Long Distance Love

When I was twenty one, I left Australia to study at Cambridge. I'm an only child. My mother was very upset. She didn't want me to go. She made me promise faithfully that I'd come home as soon as my studies were finished.

I made the promise, and immediately broke it. I stayed away for fifteen years.

Taxed by my father with disloyalty, I pleaded that I loved my mother and thought about her a lot.

"Codswallop!" Dad replied. "That's an avoidance. That's just thinking. Without actions, thinking means nothing. Thought, on its own, is a cop-out."

When Kundalini awakens, something happens to "just thinking." Consciousness takes on an increased energy, while the physical brain's power over us abates. Thoughts become packets of energy arising from an energy field. They're no longer a series of compulsive nervous tics in the head. It's possible to see a thought coming, as it were, on its way — like an eruption from the surface of the sun that hasn't yet reached the earth — and to know what the thought is, without having to directly think it. It's this that makes mindfulness possible, and rewarding.

The true energy of thought begins in the heart, and is only registered in the brain as a secondary image. When the mind's center of gravity is changed in this way, passionate contemplation of a loved one becomes a movement towards them in the energy continuum, a movement that is as real as seeing them with our eyes, or holding them in our arms. In this way, Kundalini alters the possibility of what "just thinking" might mean to people who are physically separated.

It's no coincidence that there's been an upsurge in Kundalini awakenings at a moment in history when more and more people are parted from their loved ones: the Thai farmer selling hot dogs at Abu Dhabi airport, who's missed seeing his children grow up; the Filipino seamstress cleaning hotel rooms in London, who can't be with her dying father. People displaced by war and natural disaster. The drifter who can't explain why he doesn't go home to see his mother.

Mindfulness — knowing thought without thinking it — empowers consciousness and takes some of the physical edge off necessity. Painful though it may be, physical separation becomes the pale, outer shadow of an inner closeness. Indeed, when Kundalini opens the throat chakra, the source of space/time, closeness becomes oneness, no matter how far apart you are.

I finally made it home to see my mother, and she forgave me my broken promise and long absence before she died. Close to death, high on morphine, I think she understood the power of "just thinking," though my Dad still reckons it's Codswallop!

Finding Balance in the Effort to Integrate Kundalini

One day there was a Me; the next day there wasn’t. One day I was practicing meditation, breathing in and out in a rhythmic manner; the next I was transported to another dimension I’ll never be completely able to explain or describe. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying. After all, I have one advantage: I never really returned from that other dimension; I live with a foot in both — the physical world we know as the “real world” and that other dimension. To describe it, I use terms from science as well as those from various spiritual traditions, not because I like arcanum or confusion, but because when I say kundalini, you’ll say chi, someone else will say orgone; and we’ll be talking about the same thing without knowing it.

Are You Upside Down or Rightside Up

Nevertheless, once it happens to you, you'll understand how unimportant terminology is. Each awakening experience is only a different manifestation of the same energy. Sure, it involves struggling with terminology and understanding the same notions phrased in slightly different ways. The closest we get to clarity is a series of approximations of an actual awakening experience. And that's perfectly understandable because it’s not easy to express or describe. But there is a constant: everyone who experiences Kundalini has one foot permanently in that other dimension.

Self-explanatory

There’s a corollary to that constant, one we learn, not during the Kundalini activation experience per se because during the experience we are floating in a no-mind state, at least I was. Immediately after — when we “come back to our senses” — we know there is an all-pervading consciousness behind the universe and behind human evolution. It’s not a hallucination or a projection of aberrant mental activity.

This consciousness is much greater than our bodies or the physical world we perceive. We are part of it, contained in it. In this consciousness, nothing is separate. All is Whole and Undivided. This cannot be learned in school or books, it can only be Known.

