To: K-list
Recieved: 1999/09/04 20:03
Subject: [K-list] Kein Thema
From: Mhortling
On 1999/09/04 20:03, Mhortling posted thus to the K-list:
Greetings to all kundalini-yogis!
I‘d be glad to have comments and to hear of your experiences with Ma in
return!
This is my personal account of life in the clutches of what is known as
„kundalini“. For more than twenty years I have to a more or less equal degree
been tormented and enlightened by this mysterious process and it doesn‘t in
any way seem to be over yet.
Of course I realize that all these experiences and their interpretation are
subjective and solely my own but since so many others from all cultures
around the world have gone through similar states of being and have been
willing to share their experiences, I for myself no longer have any doubts
about the reality and meaning of the whole thing. Needless to say that people
with a traditional worldview tend to consider myself and all the others
living with an activated kundalini as hopelessly deluded and pathological.
(Funny thing is that, as time goes by, one begins to think the same of the
old concept of life and the world and the people trapped in it...)
1.Blind awakening
I was about 18 years old and my main ambition in life was to grow long hair,
become a hippie and travel the world, learn to play the guitar and meet
beautiful girls. My temperament was quite reserved and introverted while
outwardly I tried to appear more boisterous and reckless. Experimentation
with different psychoactive drugs was quite common in my circle of friends
and I enjoyed the occasional high with wild laughter, intense visions and
mellow floating.
During one such evening I lay back on my bed after having smoked some
cannabis..
My eyes were closed as I listened intently to the music coming through the
headphones, I had the sensation of melting into the music and becoming more
and more detached from my surroundings. As I retreated further into myself,
it was as if a veil was suddenly withdrawn, a large, velvet-black space of
enormous dimension opened up inside of my consciousness and the center of my
awareness was now located somewhere in the middle of this vastness. The
music was still playing and I was becoming more an more enraptured at the
beauty of the multi-layered sounds I was hearing. Then all of a sudden I
began to feel a tingling, electric, extremely pleasant, orgasmic sensation at
the bottom of the spine. This sensation then started to creep upwards along
the spine and somehow in my by then hopelessly dazed state I just seemed to
accept it as part of the general fireworks going on. When this concentrated
delicious sensation reached the very top of the spine just below the skull,
it exploded like an internal neurophysiological nuclear blast and I dissolved
into my own inner space.(I know this isn‘t very eloquently phrased, but how
the hell does one put something like that into adequate words?) This was
accompanied by a an indescribable feeling of triumph, power and victory and
out of the distance, a choir seemed to declare in a thousand voices at
once: THIS IS THE REAL ME -THIS IS WHAT I AM. ETERNALLY...
I or whatever was left of me continued to expand towards infinity and I think
it was around this moment that I somehow began a frantic struggle to come to
my senses and regain some sort of contact to my normal self and reality, the
mind desperately trying to make sense of what was going on. I must have
managed to open my eyes and slowly reconnect to physical reality, the whole
experience having lasted maybe only five minutes at the most.In my youthful
ignorance and exuberance, I of course had no way whatsoever of assessing and
correctly judging the enormity of the experience I had just had.Very heavy
stuff indeed!
As far as I remember, I ascribed the whole thing to the good quality of the
drug I had taken (like, uh, far out maan !!). This episode left me dazed but
quite elated even though I just couldn‘t really understand it at all, the gap
between my everyday still very teenage-ish being and this superconscious
„thing“ was just too great and I believe I somehow tried to forget all about
it.
Little did I know that the course of my life would be irrevocably altered and
that I would suffer torments impossible to imagine as a result of this
experience. Also, I would never again be what could be termed completely
„normal“.The only real after effect initially however seemed to be a strange
pulling and twisting sensation in the solar plexus area and between the
shoulder blades, the sensation becoming stronger when I had to concentrate
hard mentally.
2.The abyss
A few years passed and I was serving a mandatory period in the Finnish army (
I‘m a Finnish citizen although I hadn‘t lived in the country for a number of
years). Due to the cold winter weather I had contracted pneumonia and was
lying in bed, slightly delirious with a high fever. I was resting with my
eyes closed when all of a sudden out of nowhere something that can only be
described as an enormous internal explosion occured inside within my
consciousness and I found myself being catapulted forcefully halfway out of
my body. There seemed to be flames all around me and there was a sensation as
if my identity, the „I“-ness within myself was being violently scattered in
all directions, I was enveloped by panic and my heart was beating furiously.
