What does the increase in Kundalini related psychic awareness say about the evolution in consciousness that K supposedly precipitates? Do psychic gifts automatically suggest an evolved consciousness or, as Phil suggests, is it not more a matter of morality, of being able to engender love and peace through righteous living. A lot of gung ho Kundalini advocates try to sell the energy as a means to increased psychic power without noting that this power can be fostered by someone with an evil intent. Only the Holy Spirit can change the moral will of an individual, not Kundalini, suggesting that Kun is a impersonal, neutral force.

Also, does the experience of telepathy imply a non duality? What then if this experience is damaging? Is it the working out of karma or an example of the dangers of unified consciousness. An individual would need to have some sort of self awareness to process telepathic input and the voice of universal consciousness without sliding into madness.

I reckon I've almost slipped into madness a couple of times. My awareness has merged with that of others to some alarming degrees but always, always I knew myself, my own consciousness. Always there has been a higher voice guiding me.But I had to become aware of this higher voice. I wonder if it was awakened by K or the Holy Spirit or by the sheer grace of God in dire circumstances. What I'm trying to say is that touching the oneness that's meant to be so blissful isn't always fun and games.

Also, my K was activated not thru spiritual practise but because my subtle body was so polluted and blocked by a number of factors. The K had to clear a way for me to breathe again. As such it acted with an an intent that responded to my soul's needs. Does this imply a personal sort of energy or was the K a vehicle for working out the will of my soul, or of God?

W.C.

Your perspective, honed as it is on your observations and experiences, seems kind of romantic to me, for lack of another word, because it assumes that healthy children are kind of naturally connected to themselves and the world around them. But that doesn't have much to do with holiness, which is the whole aim of the K. Also, your explanation doesn't take into accounts experiences like Stephen's and mine, where neither of us were on a spiritual path but the K found us anyway. I believe there are so many varieties of the K and how it impacts that there are no easy explanations, even from a pscyhoanalytic point of view. Also, I know that the "k" siddha energies that came down upon me and continue to bother me are far from holy, and their impact on my mind/body/spirit hasn't much to do with how my nervous system developed in childhood or how I related to my parents. I'd been in therapy in the decade before I ever had the K experience, and I can really tell you nothing in patterning has anything to do with how the K has travelled through my system. In fact, it has more to do with my adult experiences (whch you could say had been shaped by my childhood), but months prior to the K, my physicological conditioning was great, mostly through a lot of healing work, yoga, right diet, and I'd been on a creative role. I was having some energy experiences that various K experts would identify as pre-K symptoms, but I attribute that to the fact that I had had several sessions with an energy healer who was into siddha energies. I attribute those sessions, since she ran way too much energy through me, as the beginning of the energy imbalance in me that led to the K. The K went off four days after I was in the Northridge earthquake, a traumatic event that my mind-body-spirit wasn't prepared for, and I don't think my childhood conditioning in the Midwest had much to do with how my body would react in an earthquake where my apt building essentially fell apart.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is no way to "isolate" how the K impacts us, not by emotional conditioning or even DNA.

Also Stephen, you raise a lot of questions I've been grappling with myself, though I still maintain the kind of K experiences we've had, induced by less than friendly forces, do not automatically translate into an end game of "it's all for the good," that the K can be automatically translated into some of kind of divine intervention that will bring our soul/spirit levels, even through suffering, to some higher level. K from lower astral realms (let me be politically uncorrect and say demonic realms) is all about submission and oppression, thus the energy loops connected to lower, dense energies. I'm sure your experiences with telepathy (that all knowingness with "The One" that the likes of a Solomae would only shade as God, god god) have included both that Godly voicewhich you describe and a lot of demonic ones. (voices from purgatory, sensitivity to souls caught in various astral planes? Your lower self?)

Those on a spiritual path encorporating practices that involve a K rising are suppposed to be guided through a guru, or some sort of spiritual director, not just for discernment, but PROTECTION from these realms. Traversing these realms is considered a valid part of the spiritual path, and the forces involved can be external to ourselves and life experience, which is why WC's observations, for me, seem too narrow and somewhat innocent of the other realities involved.

