Wednesday, August 07, 2013
Kundalini, love and the mystical experience
Teilhard de Chardin wrote: "Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity,... we shall harness the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
Andrew Harvey wrote:
"The great mystical treasures of all the Christian traditions have been largely ignored for centuries, even in the monastic institutions that might have kept them alive.
The majority of westerners interested in spiritual transformation and aware of its necessity know very little about the Christian mystics; they know more about the Hindu or Sufi or Buddhist mystical traditions than about the one that is the hidden and glorious secret of their own civilization.
Many more have read the Bhagavad Gita or Rumi than have read Ruysbroeck or Jacopone da Todi or St. John of the Cross; many more have practiced vipassana or bhakti yoga than have attempted the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola or than have prayed the Jesus prayer with Symeon the New Theologian and Nicephorus the Solitary."
It is my belief that both of these excerpts apply directly to the experience of Kundalini. Kundalini is above all "the energies of love." One who is in the throes of this powerful force is someone in love--with the Creator, with one's fellow humans, and with oneself as a participant in this glorious phenomenon.
And it is also my belief that if we look closely at the mystics of all the many traditions, East and West, we will discover that their experiences are powered by Kundalini itself (love force of creation). Indeed, one who experiences Kundalini in its most splendid form is by definition a "mystic"--that is, someone who is in love with all creation as well as its Creator.
Consider Bernini's great sculpture of St. Teresa of Avila--one of the greatest mystics of all time. She is clearly in a state of "rapture" (ecstasy)--her heart is opened by the divine lover (the angel with his spear) and she reacts like any beloved in the arms of her loved one.
(As a matter of fact, many in the traditional churches have read little in either Eastern or Western mysticism.)
