Kundalini Splendor

There is a close relationship between Kundalini and the mystical experience. I think all of us experience "mystical moments," when ordinary consciousness subsides and a sense of a larger, mysterious reality takes its place. Such moments lead to intense, heightened awareness of ourselves and the world. They can happen in nature, in devotional practice, when listening to music, when creating something of beauty, or even when being in love (as well as other states of consciousness). I think that those who are universally recognized as "mystics" are simply those whose lives are marked by a near constant stream of such moments--these states then become the dominant "reality" rather than "ordinary consciousness."

Here is an excerpt that I found on a new website at http://www.icrcanada.org (Institute for Consciousness Research). The full entry (well worth reading) is printed under the section called "Literary Research."

It is gratifying to know that those of us on the Kundalini path share certain kinds of consciousness states with great mystics, who have themselves significantly impacted the world.

The Institute for Consciousness Research did not supply information as to the original source of this article nor background information on the author. The site contains much additional information of value on Kundalini as a whole, especially the role of Gopi Krishna, one of the pioneers of the Kundalini phenomenon.



The Mystical Experience

(excerpted from an article by Eileen Holland)

Mystical experience is generally described as being some type of direct experience of the Divine. In virtually every spiritual tradition, mystics talk about this experience as a "union" with the Divine or as a "oneness" with all things. Gopi Krishna says that "In the highest states of mystical ecstasy every object springs to life and the whole of nature becomes alive. One incredible living, feeling Ocean of Being connects the mystic with every object in the Universe."

In examining these lives, we present several examples of people who had these profound mystical experiences. They may differ somewhat, but their similarities are far more notable than their differences. Regardless of when or where they occurred, they all contain the elements of the mystical experience the Yogic tradition tells us are characteristic of kundalini awakening. This awakening is usually accompanied by an experience of cosmic light, sometimes sound, a feeling of bliss, and expansion of consciousness and a lasting transformation in the life of the experiencer.

Walt Whitman in ‘Song of Myself’ expresses the transformation:

Loafe with me on the grass, loose
the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme
I want, not custom or lecture,
not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum
of your valved voice…
…Is this then a touch quivering
me to a new identity?
Flames and ether making a rush
for my veins…
…My ties and ballasts leave me…
I travel…I sail…My elbows
rest in sea gaps,
I skirt Sierras…my palms cover
continents,
I am afoot with my vision.

And in his poem ‘Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking’

Never again leave me to the peaceful
child I was
before what there in the night
By the sea under the yellow and
sagging moon,
The messenger there arous'd, the fire,
the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me.

In Hildegarde of Bingen: A Visionary Life, Sabina Flanagan quotes Hildegarde's description of the experience as it appears in the introduction to Scivias:

And it came to pass in the eleven hundred and forty-first year of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, Son of God, when I was forty-two years and seven months old, that the heavens were opened and a blinding light of exceptional brilliance flowed through my entire brain. And to it kindled my whole heart and breast like a flame, not burning but warming…and suddenly I understood the meaning of the expositions of the books, that is to say of the Psalter, the evangelists, and other catholic books of the Old and New Testaments.

In her 70s, Hildegarde again describes her vision, this expansion of consciousness:

From my early childhood…this vision, my soul as God would have it, rises up into the vault of heaven…and spreads itself out among different people…far away from me in distant lands and places…The light I see… is far, far brighter than a cloud that carries the sun…Sometimes I see within this light another light…all sorrow and anguish leave me, so that then I feel like a simple girl instead of an old woman.

With Victor Hugo, the mystical experience was often expressed in his fictional characters e.g., The Bishop of Digne in Les Miserables, who meditates in his garden at night:

…opening his soul to the unknown…offering up his heart at that hour when the flowers of night emit their perfume…expanding in ecstasy in the midst of creation's universal radiance…He felt something floating away from him; and something descending upon him, mysterious exchanges of the soul with the universe…

In Hugo's poems, the sound that has been heard by mystics of all ages rings out:

First 'twas a voice, immense, vast, undefined
More vague than through the forest
sounds the wind
Music it was, ineffable and deep,
Which vibrates, flows and round the
world doth sweep…

And in the poem ‘Dreams’, the "voice" again appears:

Let me in dreams ascend
To heavens of love and shade
And let them never end,
But night the vision lend
That in the day was made.

It is a voice profound
Creation's total song:
It is the Globe's vast sound
The world as it turns round
The Heavenly space along.

