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The Chakras -Part 8

Transformation of the mind

AFTER seventeen years of persistent meditation on the Crown Lotus, Gopi Krishna had the following experience:

‘The illumination grew brighter and brighter, the roaring louder and louder, I experienced a rocking sensation and then felt myself slipping out of my body, entirely enveloped in a halo of light. I felt the point of consciousness that was myself growing wider, surrounded by waves of light.

‘I was now all consciousness, without any outline, without any idea of a corporeal appendage, without any feeling or sensation coming from the senses, immersed in a sea of light, simultaneously conscious and aware of every point, spread out, as it were, in all directions without any barrier or material obstructions. I was a vast circle of awareness in which the body was but a point, bathed in light and in a state of exaltation impossible to describe.’

For years afterwards he was ill, sometimes almost to the point of death. He had, he said, awoken the Kundalini up the wrong channel. Eventually this was righted, but he refrained from meditation, as the power worked best when left alone. This was in 1937. Today, more than thirty years later, his new awareness has stabilised and gradually matured.

Gopi Krishna used one of the conscious effort techniques to arouse Kundalini. Morning and evening, sometimes for hours, he sat concentrating his attention on the crown of his head. Here he visualised a Lotus in full bloom, radiating light. If his thoughts wandered, as they did time after time, he brought them back to concentrate on the image.
The Way of The Body

There are time-honoured methods in the path using the body. One of these is described as follows. In the Gheranda Samhita it says:

‘In the Muladhara is Kundalini of the form of a serpent. The Jivatman is there like the flame of a lamp. Contemplate on this flame as the luminous Brahman’ – that is, visualise a small flame at the base of the spine, and imagine it is an expression of God incarnate in you.

Another method it gives is:

‘Throw the two legs behind the neck, holding them strongly like a noose (Pasha). This is called Pashini – mudra; it awakens the Shakti (Kundalini).’

A practice Theos Bernard was taught is the traditional method of Shakticalana is to sit in the Bound Lotus or Siddhasana position. Inhale through the right nostril, lock the chin onto the chest and gaze forcedly at the tip of the nose or between the eyebrows. Imagine you are holding your breath in the Swadhishthana -abdominal – Chakra; now tense the rectum and pull in the navel. Before the tension weakens, breathe out through the left nostril and begin again. This practice must be gradually increased to an hour and a half daily until the Kundalini is felt to move like a hot flame up the spine.

Other physical practices are Bhastrika – forced expiration, hundreds of repetitions of Uddiyana and Nauli (moving the abdomen in and out with breath out) and standing on the head for three hours daily.
The Mystery of the Breath

All of these practices have to be thought of in terms of years rather than weeks or months. But one of the most straight forward and usable of these techniques is the Alternate Nostril Breathing.

Sit in the Lotus posture, breathe out, and close the right nostril with the thumb. The first and second fingers of this (right) hand should be on the palm. Breathe in through the left nostril to a count of 5 hold the breath for a count of 20, then close the left nostril with the third and fourth finger and breathe out through the right nostril to a count of ten.

Breathe through the right to a count of five and continue for ten repetitions. Increase repetitions over months, to 84, twice daily. If the held breath is easy, take it up to 8-32-16 or 10-40-20 or higher. But there should never be any struggle to retain the breath, it is the repetitions which are important. As the breath is drawn in, imagine the life force being taken in to the base of the spine. As the breath is held, imagine a flame of light arising up the spine to the crown of the head. As the breath is exhaled, the flame withdraws to the base.

TURNING to practices which are less directly aimed at effort arousal of the Kundalini, the power can be experienced as sound or light. This inner experience of Kundalini has given rise to a variety of practices. Some of the oldest and most widely used of those are Shabda or Mantra Yoga – and Dhyana.
Life Is Music – Music is Sound

The activity of Kundalini in us produces sounds. If you sit and listen to the sounds within the ear, you will notice, apart from any noises heard outside you, a background sound all the time within. This may be a faint humming or ringing, or perhaps a throbbing. Whatever it is, fix the attention on it and keep it there. If the attention wanders, bring it back, time after time after time. This stills the mind as our being becomes immersed in the sound. Thus a condition of stillness, of listening, of receptiveness is produced. When the conscious self becomes receptive then the superconscious self or overself can become dynamic, and begins to release its energies to our fertile being.

Gradually during the months and years of practice, the transforming influence released into our outer life, changes us. Also, the inner sounds we hear change. At times we may hear the voice of silence – or see our Master who gives us instructions and encouragement. Both the voice and vision are objectifications of our superconscious state, expressing to us through words we hear, or through the symbol of a great being. In this way the potential of the Kundalini is released into our life more surely and balanced than self direction.

