Kundalini Splendor

Modern Science and Ancient Wisdom--continued

I won't pursue this too long, but I do want to add that when I mentioned the apparent similarities in recent discoveries in quantum physics and ancient Eastern wisdom literature, I was thinking more or less specifically of the text named the "Spanda Karikas" (with its commentary the "Spanda Nirnaya"--the English title is "The Yoga of Vibration and Divine Inspiration" in case anyone wants to locate it.)

My translation is the Jaideva Singh (from the State U. of N. Y. Press) with an intro by Paul E. Muller-Ortega. And I realize that much of my grasp (however limited) of this work is based on his (to me) most masterful introductory comments.

Here are some that stand out, and seem to me to be associated with several of the concepts presented in "The Field" by Lynn McTaggart (which, along with other books written for the lay audience, I must rely on for my scattered knowledge of what may be coming up in current concepts of field theory).

"Long before the discoveries of modern physics, the Shaivite concept of spanda intimates a view of reality as composed of a vibratory web of infinite complexity."

(Muller-Ortega continues going into the metaphysical implications....most physics hasn't reached this point yet):

"Moreover, the Shaivite tradition suggests to us a unifying continuity between our physical reality, the activities of sense perception, and all forms of interior awareness. All of these are seen as phenomenal manifestations of the ultimate consciousness, enmeshed in a complex vibratory matrix."

Muller once more summarizes the text:

"Employing a variety of metaphors, the tradition often glosses the spanda by the term sphurra, the scintillating pulse of the supreme light which continuously trembles with its own incandescence. In sonic terms the spanda is glossed as the nada, the subtle but powerful resonance that echoes through the supreme silence...."

(Now, more extension into metaphysics): "The supreme spanda releases a vibrating spectrum of energies that originate within the supreme (anuttara). As the infinitely fast vibration of the supreme systematically coalesces and condenses into progressively slower and thicker vibrations, tnagible perceptible forms emerge from the void and formlessness of the ultimate consciousness. These apparently solid appearances are called "cognitions" (puramasa) and they are complex and sustained interference patterns which arise in the intermerging cross-swirl of energies created by the interaction of the vibratory consciousness with itself."  (Is this the Buddhist "emptiness is form, form is emptiness?")

Admittedly, these are difficult concepts to grasp.  But we can glean what is more or less the gist of such profound and even abstruse comments:

l.  What some call God is here called "the supreme."

2. The supreme vibrates first in an "infinitely fast vibration" in a setting void of forms.

3. Gradually it slows and as it does so forms begin to emerge.

4. These become "apparently" solid entities.  They arise from "interference patterns" created by the interaction of vibratory consciousness with itself.

Some of these insights have come down to us through various channels and perhaps are not that strange to us.  Thus, it is often posited that matter is frozen energy.  That is to say, matter vibrates at a much slower rate than other "energies" such as subatomic particles, which are so fast in their vibratory action that we can barely detect them (if at all).

All of this seems to me to have a bearing on Kundalini, strange as that may seem.  I believe that when we go into altered states such that we can experience inner bliss, we are (literally) vibrating at a higher rate than our "norm."  When we return to familiar consciousness, we are moving back into our regular, lower rate of vibration.

The majority of people continue to vibrate at the slower level, and are not aware of the possibilities of "higher vibration consciousness."  Kundalini (and perhaps other varieties of altered consciousness) take us into a higher vibrational state--and this state of enhanced vibration is what the next stage of human evolution is all about.