The Supernatural And Metaphysical Unite!

Sad is watching someone thump his chest because he believes he's won an argument that's unwinnable. That's what the polemic concerning God vs. No God is, an unwinnable argument, a polemic.

In polemics the winner is the one most skilled in argumentation. Evidence, empirical or anecdotal, is not to be found, while shouting and obfuscation are ubiquitous and omnipresent. Invective, rant, tirade, broadside, diatribe, attack, harangue, condemnation, criticism, stricture, admonition, rebuke are its hallmarks. Ted Cruz is a master of polemics.

I didn’t have to read Cold-Case Christianity (CCC) written by LA cold-case homicide detective, J. Warner Wallace to realize that it was based on customer profiling and psychographic targeting with a liberal dose of the agent's and the author's crafting a clever non-fiction book proposal, i.e., that a veteran homicide detective could apply the principles and techniques used in solving cold cases to prove the veracity of the Bible. Trouble is, the author doesn't start from scratch; he has a foregone conclusion he is determined to fit his so-called researched facts to. I downloaded the sample pages, read them, saw where he was headed, and decided to pass on the rest. Nevertheless, the book is a big seller, which says more about the general lack of analytical skills than it does about the book's content. It tells us that people need constant reinforcements of their beliefs, and they are ready to accept them blindly, in whatever form they are offered — film, article, webpage, book.

Bart Ehrman's book Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible offers a more coherent appraisal of the Bible's content than CCC does, but whether you accept Ehrman's or Wallace's version of the facts is not the real issue. Both are best sellers. And both put forth arguments that are mere stand ins or straw men for the real issue: the God vs. No God argument. One side argues that, if they can verify evidentially the accuracy of the Bible, it then follows that God must exist; the other side argues that if they can disprove the assorted "facts" in the Bible, it proves that God does not exist. This is the straw man fallacy, which Wikipedia summarizes thusly, "The so-called typical 'attacking a straw man' argument creates the illusion of having completely refuted or defeated an opponent's proposition by covertly replacing it with a different proposition." Whether the information in the Bible is accurate or not does not prove or refute the existence of God.

This straw man approach is a new wrinkle to the old "There is a God" argument, the one which urged you to accept the existence of God on faith. But like that approach, it's beside the point. Whether you argue "Bible facts" or "faith," there's no proof that God does or doesn't exist. I'm not saying He doesn't; I'm saying I don't know. No one knows, and no one can prove otherwise.

The “faith" approach is more of a movement than a proof, a political groundswell with no rational basis. The "Bible facts" argument is moot because — even though it's a diversionary straw man tactic meant to bolster the less reasoned "faith" argument — it boils down to using the intellect in trying to prove, or disprove, the existence of God. I call this the outside-in approach. It is not possible to apprehend the supernatural — I prefer the term metaphysical — with the rational mind, from the outside-in. Not possible to use intellectual pyrotechnics or polemics to authenticate the supernatural or metaphysical. Authentication must be lived and experienced first hand.

There is an alternate: the inside-out approach, which uses Eastern energy cultivation techniques such as meditation, yoga, etc, to actually awaken the hidden subsystems of the human body, allowing the individual to experience metaphysical reality directly, i.e., to pass from the physical to metaphysical planes, and thereby bear witness to what I call the energy continuum — an expanded reality beyond the material world that contains that world and the worlds beyond all cosmological worlds. How far an individual goes with this type of practice depends on his volition and dedication. Let me add here one insight it has given me: the ultimate aim of meditation is to become more and more conscious. Enlightenment, therefore, is becoming fully conscious.

How did I arrive at this? Through a kundalini meditation that projected me into a vibratory state of such profound consciousness that I realized, not because someone asked me to take it on faith, but because I experienced it, that a hidden metaphysical reality does exist, that death is only an intermediate state. How unconscious I had been all of my life!