THE meditation on light has a similar influence. Start by gazing at a candle. Gradually learn to close the eyes, and retain the image of the flame. Persistence and patience is obviously needed in all these methods. As the flame can be held with the eyes closed, dispense with the candle. Now learn to spread the light throughout the whole body, so one’s entire being is bathed in light. Here it is the light that works on one instead of the sound. They are but different symbols for the same power. The same applies about the voice of the silence and the appearance of the Master.

An ancient Chinese method is to sit and do nothing; i.e. do not attempt to get anywhere, achieve anything, or reach any special state of consciousness. Fix the attention on the middle of the brow and let the light circulate according to its own nature. That is, in sitting down for the practice, realise that the laws of the universe created you. These laws are complete in themselves, and if left alone, will come to fruition, completion, or self realisation in your own being. Thus, in sitting, you drop your own desires, and ambitions, and place yourself in the influence of the Law. The concentration on the brow is to steady the mind, to give it a centre. The rest is to do nothing but sit in the Law.
The Great Amen

MANTRA is, (for those who find it difficult to hear the sound, imagine the light or do nothing), an extremely helpful way. It can be used vocally or silently. Both are very powerful, but the vocal chanting of a Mantra is immediately potent. Again it must be used in terms of years not weeks or months. Growth is a slow process. Morning and evening, sit in a chosen spot for at least half an hour. Choose a Mantra and stick with it. The Shrimad Bhagavatam says: Seated in a secluded place, free from all disturbing thoughts of the world, one must first repeat in one’s mind the sacred word (OM) with understanding of its meaning. The word OM’ is one with God, and indeed is God. By this practice alone one gains control of Prana and the mind,

Om or Aum, is pronounced by opening the mouth, fully and letting the air out of the lungs making an AAAH sound. Then gradually close the mouth. This turns the AH into OOO, then MM. So we have AUM. It is not the meaning but the vibrational power that gives it value. Say it over and over, aloud or within.

Another wonderful Mantra is OM MANI PADME HUM. Again, as in the other practice, if the attention wanders, bring it back to the Mantra. DO NOT force the mind to stillness, just be aware of the Mantra. Some English Mantras are ‘Before Abraham was – I AM’, – ‘It is not in it – For it realises itself,’ and ‘I am that I am’.

Regarding the surrender method, this is known throughout the world. Perhaps it can be summarised by the Biblical phrase ‘Come to me all ye,. who are weak and heavy laden, and I will give ye rest’,’ Or ‘Be still and know that I am God’.

In this method we accept that we do not consciously know what is best for us – not knowing fully why we exist or where we are going. Thus we throw the burden of our existence upon life itself. Our will, our intellect, our sexual feelings and appetites, are released from the hold we have on them, and held out to Life to organise and direct. This is not like Orthodox Christianity where a preconceived morality or ‘goodness’ is lived up to. Here we become plastic and softened, so that Life can mould us according to what is innate in it. It is an. emptying of self, a swooning of self, as St. Teresa calls it, so that the divine in us may direct us and, change us.

In this way there is no attempt to get anywhere or awaken anything or be anybody. It is simply a being still while yet being active in the world. Abu Tazid at Bistami wrote: ‘Be in a domain where neither good nor evil; exists. Nothing is better for man than to be without aught, having no asceticism, no theory, no practice.’

But in the beginning of this practice, it is as if there is our personality or awareness, which offers itself and is acted upon – and there is that which acts upon it which men have given unaccountable names. These two are really one, but are seen as such only later. Shri Aurobindo says: ‘One commences in a method, but the work is taken up by a Grace from above, from that to which one aspires. It was in this last way that I myself came by the mind’s absolute silence, unimaginable to me before I had its actual experience.

It is important to realise that you may unconsciously hold the concept that to surrender means to become physically still and passive. Remember that for may people the surrender led to physical movement, making sounds, expressing emotions, dancing. So surrender needs to be done with the willingness to hold out all of one to be moved.

After his initial years of meditation, Gopi Krishna came to see that:

‘Contrary to the belief which attributes spiritual growth to purely psychic causes, to extreme self denial and renunciation or to an extraordinary degree of religious fervour, I found that a man can rise from the normal to a higher level or consciousness by a continuous biological process as regular as any other activity of the body.’

The energies of this higher consciousness in man and woman is a natural process. It is as natural as the arrival of teeth in the child, or sexuality in adolescence. In fact it is a continuation of the same process. But it seems as if this process of growth which extrudes the body, brings about human consciousness and personality, washes man up onto a sea-shore from the ocean of Life processes. For further growth, it appears that we must agree to go along with life – must decide that this is what we want – must cooperate with the process or else be stranded on the shore.

How do we do this? First recognise clearly that some process, some force, causes you to exist. You can call this what you wish, it does not matter, it remains what it is. Next recognise that this process that you are, causes changes in your life, and is apparent as growth and maturity. It does this by integrating your life and everyday experience.