After a while I more or less came to and immediately felt that something
had gone terribly wrong. I was extremely disoriented and felt that my
innermost identitiy had somehow been affected and reduced, and what was
worse, the strange, cramplike twisting and pulling sensation I had vaguely
felt before could now be sensed at different locations in the body, in the
throat and inside the head as well as the solar plexus and heart regions with
an increased intensity. It would take me many years to understand what had
happened.
My friends, if you ever wonder about the variety of terrifying and unpleasant
experiences humans can have, this was one for sure - (writing this some
twenty years later with all that has come to pass since, I can now smile at
the whole thing, but a lingering sense of unease still remains). I didn‘t in
any way connect this to what had happened some years back during my initial
mystical revelation, but rather thought that it somehow had something to do
with my physically weakened state, acute panic attacks and fever
hallucinations due to illness or something of that sort.
3.Purgatory
What followed then was agony for a long, very long time. My mind was jumping
around uncontrollably and I was beset by constant anxiety coupled with a very
definite sense of doom and of having somehow ruined my life. Nobody could
help or even understand, since what I was experiencing didn‘t fit into the
normal neat compartments of medical or psychiatric science - even if you‘re
physically ill you don‘t usually become instantly psychotic or change
personality the way I had done.
Reading had become difficult since words seemed to have lost their obvious
meaning and I had to go over sentences again and again in order to
understand-this was a further blow to my confidence and sense of self, since
I had always been what would usually be described as a quick thinker. At the
same time all sorts of subconscious material, mostly early childhood memories
began to stream incessantly into my awareness. The feeling generated by this
inner imagery was mainly one of immense sadness and again of being on the
brink of absolute destruction. The „tension points“ inside myself could now
be felt as hard, stone -like knots that had somehow become part of my inner
makeup and nervous system.The thought of suicide presented itself to me quite
often during this period, since everything seemed to be getting worse, nobody
was able to offer any help whatsoever and I absolutely didn‘t have a clue
about what was going on. I think what saved me at that moment was something
like a last reserve of courage and a certain stubborness that somehow made
me decide to face this, whatever it was, take it day by day and I could
always kill myself later on anyway.
It was here somewhere around this point that from a place deep inside I could
feel an intuition, almost like a voice telling me to begin the study of yoga,
that this would help me deal with the incessant torment going on inside.
(Some time later while I was reading a hatha-yoga manual I could swear I
heard the same voice- or more like a very distinct thought - out of the blue
telling me to memorize the names and the locations of the chakras depicted in
a diagram - „I would be needing this information later“ - very strange, but
it has proven to be excessively true, so it was probably a good idea not to
argue...)
If you‘re absolutely desperate and nobody‘s there to help, you‘ll almost
certainly clutch at any straw that might become available . Yoga practice was
that straw and I would do what was necessary with all the strength I could
possibly muster. The first thing I discovered was that my body didn‘t seem to
be very adequate for this particular type of activity at all (after many
years and countless hours of asanas my body still isn‘t what one would call
„yogic“, I have seen absolute beginners surpassing me by far, there‘s
certainly no ego-food in here for me...). What was very strange and
astonishing though, was the fact that the whole science and concept of yoga
immediately seemed very familiar to me.
As I persevered, after a few months of asanas and relaxation practice, I did
begin to feel an improvement in my situation, the mind was beginning to relax
and the depression and anxiety lifted somewhat. My concentration was still
lousy though, studying was an ordeal hard to describe (I had, for lack of
real direction half-heartedly engaged in studying economics and psychology).
However there arose within me an almost obsessive compulsion to seek out and
read spiritual books, works on yoga, new-age-stuff etc. One of the books I
one day got hold of was „Kundalini-the evolutionary energy in man“ by Gopi
Krishna ( I have since found that on this path one is automatically lead to
books and people and events one needs to experience and all this in a very
obvious manner, others have reported this too...). My knees shook and my mind
quivered as I read about the experiences he had had with meditation, the
subsequent rising of the kundalini and the torture he endured afterwards. The
parallels between his story and my experience stared me in the face but on
the other hand I thought that it just couldn‘t possibly be that I had in fact
somehow activated this very esoteric force. I smoked cigarettes and drank
wine and just had a bunch of enormously unpleasant things to cope with in my
life - I was as far removed from what one could call a spiritual aspirant as
possible and he was a known and highly regarded scholar. I then became
severely depressed again, since I thought that IF it really was kundalini
that was causing all this pain and strangeness in my life and if he ( Gopi
Krishna) went through with what he did then I, being infinetely less suited
to this kind of thing, would surely and most definitely be doomed. For
Christ‘s sake, I was living in a small town in Germany and not in India,
where these things might perhaps happen as a matter of cultural and religious
environment. Confusion without end. Somehow stubborness prevailed though.
