Transphysiological Energy Activation

Back in June 2011, I wrote a post on the labeling of spiritual constructs and how labels restrict meaning, making it difficult for individuals exploring the same process to cooperate because they feel beholden to the subtext of meaning they've been indoctrinated into.

Take Kundalini, for instance. It's a term with all sorts of connotations, none of them very scientific. Nevertheless, these connotations control the way the process is perceived, a notion I wrote about only a few weeks ago. In that post, I cited an example of persons being unable to even discuss Kundalini because the term somehow signified a cult — with all its negative connotations. They couldn't see beyond cult, couldn't accept the process as a biological actuality.

So the Right Hand Knows What the Left Hand is Doing

Even if people aren't offended by a given term in its raw state, they still tend to infer meaning from their own immediate experience. Until, of course, the process is described in scientific language, which is itself, not an easy task to manage. Survey the various authorities on Kundalini and you realize each one has its own special perception of the process behind the term, which, of course, leads to the inability of the various authorities to cooperate.

There are obvious reasons for this: the term Kundalini has a spiritual derivation. The process has been documented by most of the world's religious and mystic traditions. Each one has their own terminology and practices, which they defend against all other usages and observances. A veritable Babel!

Yes, the term Kundalini is the reigning champ, but its connotations, as we've noted above, overwhelm any ability to attract serious scientific investigation. Why should we consider science over religion? Kundalini is a biological process, first uncovered by early religious seekers, who, because of the startling effects induced by Kundalini, attributed these consciousness-enhancing and health effects to spiritual causes. At the time, the scientific method had yet to be discovered. Biology was unknown, for the most part. The only rational explanation was an irrational one: that the Gods must be responsible, that the Gods had conferred special powers on certain individuals.

We owe those early explorers a lot: Milarepa, Lao Tse, Jesus, Siddhārtha Gautama - the Buddha. Props also to modern investigators, Osho and Gopi Krishna, the 20th Century's most prolific writer and researcher on Kundalini.

The term Kundalini has served us well. Until now... 

Now we need to focus our research and practice on the biological aspects of the process. To this end, Cristian Muresanu has put forward a new lexicon of terminology to do exactly that. Will it take hold? I don't know, but I applaud the energy he has put into it. Transphysiological Energy Activation is the term he proposes. He's already published a first post on the subject, one that deals with the medical condition he faced and how his infirmity led him to the Transphysiological Energy Activation process. In the coming months, he'll present more of his research and methods in this blog. Until then, read up on his back story. 

Integral Yoga – Every Moment is Prayer

The word Yoga simply means union. The moment of oneness with the absolute. In common parlance currently in vogue, the term has come to represent physical practices, asanas or poses and nothing more. The poses assumed by Yogis to gain control of the body are simply one small aspect of the vast number of spiritual practices called Yoga. The poses are from the branch of Yoga called Hatha Yoga.

Throughout history, humanity has experienced leaps in consciousness through revelation. Whether it is the prophet Moses, Jesus, Buddha or the founders of various other religions, awakening of the kundalini and subsequent ascension of the individual to a state of illumination is accompanied by revelations that then gather a following, become part of religious practices.

Depending on the era of birth, the geography of the individual, his level of education and creative abilities, there are wide variations in the resulting revelations. They all point to the same reality but they are all expressed differently. As mentioned in my previous post, these methods are ours to use as we see fit and the path taken towards self-realization which works for one most likely will not work the same way for anyone else. This needs to be understood before accepting a rigid set of techniques and before proselytizing others.

Tied at Mooring – Tranquil Summer Days

A better approach is to figure out what path best allows you to find inner peace and drop the external mask, the persona that obscures your inner reality for the sake of fitting in with the outside world. Sri Aurobindo, the Indian mystic and Ken Wilber, the modern day mystic whose ideas are the inspiration for the ''Matrix" movies are two proponents of an integral yoga. A collection of practices that address every aspect of the human state and approach the quest for self-realization as an incessant stream to be lived each moment rather than a set of rituals performed at a certain hour.

