Kundalini Splendor

Transformation of Consciousness

The transformation of consciousness resulting from a mystical experience brings with it, along with an enhanced sense of morality, compassion and detachment , a continuum of experience, with the gifts of genius, inspired creativity and paranormal gifts on one end to revelation on the other. Often, this transformation manifests in new knowledge, revolutionary ideas, new forms of writing or art, and what the yogic tradition call siddhis or boons, i.e., paranormal gifts.

Walt Whitman's poetry in itself was a departure from a standard literary style and its structure was a new and revolutionary expression. He brought the gift of physical and emotional healing in his extraordinary ministering to the wounded and dying soldiers of the American Civil War.

He prophesied the coming turbulence of the 20th century in his poem, ‘Starting from Paumanok’

O expanding and swift! O henceforth,
Elements, breeds, adjustments,
turbulent, quick and audacious;
A world primal again, vistas of glory,
incessant and branching
A new race, dominating previous ones,
and grander far - with new contests,
New politics, new literatures and
religions, new inventions and arts
These! My voice announcing - I will
sleep no more, but arise;
You oceans that have been calm
within me! How I feel you,
fathomless, stirring, preparing
unprecedented waves and storms.

Whitman believed that sublime knowledge and enlightenment was accessible to all. "A prophet," he said, "is one whose mind bubbles and pours forth like a fountain from inner divine spontaneities revealing God…The great matter is to reveal and outpour the God-like suggestion pressing for birth in the soul."

After Hildegarde of Bingen's profound mystical experience in 1141, the voice in the vision commanded her to "say and write" what she "saw and heard" in her visions. At first she refused and as a result, she soon fell ill. The moment that she began to do as the voice within the light had commanded, her illness lifted and one of the most phenomenal creative outpourings in history began. Between her forty-third year and her death at the age of eighty-one, Hildegarde produced a monumental amount of literary, poetical, musical, medical and scientific material. In total she wrote three lengthy books on her visions, two books on medicine, a book depicting the cosmology of the world, two biographies of saints, liturgical poetry and the words and music to a cycle of over seventy songs. She wrote a mysterious and apparently unfinished dictionary containing the definitions of some 900 words that appear to be from a completely unknown language. Beyond all this, Hildegarde expressed herself artistically by illustrations (some done with the help of others) that depict elements from her visions.

In addition to her visionary, musical and medical writing, Hildegarde produced the very first morality play - a drama form that would become the standard for theatre in the Middle Ages. In his classic work, From Magic to Science, written in 1958, Dr. Charles Singer gives Hildegarde a pivotal place in the history of science. He states that her writings on Cosmology "are heralds of the dawn of a new movement" and says that "with her we have left the Dark Ages and the Dawn of Science has begun."

Along with this new knowledge, Hildegarde was instrumental in the development of sapiential theology—a tradition in Christianity that focuses on the divine feminine that is expressed as Wisdom or Sophia in such texts as Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Wisdom of Solomon.

Victor Hugo's exceptional gifts included a creative energy that often resulted in a staggering output. His daily schedule of exercise, writing, spending time with family and reading left little time for sleep. Even with only 3 or 4 hours sleep he would not stop work until he had finished 100 lines of poetry or 20 pages of prose. Yet he lived in good health and active creativity until his death at age 83.

His mystical and visionary attributes aside, Hugo stands as a great literary genius. In Victor Hugo, A Tumultuous Life, Samuel Edwards summarized, "It is said even by his detractors, that no one ever expressed the French language in such a unique fashion…He was acclaimed as the greatest lyric poet of the century and one of the greatest who had ever lived. 'A Ville Quier' is a lyric elegy of unsurpassed beauty and is recognized as one of the greatest poems ever written in the French language."

Certainly, Hugo was a visionary. He once wrote that the complete poet is composed of these three visions: Humanity, Nature and the Supernatural. "Man always dreamed," he wrote, "always went beyond reality."

The divine inspiration that Mahadevi embodied was not only evident in her courage but in her creative expression. Her deepest yearnings resulted in the powerful imagery of her poems:

For hunger,
there is the town's rice in the begging bowl.
For thirst,
there are tanks, streams, wells.
For sleep,
there are the ruins of temples.
For soul's company,
I have you, O Lord
White as Jasmine.

There can be no doubt that Mahadevi knew that she was receiving this inspiration from God:

Knowledge is like the sun;
Devotion, like his rays:
Without the sun, there are no rays;
Without the rays, no sun.
So, how can ever be
Devotion without knowledge, knowledge without
Devotion, O Cenna Mallikajuna?

Like many before and since, St. John of the Cross was transformed by his experience of illumination, becoming "a poet unsurpassed in the Spanish language". In the decade that followed his transformation, he completed his three major poems, ‘Dark Night of the Soul’, ‘Spiritual Canticle’, and ‘Living Flame of Love’ and wrote lengthy treatises to explain them in detail. St. John has given the world a wealth of spiritual guidance, his writings give us but a glimpse into the depth and scope of his insights into the union of the soul with its creator. At his beatification process, a nun, M. Francesca de la Madre de Dios, testified that on two separate occasions when he was preaching, St. John was "rapt and lifted up from the ground". In addition to writing poems and treatises in record time, St. John knew the Bible by heart and completed a two-to-three year course in theology in one year. His literary style was quite unique and highly individualistic. E. Allison Peers, his biographer, concludes that, "nothing but natural genius could import the vigour and the clarity which enhance all of St. John of the Cross's arguments and nothing but his own deep and varied experience could have made him what he may well be termed - the greatest psychologist in the history of mysticism".

