Monday, May 02, 2005
Beyond Human
Beyond Human
Last night, I tuned in by accident to a pbs program in a series entitled “Beyond Human.” It began with the observation that the Chinese had long known that the body was an electrical system. It went from there to present various recent discoveries in the field of medicine and electronic communications which link the body’s own electrical circuitry to various computer systems, often through the insertion of microchips into the brain.
Various seeming miracles have been achieved through these techniques: those with severe spinal cord injuries have been able to walk, the blind to see, and the deaf to hear. It is now even possible, through thought alone, to move objects or images outside the body, such as a computer cursor.
I was delighted to note that contemporary science is at long last exploring the role of the body’s own electromagnetic system, for the healing of disability as well as for other purposes. As Isaac Benthov posited years ago, kundalini itself may be a related phenomenon, an arousal and entrainment of the various electrical/vibrational systems within the body. When the kundalini power awakens, it may be (indeed, clearly is) among others, a somatic electrical phenomenon, which brings into consciousness, processes which previously operated below the threshold of awareness. Further, it intensifies these sensations so that they may become pleasurable or painful, according to how they manifest.
Now, this line of thought leads to interesting speculations. Did the ancients (and moderns) who trained their bodies to “bring up the kundalini energies,” actually learn to “light up” the body’s innate electrical system? Are the nadis a representation of this vast network of electrical circuitry, operating on ever more subtle levels? Is the opening of the crown, so often described as resembling the lotus’ thousand petals unfolding, the result of an ultimate electrical discharge at the top of the brain? Are spontaneous kriyas (sudden body movements, such as jerking or twitching) associated with some kundalini awakenings, actually the result of random firing of neurons throughout the body, which is attempting to adjust to its unfamiliar state?
Are we, in effect, mere minuscule impulses in a vast, ongoing, and ineffable energy system which inanimates all that is? Is the source of everything, the “great dynamo in the sky?”
In one sense, the answer is yes. This is not to reduce the human nor the universe itself to a “nothing but” phenomenon. But reflection helps us to understand the connections between the inner subjective moments of illumination and heightened awareness, and the bodily processes which accompany them and form their physiological base. We are indeed “bodies electric” (as Whitman called the human complex) in the full sense. We participate the vast unknown, being both tiny elements in its structure, and yet seemingly separate entities capable of thinking and experiencing in ways which seem unique to ourselves. We are at once mere particles of the divine, and at the same time witnesses of the process as participants (waves of consciousness) in the universal flow.
Ultimately, enlightenment is the realization that, in the end, “god” (the divine essence) is all that is. We exist only in our own mental formulation of the self, deceived by our ongoing personal responses to our surroundings into believing we have independent identities, that we are somehow self created and self propelled.
To know this truth is not to abandon the personal or the collective human project. We continue to respect our divine connection, to participate its reality through the flow of rapturous energies through our bodies when we open to a higher state of consciousness. Then, ideally, we carry our refreshed and ever more refined energies into the world, to make this a better place for us and all earth’s inhabitants. Perhaps, indeed, the planet is raising her vibrations, and we are an integral part of that process.
All of this leads me to wonder if the great healerssuch as Jesus, certain shamans and spiritual leadershave wondrous electric energy fields surrounding and flowing through their bodiesand this is what others experience in their presence. Hence, the woman who merely touched the hem of the divine garment was instantly healed. And also this may be the secret of shaktipatthe instantaneous transmission of intense electrical energy from one being to another. And when we come into the presence of such an advanced being, or perhaps a group united in their spiritual practice and thus resonating togetherwe can perhaps sense this amazing vibration as we too begin to resonate at the same level. A similar interpretation would apply to the earth’s energies in sacred placeswe resonate with the actual vibrations coming up through the earth. Perhaps now science is ready to explore the literal (physical) basis of the kundalini phenomenon and tell us how and why it works on a materialistic (measurable) level.
(I should again emphasize that I in no way look on kundalini as merely a physiological process. I feel that each experience is sacred, and affirms our divine connection. For those of us unable to “think our way to god,” it is especially valuable. Once more, I will quote Yeats: “Man (sic) can embody truth but never know it.”)