4.Milestones
Years passed, my state of mind was still somewhat shakey. I was working for a
large company, trying to fit in and somehow secure a position for myself in
this world and all I really wanted by then was to somehow finally find some
sort of balance in my life. I firmly believed in my experiences and the
metaphysical realities they seemed to have been born out of. I was by then
also quite certain, that most of my problems were due to my system having
been totally unprepared for the massive influx of energy during my initial
mystical experience. Nature seems to have provided the human system with a
safety mechanism, in which the centers of consciousness or chakras close down
when in danger of overloading, i.e when too much energy is released, when
emotions and sensations surpass the normal spectrum of feeling by far. In my
case, they seemed to have been violently jammed shut with a vengeance,
especially after my second experience, where I now believe I was quite close
to being permanently thrown out of my body....
In spite of all the yoga and tai-chi I had been practising, the knots and
blockages were still very much there inside of me, preventing me from feeling
and thinking in a normal and harmonious way. There were moments of elation,
but my general frame of mind was very moody and for over ten years (It‘s
finally getting just a little bit better now...) I suffered from periods of
extreme lethargy and fatigue .
Two important spiritual experiences stand out from this period. I had taken a
course in Transcendental Meditation, where one repeats a mantra twice a day
for twenty minutes. I didn‘t really want to have anything to do with the
TM-organisation, but the meditation practice did me a lot of good, my mind
became more relaxed and harmonious. Then one day during meditation after I
had been thinking the mantra for awhile, I suddenly became intensely aware of
myself. „I“ was silent consciousness watching the mantra repeat itself within
myself. The distinction was very clear: here was the „I“, the self - there
was the mind, separate from the self. A sense of vastness and infinity again
began to impress itself upon me. This time however there were no fireworks,
no kundalini rising upward, just silent witnessing of thought in a very clear
state of being. This was followed by an enormous sense of relief - everything
that had been torturing me for so many years, mind and ultimately the body
too, was in fact somehow different and separate from myself as
consciousness/witness. It is one thing to believe in the soul and speculate
about life after death, but clearly experiencing oneself as somehow free from
matter is quite another story and a major blessing.
>From then on, I began to develop an increasingly detached position from
thoughts, mind and the whole working of the psyche. There could be misery and
disharmony and what have you, but the true „I“ was just silently watching it
all happen. It also began to dawn upon me that maybe somehow, all the
suffering I had been through had been necessary to just wrestle me away from
some of the fixed beliefs I had about myself...
This is truly one of the great spiritual revelations and truths: we‘re
neither mind or body, but we usually can‘t see this, since we insist upon
identifying with the patterns of our minds (which ultimately crystalize into
what we then consider to be our personalities) - it‘s all an enormous
illusion - a major cosmic joke...
The second spiritual milestone occured, when one day , driving in my car on a
beautiful day with blue shiny skies, I again heard the „voice“ (in fact it‘s
not really a physical voice, but rather a very strong impression coming from
within deep in the consciousness, distinctly different from the usual mental
activity). It said something like: LOOK AROUND - EVERYTHING YOU SEE IS BEING
MADE WITHIN YOURSELF - YOU CREATE ALL THIS -
I was astonished, but somehow immediately recognized this as being totally
true. Everything around me, trees, other cars, the buildings, the sky
seemed to become more alive and colourful and I felt very elated. At the same
time my long suffering mind however was beginning to race around in circles,
thinking things like: what about all the other people, do they only exist in
my mind as well, and if so, do I only exist in other peoples mind then. It
took a while for the agitation and confusion to settle...
Now the concept of being the creator of one‘s own reality is pretty simple
and obvious, even from a purely physical and physiological point of view. The
brain takes sensory input and transforms it into the sound, images and other
perceptions we then interprete as „reality“, whereas we really have no idea
of what is truly „out“ there and somehow conveniently forget, that it‘s the
brain i.e, something we consider to be part of „ourselves“ and separate from
„exterior reality“ that actually creates that exterior reality, at least
such as we perceive it. Just another little(?) cosmic joke...Anyway, this
particular insight has stayed with me ever since and together with the one
about not being identical to one‘s thought processes, they form a nice pair
of conceptual tools to fall back upon in difficult times and situations...