Next, decide to go along with this process. Offer yourself as you are to it. Let things happen – allow changes to take place – sit in the Law. You will be shown the way.

This path does not attempt to crush the ego, the appetites, the instincts. Rather, it hands them over living so that they can develop to higher levels of expression, and reach towards fuller self-realisation in everyday life,

‘I said to my soul be still and wait without hope,
For Hope would be hope for the wrong thing.
Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing.
There remains yet faith, and the faith and the love,
and the hope are all in the waiting.’

In all, to sum it up, say YES to Life!

The Chakras – Part 7

‘Let thine eye be single, and thy body shall be full of light’

MANY people interpret this saying of Jesus as a reference to the Brow Chakra above the centre of the eyebrows. Chinese meditation practices, and some Indian methods advise the pupil to concentrate attention on their brow Lotus, and- eventually it will seem as if they are suffused with light and bliss.

The space behind the forehead,’ Eileen Garratt says, ‘clears and becomes suffused with soft light in which changing colours play an important part, and I actually enter a dimension which is colour. Now the process of clairvoyance definitely begins to function and coordinates and speeds up all sense perceptions. In the beginning of clairvoyance, the tiny space behind the forehead, illuminated by the glow of light, seems to grow and expand beyond the measurements of time or space. The action which then takes place can be related to an actual event of today, an occurrence of tomorrow, or of an episode which was lived a century or more ago.

THIS is Ajna Chakra, the two-petalled brow Lotus. Its colour is white (Yoga) or indigo (Cayce). The Shat-Chakra-Nirupana says that when the yogi meditates on this spot, ‘he then also sees the Light which is in the form of a flaming lamp. It is lustrous like the clearly shining morning sun, and glows between the Sky and the Earth. It is here that the Bhagavan (Infinite – God) – manifests in the fullness of His might. He knows no decay, and witnesseth all, and is here as he is in the region of Fire, Moon and Sun.
Edgar Cayce

Cayce said that this Lotus is connected with the pineal gland. The opening of this centre by the Kundalini, he says, is sometimes accompanied by bodily trembling or loss of consciousness. This gland and Centre is a doorway between man’s conscious mind and the memories of all he has done in this life and in past lives. It also links him with the cosmic mind or memory which records all past history and the possibilities of what is to come.

A man, describing the beginnings of activity in the brow Lotus, writes:

As I sit in meditation, offering my life to that from which I have emerged, it is as if something comes up to my head. It is like a force or energy. The eyes then begin to feel strange, flicker and usually feel as if they have turned back to look inwards or up to the middle of my forehead.’

All this happens quite by itself and I can stop it at any moment. Occasionally, as the eyes turn up, all my awareness seems to be drawn into the centre of my head, or into a different dimension, pitch black, and sometimes I lose awareness of my body. It is like being completely relaxed because my thoughts slow right down without any effort on my part and I float in great peace and stillness.

This is undoubtedly, from the descriptions of many people, the Lotus of understanding – the point where the finite mind contacts the infinite mind. That is not to say that individual awareness here blends into its Source. But this centre has the ability to understand the meaning of ‘As above – so below.’ With this Lotus functioning, we can see how the infinite cosmic mind works upon people, nations, worlds. We can see how events, things, living beings, are reflections of the infinite. We can see ‘Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in a hour.’

In other words, in looking at people, or the world around us, we can see how the physical is an expression of the divine. Through this insight, we gradually gain understanding of why things are as they are, and how everything links with a universal scheme of things.
Looking beyond the eyes

A MAN describes this insight as it came to him looking at a friend with psychological problems.

‘As I looked at him, first of all I was only aware of how he felt. I could describe his emotions in detail, but couldn’t see why he felt this way. Then it was as if a deeper insight came about, and I saw how each of his movements, his gestures, his facial expressions, were results of inner attitudes and feelings. I saw that these things had been acquired from his parents, his friends, his national culture. I also saw that these things – his personality traits – were largely out of harmony with Life in him. His traits were anti Life, and this caused him anguish. I was able to see through this to how each of us either harmonises or conflicts with the force which creates us.’

This Lotus then, allows us to understand how things work – with Life. We can look into plants, animals, planets, and see how they are part of the total scheme of things. And out of this insight arises a philosophy of what life is about. It is also the doorway to many abilities, such as experiencing memory of past lives, travelling out of the body, looking into the future and diagnosing illness or conditions in others.