What sort of mechanism did this meditation trigger in order to accomplish this? It used the body's most powerful source — sexual energy. Quite simply, the energy source which creates life was rerouted and drawn up the spinal column into the brain. Since kundalini is a biological phenomenon, it needs to draw energy from a biological source in order to accomplish its purpose. That source happens to be sexual, the same energy source involved in procreation. How could it be otherwise? The energy used to create life is the same energy used in spiritual re-birth. What other source in the human body has the requisite energy to accomplish such a task?

Luckily, I was in my early thirties when this happened. Plenty of time to learn from this process and to restore my body to its optimal condition. At first, the effects were physical; my brain and its casing were reshaped (strange how the physical awakens the metaphysical which in turn kick off a reconditioning of the physical). Gradually, as these metaphysical experiences deepened, I became more conscious, until I realized I was using only a portion of my potential, that full consciousness might somehow remove me from the physical world. As I said, becoming conscious is gradual and I haven't felt ready to make such an existential leap.

But whether it boils down to what Christians refer to as a supernatural experience or to the term I prefer, a metaphysical experience, my aroused kundalini showed me that while we can't prove the existence, or non-existence, of God, we have at our disposal a vast range of experiential phenomena, such as OBE, NDE, kundalini awakenings, etc., all of which are triggered by a voluntary or an unexpected summoning of biological energy.

With this type of experience, there's no need to thump the chest; winning the argument is not the goal here. Scientific evaluation is. These cases don't depend on polemics; they occur irrespective of cultural, language, religious, educational, or geographical differences — and they share many of the same symptoms and effects. For the individual, it's a take-it-as-it-comes succession of phenomena in the laboratory of his or her own body, which, over time, also quiets the ego as it renews the being. For society, it's a piecemeal compilation of metaphysical accounts, which, as each anecdote is added, becomes an avalanche begging for a suitable means of scientific authentication.

The inside-out approach jettisons the whole baggage of conventional wisdom, polemics, and traditional religion. Christianity, which was turned into a political party by Augustine of Hippo and whose proponents/apologists and critics/detractors have argued God vs. No God back-and-forth for over two thousand years without making any progress, is an especially sad case.

Individuals, influential early Christians like Arius and Origen, who encouraged the direct experience of the inside-out approach — much in the mode of Buddha, Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti, Milarepa, and Lao Tse — were systematically rooted out and persecuted by pro-Augustine spin doctors, a case well-documented in the Elizabeth Clare Prophet book on Reincarnation and Christianity. Yes, there are unproven hypotheses in her book, but the idea that Jesus was on a Buddha-like trip during his lost years, supports the notion that the major historical spiritual figures used the inside-out approach to arrive at the insights and fundamental practices that the religions named after them are based on. The outside-in approach didn't appear until much later when the various spin doctors began arguing the endless stream of dogma/doctrine, much to the chagrin of the real authorities on religious experience.

In fact, the supernatural yearnings Christians feel are a positive element; they need to join with metaphysicians to practice and pursue the inside-out approach that values energy cultivation and direct experience over polemics and the dictates of intermediaries, i.e., priests, spin doctors, theologians, and ecclesiastics.

Those who take the inside-out approach have made, and will continue to make, measurable progress in the practice and discovery of energy cultivation techniques which lead to direct metaphysical experience, the multiplicity of which is just beginning to be catalogued and authenticated, à la Michael Murphy’s The Future of the Body, a survey of consciousness and meta-normal experience.

Kundalini and the Blood System

At a certain point, when Kundalini irradiates the head with light and the presence of other universes are felt, the beating of the heart suddenly absorbs consciousness. Prana, which is registered as a lifting light, gives way to a sensation of being sucked into, and overwhelmed by, one's own heartbeat in a way that's different from our sporadic, everyday awareness of the pulse. The steady pumping pressure is accompanied by a feeling of being gripped and driven forward through space and time without our choosing it. Sometimes the sexual organs become engorged without any sexual contact or even consciousness of sex. If one is fortunate enough to be embracing one's partner at the time, his/her visual impact — the sexy eyes, alluring features and comely figure that so entranced and overpowered us a moment ago — are swallowed by this magnified beating of the heart. They literally disappear in the presence of the enhanced heart rhythm. And, strangely, ejaculation becomes impossible.

