranquilized complacency I have been in. A complacency rooted in resignation.

When I found Mahayana Buddhism in 1988, I had no idea that there was anything to be learned from it. I was disillusioned with the Catholic dogma I had been brought up with. It wasn't validated by my own experiences, so I began looking for something more authentic. I loved Buddhism for its own sake, not for anything I might "get" from it. When Buddha said it was possible to become awakened in one lifetime — while not understanding what he meant — I had a childlike faith in the ultimate truth of his words. I was also clear that I didn't want it for myself, but rather for others. This wasn't an an ego projection on my part, but a sincere wish to share so that everyone might be able to access to the riches within themselves.

Buddha

As I set off on my Buddhist spiritual journey, wanting only to share my discoveries with others, I found myself feeling not connected with these same others, in spite of my passionate desire to become involved. The meditation sessions were very difficult. I often felt like quitting, but something kept bringing me back. I was the most reluctant and resistant Buddhist imaginable. Yet I loved the Buddha passionately. I read all the sutras and complicated Abhidarma texts, but the meditation practice — when I was alone with myself — was torture most of the time.

My discomfort with fellow spiritual people stems from feeling uncomfortable with anything that smacks of specialness. Looking back now, I realize I sensed the presence of spiritual egotism without knowing its provenance. I sensed the veiled superiority that many on a spiritual path exude. I wanted to distance myself from it, yet I craved the teachings. It was the teachings and an overwhelming inner pull which kept me in the Buddhist environment for almost 10 years.

Then in 1998 I experienced the first rising of energy up my spine, in a non-Buddhist, non-spiritual setting. Being familiar with mindfulness through meditation, I connected fully to the energy and noticed that it didn't appear to move too far up my spine, but the effects of this experience in the weeks and months following were transformative — physically, mentally and emotionally.

There are so many theories flying around about this energy that it is easy to become lost. I hear so many accounts of energy — often referred to as Kundalini — rising up the spine. And with each account I find myself referring back to my own experience, as this is the only authentic evidence I have. I cannot rely on interpretations of the experience, only on the actual experience, the actual rising of the energy and its corresponding effects.

Because this experience was not accompanied by any great spiritual insights and because I had no idea of this energy existed, I didn't speak about it much. I didn't share with people because I didn't think that it meant anything.

So where is this post going? Back to Neven's words, "Only when you share them with others, will they then believe you." This has not been my experience. I began to speak and share. I was met with either blank looks or avoidance of eye contact. Rapid excuses to leave, to go or do something else. For about a year I shared openly in a blog which I wrote reverently about the physical, mental and spiritual changes I was undergoing using my body as a laboratory. I wrote and shared until eventually I began to be written and shared out. I believe that to have a spiritual awakening that is relatively smooth, it is imperative that there be a desire to share the fruits with others. It comes down to a question and an attitude. The question, "Why do I want this?" The attitude, "I don't want it just for me." These are critical because ultimately we are all one and so not wanting awakening/enlightenment for oneself alone validates the faith that we are all one.

After my second experience with this energy a year later in a spiritual setting when the energy went to my brain and descended to my heart, I experienced deep love and compassion for everything.. Now that my ego has been largely subdued (not totally because it never can be), the drive I had to share, speak to be seen as special has disappeared. In the early weeks and months of awakening, the wish to be recognized as special is there as the ego prepares to defend itself because it recognizes that the awakening experience poses a threat to its survival.

Before reading Neven's post I was the prisoner in Plato's cave allegory who escapes and realizes the unreality that his friends are living in and races back to share with them what he has realized and his friends kill him because they don't understand and don't want to be jolted out of their cozy complacency. The world we live in is much like that. Those of us who are awakened see the unreal world of the unawakened not as inferior, but as unnecessarily limiting. What I have seen thanks to Neven’s post is that I had sold out on what might be possible if I don’t hide out.