Classical yoga divides spiritual practices into four kinds of yoga. This classification is exhaustive. Nearly all practices and states of being, and methods of worship fall into one of the four categories, regardless of the religion of the practitioner.

The four paths of Yoga: There are four traditional schools of Yoga, and these are: Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Karma Yoga, and Raja Yoga. While a Yogi or Yogini may focus exclusively on one of these approaches to Yoga, that is quite uncommon. For the vast majority of Yoga practitioners, a blending of the four traditional types of Yoga is most appropriate. One follows his or her own predisposition in balancing these different forms of Yoga:

Jnana Yoga: Jnana Yoga is the path of knowledge, wisdom, introspection and contemplation. It involves deep exploration of the nature of our being by systematically exploring and setting aside false identities.

Bhakti Yoga: Bhakti Yoga is the path of devotion, emotion, love, compassion, and service to God and others. All actions are done in the context of remembering the Divine.

Karma Yoga: Karma Yoga is the path of action, service to others, mindfulness, and remembering the levels of our being while fulfilling our actions or karma in the world.

Raja Yoga: Raja Yoga is a comprehensive method that emphasizes meditation, while encompassing the whole of Yoga. It directly deals with the encountering and transcending thoughts of the mind.

The most common is the path of devotion, known as bhakti yoga. Praying twice a day, attending mass on Sunday, reciting the Lord's Prayer are all forms of bhakti yoga. This path, of faith, of absolute surrender to the divine is the most common form of worship. This may suffice for the average individual that worships out of a sense of social obligation, but not for the seeker on the path. Praying or meditating for an hour still leaves about 15 waking hours in the day that are not devoted to the quest. It is not just impractical to meditate or pray for hours on end while ignoring worldly duties, it is also unnecessary.

The Rising and the Falling

We need to remember the underlying goal of all this effort. The final stage, commonly called enlightenment, is beyond understanding. One can't aim for it and set course like a ship sails to a port. However, we know that the way to this destination goes through a constant process of awakening the true self and staying awake. Constant mindful awareness to each action, constantly breaking thought patterns that take us away from the here and now. By becoming aware of the mental agitation, by becoming cognizant of the constant unrest within us, we learn to witness it. To separate, for the first time ever, the mental apparatus that thinks, from the true self that is the witness. It is not I that does the thinking. I witness the mind as it creates the thoughts. Each time I step back and witness the mental machinery, it is also a process of detaching oneself from that mental chatter.

Essentially, it is a process of removing conditioned responses and ingrained patterns that have long kept us enslaved. For the first time, we taste true freedom. A freedom from the human robot bound by those repetitive patterns and conditioned responses. A freedom to be spontaneous and "in the moment," seeing, for the first time, the world as it is, without the baggage of preconceived ideas, labels and notions of how the world should be. 

Integral Yoga understands the need to incorporate the different forms of yoga and devote each waking hour to the contemplation, service and realization of oneness with the absolute. Expressed differently, to know that one is a creation of that almighty intelligence, and can never be separate from it, one needs to provide methods that constantly awaken the consciousness from the slumber induced by our mundane "reality."

Motor Highway Fest

A kundalini awakening is simply an automated mechanism that takes over the psyche and goes about cleansing the soul of past conditionings and shows the individual how to proceed on the journey of realizing one's true self and union with the absolute. Some aspects of this process, such as revelation, are governed by the energy and require no assitance from the individual. Others require the ego to co-operate and surrender itself to the greater work being performed, knowing it will be completely dissolved at the end of the process. 

Knowing this, the various forms of yoga and techniques associated with them can be seen as methods of helping the individual see beyond the ego, to align the ego with the path of spiritual progress until it realizes its role as an interface with the outside world and not as the true self. At their most basic, methods of worship inculcate positive patterns into the psyche. A lifetime spent reciting a mantra and activating a state of surrender to the divine molds the brain, creating neuronal pathways that eventually allow the self to see itself clearly.