Kundalini awakes when there is a suspension — or at least a stilling, and a natural control — of bodily processes that are normally autonomic. Initially, this occurs in three areas:

• Neural activity (experienced as thought)
• Breathing
• Ejaculation.

Processes which usually occur automatically are absorbed into a conscious stillness that generates great heat and energy. In all three areas, there is a reversal of "reality" as reality's transcendental source draws near. We experience the fact that consciousness creates the brain, and not vice-versa; that consciousness creates the lungs and respiratory system, and not vice-versa; and that consciousness creates the nervous and reproductive systems, and not vice-versa. And that prana and Kundalini are the "tools" it uses to do so. In effect, all of human biology — whether visible like the vascular system or concealed like Kundalini — is but an expression of consciousness.

Something similar happens to the heartbeat and to the circulation of the blood at those moments when we are absorbed into it. There's something about the heartbeat that's harder to approach, and to still, than breathing or even orgasm. There's a blind thrust that's nearer to the life force, and yet seems to bear no relation to our conscious, everyday being. The far-fetched metaphors of traditional love poetry take on a literal truth: the steady, spondaic pressure in our chests could as well be another person's heartbeat or our own, and, in a sense, it is. One hears the beating heart and feels the blood pumping through the body of a being who is as much the other person — any other person — as it is us. We approach the Atman, or Real Self, who is also everybody else. Love becomes the path to transcendence.

How one gets a handle on the heartbeat and stills the circulation of the blood is difficult to say. There are hints in traditional literature. The "albedo" or "white work" in alchemy, which refers to the action of prana, is superseded by the "rubedo" or "red work" on deeper physical structures through the action of the blood and "seeing with the heart."

Rudolph Steiner speaks of the "etherisation of the blood." "Tummo," the "blessed, inner heat" of Tibetan yoga is an authenticated physical fact. Milarepa meditated naked in the Himalayan snow and melted it for six feet around him by transferring heat from his blood system to the surface of his skin. These indications may help us, but, as with the other autonomic processes (thought, breath, and orgasm) it's best simply to let Kundalini bring one there, take one into it, and do it. 

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. 

Do I Need a Teacher?

Two of the most common immediate after-effects of a Kundalini awakening — in the form of ideas that pop into your head — are:

• Intense feelings that "I" need to do something that improves the condition of all mankind,
• Overwhelming desire to meet someone in the form of a highly-evolved teacher that knows much more about Kundalini than "I" do.

Both of these usually lead nowhere and here's why: Gopi Krishna had these same feelings after his awakening in India in 1938. He searched the entire country without finding an authentic someone who truly knew more than, or even as much as, he did...and that in India, a country reputed to be at the vanguard of spiritual exploration.

Before the Storm

What he did discover is: it's up to the awakened one to fend for him/herself because he/she can do a much better job of managing the Kundalini energy, once they submit. It's a long haul. It took me about one hundred days to awaken Kundalini via GFM, a time period that pales beside the 50 years I've lived with it.




I made up my mind early on that I would give into the Kundalini energy and find a way to accommodate its every whim. Why? Very simple. I realized it had my best interests at heart. That it could do no wrong. It was out to help me forge an "I" out of the "me", at the same time it rectified certain physiological abnormalities.

For good measure here's the account (excerpted from Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time) of my attempt to gather information about my awakening from Swami Muktananda at the moment of his leaving Paris for the US. This is not an attempt to denigrate his ability to confer Shaktipat; I know many people who he performed it on. Rather it is a parable on finding someone to guide you through. Thankfully the lesson I learned was I would have to become my own best teacher.

I have ventured forth in my newly purchased Quatrelle to witness the departure of Swami Muktananda. I’m not keen on the shotgun approach to finding a teacher, especially a sensation like Muktananda, surrounded, as it were, by layers of handlers who seem little more than glorified bouncers. Anyway, someone told me about him. So I thought—what the hell.

