Parzival

Traces of Kundalini awakening turn up in the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach, written around 1200, a chivalrous account of the Grail legend. Parzival is wonderfully earthy for a mystic narrative, and often extremely funny. Sexual love lies shoulder-to-shoulder with transcendental union, in a way that suggests an understanding of sublimation and the backward-flowing method. When Parzival and his bride Condwiramurs ("the lady of this land was like a rose still moist, sweet dew revealing in the bud its pristine red and white") consummate their nuptials, groom and bride are so innocently enraptured with one another they lie together for two days without penetration or orgasm:

"For two days they remained thus with one another, happy in their liking, till the third night. He often thought of embracing, as his mother had advised him, and Gurnemanz too had explained to him that man and woman are all one. Then... they entwined their arms and legs, and if you will allow me to say so found what is sweet when near."

The "Grail" that Parzival goes in quest of is not the Christian chalice of the Last Supper. It's described as being a stone. It magically produces food and wine (in an age when starvation was rife) and gives news flashes of the Divine Will. It's the alchemical Philosophers Stone more than it's the Eucharist cup.

There's a poignantly comic moment — again suggestive of states that arise when Kundalini awakens — when Parzival, still unperfected, his quest still unfulfilled, approaches King Arthur's encampment through deep, new-fallen snow. A falcon swoops down on a goose and wounds it. Three drops of blood are splattered on the white snow. Parzival comes to an abrupt halt, and stares down at the blood on the snow:

"It is God's will to give me untold happiness... Condwiramurs, here lies your bright image!"

The three drops on the snow are Condwiramurs. The snow is her skin and the blood is her cheeks and lips. The All is present in the singularity:

"Mighty Love held him enthralled, so sharply did longing for his wife assail him."

Unfortunately, as he sits there on his horse in an out-of-body state, his lance is raised, "ready to joust" (seven hundred years before Freud!) Once again, as on his marriage night, there's a state of sexual arousal without physical release.

In those days, a raised lance was a challenge to fight. Parzival's unconsciously lifted spear demands a warlike response from the knights in the camp (male competitors.) A young hothead charges out, and is just about to knock Parzival down, when Parzival's horse shies, Parzival can no longer see the drops of blood on the snow, comes out of his trance/samadhi and decks the aggressor. This happens a second time. Parzival's horse turns back to the drops of blood once more, Parzival goes back into his out-of-body state, lance raised, and Sir Kaie rushes out to beat up the defenceless man, and is again bested, when Parzival's horse shies.

The third time, it's Sir Gawain, the embodiment of good nature and intelligence, who rides forth to sort the newcomer out. Sir Gawain notices that Parzival is in a trance because he's staring at the blood on the snow, and, instead of attacking Parzival, covers the blood with his cloak. Parzival returns to his body, they greet one another, and Parzival is welcomed into the camp.

It's a world away from the modern forms that Kundalini awakenings take, yet at the heart of it there's a shared awareness. The pingala nadi is represented as being of a red colour, the ida nadi of a white colour, the blood and the snow of the "bright image." Sitting on his horse, dead to the world, in "Might Love's thrall," Parzival has passed, body and mind, into the susumna nadi, the spinal channel, the Middle Way.

Is Kundalini a Challenge?

Awakening Kundalini is sometimes linked to the word "initiation." Is this as it should be? Initiation involves a test, facing an ordeal and overcoming it. Some initiations involve a ritualized death. The hero descends into the underworld and returns with the Golden Bough.

Parzival, in the Medieval mystery romance by Wolfram von Eschenbach, beholds the Grail, and the wounded King who guards it. It's a test which Parzival at first fails. There is a question he must ask, which he fails to do. The story doesn't actually state what the question is, whether Parzival needs to ask the true nature of the Grail? And what it is for? Or whether it's the compassionate question: "What ails you?" that he must ask the suffering king. It may well be similar to Krishnamurti's "impossible question." Perhaps, the point is that the transcendent question cannot be put into words.

The awakening of Kundalini was certainly an ordeal for Gopi Krishna. He suffered years of acute pain, and was at the edge of insanity and physical death. There is a crucial moment in his account of the awakening, when he realizes that he must guide the energy from the fiery, male, outwards-directed pingala nadi into the cool, female, inwardly-directed ida nadi. He manages this and survives. It's like the passing of a test.

On a humbler level, in meditation, there are moments when the Kundalini energy clarifies into wordless realizations. Some of these realizations one "survives," in the sense of letting them arise, and accepting them with one's body and physical brain. Some of them one "fails," in the sense of blocking them out with a physical recoil. At the moment of Shaktic clarification, and "survival," the breathing is deep, unforced, spontaneously protracted. At the moment of "failure," there's a catch in the chest, a sort of shadow from the brain, a reflex of fear somewhere in the nervous system, and one is back with one's limited mind.

Perhaps a similar thing happens during love-making. Orgasm is pleasurable, but it can feel like a defeat. Lovers approach an awakening to the transcendent that becomes too powerful to handle, and throws them back into physical orgasm. What it is, inside us, that might pass such a test, is difficult to say. I don't think it's the willful struggle with oneself, which involve the various anti-ejaculatory methods. Perhaps, there are moments when love rapture is so intense, the heart simply stands up to the influx of energy.

If Kundalini is a test, it raises the question: who, or what, is being tested? It certainly can't be, or shouldn't be, the day-to-day self for whom earning a living and being polite to people is sometimes a struggle. On the other hand, if it's some central core of being, the "self-subsisting" state in the heart chakra, that's going through this process, is it right to even speak of a test? I think it is. Being tested, failing or succeeding, are part of evolution. The evolutionary challenge, which was once purely external, has now been internalized. It's a process that needs time to happen. And something else, too, seems to come about: the evolutionary test is no longer a matter of "survival of the fittest" — kill or be killed. Parzival failed his question test, but was given another go, asked the mysterious question at the second opportunity, he won the Grail. Failure is never absolute, nor is success. There's a sort of cosmic compassion in this. Time is a gift. Blake called time "the mercy of Eternity."