And yet just talking and sharing is not enough. The only thing that awakens is experience and until those of us who are awakened can provide this for others all we do is cast pearls before swine. I sometimes watch a YouTube satsang that Mooji gives. I marvel at the frustration of people in the video who sit at his feet. Intuitively they know he is living another reality, but they unable to access it for themselves. With a mixture of story, parable direct confrontation with the ego, Mooji tries very hard to transfer his vision, but without the ability to confer what is known in the East as Shaktipat — direct guru transmission of energy to enable the consciousness to awaken and shift from its identification with the body/mind — he seems unable to make much progress as the same people come to sit at his feet time and time again. This leaves me with the question: Is it worthwhile speaking or sharing when it isn't accompanied by the grace of awakening?

Spiritual Evolution

How do you explain light to someone born blind? You may use words, but they won't understand. How can they? We naturally relate through past conditioning so if they have nothing to relate to, the matter will remain a mystery to them. If you have had a full kundalini transformation, you will find yourself unable to explain this new state to others. You will try. But you will fail. Time and time again.

Don't bother explaining yourself. You will be persecuted if you do. People are afraid of things they don't understand and base their judgments on their fears. Instead, don't speak about the light; BE the light. Become the source of light and lead the way. Others won't understand, but they will be intrigued, inspired. They will follow. Become special through your actions and others will be convinced. You can speak of riches all you want but once you share them with others, only then will they believe you. Only then will they want to have the riches for themselves, too. This is your purpose. This is why you had an awakening. To open the eyes of others so that they too might see the light as you do. Only then will you be fulfilled. You will find the unity which you seek.

When I first had the awakening nine years ago, I thought I was special. I found happiness in differentiating myself from others and thinking I was more blessed than the rest. As my ego started shedding its conditioning over time, the happiness of being different turned to despair. No one knew or understood what I had experienced. The wonderland I lived in was restricted to myself alone. I was lonely beyond belief with no one to relate to but myself. But something magical occurred. The ego began to shrink, and so did my loneliness. I no longer differentiated myself from others; I related in the most loving of ways. I now see every person as myself and every person is special, like me. I am no longer lonely; for the first time I'm full of life.

There are two parts to the Self: The I and the Ego. The I is found in the heart, it is a spark of the light of the Sun. The ego on the other hand is found in the mind. To test your will, God devised a master plan that requires your getting to the heart through the mind. To get to the God-Self, or the I, you must conquer the realm of the mind.

Duality is found in the mind, in the realm of the illusory nature of the moon. The realm of opposites. Which means that all fears and perceived negativity exist there. The ego thrives on fear. In reality, it exists only because of fear. The same as the I exists to love, the ego exists to discriminate between opposites. It doesn't love others, only the self. The ego is a thought, the same as the I is an intuitive emotion. It exists as part of memory, and memory is found in the element of water.

Our physical bodies mainly consist of water. Therefore physicality is linked to the ego. The ego is a liar. The biggest con the ego pulls is letting YOU believe that you are YOU. In reality, you are not.

Through a kundalini awakening, immense fire is released into the aura. This fire, when applied to the water element, sheds the ego over time. This is why, over time, your memory is purged and you begin to realize that who you thought you were, you are not anymore.

Memory exists because of duality. It is linked to the past. The ego exists through the past. Living in the past, the ego plans the future. In the mind. It creates desires. As the past is eradicated, so is the desire to craft the future, which brings one to the apex of the NOW. The overall purpose of the kundalini awakening is to purge consciousness so that it can exist in the NOW. And once it exists in the NOW, the mind realm has been traversed, opposites have been reconciled, the ego has been diffused, and one slips slowly into the realm of the heart. In this realm, the true Self is found — the I. And with it comes true unconditional love because love is the fuel of the I and the connecting link between Self and other Selves. Therefore, true unity is reached. Heaven has been found.

The Grid-like Fabric of Reality

With a full kundalini awakening, accompanied by the breaking of the cosmic egg at the crown and the awakening of the spiritual body and the 72,000 nadis or nerve centers, the human being becomes the God-self. In an instant. In a flash, the human battery or aura is expanded from 100 volts to 100,000 volts. All the chakras or energy points in the body are awakened, and the light inside pervades all that is seen and felt and heard.

At first, this state is only a state of potentiality. Consciousness has to evolve over time to adjust to this new voltage. Karma from each of the chakras has to be dealt with and purged in order to reach its highest state and maximize the potential what's inside you. As before, the ego is still present, but it is wounded and starts slowly dying. As the ego dies, so too, the memory of who you thought you once were. It takes many years, many painful memories to purge your conditioning — many fears to overcome, many doors to open.