Ever Increasing Concentric Circles

Very few of us progress straight from birth to self-actualization. To perceive whole and undivided Oneness, we first serve an apprenticeship, as it were, in a world of duality, a world in which every aspect seems to be in opposition to every other. This is not reality; it is the world of the senses, one we are conditioned to from birth. Once we recognize that we are conditioned to think in terms of duality, we are able to find ways and means of extracting ourselves from that conditioning; and we are offered the opportunity to do so.

Many individuals are so completely conditioned they remain that way for the rest of their lives. Some are able to recognize this conditioning. A few are able to work their way through it to the cosmological Oneness behind duality. Those who achieve this may attempt to integrate this knowledge with their real world lives; others are content to remain immersed in the bliss they’ve discovered. I chose a balance: remaining in the world, at the same time, realizing I am a part of an Energy Continuum. I didn’t really choose It; It chose me. That’s the kind of purposeful compulsion Kundalini introduces into our lives. After awakening, we can’t take credit for anything we do, say, or write. We are driven to it.

Yet, spurred on by an urge to understand my experience to the extent I can — how conventional science views evolution as opposed to how someone like myself, a person with a foot in two different worlds, perceives it — I concluded that Kundalini is an evolutionary force with a guiding intelligence behind it, and I looked for an evidence-based paradigm for examining it.

Let's All Go to the Movies

Science recognizes “survival of the fittest” and “natural selection” as the operative mechanisms behind evolution. But is there another mechanism working at a higher level, one Gopi Krishna called the evolutionary impulse? Not perceptible by everyone at this time, this mechanism drives certain beings toward super-consciousness, allowing them to recognize and access energy fields beyond the confines of the circumscribed physical universe, beyond the five senses. Those who do experience it say this super-consciousness manifests itself as vibrational energy. If so, could it become perceivable at some future time by all humans as a result of a rapid surge in the quality of human evolution? A new tip of Maslow’s pyramid dedicated to higher consciousness? In other words, could all human beings eventually become conscious of consciousness at each and every moment of their lives?

Preparing for the July Fourth Nacho Eating Contest

Is the objective study of Kundalini a fool’s errand? Perhaps, but Kundalini is a many-sided subject. I believe we can learn from an evidence-based approach to studying its role in evolution.

How Kundalini is Perceived

If you're out there, dealing with Kundalini, how do you explain it to others, to yourself?

Recently, I had the opportunity to test this. I wasn't giving a talk or a presentation on Kundalini; I had been invited to join a community discussion group with five or six other men and I was attending my fifth or sixth session. Discussion usually skirted around cultural and any number of other progressive topics, but it never touched spiritual matters. And I never brought one up.
 

Prayer or Practice

One day, however, one of the participants — I later discovered he was battling cancer — brought up the afterlife question in a way that flowed seamlessly into the existing context. I can't remember word for word what followed, but I did seize the opening to comment on my research into human energy potential and energy cultivation techniques, as well as my findings that death was not to be feared and was only a transition into a new state of being.

Someone asked me if I could prove it. I cited NDE and Kundalini as examples of consciousness existing outside mind and body. I underlined that this hypothesis was the result of research done in the laboratory of my own body, and it was supported by many similar accounts from all over the globe. Some members continued the discussion; the man who'd started it wanted to hear more. But several others began shouting that Kundalini had no scientific value; it was only a cult.

A cult, a religion, a philosophy, a practice, and an exercise regimen. It's been called all of the above, and probably less flattering names as well, I observed. One man kept shouting it's a cult, it's a cult. I spent two minutes trying to explain that Kundalini was a biological process, that I had no religious affiliations, and that kundalini, despite the unfortunate connotations attached to its name, was the driving force behind evolution. I mentioned that my kundalini experience had begun with breathing exercises, and then morphed into profound consciousness experiences I have documented in several books.

I stated that my experience was not the result of any religious practice. In fact, I told them I practiced no religion nor did I hold any position on God.
 