Mahadevi Akka, whose short but passionate life was spent in intense devotion of Shiva, recounts her experiences of bliss and light in her poetry much the same way as Hildegarde:

A light excelling a billion suns and moons
Came down and lodged itself within my mind;
At sight whereof I crossed this life's pitfalls

When Mahadevi reached marriageable age and her parents began to seek a husband for her, her worship of Shiva became clear, as she refused all eligible suitors saying she loved only Shiva whom she had given the name, Chenna Mallikarjuna (My Lovely Lord White as Jasmine). In her poetry, this love is portrayed as pure joy and a sense of expansion:

I saw the Absolute,
I saw the Mystery,
I saw the joy that comes, the joy
That is possessed, the joy that is lodged
When knowledge had been won, I lost
All trace of ignorance;
While still hemmed in
Within the fascination of the Sign
I shed my bounds on knowing Thee,
O Cenna Mallikarjuna.

St. John of the Cross, whose experience of fire and light is the core of his writings, expressed his spiritual awakening in ‘Living Flame of Love’:

Oh living flame of love
How tenderly you wound
the innermost center of my soul…
Oh gentle cautery!
Oh delicate wound!
Oh soft hand! Oh gentle touch
that tasted of eternal life
and repays every debt!
By killing, death into life you have transformed.

He explains the purifying flame further: "The fire…is able to consume to an extent which cannot be measured…since God is an infinite fire of love, when therefore He is pleased to touch the soul with some severity, the heat of the soul rises to such a degree that the soul believes that it is being burned with a heat greater than any other in the world."

While imprisoned at the age of 35, St. John experienced a mystical ecstasy he described as a presence of light. One of his biographers describes it: "His cell became filled with light, even though it was night and there was no lamp or other source of light. St. John…later…told one of his brethren that the heavenly light, which God so mercifully sent him, lasted the night through, filled his soul with joy and made the night pass away as it were but a moment".

Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke of "one central fire which flaming now out of the lips of Etna…and now out of the throat of Vesuvius…It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul that animates all men."

Emerson's mystical experiences were many and profound, finding expression in Nature, where he wrote…"Standing on the bare ground…my head bathed in the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all, the current of the Universal Being circulates through me."

St. Teresa's descriptions of her mystical experiences are not only scrupulously detailed, they flow with a literary beauty that carries the reader along with her:

If I should have spent many years trying to imagine how to depict something so beautiful, I couldn't have, nor would I have known how to, it surpasses everything imaginable here on earth even in just its whiteness and splendor.

The splendor is not one that dazzles, it has a soft whiteness, is infused, gives the most intense delight to the sight, and doesn't tire it; neither does the brilliance, in which it is seen, the vision of so divine a beauty, tire it. It is a light so different from earthly light that the sun's brightness that we see appears very tarnished in comparison with that brightness and light represented to the sight, and so different that afterward you wouldn't want to open your eyes.

The expansion of consciousness attendant to the mystical experience, St.Teresa explains with a warning to the beginning spiritual seeker:

There is another kind of rapture - I call it flight of the spirit - which though substantially the same as other raptures, is interiorly experienced very differently. For sometimes suddenly a movement of the soul is felt so swift that it seems the spirit is carried off and at a fearful speed, especially in the beginning. This is why I have told you that strong courage is necessary for the one to whom God grants these favors, and even faith and confidence and a full surrender to our Lord , so that He may do what He wants with the soul.

Jiddu Krishnamurti wrote in his Note-book — "…there was an intense bright light at the very centre of the brain and beyond the brain at the very centre of consciousness, of one's being. It was light that had not shadow nor was it set in any dimension…with that light there was present that incalculable strength and beauty beyond thought and feeling."

And in another description of the experience… "Suddenly one felt this immense flame of power…It is beyond all thought and words to describe what's going on, the strangeness of it and the love, the beauty of it. It's beyond and above all faculties of man."

Thomas Jefferson, who chose not to dwell too deeply on the ‘mystical’ but yet from his youth had a serene sense of an indwelling God, instead took the path of reason and religious freedom. He was interested in Eastern philosophy and there are intriguing hints that he may have turned away from the powerful experiences that often accompany esoteric disciplines. In a letter to Isaac Story, a Massachusetts minister, who was questioning Jefferson's beliefs, he answered…"When I was young I was fond of the speculations which seemed to promote some insight into the hidden country but observing at length that they left me in the same ignorance as they found me, I have for many years ceased to read or think concerning them and have reposed my head on the pillow of ignorance which a benevolent creator has made so soft for us…"

Jefferson had a deep conviction that men should answer to their own God and to "question with boldness even the existence of God." In a letter to his nephew urging him to selfless action, he wrote, "if you find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under His eye and that He approves of you, will be a vast incitement (to virtue)."

These examples of mystical experience are but a small sampling of the highly evolved individuals who have reached these higher states of consciousness. These higher states should not be confused with ‘altered’ mind states that are often drug-induced. The true mystical experience may be perennial, i.e., the person lives in a permanent state of luminous thought-energy, or the experience can be of short duration. In either case, the person is changed forever, the feeling of ‘oneness’ with all living beings causing a transformation endowing the person with a deep sense of morality, compassion and humanitarian characteristics, detachment from the material and an unshakable belief in a Divine Intelligence or God.