Ralph Waldo Emerson, it is said, was not a great writer, but he was a writer with a greatness of mind. He has been compared to Walt Whitman in that they both overcame the suppressive nature of their cultures and each produced a body of writing that was uniquely American. Emerson's belief that science and religion could be unified was a revolutionary concept. In his outstanding work, The Esoteric Emerson, Richard Geldard explains: "In our secular world Emerson's world view is lumped into so-called paranormal phenomena and is often discredited as sentimentalism. In science the subtle is merely what is yet to be fixed by experimentation and demonstrable proof. For Emerson, subtle meant unseen, what had to be intuitively known. It also meant "real" and he defined it as a "source of energy by which life was generated and sustained."

Emerson's gift of genius might not be original in thought but there was originality and beauty in its expression. A precocious child, an unusually thoughtful young man, Emerson's genius matured in his mid-30s with the publication of Nature. His essays and poems were a marvel of intellectual clarity, depth and range; their vision, revelations and practical wisdom causing one biographer, George Woodbury, to say, "No man rises from reading him without feeling more unshackled."

Stephen Whicher calls Emerson's idea of man's entire independence one of the most startling new notes in American literature - "The aim of this strain in his thought is not virtue, but freedom and mastery. It is radically anarchic, overthrowing all the authority of the past, all compromise or co-operation with others in the name of the Power present and agent in the Soul."

The expansion of consciousness attendant to the mystical experience, St. Teresa of Avila 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."

St. Teresa of Avila wrote about her mystical experiences in the language of her people and displayed her genius by expressing the ineffable in a way that could capture the essence of her spiritual life. She wrote spontaneously with very little erasing nor revising her words and her work belongs in the top echelon of spanish literature. The Interior Castle stands as an example of divine inspiration and a practical road map to a spiritual transformation.

After Krishnamurti's mystical experience in 1921, people who had known him from an early age reported that the change in him was marked. Mary Lutyens, his biographer, called him "almost vacant" in his early years. But in the years 1926 to 1931, Krishnamurti wrote sixty poems. From 1926 until his passing in 1986, he gave innumerable talks world-wide, published dozens of books and founded eight schools.

From a very early age, Krishnamurti had a tendency to be clairvoyant, seeing deceased and absent loved ones, occurrences that could be brushed off as fanciful if they hadn't been witnessed in some cases. When asked about his ability, he said it was a faculty he could still have but did not choose to. He felt the ability was a distraction from real spiritual development.

According to Mary Lutyens, he also had the power of healing. Krishnamurti had written to friends years earlier that he had success in this area but later down-played the assertion because he did not wish to be known as a healer. He emphasized throughout his teaching that internal personal growth is far more important than development of psychic abilities. He never rehearsed his teaching —"It is like what the Bible terms revelation", he said "It happens all the time I am talking. This simple person Krishnamurti has not come to the teaching through thought. The core of his teaching is that each individual must hold a mirror to his own consciousness and strive to develop freedom. There is a direct line to Truth within each individual."

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, mastermind behind the historic expeditions of Lewis and Clark, architect and founder of a great University, was also an accomplished naturalist, musician, inventor and lawyer. He could converse expertly on art, science, religion, physics, astronomy and literature. He spoke several languages fluently and could read the classics in the original Greek and Latin. These astonishing gifts of genius have been documented in numerous volumes over the years. Was Jefferson a prophet, also? In his writings, he often predicted the evils, upheavals and disasters that later came upon the American people in consequence of violation of economic balance, political justice and social fair dealing. His mind was always open and young. Phillips Russell writes, "One of Jefferson's distinctions was that increasing age found him neither cynical nor conservative. During a long life, he remained an inquirer and student."

This has been but a brief examination of the lives of enlightened mystics and extraordinary geniuses. Some diversity in the accounts of their experiences are due to variations in mental levels, ideas, and cultural development but the common features of the characteristics displayed certainly give credence to the Kundalini hypothesis. Research into the kundalini phenomenon remains embryonic at this stage but its importance for our planet cannot be overestimated. Gopi Krishna makes this prediction:

The possibilities inherent in Kundalini are unlimited. Its implications in respect of every sphere of human life are enormous. What the seekers often believe to be a power they can activate for their own spiritual or material benefit, is the Power that rules the Universe, the Infinite Intelligence of which we are a tiny speck. Once the existence of an organic evolutionary mechanism in human beings is confirmed, Kundalini will assume an importance that is unimaginable at present. It will decisively influence every field of human activity and thought. The whole atmosphere of the earth will be saturated with the idea that man is a pilgrim on the way to the Shrine of God-Consciousness.