However, I said Kundalini did trigger many physical, metabolic, mental, psychic, and other effects in my being, right down to the cellular level, on which I could elaborate if the group was interested. I told them these effects had nothing to do with religion. They were the by-product of the biological energy Kundalini produces and they resulted in my becoming immersed in an Energy Continuum, not unlike the Unified Field physicists speak of. My experience inspired me to learn more about higher consciousness, energy cultivation, and the role of Kundalini in evolution. I added that the effects were largely unexpected and showed me that keeping an open mind was paramount if we are interested in the forces behind evolution.

"Cult, cult," he shouted.

It's not a religion or a cult, I said. You can't be "converted" to Kundalini, any more than you can be converted to a heart attack or an orgasm; they just happen. That's the nature of biological processes; they just happen. Some are triggered by external stimuli or practices, like meditation; others are autonomic or spontaneous.

Needless to say, the discussion ended there and that was the last meeting I attended. What's the point? If a person is so closed-minded he confuses biology with religion, there's little room for dialog.

Nevertheless, of the two most excitable critics, I learned that one was a virulent atheist who could not conceive of any middle ground between belief and non-belief in God and the other had been raised in fundamentalist surroundings and had it up to his chin hairs with religion. Both were college professors.

So how do you explain Kundalini? How do others react to your explanation? Did you learn anything from encounters with people whose minds are closed to any investigation of the hypothesis that biology is an expression of consciousness?

More NDE and Kundalini

There are thousands of accounts of Near Death Experiences (NDE) and Kundalini Experiences (KE) that reveal an energy continuum outside the present bounds of Western science. What’s so special about these accounts? Why should we take them seriously? They occur irrespective of cultural, linguistic, geographic or religious influences. In other words, yes, they are anecdotal in nature, but, at the same time, asynchronous, disconnected in time and space. In fact, so disconnected it would indicate that the subjects (the individuals undergoing the experience) were in no way influenced by others undergoing similar experiences. Similar enough for any serious investigator to keep an open mind about the subject and to focus on proving/disproving the existence of this hypothesis — that the energy continuum exists.


 
Instead, neuroscientists tell us that the NDE is an hallucination. In a recent Scientific American article the author argues that Dr. Eben Alexander’s book Proof of Heaven is not an account of consciousness existing separate from the mind, but only an hallucination.

“The reason people turn to supernatural explanations is that the mind abhors a vacuum of explanation. Because we do not yet have a fully natural explanation for mind and consciousness, people turn to supernatural explanations to fill the void. But what is more likely: That Alexander’s NDE was a real trip to heaven and all these other hallucinations are the product of neural activity only? Or that all such experiences are mediated by the brain but seem real to each experiencer? To me, this evidence is proof of hallucination, not heaven.”

Notice how he uses the pejorative term supernatural as opposed metaphysical, a more respectful, scientific term. But that’s what the conventional wisdom does: ridicule new hypotheses, instead of investigating them. In addition, the article was originally published under the title Proof of Hallucination, before it was subsequently changed to the current title, Why a Near-Death Experience Isn’t Proof of Heaven. More misplaced ridicule, and very unscientific, because the article no more proves that NDEs are hallucinations than it proves that consciousness cannot exist outside the mind.

The only convincing point Shermer makes in the article is that Alexander did not see heaven. That much we agree on. But from Alexander’s descriptions in his book, I do believe he “visited” the energy continuum, just like Jill Bolte Taylor did.

As for the argument that all NDEs are hallucinations, why do all NDE subjects have basically the same hallucination? Despite the differences of culture, etc? If they were hallucinations, it would seem to me that they would differ. One subject would see himself in a poker game, another charging up San Juan Hill, still another making love to the Empress of China, and so on. I know my dreams are different each time. Why are all NDE accounts virtually the same?

How is the NDE is related to Kundalini? That the two share a set of similar effects is certain. That up to now, there is no empirical proof that either phenomenon can be scientifically observed is also accurate.

That makes it easy to discard, (even ridicule), the numerous anecdotal accounts of these phenomena. Yet, this disdain is so Western-centric, so Scientific-American, totally ignoring centuries of research that has taken place in other laboratories. Namely, the laboratory of the practitioners' bodies, those who have practiced a variety of esoteric, consciousness-expanding disciplines through the ages.