Last night, I tuned in by accident to a pbs program in a series entitled “Beyond Human.” It began with the observation that the Chinese had long known that the body was an electrical system. It went from there to present various recent discoveries in the field of medicine and electronic communications which link the body’s own electrical circuitry to various computer systems, often through the insertion of microchips into the brain.
Various seeming miracles have been achieved through these techniques: those with severe spinal cord injuries have been able to walk, the blind to see, and the deaf to hear. It is now even possible, through thought alone, to move objects or images outside the body, such as a computer cursor.
I was delighted to note that contemporary science is at long last exploring the role of the body’s own electromagnetic system, for the healing of disability as well as for other purposes. As Isaac Benthov posited years ago, kundalini itself may be a related phenomenon, an arousal and entrainment of the various electrical/vibrational systems within the body. When the kundalini power awakens, it may be (indeed, clearly is) among others, a somatic electrical phenomenon, which brings into consciousness, processes which previously operated below the threshold of awareness. Further, it intensifies these sensations so that they may become pleasurable or painful, according to how they manifest.
Now, this line of thought leads to interesting speculations. Did the ancients (and moderns) who trained their bodies to “bring up the kundalini energies,” actually learn to “light up” the body’s innate electrical system? Are the nadis a representation of this vast network of electrical circuitry, operating on ever more subtle levels? Is the opening of the crown, so often described as resembling the lotus’ thousand petals unfolding, the result of an ultimate electrical discharge at the top of the brain? Are spontaneous kriyas (sudden body movements, such as jerking or twitching) associated with some kundalini awakenings, actually the result of random firing of neurons throughout the body, which is attempting to adjust to its unfamiliar state?
Are we, in effect, mere minuscule impulses in a vast, ongoing, and ineffable energy system which inanimates all that is? Is the source of everything, the “great dynamo in the sky?”
In one sense, the answer is yes. This is not to reduce the human nor the universe itself to a “nothing but” phenomenon. But reflection helps us to understand the connections between the inner subjective moments of illumination and heightened awareness, and the bodily processes which accompany them and form their physiological base. We are indeed “bodies electric” (as Whitman called the human complex) in the full sense. We participate the vast unknown, being both tiny elements in its structure, and yet seemingly separate entities capable of thinking and experiencing in ways which seem unique to ourselves. We are at once mere particles of the divine, and at the same time witnesses of the process as participants (waves of consciousness) in the universal flow.
Ultimately, enlightenment is the realization that, in the end, “god” (the divine essence) is all that is. We exist only in our own mental formulation of the self, deceived by our ongoing personal responses to our surroundings into believing we have independent identities, that we are somehow self created and self propelled.
To know this truth is not to abandon the personal or the collective human project. We continue to respect our divine connection, to participate its reality through the flow of rapturous energies through our bodies when we open to a higher state of consciousness. Then, ideally, we carry our refreshed and ever more refined energies into the world, to make this a better place for us and all earth’s inhabitants. Perhaps, indeed, the planet is raising her vibrations, and we are an integral part of that process.
All of this leads me to wonder if the great healerssuch as Jesus, certain shamans and spiritual leadershave wondrous electric energy fields surrounding and flowing through their bodiesand this is what others experience in their presence. Hence, the woman who merely touched the hem of the divine garment was instantly healed. And also this may be the secret of shaktipatthe instantaneous transmission of intense electrical energy from one being to another. And when we come into the presence of such an advanced being, or perhaps a group united in their spiritual practice and thus resonating togetherwe can perhaps sense this amazing vibration as we too begin to resonate at the same level. A similar interpretation would apply to the earth’s energies in sacred placeswe resonate with the actual vibrations coming up through the earth. Perhaps now science is ready to explore the literal (physical) basis of the kundalini phenomenon and tell us how and why it works on a materialistic (measurable) level.
(I should again emphasize that I in no way look on kundalini as merely a physiological process. I feel that each experience is sacred, and affirms our divine connection. For those of us unable to “think our way to god,” it is especially valuable. Once more, I will quote Yeats: “Man (sic) can embody truth but never know it.”)