5.Ma
Even more time passed. I was reasonably firmly established, first having
worked for a mega-rich real estate mogul for a while and then briefly as an
investment advisor for a major bank. (I had actually mutated into a
yuppie...) My basic outlook was definitely spiritual however and I had
somehow managed to survive the last ten-twelve years. During this time there
was no perceivable kundalini activity, although I could clearly feel energy
moving in the body after yoga practice that I still did occasionally when
time permitted.The mind was somewhat battered but a generally optimistic
perspective had replaced the worst confusion and depression. The blocks in
the area of the chakras could still be felt at all times though and this made
me absolutely frantic, it affected my work, my relationships and I knew that
I would somehow have to solve this problem if I wanted to truly find balance
- but just how to go about it, what to do?
Anyway,as John Lennon said: „Life is what happens to you when you‘ve made
other
plans“ - My semi-comfortable little world suddenly disintegrated. I lost my
well-paying job and the woman I had been living with for six years left me
for somebody else. I was extremely detached about both issues but somehow had
lost all interest in looking for a new job. I could clearly see that a
couple of years in the shark-pool of big money had definitely cured me of
all career ambitions. I could always commit suicide later (by now this had
become a sort of a standing internal joke and I didn‘t really believe in the
concept of „death“ any longer).
I found myself having little money and lots of time. This seemed to be a good
occasion to finally make a larger effort again to cure myself of the
blocked-chakra blues which still gave me so much unpleasantness (there were
physical health problems as well as the often experienced exhaustion). So
again I started with intensive yoga and tai-chi practice. Two hours in the
morning, two hours in the evening. Reduce smoking and drinking. Sleep well,
no worries.
Then IT happened again. One afternoon after asanas, I was lying on my back. I
concentrated on relaxing all the muscles in the body. All of a sudden (it
always seems to come upon me without warning...) there was the tingling
sensation again at the bottom of the spine. I was startled, but being
semi-relaxed, almost on the verge of sleep, I let it happen. And happen it
did. Whereas during my very first experience, the sensation was orgasmic in
quality and it moved up the spine with relative ease, it now felt as if a
freight-train had suddenly invaded my system. The power was absolutely
awesome, my reaction was: Okay, Michael, you‘re a tough guy but now, this
time, now you‘ve really had it, now you‘re going to die for sure. It
certainly felt that way, the body began to twitch and squirm uncontrollably
as this impossible to withstand power tried to force it‘s way up along my
spine. I felt as if in the clutches of a medieaval torturing device, horses
pulling at my limbs in different directions. The years had however at least
partly prepared me for something like this- I could watch this truly awesome
thing happening to me with a relatively calm and detached mind - I was still
the witness!. I closed my eyes and tried to direct my thoughts to my spine,
because I somehow felt that the best course of action would be to cooperate -
there was absolutely no way of opposing this raging power. I concentrated on
the areas in the lower spine that seemed to give out the strongest resistance
- I tried to concentrate and relax, the power tried to push it‘s way through.
Although it felt as if my bones could be shattered any moment, I received the
distinct impression that the force was not only immensely powerful but also
immensely and ultimately beneficial. I twitched and gasped and gasped and
twitched and somehow thought that childbirth must be something like this.
After an hour and a half of this it was all over, as quickly and unexpectedly
as it had begun. the energy just died down and I lay back completely
exhausted, every single muscle in the body seemed to be hurting, my right
hand was shaking violently and I could clearly feel the connection of the
hand and the fingers to the chakras in the spine. I had to laugh out aloud -
I was still there, there was no doubt about the kundalini having become
active again and it felt alright. There was nothing really mystical about it
this time - just stupendous energy from out of nowhere throwing me about for
a while. I could still sense all the blocks in my body and it seemed as if
they had been given a good bashing (serves them right...) So what would
happen next?
I don‘t know if it was foolishness or deeper insight or just curiosity but
the next afternoon found me doing asanas (very carefully though!) again. The
identical procedure occured just as the day before - after relaxing, the
energy began to move again from its resting place at the bottom of the spine,
trying to rise upwards and making my muscles and bones twist and stretch as
if I was having seizure upon seizure. It seemed to me to be all important
that I could focus my mind in order to guide the energy along the path it was
trying to take along the spine as well as willing the muscle to relax as far
as possible, the moment I lost the focus and concentration, the power seemed
to become totally uncontrollable and the painful twisting and pulling became
much worse. This whole circus repeated itself every day for maybe two weeks.