I've thought for a long time that Kundalini impacts us according to some sort of spiritual blueprint we come into the world with. Rather than being fundamentally influenced by factors of upbringing or any sort of biological/chemical conditioning, it works in conjunction with something more 'essential' ie something of our essence. I realise that this could lead us down the road of reincarnation and karma, but I think that, from a biblical perpective, something of us is known in God's mind before we hit this earthly plane and that this foreknowledge forms the essential part of us which is at the heart of all our action. K, being a soul energy, reacts with this "foreknown me" more than it does with any other part of us. ( I still maintain that certain dreams of my childhood were remembrances of a pre-existing consciousness, if that doen't sound too whacked-out!!) This is all perhaps fairly nebulous and it does open up all sorts of questions regarding free will and individual responsibilty.

I think, in all honesty, there was a lot of emotional security in my life and if there hadn't been I would probably have ended it all long ago given the degree of trauma that the K has brought, and that, rather than affecting the "type" of awakening we have, the level of emotional security an individual possesses affects how we respond to that "type" of K awakening. Maybe some of us just tend towards this.
I've always inclined towards the naively optimistic "its all for the good" idea. Recently however, its been seasoned with a healthy dose of "it could all go horribly wrong" because, at times, it has all gone horribly wrong. Why? God knows.

There have been telepathic experiences with a kind of God voice, but more often than not they have been with voices of PEOPLE surfing the same astral zone as I was on. At times the God voice took over my responses. At other times the telepathy was with my own future consciousness. Sometimes I think that God just gave me what I wanted (ie. that which is "far out", that which is "beyond", that which is "positively out there , man") and that I am simply paying the price of my own curiosity.

Also, w.c., if Kun is a vehicle for nourishing the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, why are some people displaying all the fruits of the Spirit without ever having gone thru K? Doesn't the cleansing affected by Christ's sacrifice do the same? What need then K?

Just to add, there seems to be conflict in the impact of the K with me. On one hand it has cleared and made whole; while at the same time it has lead the mind and body into some scary, dangerous terrain. Go figure!

"Also, w.c., if Kun is a vehicle for nourishing the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, why are some people displaying all the fruits of the Spirit without ever having gone thru K? Doesn't the cleansing affected by Christ's sacrifice do the same? What need then K?"

I agree, Stephen. What I mean to say is that K seems primarily in the service of the body as temple, by design. Which doesn't mean it has to be noticeable for those without the obscurations or samskaras that would make it an ordeal. In more mature souls it might very well remain in the background, flowing smoothly where the faculties of the soul are ready for a purer awareness. On the other hand, Phil's book addresses the dilemma of Christians having trouble with K and nobody to turn to, so it may be the rare soul who can pass through without arousing it. As for the cleansing of Christ's sacrifice, does that forego in us the more difficult passages?

And my sense of this includes something like what your describing as karma or a blueprint. However, that blueprint, if viewed according to Vedic astrology, would predict various responses to K, with strong influences from formative early experiences, which are also karmically interwoven.

"I think, in all honesty, there was a lot of emotional security in my life and if there hadn't been I would probably have ended it all long ago given the degree of trauma that the K has brought, and that, rather than affecting the "type" of awakening we have, the level of emotional security an individual possesses affects how we respond to that "type" of K awakening."

This makes sense. I'm glad you had a good foundation to help you get through the K traumas. When I refer to developmental effects, I'm thinking not just about early traumas but thwarted growth as well, where the nervous system simply doesn't get to wire itself very thoroughly. Most of the people I've met with chronic, severe K crisis tend to have had a good deal of disorganization in their nervous systems with much struggle in self-regulation throughout their lives and prior to K arousal. Meditation practices that intend on stirring up prana feed the dissociative or narcissistic tendencies and seem to easily activate the K in a nervous system where the wiring is weak and incomplete from a developmental point-of-view. The nervous system has already lost much of its homeostatic ability, and now has energy running through it which it can't manage.