To devalue these practices is to say there is no other way of unlocking the secrets of consciousness, except through experiments performed in the labs of Western scientists, especially the cabal of neuroscientists who proclaim that consciousness does not exist outside of the brain, that the brain is like a computer motherboard, which, once it shuts down, is no longer of any use. The human body is not a computer.

These individuals approach all consciousness research with a set of foregone conclusions; they know what they are looking for and proceed to find it in their data. Quelle surprise!

They’re as close-minded as the so-called experts who opposed Dr. Barry Marshall when he declared that ulcers were caused by bacteria. But that’s the way much of science works. By resisting new ideas until they become so clearly corroborated that resistance finally topples over of its own inert dead weight.

Yes, Dr. Alexander got carried away. Better to have titled his book One Small Step in Proving the Existence of an All-Encompassing Consciousness.

Nevertheless, Kundalini and the NDE are real, not just it’s-all-in-your-mind accusations leveled against New Age babblings. Consciousness exists outside and beyond the human brain. That we don’t have the tools or methods of demonstrating this to Western scientists at this time doesn’t mean we never will.

Right now, research could focus on how the practice of Kundalini activation techniques sheds light on the NDE, bolstering and supporting by separate experimentation thousands of NDE and KE accounts.
 
If we don't know what consciousness is how can we presume to say what it isn't? So let's keep our minds open until we can — one way or the other.

I AM

Meditation has been my way of learning about myself. I have been asking the question, "Who am I?"

The words "The Earth is my dream" flash in my mind and I ask, "Who am I?"

The answer I receive, "You are my creation."

And I fall deeper into myself as everything fades away and I dissolve into an energy field that is infinite. Call it the Unified Field, Energy Continuum, The Matrix, Spirit or God.

My ego says, "I am Simmi."

The field replies, "I AM."

I realize that my ego is like a looping labyrinth that always walks me back to the starting point no matter how I try to maneuver through it. Its job is to keep me identifying myself as separate from the whole. Once again, it walks me back to being Simmi and I say, "I am Simmi."

The field replies more emphatically.

"(No) I AM."

It shows me how a piece of the whole gets embodied as a separate being. Like a sliver being encased within the armor of Simmi.

"I am Simmi."

"(NO) I AM."

I feel I am in the mind of God and He has observed me into being. He has observed everything that exists into being. Creation are the thoughts of God manifested inside His being. When I lose the armor of Simmi, I am the whole. In the whole, thoughts float in an endless sea. The ego creates shape and time and dimension. It creates the illusion. I understand that since you exist you are important to the whole and you are exactly how you should be.

I ask again. "Who am I?"

And I awaken to.

I AM everything.

Kundalini and God

Back in the 50s when I was young, bars and taverns featured philosophical discussions in which showing off your vocabulary and your syntactical prowess played a large part. Mastery of debating and spoken language was important. Perhaps we had fewer distractions — no iPads, no Internet, no Netflix, no Kindle Fire, no TV remotes. You had to get up, walk across the room to change the channel. Pretty much a linear world. Books opened on page one and proceeded to the last page, cumbersome LP records loaded, then played from track one to the end. No hopping around, no random channel zapping.

Did this paradigm affect our train of thought, our self-expression? Probably. I remember formal discussions, often centered on theology — God vs. no God, free will vs. predetermination, life and afterlife, — often quoting Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Voltaire, Bertrand Russell, and other sources, many of whom had been dead for hundreds of years. We were closer to classical literature then, closer to formal expression and grammar. We took pains to use "few" correctly, instead of lumping paucity under the all-inclusive "less." Not only did we discuss in bars, impromptu forums were everywhere: around campfires, on trains, in schoolyards and campuses, even in Army barracks.