The best way to remove an ingrained pattern that leads us towards robotic behavior and prolongs the state of ignorance is to replace it with one that causes an upward spiral towards freedom. A pattern of repetitive behavior that eventually removes all patterns and conditioning. This is the true purpose of any method of worship. If a chosen method does not serve that purpose, it should be replaced by another, more effective one or augmented with other methods that achieve this goal.

It may seem like a contradiction in terms to advocate the use of ritual, repetition and conditioning if our final goal is to remove all such shackles, but it is not. It depends on the patterns we choose, how we practice, and why we practice a ritual.

It is important to have control over who programs your mind and what it is being programmed with. If I am doing it myself, aware of the effect of that course of action, I have a better chance of reaching my true self. If I allow friends, social groups, or worse, television commercials and the approval-disapproval control mechanism, high-school popularity contest that is the Facebook "Like" button, I remain stuck in the realm of ego, bound by the senses and the ego's craving for comfort and its tendency to create a false reality favoring a selective image of itself.

In future posts, I intend to write in detail about each path and how almost every action or thought can be a method towards the realization of the absolute.

Love and the Ego

People talk about the ego and its role in the kundalini awakening process. First off, you don't abolish your ego while in the physical body. You only seek to tame it and use it instead of being used and abused by it. The only way to abolish your ego is to destroy the physical body which we need as a vehicle in navigating the material world. The ego is attached to the physical body and nobody wants to die physically.

Instead, let's try to understand the ego and how it operates. The question I always ask myself about my actions and pronouncements is, How does this particular action or utterance affect the big picture? Positively or negatively? Useful or not useful? If it only helps me, it's an ego action. If it helps others or positively affects a situation, it's of the Higher Self.

The Universe makes the formula very simple. If our actions are positive and the change is directed outside ourselves towards other people, it triggers the principle of love and unity is attained. And the action induces the most bliss. If the action is directed towards the self alone and there is no focus outside the self, it is self-directed, and affects the ego. It attaches itself to our wheel of karma and binds the ego further, making the illusion of self greater.

So focus on making a positive change in other people for the sake of other people alone, and the ego is subdued and Higher Self exalted. If you ask yourself, what do I gain from this, question why are you performed the action. Sometimes it's as simple as hearing yourself speak. This is really hard work. To do it right you have to question everything constantly.

If you really intend to help other people, and your ego has come to terms with it, it's easier to do the right thing. And that's the best part.

The formula is counter intuitive for the ego. The more you help others and the less you focus on yourself; the more love and unity you feel with all things, the more bliss you experience. You may not believe it before you see it. The ego is faithless and when it doesn't get its way, it gets angry as a child who doesn't get what he wants.

The best actions are those with no attachments. If the ego has nothing to lose — as in the case of helping others — then it's able to be used by the Higher Self. If there is something to lose, the action is tainted and the principle of love is compromised. In other words, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. You have to let go of one to achieve the other.

The snake (awakened kundalini) in its upwards flow towards the brain centers

The ego operates in terms of opposites. It wants to create pleasure for itself and avoid pain. Let's look at the two primary opposites that drive our lives. Pain and pleasure are different aspects of the same thing that depend on how the mind perceives the material world.

A full kundalini awakening creates a bridge between the conscious and subconscious minds. By bridging the conscious with subconscious, the swing from pleasure to pain increases exponentially, giving rise to mental ailments. However, in a kundalini activated person this process is only temporary. It serves to eradicate negative memories which act as a wall between the world of pure potential and the limits created by the mind in its quest for survival. 

The self that has survived is the Ego. With the influx of the kundalini fire within the aura, it slowly starts to dissipate. It exists in the waters of your body, in your memories. And what happens when you apply heat to water? The water starts to purge itself of impurities and they start to evaporate and leave the system. The ego knows this and rebels. It doesn't want to be subdued.