Hey Stephen,

I couldn't message you for some reason, so I'm posting this on the board (which feel free to delete Phil once Stephen acknowledges) but I got my Christian Healing Ministries newsletter and Francis MacNutt is coming to Edinburg, Scotland Nov 17-19, at Heriot Watt University. Topic is Spirutual Healing through Prayer, hosted by Church of Scotland Board of Social Responsibility. I was at CHM the day Francis confirmed in the invitation. Church official of some sort invited him because there's so much bondage to witchcraft up there, he said.. (Harry Potter territory!) COntact info Douglas Irving, 011-44-1557330489. Healing service at Presbyterian (like no kidding) St Cuthbert's Parish on Princes St. Highly recommend and if Francis is laying on of hands individually, please go up. Nothing flowing through him is going to harm you in any way, take my word for it.

Also, W.C., I still don't agree with you. The body as a vessel, or the mind, infrequently can't "control" the K's run. The argument about whether someone's nervous system is well prepared is not valid since no one can x-ray a nervous system (much less the brain) and determine what pathways are developed and which ones aren't. I don't think many doctors, even neurological specialists would say that a person's emotional development or psyciological ability are reliable indicators.

What do I base this on? My own experience. I've been through about every medical test, pscyho history and just about every experiment related to K in book, including brain wave therapy. I've heard both the nervous system and pscychological perspective regarding K flows before, particularly within the energy healing community. But I've never seen any solid proof in western medicine, so I think its a leap as a series of explanation and a dangerous one at that because it discounts the fact that the K has a mind of its own, and one that isn't individual to vessel it is flowing through.

How a person REACTS, in terms of behavior, to a K imbalance may have very much to do with what you're talking about, which I think Stephen has confirmed, but I would never view those factors as fundamental to the behavior or flow of the K itself.

" . . . the forces involved can be external to ourselves and life experience, which is why WC's observations, for me, seem too narrow and somewhat innocent of the other realities involved."

Linda:

Along the lines of Stephen's comments, I'd guess that how well the nervous system is wired would have some influence on how permeable the aura is to these astral forces, if that's what your referring to. I remember Barbara Brennan talking about the chakras having a webbing or screen that is dependent upon the early attachment relationship, which makes sense with energetic development and physiological development being so closely linked.

Yes, my observations are a bit narrow, probably due to my own peculiar struggles affecting how and what I see. What you and Stephen are saying makes sense, and perhaps, along the lines of divergent blueprints, we're talking about different sorts of folks with different vulnerabilities, maturity, etc. So it's good to tumble into this with you and then step back and look at things.

I'll give you my view of the more pathological version of K imbalance, or the characteristics in behavior that seem common both before and after K arousal:

* A decreased connection with others in the ordinary, mutual sense of friendship and intimacy.

* Increased grandiosity and tendency to rationalize/spiritualize the psychopathology as a form of special identity.

* Hypervigilance: Constant seeking and great difficulty just being an ordinary person without a special quest.

* A lack of tolerance for internal disorganization, being too identified with it and a constant need to fix it.

* An unwillingness to face the longing within the energy, which then gets projected as a display of the False Self System.

Those are great points, W.C., and I guess we can agree that behavior is indeed shaped in part by the nervous system. But aren't these an outline of how a person reacts to a K experience? My point is that the "vessel" of the person experiencing the K is not necessarily (and I stress that)a foundation for how the K flows - that it can be routed independent of behavior, positive or negative as well as physical or mental attributes.

Personality is both intrinsic and reactive, right?

So my next point is behavior, grandiose or otherwise, can influence the K flow only up to a point. Makes sense, right, since the more grandiose, if they could influence their K, really would be levitating or performing miracles as their God-selves? That is, if they had ultimate control. I suppose couple of K indian yogis got there at some point, but they are hardly role models any of us here about very frequently here in the west.