During one discussion I remember fading into a kind of beer-soaked reverie, a moment of clairvoyance in which I was a separate entity outside myself, watching the words come out of my mouth, people’s arms waving, beer being swigged. It was as if I was a ventriloquist’s dummy someone else was manipulating. Yes, it was me talking, but the words weren’t really mine; I was a mouthpiece for something I’d heard or read. I felt a shudder, as if I was, and had always been, involved in a vain search for recognition, a desire to be taken seriously, in spite of the second hand nature of my words.



I wondered if anyone had answers. Or were we simply verbal shadow boxers, some more clever than others, aimlessly repeating without any empirical basis to our thoughts? Were we merely casting opinions, hoping others would somehow fall under the spell of our words?

There had to be another way of exploring these issues. Endless discussion around beer-laden tables was not it. Quoting the cognoscenti led to nothing. But what way was there? And if there was a way, was it worth pursuing?

Whatever it was, instinctively I knew I would have to find it myself, go it alone. I would have to step outside groupthink and conventional wisdom, stop repeating what someone else thought or how someone else had rationalized the existence or non-existence of God.

My search led me to Yoga and Kundalini, back to the very essence of my Being, like the following Tagore poem suggests, coming back to where I started:

The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.
I came out on the chariot at the first gleam of light, and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.
It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.
The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.
My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said 'Here art thou!"
The question and the cry 'Oh, where?' melt into into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance 'I am!'

Activating Kundalini in 1973 was serendipitous, but unintentional, in that, yes, I was meditating, but at the time, I had never heard of Kundalini. I stumbled into it as a result of my meditation practice. I didn't really understand what might happen should my meditation practice succeed. Back then, it wasn't like it is today; there was very little information on Kundalini and I didn't even start looking for it until my awakening happened because I didn't know what to look for.

Forty years later I now understand the futility of polemics. The only thing that matters is experience, and what you see, hear, and feel during your experience. Reading won’t get you there. Neither will science, law, education, religion, money, or good works. If they worked, we’d all be illuminated.

Kundalini takes no position on God; it merely connects you to the energy continuum. Trouble is people (very intelligent people) will see you as an advocate of religion, despite the fact that Kundalini is at once agnostic and ecumenical. To activate it you do not have to follow rituals or say prayers. No invocations, no learning of doctrine, no chanting the names of Saints.

There are no cultural, no language, no geographical barriers to activating Kundalini. No religious prerequisites either. An individual can do it if he/she is a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Hindu. Or none of the above — a person without religious affiliation. Once I realized this, I said to myself, Hey, this isn’t religion; this is science, albeit a kind of self-empiricized science that most people won’t recognize.

Unfortunately, one of the constraining factors around Kundalini is that, once an experience like this (a Kundalini activation) happens, one looks around for verification and support, and the only place one finds it is in Hindu, Taoist, and/or Buddhist texts. So the initiate throws in his/her lot with Eastern religions...for a while, at least. But if he/she starts to examine the issue as I have over the past 40 years since my Kundalini activation, he/she sees that what happened to him/her could happen to anyone. And he/she begins to see the scientific ramifications of his/her experience, begins to realize Kundalini is neurobiology.

The danger is getting so carried away with religious fervor that you miss the science. It leads to getting tainted with the kiss-of-death Spirituality label. There is a term that describes this work but it’s not spirituality, it’s Metaphysical.

What’s the difference? you ask. Spirituality has become a cliché. Ask 50 people to write down a one-sentence definition of spiritual and you get 50 different, contradictory answers. The word has no meaning. Metaphysical, on the other hand, is clear: it means beyond the physical.

The Mind can be a Prison

So be careful. Just because you feel a religious fervor on awakening Kundalini, don’t say you spoke with God or saw Him if you didn’t. For instance, perhaps, you saw a white light, but don't assume that God is somehow in the light, not an anthropomorphic representation, that is. God IS there, just as God IS everywhere. The God I'm talking about, however, is as much the consciousness contained in the Energy Continuum as it is You in your self-realized state.