It would begin at the same time every afternoon and last for an hour or
maybe two at the most, after which I would just collapse from sheer
exhaustion. Since those days the kundalini has been permanently active in my
system.
I felt happy about this new developement but I wasn‘t in any way enlightend -
greatly changed, yes - totally free and in permanent communion with the
Universe and the Divine, exude Spirituality for all to see 24 hours a day,
full of paranormal powers - definitely no. (Thank God)
Some interesting things began to happen though. One of the first was a
delicious taste of a flowery, honey-like substance in my mouth. This lasted
for maybe three months and then disappeared. (As I write this a few years
later, the nectar-like sensation has been replaced by a quite unpleasant
metallic taste. I‘ve learned that in the kundalini process nothing should be
taken for granted, the ecstatic and pleasurable usually goes hand in hand
with some sort of pain and unpleasantness and just when one believes to have
scaled a spiritual mountain one is thrown back into the shits. It‘s only
aftewards looking back that one can perceice that there is indeed a definite
developement going on all the time.)
Everyday and trivial objects such as the taillights of the car driving before
me acquired a vibrant and meaningfully friendly appearance. I had always
loved music deeply and it had been one of my closest friends all of my life -
now it at times seemed even more beautiful, I could perceive subtle shades
that I hadn‘t heard before. Nature seemed to be imbued with living spirit
speaking softly through the rustle of trees and falling rain, impossibly
beautiful. Whenever I had one of these „extended“ impressions, I could feel a
little burst of energy going up the spine and softly tickling the brain with
a little internal electricity. I found myself weeping without reason and
becoming easily irritated and impatient with „normal“ people. I occasionally
saw auras and halos around peoples heads, but this also disappeared after a
short while.
I went to India and stayed in various ashrams (that‘s another long story,
ashrams and gurus...) and practiced more yoga (I‘m still not a very good
hatha-yogi, it‘s true...) and meditation. Another major developement that
began to slowly come upon me was the recognition of the true nature of the
kundalini-energy. Ever since the day it awakened again and I felt its
enormous power I realized that I of myself really am nothing - the life force
is definitely the boss. The life force though isn‘t just the boss of the body
or even the mind. It‘s actually the boss of everything there is that has a
shape and a name, be it thought, galaxy, microbe, demon from hell, angel from
heaven, you name it. I‘ts always just the life force, Ma, Shakti, the Great
Mother-Goddess giving life to billions of ever changing different shapes. I
find this is the greatest gift kundalini-yoga can give (and its actually the
kundalini giving it to herself) : the personal relation to the Great Goddess
who not only rules the world in but in fact IS the world - and again it‘s the
great cosmic joke that we don‘t see it.
When I try to explain what had happened and why my life is so weird, mostly
people don‘t want to hear (this I have become very used to) I try to
maintain a low profile and not talk a whole lot about things such as the
nature of reality and detachement from the mind (not to mention Indian
Goddesses living in each and everyone of us...) Since these are among the few
topics worth discussing I‘ve become somewhat of a hermit - faking interest in
other peoples reality is quite painful and it doesn‘t work in the long run.
This isn‘t all, there‘s been a lot more, some of it good, some of it rather
less good and there‘s more to come for sure. To all those who have activated
the Shakti without knowing what on earth hit them - you are my true tantric
Brothers and Sisters, I know what you are going through. For those who did
know what hit them and knew how to deal with it - lucky you ! (Difficulties
can sometimes have advantages though...). All the others don‘t know what
they‘re missing but I have the definite feeling everybody will find out one
day.
And to conclude, here‘s a little tantric song I sometimes recite in the
shower in the morning (I think its from India):
Look to this day
For it is Life
The very life of Life
For in its brief course
Lie all the truths and realities
Of existence
The joy of growth, the splendor of action
The glory of power
For yesterday is but a memory
And tomorrow but a vision
But today well lived
Makes every yesterday a memory of happiness
Every tomorrow a vision of hope
Look well therefore to this day
Blessings, om shanti
Michael MHortlingATnospamaol.com
DISCLAIMER!
Home | Archive Index | Search the archives | Subscribe
K. List FAQ | Kundalini FAQs | Signs and Symptoms | Awakening Experiences | K. list Polls | Member Essays | Meditations | List Topics | Art Gallery | Cybrary | Sitemap | Email the moderators.
symbol.