Also, re Barbara Brennan and energy healers, other than some tests held at UCLA re vibrations and the human auric field, has anyone ever really proven that chakras exist? (perhaps they exist only in the psychic healing realm?) Someone else raised that question to me - a knowing person in the western medical community - as a challenge a few years ago when I went on and on about chakras, etc. He maintained there was no model at all that proven any consistency in their existence or evidence that energy pathways or subtle energy bodies also exist in regular way. I know Rosalyn Bruyerre, one of BB's teachers, and someone I studied energy healing with, is teaching some elements of healing at Univ of Arizona's medical school, and I find that unnerving (except for its and her link to Andrew Weill) given the fact that there's no evidence that this "pathway" system that she and others like her, promote is any solid form of reality, outside of their own third eyes. Even acqupuncture, which relies on such systems, has all kinds of different methods of approaching pathways - like where they exist in the body isn't even agreed upon.

You all are doing such a superb job covering the topics of early development, nervous system, and how this influences K process that I'll skip over to this recent part about chakras and their existence. I know Ken Wilber doesn't take their existence too literally, and I'm increasingly inclined along the same lines.

OTOH, nerve plexuses and endocrine glands certainly do exist, and these are places in the body where powerful energy transmissions take place. It's also pretty clear that different kinds of consciousness/intent are held differently in the body--e.g., that sexual thoughts stimulate the reproductive region and associated nerve areas more than thoughts about Maritain's philosophy. The embodiment of states of attention does seem to roughly correlate with chakra regions, and there are probably some good reasons for that. Threat perceptions activate those glands, nerves and muscles that need to be activated, while loving perceptions activate others. IOW, the various organs, glands, and tissues of the body are variously suited for dealing with different kinds of intentional and affective states. This, too, is not far from the concept of chakras.

Whether we have all the bodies the Hindus describe, with subtle chakras blooming throughout . . . I have my doubts. As a Catholic, my metaphysics is pretty much body/soul, with the body being a sort of bio-energy suit which enables the soul to exercise itself in the physical world. The body in this sense is not separate from the soul, you might even say that it IS the soul manifesting on a physical plane. So the attunement of the body described in the pgh. above reflects certain aptitudes in the soul, and is probably essential for enabling the soul to know what it knows. It's possible that the soul couldn't feel love without a physical heart, for example, or power without a solar plexus. So these aptitudes of the body are not merely physical or chemical, but are in the service of the soul and so have a spiritual orientation . . . not too different from the idea of chakras.

I can say that, for myself, the 3rd eye experience is very, literally real. I feel the energy surging into the center of the brain, whence a kind of seeing from the center of the forehead intensifies, calming the mind, buoying the heart, and opening the mind to direct communication from the Spirit. There also seems to be a seeing from above the head, but I don't know this as often. I think of these as spiritual senses in the soul, manifesting through the body via the mediation of the pineal and brain. Perhaps there are subtle chakras mediating between the physical and spiritual senses; perhaps what have been called chakras are the perceptions of the subtle electrical radiance between body and soul.

Linda:

With SQUID and CAT scan technology and radioactive dye tests by Robert Becker and others, the mainstream evidence for subtle energy pathways is still modest at best, it seems. As for BB's notion of chakra screens or webbing, I'm not needing a hard sell on the metaphor as a literal reality. Breastfeeding has been shown to increase the size of the child's thymus gland upwards of 200% over those bottle fed. I have no trouble believing that the resonance of a healthy attachment relationship nourishes the child's nervous system as well, both subtle and gross. I'm guessing you'd give a nod to this, too.

" . . . that it can be routed independent of behavior, positive or negative as well as physical or mental attributes."

I would have to admit this just based on limited insight into K, with only my own experience to consult with, besides indirect observation of others. You know, I do remember a time when I was doing some Buddhist mantra/visualizations work back in 91, and K began to flow through me in a frighteningly powerful way. I jumped out of bed and managed to keep it at bay until it subsided and returned to some degree of normalcy. The only mercy, thank God, I've had around this was that all the Qigong I did for years leading up to K was followed by forgiveness work with my family, which opened my chest area, bones moving and all, followed by a massive train-like explosion of K up my spine, over my head, down through my tounge and down into my navel, sometimes down legs and back around, etc. . . ongoing for 6 months. I'd been working these pathways for about 4 years through Taoist Qigong, and it was fortunate the forgiveness work was taken seriously, or I fear the eventual crisis would have taken a different form. I guess that's why Loving Kindness Meditation has been so important to me since that time, although it was years before I knew it formally. Given my early development, I could have gone south in a bad way.