The eternal witness of the Now — your real Self — stands aside as the ego feels the pain of knowing that in its death, lies true life. It took many years for the ego to develop. As every action has an equal and opposite reaction, know that it will take many years for it to be extinguished. This is normal. Pain is normal. Once the pain of the ego is cleared, consciousness is free to experience the pure emotion of the Void, which is rapture, which is Nirvana.

Let's look at love in terms of how this particular emotion affects the mind and curbs the ego. Positive thoughts can only be induced by love. Love is the driving force that inspires one to reconcile a negative, fear-based thought. Love acts like the force of fusion between two opposing thoughts, completely neutralizing them and removing fear, the driving force behind all negative thoughts.

At the crown, this process is voluntary and continuous. Hence, the crown is considered the ultimate in consciousness and ego-less-ness. Fear exists only on the mental level of duality and can be likened to False Evidence Appearing Real. Or F.E.A.R. In other words, lack of understanding or improper interpretation of events. The only way to interpret an event is through love; lack of love creates fear, which creates karma since karma exists as a safeguard to our spiritual body or body of light or love. Karma may be likened to memories of events improperly interpreted due to lack of understanding, and the fear it created. Take away fear, you have faith. In faith, you find love. The ultimate in human understanding.

Alex Grey: Kundalini energy piercing the mind's eye and crown centers

A full kundalini awakening, one that is sustained in the head, is marked by two factors:

• Constant vibration is heard on the inside at all times,
• Light in the head is present at every moment.

Once this state is achieved, one can be certain that the bindu point at the top back of the head has been activated. The bindu point is the point of limitless existence. It is essentially The Void. The point of Non-Existence. In other words, Eternity.

Once activated, a person starts discarding old thoughts and emotions. This process is continuous once activated and it cannot be annihilated or stopped. It will do what it must with or without your involvement. The bindu is associated with memory, therefore by purging your memory, you are shedding the ego. You feel like you are losing your marbles because your ego realizes its losing its hold over the Self.

This is normal. It will continue until the Kundalini Fire has purged the ego and the light in the Heart shines forth and consciousness has been expanded. The best way to deal with this process is to let go. By letting go you develop faith which in turn extinguishes its opposite — fear, which subdues the ego since its fuel is fear.

By removing fear, you are left with its opposite — love. And once you are in love, you have safely traversed the mind-plane and entered the heart, the first point of non-duality. In this state, every moment is rapture, and Kingdom of Heaven has been attained. You sit at the right hand of God and are a King or Queen in Heaven. This is the truth behind all of Jesus the Christ's teachings. It is no wonder that Jesus is depicted as having a heart of gold and a halo around his head. He completed the kundalini awakening process and came to tell others of it. He knew it was the ultimate step to enhancing human evolution.

The flow of kundalini energy through the chakric points and the location of bindu point

The bindu is linked to the mind's eye as well as the second chakra which generates the fire of the kundalini when activated. The bindu when activated, releases emotional memories which serve to purge the ego over time. This process is seen in the mind's eye and is fueled by the area of the second chakra.

How to balance yourself? Learn to let go of trying to control your reality. By learning to let go, you will develop faith, which will serve to extinguish the ego over time. There are various other ways as well, but always check yourself by asking yourself: who is feeling the pain? Self or Ego? Over time you will polarize with the real self and pain and pleasure will both dissolve into an eternal rapture which is the Glory of God.

No pain, no gain.. don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

I recently read a quote by a popular guru in a question and answer session. One of his disciples asked the guru about kundalini. Now, this guru is a famous personality in India, one that influences millions of people. Currently, you cannot talk about the spirituality/New Age scene in India without mentioning this person. The conversation went something like this:

Q: Guruji, what is Kundalini and how to awaken the Kundalini?