You start in the lower chakras: earth, then water, into fire and air, and finally spirit or aethyr. Always moving upwards. Once you have reached spirit, the battery's power is now integrated within consciousness and the human being becomes tuned to the vibrations of the outside world. Consciousness operates within the 4th dimension, the dimension of vibration with aethyr as its medium. The inside is the outside, the ego is completely diffused, and you are living in the NOW.

You're a God or Goddess in this world as related to the material plane and you are now above it. You have your feet on the Earth, but your head in Heaven. You will die and be reborn in a different solar system with a whole new set of life lessons and forms of spiritual evolution. What those are, nobody can know while existing on Earth in the physical body, but your ultimate goal has been reached in terms of your spiritual evolution in this earthly form.

The Biology of Consciousness

New Age consciousness is a mass movement. Yet consciousness has a biological origin, a fact most people are unaware of. They see the treetops, but not the roots. Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time is a case study on how Kundalini overhauls one's biology to create a new human being in one lifetime. That is the power of Kundalini.

The question put forward, extrapolated from my experience, is: With the adoption of systems from other cultures, such as meditation and Yoga as well as the veritable explosion of New Age self-realization systems could the mass experimentation with these techniques ultimately trigger an acceleration of human evolution or will we have to wait for evolution to simply take its course? Is there sufficient critical mass to allow the various self-realization techniques to push humanity over the threshold of higher consciousness or do these techniques only produce temporary change in a given individual? If we could influence evolution by the mass practice of these techniques, which ones work best?

Yes, there are many paths, many systems, many techniques. They work in different ways. Some work by improving the individual's outlook and world view. Some actually overhaul the entire being. But how many of them alter brain chemistry in any significant fashion? Because that is where higher consciousness is forged. In my case, an activated Kundalini altered my somatic, metabolic, and genetic actuality, rearranging me physically.

While practicing a given system, one often becomes a devoted disciple, forgetting to evaluate the results with a critical eye. Does the system I practice actually produce results? Am I changing? How? Is my brain chemistry changing? For instance, am I able to function at a higher level? Do I have a greater existential awareness? Could I possibly give up sex and use my distilled sexual energy for the sublimation purposes? How can I prove I am changing? Can I demonstrate altered brain chemistry? Or have I only convinced myself that I must be changing because I'm an eager follower of such-and-such a system?

Our Multi-cultural World: Store Window Saris in Berkeley, CA

Is there a scientific way of confirming altered brain chemistry? A way of showing that Method A alters brain chemistry more completely than Method B?

Right now, scientists combating Alzheimer's offer solutions for increasing, or stabilizing, brain cell propagation. Cognitive techniques of all sorts, from tic-tac-toe to Monopoly to crossword puzzles to attention, memory, and coordination games. There are websites devoted to these types of exercises. Websites that after a few free rounds ask you to pay. Here's how one site, Lumosity, describes their neuron rebuilding program:

"The Human Cognition Project makes it easy for neuroscience researchers to study the questions that advance their research in ways that have not been previously possible. The ease of use and engaging nature of the Lumosity programs means that people enjoy doing the training, making it easy to recruit and retain participants in university-based studies. It also means that the database of users worldwide is growing everyday, giving researchers a new venue for exploring cognition not previously available. With over 14 million members worldwide having played hundreds of millions of game, Lumosity has the largest database of human cognition ever assembled. Researchers are actively exploring this database to understand the determinants of cognitive performance and cognitive enhancement — all in an effort to make the world a smarter place."

For all the buildup it's not really scientifically certain that cognitive exercises prevent the onslaught of dementia. So what about New Age consciousness enhancing methods? What about traditional methods, like Yoga and meditation? What is their track record?

I'm not sure there is one, except for scattered, unfiltered anecdotal reports — books like Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time, for instance. Unfortunately, scientists don't approve of anecdotal data. Even the thousands of statements related to Near Death Experience make them uncomfortable, despite the fact that similar statements are collected from people who don't know each other, live in different places, belong to different religions, and don't share a common culture. Doesn't the notion of critical mass begin to apply here?