As it sees how the Infinite is mirrored in the physical world, it is the Lotus which helps the individual understand his own particular relationship with the Cosmos. Through it he glimpses, in symbols, intuitions the voice of the silence, or a sight of his Master (i.e. an embodiment of his own oversoul) how he should proceed. He gains tuition from his Master, giving details of meditation what he should do in life, of his karma, and his work in the world. As it opens such understanding to us, it is one of the safest of the lotuses to meditate on. Its influence reaches up to the crown and down through the other centres to the Root Chakra.
Tensions that block vision

Wilhelm Reich describes the tensions in the face and neck as arising from blocked emotions that seek to express themselves through the mouth and eyes. A constant frown, a mask like face, or talking through clenched teeth, are all signs of these tensions. They can sometimes be released by imitating screaming or crying, when the underlying emotions will eventually break through, and real crying. or real screaming will take place.
the thousand petals of light

The Crown Lotus or Sahasrara Chakra is at the space where the baby has a soft spot on the head. It has a thousand petals, with twelve large ones at the centre. Its colour is as clear as light (Yoga) or violet (Cayce). The pituitary gland is said to be its physical connection, and its principle that of wisdom.

Eileen Garratt describes her experience of this:

‘the seventh level of consciousness contains within it much that I have so far found difficult to put into words. In that instant I become almost simultaneously, more and yet less myself. It is at this moment of the crescendo of my clairvoyance that precognition, clairaudience, projection and vision at a distance occur simultaneously. In this state I receive inspiration and I become one, am identified, with all life, which my vision beholds and my wish embrace. On this level I can reach out and be aware at will of the life cycle or life of any human being.’

The pituitary gland acts as a balancing force on all the other glands. The Hopi Indians describe the Crown Lotus as the first of the centres in man. ‘Here when he was born, was the soft spot, Kopavi, the “open door” through which he received his life and communicates with his creator. For with every breath the soft spot moves up and down with a gentle vibration that was communicated to the Creator. At the time of Talawva the last phase of man’s creation, the soft spot was hardened and the door (to spontaneous communication with the Creator) was closed.’

At the brow centre it was said we can see how the Infinite is reflected in the material world. Also, we receive information from the Infinite in symbols, visions, or looking into nature and man. But there are several ways of realising a thing. We can experience the results of the thing – we can think about it – or we can BE it.

The crown Chakra opens to a dimension of experience beyond the separations of thee and me – subject and object – God and man. It gives direct experience of Being.

It is possible that the last part of Jesus’s life is a symbolical explanation of this. He carried his cross to the top of the hill called Golgotha – the skull. There he was crucified. While this occurred he cried out ‘My God, My God why hast thou forsaken me’?

Truly the Lotus at the top of the skull is where man dies. That is, his ego dies and all Separateness disappears. Thus, there is no longer God and me. There is no longer God and Jesus there is only unified being. Through it, man no longer sees his source reflected in the world, or dreams, visions and voices, but experiences it directly.

There is a very ancient symbol of a snake kissing a bird. There is also the symbol of a dove descending to Jesus’s head at baptism. This symbolises the fact that just as the serpent power, Kundalini, rises through our being, the dove power, or spirit, also descends through our being from the crown Chakra. Whereas the serpent power unfolds the latent capacities of us – the dove power (Amazing Grace) redeems them and harmonies them with the rest of life in the cosmos. Some people in fact do not experience Kundalini rising, but feel the descent of a blessed power that cleanses and then unfolds them. Remember that Pak Subuh saw a ball of light touch his head. This was his initiation.

Why this difference in experience? Too little is known, at least by the author, to state definitely why. It is probable, however, that some basic attitude in the person, their approach to life, the method used, all cause a variation in the type of ascending or descending which they contact first.
Learning to see anew

THE ways in which men and women awaken in themselves the conscious activity of their Chakras – either through the ascent of the serpent power, or the dove power – are extremely varied. We can usefully classify these methods under just a few headings, however. There is the way in which a guru awakens it in us through his or her presence and relationship. There is the way of conscious effort, in which we concentrate on the Chakras, or try to develop them to arouse Kundalini. There is the way of function; and there is the way where we make no conscious effort, but surrender our being to the Infinite.

I must admit that I am biased toward the surrender method. It seems to me that the intellect is itself limited in understanding its own being; any course of action planned or initiated by the intellect does not have full understanding regarding its foundation, its ground of being. As our being is such an enormously complex thing, how can we be fool enough to think we know what is best for us? But as the conscious self is a projection of the superconscious self, we can safely hand ourselves over to our source. It would, however, be an insult to your intelligence and freedom only to explain my own views, so we will briefly describe the other way.

Function is perhaps the easiest to understand. We develop an ability by using it – doing it. The functions of the Chakras can therefore be developed by trying to experience people in a deeper way than just through our senses. Thus the crown Lotus can be brought into play by learning to see and experience ourselves as one with all life; the Brow Chakra by trying to see how the world is an expression of infinite mind; the Throat Lotus by trying to know what thoughts lie unexpressed in others and in self; the Heart by learning to feel the unspoken emotions of others and oneself. The navel Lotus, watching how people relate; The Genital Lotus by being aware of the sexual disposition of others.