Bye the way, my best buddy, who absolutely has no leaning in this direction, is particularly sensitive to energy work. He's epileptic, with past episodes of clairvoyance, which he treats with much scepticism. His harsh Hispanic "Catholic" upbringing seems to haunt him strongly. I don't do it anymore, due to the ill-effects on him and the dangers to myself, but I used to put my finger about an inch from certain acupoints on his feet and he would usually see the spiralling pathway and its color related to the organ system described in Chinese Medicine. I used to envy him. Not anymore.

"Personality is both intrinsic and reactive, right?"

Yep. But we know now that experience, especially the developmental variety, not only shapes the nervous system, but interacts directly with gene expression.

"So my next point is behavior, grandiose or otherwise, can influence the K flow only up to a point. Makes sense, right, since the more grandiose, if they could influence their K, really would be levitating or performing miracles as their God-selves? That is, if they had ultimate control."

Aren't you also implying that K has its own intelligence, or is informed from a higher intelligence, and that conscious control of it is limited in any case?

Didn't the disciples confront healers and miracle workers who were just jerking the energy around and not repenting and opening to God? Book of Acts, somewhere . . . but the ultimate control you speak of would imply some wisdom, hopefully.

Also, those suffering from severe grandiosity are already weak energetically, so the effects would be limited, or until they blew their insulation. Chinese Medicine might call it Liver Yang disturbance of Heart Spirit, or something of the sort.

Just an aside about chakras. First, it really makes no difference to me one way or the other. Ultimate Reality isn't something I'm going to affect anyway. That statement alone almost makes one a theist, doesn't it . . . . . be very quiet, I'm hunting for . . . . . wabbitts . . . . (jb . . . )

Phil, I've actally experienced these areas of the body as flowers, without any intent to do so. However, it could be a background, unconscious expectation at work. One instance was quite peaceful, the other during acupuncture with my crown looking like a chrysanthemum opening and shutting (I guess I'm not enlightened enough to have a Lotus flower).

w.c., a nerve plexus looks kind of like a flower, and if one perceives, say, a subtle electro-magnetic radiance emanating from it, it could look very much like one, I suppose. I don't know about seeing a Sanskrit letter on it, however.

It seems to me that the chakra system is every bit as much about describing "places in consciousness" as about metaphysical energy organs. They also describe a basic developmental schema that has parallels among the more empirical developmentalists; see this link for example. Finally, they seem to provide a kind of structure for suggesting spiritual disciplines which address one's developmental issues. I think there's value in all of that, even though the existence of a chakra might not be verifiable with a dye or CT scan.

I got so steeped in the kinds of things on that link you've provided, Phil, when I was involved in energy healing that I got bogged down in the details of my own process. That kind of information also led to me think that I had more control over my healing process. Then the K came along, and I found the elements of that chart valuable in diagnosing certain phenomena I was experiencing. (weird psychic stuff, hmmm, my sixth chakra is whacked, etc. etc. )

I've experienced a real physical sensation of the chakras, even their differentiations in terms of structure as described in the eastern traditions, the "flowering" phenomena you describe, for example, WC, a real sense of chakras spinning clock wise and counter clock wise. I wondered if there were truly happening, or a psychic phenomena, a sort of energy sheath overlay, that provided a sort of layer of coding for my energy bodies, particularly when I was following more of the eastern modalities of healing. (i.e. if I were a really developed or graced Christian, would the equivalent be, perhaps, stigmata, because the etheric body of Christ would be my overlay?)