To enter the ashram, I have to stand in line and be screened. Waiting to enter the big room, I overhear his acolytes buzzing about who is going to ride with him in the car to the airport. That is the spiritual concern of the day. More like backroom political maneuvering—jockeying for votes, bargaining for influence.

And the prize? Proximity to the guru during the final trip to Charles de Gaulle Airport. The winners get to ride; the losers get to follow in a motorcade. Dressed in robes of saffron, white and red, they huddle by the door whispering and cajoling, earnestly vying to move up the ladder of distinction.

Attended by still more acolytes who buzz around him, the guru is seated on a platform in the big room. I watch him while the bouncers quiz me. I picture Milarepa alone in his Himalayan cave. Somehow, the two don’t jibe.

I have a vague idea about the questions I want to ask, but when I’m finally admitted to the big room, I see it may be impossible. First, I am one of a large group of people seated on the floor. I may never be recognized to speak because of the on-going ritual. All this makes me impatient, for I am only interested in knowing if the illustrious guru has some answers to my specific condition. The ceremony, trappings and schmoozing make me uncomfortable. I’m sorry that I’ve driven through all that Parisian traffic. And now I have to sit through the chanting, which I guess would have its place if the context didn’t resemble a White House press conference with its hubbub of kibitzers and white noise.

If any present are on a spiritual mission, personal or otherwise, I can’t detect it. It seems more like the worship of a particular personality, whose followers take their status from proximity to the Master.

I am probably missing the true meaning of the chanting, but the shuffling, the ritual mutterings of Muktananda, only underline the general impatience, as if everyone in the room is waiting for the mad scramble to the cars.

I can’t remember if he asks for questions, I just remember my hand being in the air at a particular moment and his pointing at me. The noise level drops to zero as I stammer forth. Can’t remember my exact words, only a paraphrase: “I recently spent one year in isolation, meditating. During this time hidden channels in my body were awakened…and eventually energy streamed into a place…a location in my head…that I can only call the third eye. Now, it continues on its own without my intervention, and my head cracks while it does…”

The Guru interrupts me. His acolytes turn their faces expectantly, as if ready to savor his reaction. My fellow floor sitters turn to stare at me.

“It is not possible. The head does not crack. There are no muscles in the head…” replies Muktananda.

Giggles and titters, as if the crowd were saying, “You don’t know that, stupid? Everyone knows that!”

“Then something is cracking in every room I’ve occupied…”

“It wasn’t your head.”

“It must have been the radiators then,” says someone in the crowd.

More derisive laughter. I’m not so much annoyed by people laughing at me as by the complete refusal to accept the possibility of a head cracking. That’s what growth is all about, from infancy to maturity—the head changing imperceptibly over time.

“That is impossible; the skull cannot crack,” he continues.

“But can it change its shape?”

“That is another matter.”

He whispers to someone behind him in a light green robe. Everybody rises. Question time is over.

In his denial, is he saying that it didn’t happen to him so therefore it couldn’t happen…period? I don’t put any limits on the power inside me. Obviously, once maturity is reached, cracking might be difficult, but not impossible. Being him, I would have wanted to hear more. Being me, I believed he could look at me and see my inner workings, and therefore know I was telling the truth.

So, I am disappointed, but not much. It only reinforces what I’ve learned. I figure I need a few experiences like this to learn to ignore conventional wisdom. In the solitude of St. Jean, as a kind of empirical detective, I learned to keep my mouth shut, perhaps by virtue of having no one to talk to. And now, reintroduced into the world, I am flush with success, like I have accomplished something—even though, in my heart of hearts, I know I haven’t. The road is never ending—for as long as I have the strength to push my body out of bed. It’s the same for the ordinary person as it is for the enlightened.

Good for you, I say to myself while walking into the bistro across the street from the ashram. You got laughed at and you deserved it. Now wake up, continue on your way, and forget conventional wisdom—even from the mouths of the so-called enlightened.