Visit the Self-Realization Restaurant

It's the same for Kundalini, for Tai Chi, for meditation methods of all sorts, for all New Age proclivities and predispositions. It's up to each of us to find a means of quantifying the neural regenerative aspects of our given system and then comparing the results with, say, cognitive game therapy such as Lumosity. In the future we will have to work together, but with so many different types of awakening experiences we can start by exploring with the brain chemistry altering capabilities of a science like Kundalini meditation, which actually floods the brain with dementia fighting substances, derived and distilled from sex energy.

Symptoms of a Kundalini Awakening

A lot of very good information has been published on this blog about the kundalini phenomenon. I am thrilled to be part of such an erudite and articulate group. I thought it would be interesting to add a post on the kundalini symptoms that I have faced on an almost daily basis.

The energy serpent moving through the spine is the most common symptom and everyone with an awakening reports it. Beyond that however, each individual, with his or her karma and life experiences is witness to a variety of different experiences. Here are some of mine.

In the beginning, when the body began to contort, it felt as if an alien being had descended into my body and was taking it over, like a hand inserted in a glove that was wiggling to get a good fit. I, the observer, was still aware of the activities, but was no longer actively moving the body parts. The two main yogic postures that the body took were chakrasana or wheel pose and a forward bending action when I was seated, making my head touch my knees. Any resistance to this would result in pain. This was a completely new experience. It was interesting to note that the body performs the postures needed for your particular needs, to get the energy flowing through blocked areas. It was not important to know every single yogic pose or become a master. The energy knew where the blockages were and moved the body as needed to fix them.

The most amazing and illuminating experience came from the throbbing of the third eye. The energy did not flow sequentially from one chakra to another, lowest to highest. Most of the activity focused on the heart chakra and the third eye area. There was little or no energy movement in the legs. It was all in the spine, neck and head. My initial experience gave me the feeling of an egg cracking at the bottom of my spine, then an explosion in my heart, both events accompanied by visions and revelations. However, it was only when the third eye started to throb that the altered states of consciousness and revelations went into high gear. By this time, I had begun searching for books, websites and personal accounts on the subject. The throbbing third eye was the equivalent of receiving the rosetta stone to decipher the information in those books.

In the first few months, felt a need to cleanse the body of all toxins. Using laxatives and going on juice diets, taking supplements, I removed all built-up junk that had accumulated over the years. Damage caused by excessive use of alcohol and red meat was undone by the energy and it guided me to assist it in the detoxification process.

Right from the start of this journey, my libido went completely haywire. Initially, the awakening and cleansing was accompanied by an increased sexual appetite and constant thoughts and images of a sexual nature, followed by weeks of zero interest in sex.

A heightened sense of awareness. Usually, we are aware of two or three things around us at most. The TV, sounds of kids playing, maybe a conversation going on in the background. In my heightened state of awareness, I could detect every single thing going on around me. I had the sense of being so deep in the moment — with no intruding thoughts of the past or future — I could sense everything happening around me.

Time started to stretch and/or shorten. For example, two minutes lasted a lot longer during meditation and felt like a half-hour had passed or conversely, twenty minutes would feel as if they were only a few seconds. I would reach the state of 'samadhi' or total emptiness and come back to normal reality in an hour or two, not knowing how much time had elapsed.

A feeling of one-ness with nature. To this day, the first few days of spring brings total ecstasy. I can 'feel' the energy of the new leaves on the trees. Spring and summer are blissful and rejuvenating and winter brings the blues once the trees are barren. I have to prepare myself once the trees start to shed leaves.

I never saw the bright lights that others have reported. However, moments of revelation are sometimes accompanied by a bright blue flash. This is usually a pin-point that shines before my eyes, but a few times, it has been like a blue flash bulb went off.

These are just a few of my symptoms that I have felt or experienced and continue to experience over the last six years.

A Few Days Ago I Was Petting my Dog

A few days ago I was petting my dog and suddenly got a very vivid visual flash of Cola Cao.
 