So I wonder how much of what we experience re the K is based on what spiritual path we're in. Or maybe those sensations are just part of the process at some point. I still experience some of them, but not as regularly as I did a few years ago. For me, its been easier to just try and pray for general healing, aided by some yoga and clean living, as a way to cooperate with the K. When I experience some weird symptom, then, yeah, I do check in with the kinds of subtle energy system structures on that chart. But dealing with my experience constantly on that basis was a drag, if not a lot of work! My general theory for living with the K is if it isn't broken (in the sense creating a lot of weird sensations or discomfort), don't try to fix it. Of course, as you all know, the K will find any picadello anyway, so that's mostly wishful thinking!

A quick description of chakra opening as I've experienced it - rather like a 2 dimensional balloon blowing up inside me at the areas of heart, solar pexus and just above the genitals, followed by in-rushing cold or hot energy, oh, and at the crown, where it felt as if my skin was being peeled back. Or, alternatively, like a thin gossamer veil being opened at the various points. Not at all scientific, granted!

Each time, the opening was accompanied by a wave of oppresive activity, as if their opening was a gateway to some predetermind experience I had to go thru and not mere physical sensation. Or, as if their function was to act as portals for the energy underpinning reality and experience.

Funny that this opening was experienced not when the K first awakened but when I tried to manipulate the energy myself or had it manipulted in me.

Interesting, too, how some of the pathological traits W.C. mentions can be ironed out as an awareness of the process grows. How much of God's grace and the Spirit's power does that reveal!

" . . . K has a mind of its own, and one that isn't individual to vessel it is flowing through . . . . How a person REACTS, in terms of behavior, to a K imbalance may have very much to do with what you're talking about, which I think Stephen has confirmed, but I would never view those factors as fundamental to the behavior or flow of the K itself."

Yes, I'd agree to that. I just caught up with the last bit of the above post . . .

Perhaps what your alluding to is the way K, at more intense levels, relates with some kind of dissolution of the ego, a highly fictional notion to me, since most of the adepts who have spouses seem to suggest it isn't ever collapsed entirely. Phil has had numerous exchanges over this topic with Bernadette Roberts. And the website describing the last years of Suzanne Segal suggest elements of ego remained. But let's suppose that dissolution of the ego, or smaller self system, is part of K's business . . . or maybe it just seems so for all the reorganization it seems to entail. Perhaps that reorganization has, as you suggest, no precedent in previous human experience after a certain point. In that case, the person's developmental history could serve as some stability in protecting one from delusions in human relationships, but not be a direct arbiter in K unfolding.

[But let's suppose that dissolution of the ego, or smaller self system, is part of K's business . . . or maybe it just seems so for all the reorganization it seems to entail. Perhaps that reorganization has, as you suggest, no precedent in previous human experience after a certain point. In that case, the person's developmental history could serve as some stability in protecting one from delusions in human relationships, but not be a direct arbiter in K unfolding.]

I agree with this w.c. My own experience probably limits my opinion to some degree but I feel that the reorganisation effected by the Kun leads to a certain amount of psychological imbalance which is then slowly ironed out by the resources imparted from a well adjusted development. Speaking from the perspective of someone who's Kun went haywire ( I can't really say anything about "proper" Kun awakening), what followed such an awakening was
the fracturing of ego and certain delusional attachments which did indeed "just seem" to denote a "dissolution". How this is repaired and readjusted involves, in my experience, not only an individual's heart/mind development but a certain holistic integration with family and community where the energies of same rebuild and repair in conjuction with the K's function. If this integration is possible then the need for energy healers is greatly reduced(perhaps not quite redundant).

Indeed a lot of the repair work on my own psyche was effected initially by this holistic integration of energy into my own system. But then also, funnily enough, by a disastrous flirtation with an energy healer, where the botch job done on me led to a great degree of trauma which, in turn, forced me to snap out of my previous delusional state in order to keep from going under.

To what degree Kundalini influences this natural, holistic process, I'm not sure, but I think that it probably attracts a lot of the right energy when the right energy is needed. How this equates with the negative astral energy it also draws on occasion is a bit of a mystery.

P.S. Linda, thanks for the info! I've sent you a mail which I hope you get.