The flame in one person’s being, can ignite the tinder in another. A person can only be called a guru if we have completely placed our life in their hands. Otherwise they are just a teacher or friend. The guru objectifies for us our own ‘overself’, and through working out the difficulties of our relationship with our guru, we remove the blocks between our conscious self and our cosmic self.

In a sense, the person we choose as our guru does not have to be perfect or miraculous. ‘Whatsoever ye do unto one of these ye do unto me.’ Each person is an incarnation of the highest. In meeting and coping with our wife, our husband, our guru, we are discovering our own divinity, and how it is veiled by our own illusions and failings ‘Come to me’ says the guru, ‘and surrender all.’ But can you?

The Chakras – Part 6

People of the desert

WHEN Laurens Van der Post was travelling through the Kalahari desert, his expedition team rested from the oven-like heat under a few lone trees. Laurens could not sleep like his friends, but lay looking at the mirages.

Then soundlessly, the bushman interpreter crept up to him and said, ‘Moren, there are men coming from over there. They are in trouble.’

Laurens walked with Dabé, the bushman, to where they could look over the desert. Mirages blanketed the land and sky. He could see or hear no sign of movement. ‘Are you sure people are coming, Dabé?’ he asked ‘How do you know?’

‘People are corning,’ Dabé’ replied. ‘They are in trouble. I feel it in here’ he said, and pointed to his chest. A few minutes later Laurens saw a faint movement among the mirages. Then a group of Kalahari bushmen, women and children came into view. They were walking like sleepwalkers, with eyes of the living dead They had come from a drought area, and had been without food or water for many days. When they were offered water; each of them drank a full gallon, and then slept.

What was Dabé pointing at within his chest, when he said: ‘I feel it in here?’ Was it perhaps the vibratory centre where the Hopi Indians said man could be ‘of one heart’ with God and other people? Was his heart lotus, the psychic sense organ of the Anahata Chakra functioning more fully than the white man’s? The Hopi Indians say that when a man closes down his centres, he loses contact with life around him, and the creative force that made him.

Edgar Cayce taught that all the forces we express in our life, must be in harmony with our Overself or Spirit, if we are are to find peace, health and spiritual growth. When the sex forces are misapplied, he says, disease follows.

‘The misuse of the forces of the adrenals results in sapped energies, and the misuse of the forces of the leydig bring about a shutting off of the forces of natural healing and supply. Misapplied love, as on the thymus (heart centre) level, reacts as a consuming force upon the individual. Love must go out not in.

Thymus gland

The thymus gland lies behind the ribs, on the midline, halfway between base of neck and sternum. In a baby it is enormous, but gradually shrinks during maturity. It inhibits the activities of the testicles and ovaries, produces the lovely rounded limbs of babyhood, and if overactive in adult life, prevents sex differentiation.

Such people lack male ruggedness, or female curvaceous, and look more like ‘angel children’. They are often pathological liars, irresponsible, and like the company of their own sex. If the pituitary is fairly active, they may be brilliant, however, and Oscar Wilde is perhaps an example of this type – i.e. of unbalanced and overactive thymus.

The balanced thymus, or balanced glandular type has full sexual characteristics, is intelligent, emotional and energetic. That is, his or her gonads, adrenals, thymus, thyroid, pineal and pituitary are active in harmony.

We can see from what has been said that perhaps the heart lotus is the centre for emotional rapport. The bushman was aware through this centre, of other people’s feelings, even though his physical senses had not yet received information of them. Therefore, through this lotus, when it is working, we can be aware of other people’s emotional disposition, their state of being, and their love or hate. These can be perceived even if no outer sign is given. Because of this, we can be aware of the dead through this lotus.

Just as the bushman was aware of people’s feelings even without seeing their physical bodies, so we can be aware of the feelings and love of those who do not have a physical body.

The reason we cannot usually be aware of the dead, is simply because we are not aware of the feelings of the living, unless they physically express them in word, gesture or expression. All these are picked up by our physical senses. But if they do not have a physical body, we are lost, because we have never learned to communicate with them on a deeper level.
Communication without speech

As plants, animals, the earth and the cosmos, all express ‘feelings’, moods, love or desire, we become aware of communication with the world around us, other than in speech, when this centre becomes active.

The unspoken love in the heart of a new-born baby – the yearning of a flower to the sun, or a bee – the silent and pitiful longing grown painful in the breast of many a stranger who passes, in many an eye that looks into ours, is known when our heart lotus responds to life.

Wilhelm Reich found that tensions of the diaphragm and chest block ‘life’ in this area. The breathing was either tensed in expiration, making it difficult to breathe in; or tensed in inspiration, making it difficult to breathe out.

