Kundalini Splendor

The following is by Peter Fenner, but he quotes liberally from the Gospel of Thomas.
Basically, the message is expressed by Tolstoy who said, "The kingdom of God is within you."  As Fenner notes, such is the essential teaching of all mystic traditions. Kundalini is one such tradition--when the self and the Self unite, there is ultimate "nonduality."  This is not a state we think about––it is a realization we experience.

"Western Judeo-Christians are often uncomfortable with the word "nonduality." They often associate it (negatively) with Eastern religions. I am convinced, however, that Jesus was the first nondual religious teacher of the West, and one reason we have failed to understand so much of his teaching, much less follow it, is because we tried to understand it with a dualistic mind."
~ by Fr. Richard Rohr, in The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See

I think it is important to stress the fact that the saints and sages of India have no title-deed to the Truth over and above the devotees of other lands and religious traditions. Every religious tradition worth its salt recognizes the same eternal Truth; and all great religious teachers have taught according to their own intimate experience of God, their “mystical vision” -- whether it is called “samadhi,” “nirvana,” “fana,” or “union with God.”

Since there is but one ultimate Reality, which all share, each one who has experienced the Truth has experienced that same ultimate Reality. Naturally, therefore, their teachings about it, and about how one can experience It for oneself, are bound to be identical.

The languages and cultures of the various teachers who have lived throughout history are, no doubt, different from one another. Their personalities and life-styles are different. But their vision is one, and the path they teach to it is one. In the mystical experience, which transcends all religious traditions and cultures and languages, the Christian and the Vedantist alike come to the same realization: They realize the oneness of their own soul and God, the Soul of the universe. It is this very experience, which prompted Jesus, the originator of Christianity, to explain at various times to his disciples that he had known the great Unity in which he and the Father of the universe were one:

“If you knew who I am,” he said, "you would also know the Father. Knowing me, you know Him; seeing me, you see Him. Do you not understand that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? It is the Father who dwells in me doing His own work. Understand me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me." 1

This is the truth that Vedanta speaks of as “Non-Dualism.” The term, “Unity,” is, of course, the same in meaning; but it seems that the declaration, “not-two” is more powerfully emphatic than a mere assertion of oneness. Indeed, the word, “Unity” is often used by religionists who apply it to God, but who have not even considered the thought that they themselves are logically included in an absolute Unity.

Non-Dualism, the philosophy of absolute Unity, is the central teaching, not only of Vedanta, but of all genuine seers of Truth. This position is embodied in the Vedantic assertion, tat twam asi, “That thou art.”

Once we begin to look at the teachings of Jesus in the light of his “mystical” experience of Unity, we begin to have a much clearer perspective on all the aspects of the life and teaching of the man. His teachings, like those of the various Vedantic sages who’ve taught throughout the ages, is that the soul of man is none other than the one Divinity, none other than God; and that this Divine Identity can be experienced and known through the revelation that occurs inwardly, by the grace of God, to those who prepare and purify their minds and hearts to receive it.
His disciples asked him, “When will the kingdom come?” Jesus said, “It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying ‘Here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ Rather, the kingdom of the Father is [already] spread out upon the earth, and [yet] men do not see it." 4

"... Indeed, what you look forward to has already come, but you do not recognize it." 5

The Pharisees asked him, “When will the kingdom of God come?” He said, “You cannot tell by signs [i.e., by observations] when the kingdom of God will come. There will be no saying, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' For, in fact, the kingdom of God is [experienced] within you.” 6

They are those same two principles we have so often run into, called “Brahman" and "Maya,” “Purusha" and "Prakrti,” “Shiva" and "Shakti.” It is the Godhead in us, which provides the Light in us; it is the manifestory principle, which, in the process of creating an individual soul-mind-body, provides us with all the obscuration necessary to keep us in the dark as to our infinite and eternal Identity.

Jesus said, “If they ask you, ‘Where did you come from?’ say to them, ‘We came from the Light, the place where the Light came into being of Its own accord and established Itself and became manifest through our image.’ If they ask you, ‘Are you It?’ say, ‘We are Its children, and we are the elect of the living Father.’ If they ask you, ‘What is the sign of your Father in you?’ say to them, ‘It is movement and repose.’” 11

The teaching, common to all true “mystics” who have realized the Highest, is “You are the Light of the world!" You are That! Identify with the Light, the Truth, for That is who you really are!” And yet Jesus did not wish that this should remain a mere matter of faith with his disciples; he wished them to realize this truth for themselves.

And he taught them the method by which he had come to know God. Like all great seers, he knew both the means and the end, he knew both the One and the many. Thus we hear in the message of Jesus an apparent ambiguity, which is necessitated by the paradoxical nature of the Reality.

In the One, the two -- soul and God -- play their love-game of devotion. At one moment, the soul speaks of God, its “Father”; at another moment, it is identified with God, and speaks of “I.” Likewise, in the words of Jesus to his disciples, we see this same complementarity: At one moment, he speaks of dualistic devotion in the form of prayer (“Our Father, who art in heaven”); and at another moment he asserts his oneness, his identity, with God (“Lift the stone and I am there . . .”).

"I took my place in the midst of the world, and I went among the people. I found all of them intoxicated [with pride and ignorance]; I found none of them thirsty [for Truth]. And my soul became sorrowful for the sons of men, because they are blind in their hearts and do not have vision. Empty they came into the world, and empty they wish to leave the world. But, for the moment, they are intoxicated; when they shake off their wine, then they will repent."

Peter Fenner

Notes

1. John, Gospel Of, 13:40. back
2. Ibid., 17:25. back
3. Ibid., 8:54. back
4. Thomas, Gospel Of, 114; Robinson (trans. by Thomas O. Lambdin), pp. 138. back
5. Ibid.,51, p. 132. back
6. Luke, Gospel Of, 17:20. back
7. Thomas, Gospel Of,3; Robinson, 1977, p. 126. back
8. Ibid., 83, p. 135. back
9. Ibid., 24, p. 129. back
10. John, Gospel Of, 1:1. back
11. Thomas, Gospel Of, 50, p. 132. back
12. Ibid., 77, p. 135. back
13. Matthew, Gospel Of, 5:14-16. back
14. Mark, Gospel Of, 9:1. back
15. Thomas Gospel Of, 111; Robinson, 1977, p. 138. back
16. Ibid., 59, p. 132. back
17. Ibid., 70, p. 134. back
18. Ibid., 17, p. 128. back
19. Luke, Gospel Of, 18:18. back
20. Ibid., 18:18-30; Matthew, Gospel Of, 19:16. back
21. Matthew, Gospel Of, 5:17. back
22. Thomas, Gospel Of, 105, p. 137. back
23. Ibid., 28, p. 130. back