Try to catalog your experience scientifically. Include only the realities you see and hear. Yes, there is an Energy Continuum, but just because you now perceive and are part of it doesn’t mean that you have to embellish it. That only does a disservice to those who are trying to gain mass critical acceptance for Kundalini. Yes, the Energy Continuum is wonderful, like Disneyland to a child, but place yourself in it accurately. Don’t get labeled as a spiritualist. At the very least, step back from your experience to evaluate it. Is it a scientific experience or a religious one? It’s got to be one or the other; it can’t be spiritual, because the word has no meaning. If religious best describes it, realize you get nowhere. People will call it spiritual and lump you in with fundamentalists and fanatics. If metaphysical best describes it, then it’s scientific, because metaphysics is the science of that which lies beyond the physical. Never forget Kundalini is a direct result of physical activity. Consciousness rising out of mechanical pieces and parts, namely our breathing apparatus and our sexuality — neurobiology at its most potent.

So, if you come out spraying a lot of new age mumbo-jumbo, everyone you talk to will be thinking it’s all in his/her mind. Don’t give them the satisfaction of lumping you in with religions based only on faith or spiritual cults based on accepting someone else’s arbitrary opinions. Try relating it to the real world. You’ll find there’s no separation. They flow into one another — the physical into the metaphysical.

Just because you can’t furnish an empirical proof that science accepts today, doesn’t mean your experience isn’t real. In time it will be empirically proven, once we have the tools and/or the means to do so.

Today, we have the nouveau atheists, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, who carry on about God and no God. More words, cleverly put together. It’s still only opinion. And it’s beside the point. They are talkers, not doers. And metaphysical knowledge cannot be gained by talking.

Do they have a case? Absolutely, their arguments about the limits of religion are correct; everyone should read their books. Accepting anything on faith is wrong minded. But they add no empirical evidence to the matter, just more rationalization.

Ask yourself: Why do neurobiologists ignore Kundalini? If they're really investigating the neurological effects of biology, shouldn't they be investigating the most powerful means of enhancing the brain? Should they really be saying the only way to study the brain is from the outside-in, not the inside-out?

Whether it’s from the side of religion or the side of science, it’s only so much talk. No one knows without doing. The problem with doing is there’s a tendency is to overdo. To get carried away with religious fervor when it’s really a scientific experiment you’ve just lived through, one that took place in the laboratory of your body.

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.

The Energy Continuum

I don't know if the phrase Energy Continuum originated with me; I don't care. What I do know is it's the closest I can come to expressing what I perceive to be the reality of what can only be termed consciousness that extends beyond the physical, material dimension we like to believe is all there is. I use it because it applies to my observations and experience. It's what I have observed since my Kundalini activation provided me access to the metaphysical dimension, allowing me not only to see beyond the material world, but also into the inner workings of a metaphysical subsystem within my own body.

At present, my accounts cannot be disproved or proven by the scientific community, only discounted as anecdotal. The fact that thousands of kundalini adepts and near death experiencers (NDE) have witnessed and merged with the Energy Continuum holds no sway with scientists. That's fine. Nevertheless, these accounts, though anecdotal, are the first wave in what will ultimately become a tidal wave of scientific exploration on the Energy Continuum, and on Consciousness with a capital C.

Kundalini Is Not A Bed Of Roses!

Discounting the existence of the Energy Continuum is actually silly. Why? Because so much energy is spent by scientists/atheists and their religionist counterparts in proving/disproving the God/No God theories. Theories that cannot be proven or disproved.

As stated previously, there is no evidence for, or against, either of the two positions: God or No God. None. But there is evidence, albeit anecdotal, for the Energy Continuum.

This should actually please the respective sides of the God/No God argument. Sadly, it doesn't. They've been at it so long, they can't foresee an end to the argument, even though if they settled for what we do know, thanks to mountains of first person Kundalini and NDE accounts, they might drop all the posturing about a notion (God or No God) which, at this time, is neither provable nor disprovable. Drop it and do what? you ask. How about trying to piece together the various accounts of the Energy Continuum and extended Consciousness!