Dogs at Play — Hiller Park, McKinleyville, CA

I have no idea where this flash came from! Cola Cao is a Spanish milk chocolate drink in a glass bottle I used to drink as a child. Amazing is, I had completely forgotten the existence of Cola Cao.

Yet years later and miles away from my beloved island of Formentera, a flashback to Cola Cao. More extraordinary still is the flash came back with the full awareness of myself at age seven sitting at Consentino’s Café by the beach. I am not just aware of myself, I AM myself at age seven. I am sitting in the chair in my wet bathing suit, my nose is immediately picking up the smell of the green plastic tablecloth just cleaned with a wet trapo. My nose is also picking up on all the other smells in the place. All these smells are separate and distinct as they include the delicious liquid chocolate of my drink as well as the smell of the coffee machine. The frying olive oil smells coming from the kitchen and the smell of the sea and seaweed; the dry twigs on the beach and the salt on my skin and the scent my brother’s wet hair.

I see everything surrounding me with a sharpness and electricity I have never seen before, except in dreams. The Mediterranean blue is glistening, the sand is golden and warm, I am aware of the specks of sand clinging to my bare feet, I can see the details of the sabina bushes and the pine trees, the gorgeous yellow of sunflowers growing in front of the café, and a lonely black beetle digging into the sand.

I have vision everywhere and can see in all directions. I am living an authentic Madeleine de Proust experience! My taste is enhanced, too, as the deliciousness of the creamy drink lingers in my mouth I can simultaneously feel the taste bud sensations of all the people around me including my brother drinking a Fanta Naranja, sweet and acidulated and fizzy all at once. I feel how the drink tastes to him, not to me.

Did I ever feel, see, taste, smell things so sharply as a child? I don't remember; it seems like a vaporous dream.

Yet now, in this instant, things are more real than real and, though belonging to the past, more present than they ever were. The recollection of the Cola Cao acted as a kind of a doorway.

This doorway led me deeper and deeper into more memories and feelings of the forgotten past, each more vivid than the other. I could choose to focus in on one image, for example  a green lizard biting a piece of watermelon on the ground. I could zoom into the image until I had a close up of the velvety texture of his emerald skin and tiny white teeth, or I could zoom into the sound of his body on the sand, or the teeth chewing on the watermelon. I could also zoom into the feeling he had while eating the piece of watermelon with the warm sand underneath and the soft sun warming his back. It was all so exhilarating!

I could also zoom into the feelings of all the people present in the café, the way Maria felt at the time and Consentino and my parents and the kids running around and the tourists sitting at other tables. I just knew how they felt. I could go where I wanted to within the recesses of my memories as if I were a master filmmaker.

Eventually, I actually had to stop as I had things to do…

During the Cola Cao experience my dog sat with me as if she was seeing and hearing with me, sharing my space.

When I do an animal communication, it is quite similar as the present becomes more real than real. I am talking of a communication with an animal that is not in front of me, an animal whose essence I capture as I let my spirit float towards him.

I share and exchange with the animal in this "non space, non time" dimension. If I’m tired or preoccupied, my senses are more deadened, but other times they are incredibly vivid and present. If I am with a horse, for example, I can inhale fully his wonderful scent.

It is all incredibly delicious to experience!

I enjoy those times because reality becomes bigger and more profound, time and space expand and become elastic. There is a feeling inside, a space of eternity, within which, silence is filled with sounds and scents images and feelings.

Through the Time Warp, Over and Over – Parc du Chatelet, Paris

I am fully aware at that time of the consciousness of the animal as we share our breaths and our feelings. His thoughts (even though they are silent and different then mine) pulse within me. Everything becomes awake, consciously vibrant.

In those moments, I realize what an extraordinary being an animal is. I realize the incredible vastness of his spirit, I realize the beauty of his soul, I realize the extreme sensitivity of his feelings and the natural flow of his thoughts. In those moments I almost capture what consciousness is.

And, above all, when I am able to feel the consciousness of a particular animal, I become aware within every cell of my body and depth of my spirit simultaneously that EVERYTHING IS ALIVE AND CONSCIOUS. I can bathe within that awareness as long as I wish as I know that as soon as I break the communication, the complete, extraordinary present awareness — that all is consciousness — will fade away and just become an intellectual thought, a notion in my mind… until the next time.