These tensions are often very difficult to shift. It is difficult to release the emotion dammed up, and allow the breathing to be free. This usually involves the person in crying, sometimes in the feeling of vomiting, or in emotional longing.

As the arms are an extension of this body segment, repressed aggression may bind the back muscles in pain and tension, or produce tensions in the arms and chest through holding back the desire to hold and cuddle others to draw them to us, to our love or our body. Forced out-breathing sometimes helps to loosen the chest tensions and permit crying. Also expressing rage or anger by banging a pillow or couch with the hands helps to release the arm and back tensions.
A higher triplicity

The fifth lotus is at the base of the neck, just above the chest. This has sixteen petals, is purple (Yoga) or blue or grey blue (Cayce), and is called Vishuddha Chakra, or Throat Centre. It appears to be linked with the thyroid gland and larynx. Whereas the four lower centres were represented by the four lower elements Earth – Water – Fire – Air, this centre seems to be the beginning of a higher triplicity; perhaps the true universal forces of Creation, Preservation, and Destruction.

The ancient Hebrews felt that the formless emotions and dispositions in the human heart take form in the throat and through the larynx emerge as words. So the throat or larynx is thought of in many ancient cultures as a higher form of womb, in which the human spirit is incarnated or takes form.

This is mentioned because of the experiences of some people when the life force of Kundalini works on the throat lotus. The Hopi Indians say that the throat centre ties together ‘those openings in the nose and mouth through which we receive the breath of life and the vibratory organs that enable us to give back breath in sound. This primordial sound, as coming from the vibratory centres of the body of earth, was attuned to the universal vibration of all Creation. New and diverse sounds can be given forth by these vocal organs in the form of speech and song. But its primary function is to express in sound, the individual response to the Creator.’
One sound

In other words, through it, we can echo the Creative Sound or Word – or weave songs to harmonise with the workings of life, by singing aspects of the one sound.

Eileen Garrett describes her experience of activity at this level as ‘a clearing and expansion at the back of the neck.’ Another person says, ‘when it reaches this point, it causes me to cough and it feels sore as when with a cold, but it passes off when it (kundalini) leaves this point.’

Two other men agree with this, but add something else: ‘At one point it seemed to produce coughing. But once while sitting in meditation, my mouth came open spontaneously as my head went back and back. This felt as if my being were offering my open mouth as a womb or entry for something wonderful to enter. Or perhaps there was a great and rich sound I wanted to make but couldn’t.’

The other man describes it thus. ‘Often in meditation the energy released seems, after going up and hitting the middle of the brain behind the eyes, to work on the throat. Sometimes the head goes back quite by itself and the mouth opens. This is usually accompanied by a strange sensation at the back of, or above the larynx, like a tickling, irritating feeling – or as if something were emerging or being pushed out or sore at that point.

‘I have the intuitive or irrational feeling that I have to offer my throat and voice to Spirit or God, and this is why my mouth opens. The open mouth is like a posture of offering, or giving oneself. When the sensation becomes intense it produces coughing, but it passes off immediately the power leaves the area, and my throat is never sore as a consequence.

Considering the remark about ‘giving oneself’, it is interesting that Edgar Cayce considers this centre as the expression of human will, which can oppose or cooperate with the divine will. He says that misuse of these forces result in stubbornness, self will or bullheadedness. When this aspect of self is allowed to be directed by the overself, or higher consciousness, instead of intellect, emotion or passion, the contents of the unconscious and old regrets, guilt, lusts, desires are released to be dealt with.

Excess thyroid activity produces rapid pulse, nervousness, excitability, protruding eyes, and an overactive mind and emotions. An underactive thyroid produces mental backwardness, coarse skin, lack of growth, slowness. The thyroid arises from the same tissue and almost from the same spot as the anterior lobe of the pituitary. In lower life forms, the thyroid is a sex gland, and even in humans, links the sex glands with the brain. It seems to control or regulate the speed at which we live.
Halfway between emotion and abstract thought

In the heart lotus, we are dealing with love, and a sympathetic entrance into other lives. Sympathy or compassion is the keynote. Through it we can look into another heart. In the throat centre, sympathy is transmitted by the blending of a yet higher centre, into empathy, the direct experience of the inner condition of another.

But this centre does not deal in pure emotion or feelings. It is a half way house between emotion and abstract thought. Whereas the Kalahari bushman felt the troubled feelings of others at the heart centre, the throat centre is sensitive to thoughts and decisions, to the things we ‘will’.

Sometimes this centre translates impressions into sound, much as a wireless does to radio waves. Sometimes the impressions received here are seen as descriptive colours or forms. To quote Rudolph Steiner, a revengeful thought, for example, assumes an arrow-like or pronged form, while a kindly thought is often formed like an opening flower. Clear cut, significant thoughts are regular and symmetrical in form, while confused thoughts have wavy outlines.’
Creative energy

This may seem fairly understandable, that the throat centre senses the thought radiations or mental energy of others, in or out of the body, but there is a more interior function also. One is reminded of the yearly miracle of Satya Sai Baba, who produces a beautiful jewel like lingam (Shiva symbol) out of his throat.