The Guru: Kunda means body, and Kundalini means the conscious energy in this body.

Whatever happens in meditations in the Advance Course is Kundalini itself. There is no other way to interpret Kundalini. If meditation happened, it would not be possible without the awakening of the Kundalini. If you went into meditation, it means the Kundalini has been awakened in you.

I was amazed, not only by the lack of knowledge of this well-known guru, but his touting of his 'Advanced Course' and reducing the definition of kundalini down to 'when you meditate, that is a kundalini awakening'. Here I sit, 6 years into a sometimes scary journey with profound insights, a writhing snake slithering up and down my spine, immense improvement in latent skills, becoming a better singer, photographer, a change in my outlook towards the world, a totally new person unfolding each day. I have undergone shock and trauma that rivals PTSD experienced by soldiers that have served in the worst war conditions, questioned my sanity, lived in existential terror for years.

Along comes his exalted holiness and gives this simplistic and downright misleading definition of the phenomenon. A lot has been said on this blog about what a K awakening brings, but I think there is a need to mention how to spot a fake and what a kundalini experience is not.

Anyone that quotes scripture and describes the kundalini process based on what's in the sacred texts, but has no explanation or personal stories about their own experiences should been viewed with suspicion. Likewise, people that remain exactly the same person without a fundamental shift towards spirituality, and more importantly, people that do not go through a phase of trauma, disorientation and a cathartic cleansing of the body and mind have not experienced a Kundalini awakening.

Our images of the divine are invariably the beatific, calm, sublime and angelic notions of a benevolent God. You just have to look at the pictorial depictions of Jesus or the Buddha to confirm this notion. In rare instances, depictions of wild, scary goddesses like Kali or a bellicose Shiva might stray from this image, but the pseudo-gurus usually play to the beatific, peace-loving guru image that they are expected to play. It makes them tougher to spot. They have memorized the scriptures and have a witty line memorized for every question. If you have undergone an awakening, however, these gurus are laughable and stand out like three-dollar bills.

Kundalini can be a scary, mean, energy that does not give a hoot about you, your ego and its notions about reality.

"I am an atheist who likes Richard Dawkins" may sound cool at cocktail parties, but gets thrown out the window when the energy takes over and starts to overhaul the entire being, starting with the fake rationalizations, the false ideas of self that we hold dear, the explanations we give ourselves to hide our skullduggery. There is nothing politically correct or gentle about it.  It is a benign energy, but when it does its work on us, our ego sees it as a horrible experience because the ego resists death. It dearly wants to hold on to its ideas.

As seen from the perspective of the dying ego, the energy is demonic. A surgeon operating on you to remove a gangrene makes you bleed, there is a lot of pain, but the eventual result is the healing of the body, leaving the person healthier. What the kundalini energy does is very similar. It removes the harmful gangrene attached to our souls, our ego. The things we keep hidden in depths of our mind, even from ourselves, (especially from ourselves) are laid bare. The first few months (or years, depending on how long you resist) are the worst. If you have spent a lot of time building up an ego, pretending to be someone you are not, your ordeal will be pure purgatory.

In fact, this is the real purgatory. The term refers to the bridge, the throat chakra, that separates the earthly realm (the body) from the higher chakras (the head). The concept of purgatory, in the metaphysical sense, are the visions seen by those undergoing a Kundalini awakening who are stuck in the in-between stage. The cleansing of past trauma, sins, wrongdoings stuck in the psyche as blocks are cleansed by the energy as it passes up and down the body, giving way to brief glimpses of the absolute (heaven) as the energy passes unimpeded to the third eye or higher, activating the pituitary and pineal glands, releasing anandamide, giving rise to mystic experiences as the left and right hemispheres underwent neuroplastic reconstruction.