Kundalini and Fear

Many years ago I came across an old Sufi story that resonated with me. I don't know why. The story goes that there is a big black dog who is extremely thirsty. Everytime it goes to the well to take a drink, it looks in and sees another big dog looking out so it becomes afraid and moves away. Eventually the thirst gets too much and the dog just jumps in the well and, of course the other dog disappears.

Dog Sees his Reflection in the Well — an Allegory of Fear

I understand that the big dog looking out from the well is the mind. The mind throws up all kinds of fearful thoughts when it feels its authority being threatened. In the writings of realized mystics and sages, fear at one point or another has to be dealt with. Not a crippling or paralyzing fear, but a fear that must be experienced and overcome in order for one to awaken spiritually.

In my own case, when Kundalini rose the second time, I was on a meditation retreat and I experienced the rising and falling of this energy. I had heard about the concept of surrender during the ten years I spent studying and practicing Mahayana Buddhism and had considered it to be the end of the spiritual journey. During one of the occasions of the rising energy I murmured "I surrender" and thought that would be the end of it. But it wasn't, and in that moment when I realized I had come to the end of everything I had known, I felt a tinge of fear. It didn't last very long, but it was there. Being brought to this place of fear and then having the courage to go beyond it is a characteristic of spiritual awakening.

I know my mind created this fear by the thought "I don't know what else to do." Then, following the experience, the mind quickly let loose a stream of other thoughts like "what has happened," "you're going mad." Following a spiritual awakening, the mind tends to do this because it feels threatened by the sudden expansion of consciousness. But there's only a limited period during which it manufactures these thoughts. That's why staying steady and not acting on the streaming chatter coming from the mind is so important. Just observe how the mind behaves without getting absorbed or drawn in.

I can remember in the months following the Kundalini rising having the words of the hymn I learned when I was in a Catholic boarding school in my head constantly: "do not be afraid." I would say them constantly to myself to manage the fear, which at times became quite acute, as the mind tried its hardest to throw me off course.

Gradually, if the mind is not listened to, the expansion of consciousness that an awakening experience produces becomes integrated, resulting in peace, joy, harmony, clarity — a life that flows and has balance. But this is not possible without confronting fear and when that fear is faced, it turns out not to be fear at all, but only a projection of a threatened mind.

Death

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
~ Dylan Thomas And Death Shall Have No Dominion 

A macabre presence hovered over me during my recent European trip — from city to city: London, Paris, Hamburg — the Grim Reaper, Death. Everywhere I went, old friends brought up the subject of dying, as in, “Once I consolidate… sell off all our stuff… prepare my will… settle up… let the children make their choices… convert everything to cash, I’m ready to go.”

London Shop on Chelsea High Street

I didn’t take these utterings as a symptom of morbidity. It seemed like an honest approach to the matter. What’s the point in complicating your final years by holding onto to a lot of material things you no longer have any use for or derive any pleasure from? Seems reasonable to wind things down, no?

So if it wasn’t morbidity, what bothered me then? I suppose it was the finality with which they spoke about the process —its utter end-game futility, the closing of the final chapter, for now and for all time. Not that I went into detail on The Tibetan Book of the Dead or elaborated on the history of the Bardos with them. They aren’t people you can talk to about reincarnation. They aren’t easily convinced that death is only a stage in the development of the energy concentration known as I.

Paris, La Défense

They’re highly educated, which makes it all the harder because they believe in the power of the rational mind and are therefore constrained by its limits. The mind is a wonderful tool, but by definition also a barrier if it's conditioned to set limits on the extent to which man is capable of developing. And if one believes those limits are defined by the scientific method, it then becomes a barrier beyond which one cannot penetrate because he/she has neither the spiritual practice nor the flexibility of spirit of an Einstein. Einstein, who once exclaimed, “I didn’t come to any of my great discoveries through use of the rational mind.”

My friends maintain that there is nothing beyond the life of the brain. Once death occurs, the brain is as useless as a broken-down motherboard. And that's true. But they are like the skeptics who believed Columbus and the other early explorers would simply sail off the edge of the Earth. 