What kind of accounts? We're talking about out-of-body, kundalini meditation, Near Death, astral travel, kundalini experience, Energy Healing, consciousness, and psychic prescience. I'm sure I've left someone or something out. I'm sorry. But there are so many firsthand accounts, metaphysics (beyond the physical) has got to be more than Coincidence, more than Synchronicity. It has to have some foundation, or one out of four people are crazy. I'm not crazy. I have seen the other side and it is continuous (as in everlasting) and full of energy (as in conscious energy). Others — too many to ignore — have also witnessed or become immersed in the Energy Continuum, each in his/her own individual way. Each has his/her story to tell. Why not join forces to study these experiences?

Yes, there is resistance. It comes in many forms, people who say things like:

• It's all in you mind.
• There's no proof.
• Science does not accept anecdotal evidence.
• Death is like the crash of a motherboard.
• It's not a question of belief; it's a question of faith.
• There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers.

Why should this discussion matter to someone pursuing self-realization or metaphysical truth? Why should you care if no one believes in your experience? Is it worth trying to convince closed minds to open and to remain open?

Think about it. When you choose the path of faith and belief, you give up your power. You become subservient to the argument you support; you become subservient to someone else's opinions; you become subservient to polemics, useless discussion of something that cannot and does not affect your life, your health, your conscious refinement, or your being. What do I mean?

If you are truly interested in self-realization, you will forget polemics; you will concentrate on practice, secure in the knowledge that there is an Energy Continuum. Why should you take my word for it? You shouldn't, but the fact that you are reading these words means that something has piqued your interest in the subject. Most likely it wasn't a discussion in a bar about the non-existence of God or a sermon in church about the existence of God; it was an actual physical sensation or experience. Something inexplicable happened in your life: a feeling of weakness followed by a renewal of strength, a moment when you felt great clarity, the ability to heal yourself and others, an instant of energy surging up your spine, an out-of-body experience, clairvoyance, some unusual feat of dexterity, a precognitive vision, the capability to control heart rate or body temperature, extraordinary somatic awareness, scientific or artistic inspiration, and so on. In short, a metanormal experience.

What mattered most to you was the certainty that your sensation or experience was real, not a figment. So what do you do when someone attributes your sensation or experience to mania, madness, mental illness or aberration? What can you learn from this sort of criticism? Simply, that it's better not to talk with close-minded people. You can't get anywhere by arguing. So don't. Redouble your efforts and continue to practice, knowing that many are doing the same. They may not be using the same techniques or the same method. Respect that, knowing that they were probably "picqued" by some metanormal experience in much the same way you were.

There's an energy revolution on this planet. I'm not talking about the energy we extract from the ground. This revolution is taking place in the bodies and souls of men and women. This is the millennium of the Energy Continuum, man's last greatest frontier, if we are to survive on this planet and in this universe. We must find a way to master the negative aspects of our Beings, to change our consciousness as we move forward in a complex, unforgiving, technological world.

Blueprints of our Physical Bodies

"We are all perfect at the split-second moment before conception. Of course, like a building before the foundation is laid, at that moment our beings are only blueprints. These blueprints — the numinous plans laid out for our embodiment — are perfect. At the moment of conception — the moment the egg is fertilized by the sperm — the embryonic body begins to take shape. It’s the moment when, were we able to stand over our perfect blueprints, we might wonder if they will be executed as designed. From the moment we’re born, any one of thousands of stimuli — within or out of our control — can alter our growth, assuring degrees of deviation from the blueprint for our unique embodiment.

"After activating the Kundalini-Life Force, I was able to see the blueprint of my perfect body and compare it to my altered state. Amazingly, the Life Force recognized my deformity and immediately began to correct it. I witnessed it slowly reshape my body to the exact proportions in the blueprint. So — and this requires a leap of logic — if I could see the original design for my body and it was perfect in every way, there must be some sentient agency that created this design. And even though my growth took a detour on account of my deformity, the blueprint continued to exist in some ethereal computer-memory-like storage, waiting for the day that I might learn of its existence and find a way back to it.