In the state of mystical hyper-awareness, the trauma and past 'sins' are churned up and as the energy burns through them (literally, a burning sensation as the energy passes through the spine) each is seen vividly. This is the experience of hell. The journey from earth to hell to heaven is the span of the vertebral column. The number 33 has a significance in metaphysical literature of disparate traditions. Jesus 'died' at 33. 33 is not only a numerical representation of "the Star of David”, but also the numerical equivalent of AMEN: 1+13+5+14 = 33. In Kashmir Shaivism, the universe is explained in 36 tattvas or principles. The first 33 are in the realm of divinity in an expanded form, the last 3, shiva+shakti = paramshiva, when the yin (right brain) and yang (left brain) unite to become the absolute (crown chakra). In Hinduism, there are 33 levels or koti of Gods. Each level has its own deities. (The word koti also means the number 100 million in Sanskrit and Hindi and it is mistakenly said that there are 330 million Gods in the Hindu pantheon).

Why the emphasis on the numbers 33 and 36? Simple. There are 33 bones in the vertebral column. The energy takes the human being through the expansion of the absolute, a reverse evolution or involution back to unity. The 'death' of Jesus at 33 is the death of the human and the subsequent unity with the absolute. 33 steps on the way to heaven, then a purging of the impure or demonic in purgatory (ego loss) and entry into heaven. There are countless tales of wars between Gods and demons, one of the most famous being the Hindu tale of Samudra Manthan, where Gods and Demons churned the ocean (consciousness) using a snake tied to a mountain, Meru (Meru-danda is a term used for the spinal column). It yielded several gifts, gems, powers and the poison halahal, which Lord Shiva held in his throat, turning it blue. A reference to the throat chakra and the poison or toxic blockages and trauma that have been cleansed by the energy. The detailed account can be found here.

Now, all this magical, mystical stuff, wondrous phenomena, revelation that solves ancient riddles and explains allegorical tales from mythology, summed up as “when you meditate, you awaken kundalini” by this charlatan. Sad state of affairs. Kundalini fundamentally changes you as a person. The old you does not exist any more. The new you is a higher ascended being (if the process is allowed to unfold properly). Politically correct ideas do not come into play. Lofty ideas about 'helping society' take a back seat to just keeping your back from breaking into two and keeping your sanity intact.

I have run into all kinds of people during my awakening. The worst kind are those that have made a commodity out of spirituality, to be bought and sold in hour-long sessions of chakra therapy, energy work, past life regression and assorted mumbo-jumbo. Some of the worst advice I have received is from these hucksters. Kundalini is a rare phenomenon and there are very few people that can offer genuine advice and help out a person suffering in the depths of 'hell'.

On the other hand, there is 'modern' medicine, that has relegated this incredible experience to 'kundalini syndrome' in the pages of DSM IV, the reference manual for mental health professionals, to be treated as a pathological condition, to be 'cured' with powerful anti-psychotic drugs, doing immense damage to the poor person struggling to cope with an extraordinary occurrence.

There is no gentle way of easing into this experience. People who prepare all their lives to receive this blessing, through a regimented set of practices, breathing exercises, yoga, a diet of fruits and vegetables, cleansing rituals may never receive the blessing, and people that are totally unprepared and clueless about it stumble into it as I did, through a spontaneous awakening as a byproduct of drug use, meditation, tantric sex, while delivering a baby — only to wander through life looking for answers. The rare individual that prepares for this through yogic practices and receives it under the auspices of a true guru maybe one of the few that can ease into the subsequent process with minimal trauma, but most aren't that lucky. The disoriented, terror-filled stage which makes the person look and sound 'crazy' is almost a given.

Any guru that does not warn you about this is doing you a huge disservice. It is better to read true accounts of people that have undergone a real awakening, people in the modern era, not ancient sages. It will save a lot of time and may even provide simple, common sense answers like my previous description of terms like hell, heaven and purgatory as seen from a 21^st century perspective, but with the aid of mystical experience. Stay away from the hucksters. I thank JJ for starting this and other blogs and forums so people with a genuine experience can inform and educate others.