To: K-list
Recieved: 2004/07/04 19:02
Subject: Re: [K-list] New Trick
From: Druout
On 2004/07/04 19:02, Druout posted thus to the K-list:
In a message dated 7/3/2004 4:15:01 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
mazATgreenwater.fsnet.co.uk writes:
>I think I've probably only experienced kundalini once then. The witness
>state. Which came unannounced and unbidden. The 'drenched in bliss' came
>via someone else.
>How do you know, Hillary? Is kundalini always an overwhelming force? Can
>it come sideways like creeping up on you like psychic abilities do? Or is
>it something else entirely?
>I'd like to understand. Instead of being lost in the forest :)
Dear Marion,
My sense is that Kundalini is both a process and an energy. From your
descriptions you are certainly Kundalini active.
Traditionally classic Kundalini awakening comes when energy shoots through
the spine with unbelievable force--causing both metaphysical and physical
sensation, triggering further Kundalini energy activity which may or may not include
activity up the spine.
Many people feel this isn't really equivalent to enlightenment, though it can
be. The experience can certainly lead to the awareness of full
enlightenment.
For me Kundalini isn't always an overwhelming force. Often the energy will
simply wash over me. Since I don't meditate, the energy comes over me at will.
It's always there but tangible when I'm in a relaxed state. At night it can
still wake me several times a night with its force. During the day I tend to
prefer to stay self-aware however! :) . Your experience seems to be a bit
like mine--an activation of the pleasure centers of the brain.
I agree with both Rick and Guy that enlightenment comes when the Self drops
away and the state is permanent. There seem to be more than one way to
perceive this, however.
One way is physical in the sense that bliss overtakes the body--as Marion
says, the body is drenched in bliss so there is nothing but that sensation.
There is simply no room for the ordinary self in that state.
The witness state is another in which one can look at the ordinary self
without being attached to it. In that sense there is a self, but it is not really
connected to what Guy terms "the other."
Another is the sense that "Thou art That." Nothing is "separate"
In the wonderful book *What is Enlightenment?* John White says of Evelyn
Underhill.
In her study of the mystic way, [ *Mysticism*] Underhill distinguishes five
stages in the process of self-transcendence and return to the Source:
awakening or conversion, self-knowledge or purgation, illumination, the dark night of
the soul, and union or the unitive life. In that final state, which is the
true goal of the mystic quest, she says "the Absolute life is not merely
perceived and enjoyed by the self, as in illumination but is one with it." And that
inevitably impels them to activity which is in the world but not of the world.
..."
Many take the position that we all are and always have been enlightened.
In the same book, John White says of Ken Wilber:
As he [Ken Wilber] puts it in The Atman Project, "it is not that an
individual is first an ego and then may become a Buddha--it is that he was first Buddha
and then became an ego."
White goes on, "In other words, your human beingness is an expression of the
Great Being which manifests itself in the countless realms of creation with
endless diversity of forms and phenomena. But before an of those realms
existed, your "original face" was none other than the Great Mystery which is your
true condition at this very moment, has always been and always will be. There is
no state which is apart from it in any way whatsoever. You are already
enlightened. Realize it."
Love, Hillary
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