Just as the sexual organs express creative energy in a physical sense, the throat lotus seems to have the capacity for expressing creative energy of a more subtle nature. We can see something of this in the power that arises from some people’s speech or words. Such words can have the power to move others in a variety of ways.

But perhaps, considering the experiences quoted, where the throat is offered to the Overself or higher awareness, this is a womb in which the child is formed, resulting from human will offering itself to the Infinite will. In other words, there might grow here, a non- physical organ which links the activities of our body with the influence of the Infinite. This would harmonise our physical life with the life around us, so that our actions blended with the activities of nature instead of being a disturbing and destructive influence in the life of our planet. See – Life’s Little Secrets – Opening to Life

 

The Chakras – Part 5

The evolution of sexual desire

The ‘intense and primitive – sexual – desire’ that Eileen Garratt describes as the first level of awakening inner power, is really an experience of the lotus above the genitals. Although at first it seems to involve the sexual organs, it then appears to fold back’ upon itself, and what was naked sexual desire turns into a warm outgoing feeling.

It has been said that the lotuses are separate expressions of the one creative power – sound – or word in us. It is therefore foolish and perhaps dangerous, to concentrate or meditate just on the one Chakra. This may simply arouse intense sexual desires and then what do we do with them? The only time we can approach any lotus separately is when we have first centred ourself in the essence of them all, the Overself or Infinite which directs the activities of our being.

The power that whirls into the Chakras is from the One primal energy, and the Chakras dependence on the One must always be remembered if balanced development is to be maintained. In fact, attunement with the One or Overself, brings development of the Chakras naturally, in their own time, and without concentration or meditation on any one of them.
negative and positive

We saw that in the root Chakra, the creative energy was released and projected into the rest of our being. The next level of its expression is in the Svadhisthana lotus. At this point the energy becomes negative and positive – creative and destructive. Its creative power is expressed outwardly in the sexual organs, its destructive power in the rectum, and in the ejection of faeces. This centre is therefore the sense organ informing us of these forces in other people, and all nature. Through it, as we become aware of it functioning, we begin to perceive the negative and positive forces in plants. The magnetic attraction and repulsion – the forces of which create the sex organs in plants is felt by us through this Chakra. That is, we become aware of the invisible forces of attraction and repulsion creativity and destruction which cause physical changes in people, animals, plants and in the cosmos.

The state of sexual attraction or repulsion in another person is felt by us through this organ. We know how the person, plant or world responds to us and to life in general. As this deals with invisible forces, we can also be aware of the dead through this centre, but only in as much as they are expressing those forces common to this sense organ. Wilhelm Reich classes this as the same body zone we dealt with under the root Chakra.
the flower with ten petals

Next comes the ten petalled lotus, Manipura Chakra or navel centre. The element of this is Fire, its colour is blue (Yoga) or yellow (Cayce). The Shat-Chakra Nirupana says, ‘By meditating on this Navel Lotus, the power to destroy and create (the world) is acquired. Vani with all the wealth of knowledge ever abides in the Lotus of His face’.

This is often called the Solar Plexus centre, and connects with the plexus epigastricus, and with the adrenal glands. The Hopi Indians say that this centre is in the region of the navel, and is the seat or throne of the creative power in man. Eileen Garratt describes the sensations of lotus activity here by saying, ‘I become aware of a movement which sways upward and outward from the solar plexus and then folds back towards the base of the spine. In that moment, a welling up of strength transforms the original primitive desire into a pleasurable state of suspension and anticipation’

Two other people describing the sensations of Kundalini working on the Chakra here say, ‘It feels as if my digestion is upset, there is a feeling of movement or trembling in the Solar Plexus and I can’t eat all day.’ And, ‘when it reaches the Solar Plexus, it is accompanied with a feeling of hunger. When it is really charged with the energy I sometimes feel sick.’
mysterious process

Gopi Krishna, in his book Kundalini, describes some of these activities after the Kundalini awoke in him. ‘It was obvious’, he says, ‘that by some mysterious process, the precious secretion of the seminal glands was drawn up into the spinal tube, and through the interlinking nerves transferred into a subtle essence, then distributed to the brain and the vital organs. The suction was applied with such vigour and in the early stages, with such violence, as to cause actual pain.

Gopi Krishna also found that his appetite increased enormously. Aware of the Kundalini as a subjective light, he says ‘I could distinctly perceive a tongue of the golden flame searching my stomach for food and moving around along the nerves lining it. I took a few bites of bread, and another cup of milk, and as soon as I had done so I found the halo in the head contracting and a larger tongue of flame licking my stomach. I lay awake, dumb with wonder, watching this living radiance move from place to place through the whole digestive tract.’

