Kundalini Splendor

Recently I came across the original manuscript of "Unmasking the Rose" and I realized that many of the entries contained therein were cut out of the final version.  Some were included, some not, but altogether they form a picture of the kind of preparation for initiation I was undergoing at that time.  Beginning in l980 (a year before awakening) I seemed to receive "lessons" from a higher source, concepts and images containing some essential information about the nature of reality.  I am going to reprint some of these texts here, not trying to separate out what is included in "Unmasking" and what got left out.  This first entry is dated March 22, l980.  In it, I describe a kind of "dream vision" of my future life, and also am grappling with the relationship between mind and feeling.  Perhaps the most important part of this entry is the final question in the dream vision.  Many who undergo Kundalini awakening also feel a deep urge to "unite with the god of this world," however they symbolize "it".  This "god" then can become the "Beloved Within," and union is possible through receptivity to Kundalini bliss.
Though it is now out of print, "Unmasking the Rose" is still available from Amazon.

I have been to a party and there--for the first and only time in my life--have sampled amyl nitrate.  (“Go ahead,” they urged.  “This is very mild.  It absolutely can’t hurt you.”)  So I, stranger to drugs of any kind, one who “gets high” on a few cups of coffee or two glasses of beer, agreed to “try it.”  Not realizing that it would, rather, “try me.”  Whether we smoked or inhaled or drank it--I scarcely recall now.  Something was passed around.  Surely we pressed a vial to our nostrils and inhaled--as if our noses were stopped up, as if we were asthmatic.
Then--I relaxed deeply, and listened to music while I watched little dots of light dance in carefully composed geometric patterns in the air.  And then I noted that I had two--or more--centers of gravity, and how strange that seemed.  And then I went home and had an inner vision:

l. The dancers are moving through a spiral labyrinth;
we go in, we go out, in the cycle of birth and death, and rebirth.
But some go in and do not return.  (Do they fall into a black hole at the center?)

2. Shakti stands before us, waving her six arms in  the dance.  Her many limbs reveal her nature as a multiple being, for the mother has many wombs.

3. Someone (a young male) hurtles across the plane of vision, a powerful karate master--or pupil; his energy is intense, potentially destructive.

4. Flowers are opening, symbols of life, which is ever rooted in sex and nature.

5. Seeds spew forth in abundance from the flowers--procreation from nature.

          6. How can we fuse with the god of this world in
transcendent union?


This “vision,” as well as the list of “lost perceptions” in the next dated entry, is a veritable “table of contents” for the early notebook entries and the events they anticipate.


Next, I consider the plane of interface between mind and matter, and find that there are four hierarchical levels:

                              l. Things which do not feel and do not know it.  (such as rocks and clods of dirt)

                              2. Things which feel and do not know it. (such as fish or perhaps other animals)

                              3. Things which do not feel and know it.  (I am not sure what this refers to)

                              4. Things which feel and know it.  (Humans,, who have the capacity for self awareness)

And it seems that the realms of mind and feeling are symbolized by two figures, a youthful (spiritual) young rabbi and the sensuous mother goddess.  An image expresses their relationship: (here an image follows, a kind of leaf with the goddess on one side (to represent intense feel) and a youthful rabbi (to represent extreme intellect).  However, as the two side of the "leaf" they are parts of a single whole.

Thus, mind and feeling are two realms which fuse and are yet separate.  The chord separating the two realms suggests that the most intense feeling type is close to--yet infinitely distant from--the purely “spiritual” (mental) being.  One type is ill at ease, alienated in the realm of the other.  Hence the enmity of spirit towards flesh.

The Goddess         and          The Youthful Rabbi

Dominant:      Matter                                   Spirit  
                      with                                      with
                     spirit                                    matter
        energizing it                            enabling in