"Happily, GFM, the method of meditation I practiced, restored my deformed body to its original state, and, in so doing, proved both the existence of the blueprint and the restorative power of the Kundalini-Life Force. This sounds an awful lot like Intelligent Design, doesn’t it? A permanent blueprint of our beings and a mechanism within the body capable of restoring it to its intended state."

~ Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time - JJ Semple

I suppose many readers pass over the above without a second thought. One reader, however, challenged me to explain these words when he posted this inquiry on the Forum,"Dear JJ: How does a person access their blueprint? It's not clear from your book."

I got to thinking, and I had to agree: It isn't entirely clear, but not because my description is poor — it's the best I can do — but because you can't see the mountaintop until you're on top of the mountain. 

So what's the real issue? For one, the only way to describe a phenomenon like this is by liberal use of imagery: "perfect body," "template shroud,"  "sentient agency," "bodily substantiation," "controlling field," "permanent blueprint?" What do these terms mean? Two, we have to determine what this blueprint is before we can talk of accessing it.

Edward Hopper: Girls In Cafeteria Line

I don't know any way of doing this without using more imagery. No words suffice or exist for those who have never experienced the energy continuum. But I won't compound the difficulty by adding more imagery.

I was able to see two separate bodies, one, my actual physical form; the other, my intended form which lay over my physical body like a template shroud. Now I didn't actually see it so much as sense its surrounding me like an aura. I knew it was there; I knew it was perfect. I knew the physical body could be "stretched" to fit this causal body, using it as a blueprint to restore my physical body to its intended form. So how did I know it?

Simply that once the Kundalini rose, my nervous system found another level of activity, as if it morphed from a chugging Model-T Ford to the Warp Drive propulsion that characterizes fictional Star Trek spacecraft. My mind's eye perceived my aura shimmering around my body. See my aura? I had never been able to beforehand.

Whole lifetimes without seeing one's aura is par for the course of life, in most cases. It could have easily been mine. Yet when it happened, it was a feeling greater than enchantment; it signaled a complete breakdown of the duality paradigm. I realized I was a part of a greater whole, that I extended beyond the limits of my physical body into an infinite horizon.

Kundalini is not the private domain of certain adepts

I wasn't able to get to the state that allowed me to perceive the blueprint until I had successfully mastered all steps of the method. Yes, there are many other types of awakening experiences, many induced by other sorts of stimuli or triggers, but I only know mine.

I can tell you about it, I do in my books, but you shouldn't rely on me. In fact, the more you rely on me, the less likely you are to actually experience any of this as anything but an intellectual exercise. A big part of the method — of any method — is the challenge of validating everything you see, hear, and feel as your practice progresses. An even bigger part is practicing the method until you become a trained observer of the inner landscape. Complete the method — all parts, all steps — as per the instructions. When you do, you won't be asking questions: you will have answered them the only way possible — by hard work and practice. Only then can you expect to reach states attainable by completing the work.

What's more, there are no guarantees in this work, you shouldn't expect them. Success (whatever that is*) depends on your Karma, your efforts, your conditioning, and the method you use. Is GFM is the only method that induces permanent Kundalini? No, there are other methods and I encourage you to explore them. I can vouch for GFM; I can't vouch for any other method. Sensing the blueprint and seeing the inner workings of my being only occurred after I was deeply into the process, i.e., months and months of working at it. It's not a question of fairness, that I can see it but you can't. It's a question of practice and training.

If you play around with a lot of methods, you may have some Kundalini experiences, even a Kundalini awakening, perhaps. The question is: will they be complete enough for you to witness the inner workings of your being?

 

* You should have a goal and a roadmap; many individuals don't; they dabble and flail about, then wonder why they're not successful. Success is dependent on many factors. If there was a magic Kundalini elixir, that would be great, but as of now, there isn't. Nevertheless, a good way to find out about the design for your Being is to practice Kundalini meditation.