Friday, January 02, 2015
Kundalini and Wonder
Recently, as I was browsing the internet, I came upon this comment and it seemed to me that these words might apply to Kundalini as well as wonder. Indeed, we cannot plan our Kundalini experiences any more than we can "plan a surprise for ourselves." Each visitation is a joy that seems to be orchestrated elsewhere. We can receive the "gift" with gratitude, but we cannot "make it happen." Each encounter "jolts us out of the world of common sense." Kundalini introduces us to "some new dimension of meaning," and, although each episode is accompanied by wonder, the experience reaches beyond the familiar world (of wonder) into a reality that is, finally, ineffable.
It is difficult to explain these states to others who have not shared similar experiences: it is like trying to explain color to someone who is blind, or sound to one who is deaf. It exists in a separate category of knowing, like a sixth sense, or a capacity to see angels, things invisible to ordinary perception.
Keen (l969/l973) in his “Apology for Wonder” sums up wonder like this:
Wonder breaks into consciousness with a dramatic suddenness that produces amazement or astonishment. We can no more create a state of wonderment than we can plan a surprise for ourselves. . . ..wonder reduces us momentarily to silence. We associate gaping, breathlessness, bewilderment, an even stupor with wonder, because it jolts us out of the world of common sense in which our language is at home. . . . .We are silent before some new dimension of meaning which is being revealed