There's more to the mind than the brain; the mind is connected to an Energy Continuum. It feeds from its inexhaustible reservoir of knowledge and contributes to that source in its own right. Yes, the physical brain dies, but the pulsating energy that animated it lives on, thereby extending the boundaries of today’s known physical science, extending even the very definition of science.

Many of my friends were exposed to fundamentalism in their youth and did not enjoy the experience. So they took refuge in the mind/brain duality, and in so doing, created a bulwark against religiosity. Nothing wrong with that except they lumped everything in together: no difference between the doctrine/dogma of organized religion and the solitary pursuit of truth through meditation/Yoga. All of it is superstition and humbug.

"Quite apart from the charm of the new and the fascination of the half-understood, there is good cause for Yoga to have many adherents. It offers the possibility of controllable experience and thus satisfies the need for facts, and, besides this, by reason of its breadth and depth, its venerable age, its doctrine and method, which include every phase of life, it promises undreamed of possibilities."
~Carl Gustav Jung 

How one equates attending church and accepting without question the canons of organized religion with a solitary practice built on questioning everything and that ultimately leads to an awakening experience is beyond me! I understand the desire to tie up loose ends, but it seems to me that once that is accomplished — the decks are cleared — the only remaining item would be to begin asking the basic questions so frequently pushed aside during lifetimes of activity and achievement.

• What was I here for?
• Who am I?
• What happens next?
• What is the purpose of life?

To start doing some original thinking on the meaning of life instead of accepting the mantra-like orthodoxy of either organized religion or the scientific method. Yes, the scientific method can be as constraining as Catholic dogma, especially if it proscribes "undreamed of possibilities."

I recognize that questioning one’s existence is hard to do once old age closes in. It takes a reorientation of Being — a circumstance I encountered in the person of an elderly Swiss lady who sat next to me during the last leg of my journey from Zurich to San Francisco.

On the way Home with the Swiss

I didn’t talk to her at first because I thought she only spoke German. But when, in the course of the flight — getting up to go to the toilet, passing trays back and forth, commenting on the vegetarian meal we’d both consumed — I learned she spoke English, I got to hear her amazing story. A widow in her 80s, she visits her son in San Diego twice a year for a month, but only stays a week with him because his wife is domineering and doesn’t like her.

The rest of the time she stays at Yogananda’s nearby Encinitas Self-Realization Fellowship, an interest she developed after realizing that spending extensive time with her family would be unrewarding. I was impressed by her ability to change course, to make her life over at a ripe old age. She told me it wasn't a product of "thinking things over;" it was the result of practice — through which, metaphysical actuality became as clear to her as the staring at a tree or the touching of the grass with her bare feet.

She enumerated the program of study she’d undertaken over the six-year period she’d been going to the fellowship:

• Quickening Human Evolution
• How to Meditate
• Finding your True Vocation in Life
• Developing Creative Ability
• Overcoming Fear of Death
• Correct Breathing
• Diet and Fasting
• States of Consciousness
• The Laws of Healing

And last, but not least:

• Life After Death
• Reincarnation

To which she added with a twinkle of the eye as we stood up to deplane, “You do know we are incarnated again in a new body, over and over?”

“Yes,” I replied, “I’ve worked my way to many of the same conclusions, not by use of the rational mind, but by practicing the same techniques, albeit served up in a different tradition with some discoveries of my own learned along the way.”

“I’m looking forward to that new body,” she said, “tired of dragging this one around for such a long time. There is no death, something I learned just in time to prepare myself.” 

And death have shall no dominion!

And it appears this notion is taking hold. Witness this interview in The Guardian with rock star, Tricky:

Q: You've got a new song called We Don't Die. Where do we go if we don't die?

A: The weird thing with me is I've had close people die, like my Mum, but I don't get sad at death. I miss them, obviously, but move on. That's not because I'm a bad person or emotionally numb, but there must be a reason it don't affect me. I think it's because death doesn't really exist. I don't believe in it. In some ways I was lucky my Mum died when I was that young. I've seen friends lose people as adults and be so traumatized they can't eat or go off the rails and into prison. But I've never had a conversation with her. I'd love to sit down with her for one hour to see what she was like.

And death have shall no dominion!