Strangely enough, Gopi Krishna never became aware of the Lotuses, and never saw them. But neither did he develop the abilities and perceptions that come with them. The only two he experienced were the root and crown, and with these he received the allied inner experience. His comments on the seminal fluid rising do tie in very strongly with the Edgar Cayce’s comments in ‘Search for God’ (A.R.E. Press).

Cayce says:

With the arousing of the image, or ideal, this life force rises along what is known as the Appian Way or Silver cord, to the pineal centre in the brain, whence it may be disseminated to those centres that give activity to the whole of the mental and physical being.

It rises then to the hidden eye in the centre of the brain system – Pituitary body – which is just at the back of the middle of the forehead. Thus on entering meditation, there arises a definite impulse from the glands of reproduction that passes through the pineal to the pituitary.

adrenal glands

However, getting back to the navel lotus, we can understand more of its activity by knowing something of the adrenal glands. Adrenal secretion energises the muscles of the body, especially those of the circulation and digestion. These secretions also provide the base for saliva, pepsin, hydrochloric acid, and other digestive juices.

These glands prepare the system ready for stress, fight or flight, by raising blood pressure, making ready the voluntary muscles, speeding the heart and releasing energy. The adrenal centred type is usually dark, hairy, stocky, very energetic, aggressive and robust.
assimilation

This is therefore the centre of self preservation, physical energy and assimilation. Assimilation is, in a very real sense, dependent upon relatedness. We cannot assimilate that with which we have no sympathy, no associations, no desires or need for.

This centre therefore deals with relatedness in a finer sense than the abdominal Chakra, which dealt mostly with attraction and repulsion.

Once things have been attracted to each other, there comes an inter-blending or interaction which produces or creates a quite different situation. Thus, sugar added to tea becomes different to sugar or tea when separated. The Manipura Chakra, or ten petalled lotus, is a sense organ, informing us of these subtle interrelations.

Because of this, when this lotus is well developed, we become aware of how people will relate to certain situations or events. This gives us the ability to arrive at an understanding of their talents, tendencies, failings, proper vocation and usefulness. This applies also to herbs, minerals, natural forces. We begin to see through this Chakra, how they will relate combine – assimilate, with other conditions, thus understanding their medical or general use.

As a centre of outgoing energy, we find this lotus pouring out those feelings which bind others to us warmly, or pushing them away. In his book ‘A Separate Reality’, Castenanda reports his teacher, Don Juan, as saying that this centre can extrude subtle limbs to grasp things like a web or tentacles. Through it too, terror or human warmth can reach us.

Rudolph Steiner says that to develop this centre, we must closely watch our impression of things outside us. We must dominate or scrutinise the source of our inner feelings or presentiments. Steiner gives the example in ‘Knowledge of the Higher Worlds’ of a man unconsciously seeing (in a newspaper) a notice of a famous man’s illness. The next day he reads of the man’s death, and claims he had a presentiment of this – whereas in reality the presentiment arose from the unconscious impression of the previous day. Unless we can cut through the confusion of such inner feelings it is difficult to see clearly, those arising from this Chakra.
letting go of tension

Wilhelm Reich describes the muscular blocks in this area as concentrating on the abdominal muscles and the lateral muscles – transversus abdominus. These an be felt as hard and often painfully tense muscles. It is fairly easy to learn to let go of this tension once we become aware of it.

The solar plexus is the largest of the body ganglions. These nerves connect with the digestive organs and glands under the diaphragm. We can summarise the functions of this lotus, as assimilation of matter (food) and its transmutation into energy. The energy is expressed to perform particular functions or relationships.

In fact, it is in this area of relationship that the traditional descriptions miss mention of a fundamental and important process. It is here at the navel that we were connected in a life giving relationship with another person – our mother. This connection and the profound sense of loss that might occur in the break of a loving relationship, remain, or are felt, in this part of our being. So this centre deals with the deep and fundamental connections we forge with others, the breaking of such connections as independence occurs, and the possible pain of loss.
love

The Anahata or Heart Chakra, is one of the big three, being the Love centre. It is said to have twelve petals of orange red (Yoga) or green (Cayce) colour. Some say it connects with the physical heart, and they show it actually above this organ.

Yoga positions it between the breasts on the midline of the body. As a vortice of energy, combining negative and positive, this would seem true, as the midline is the vortice of left and right nerves – as shown by the right and left lobes of the brain etc.

Cayce gives this Lotus as connecting with the Thymus gland, on the midline, just above the breasts. The Shat-Chakra-Nirupana says that he who meditates on the heart lotus is, ‘Foremost among Yogis, he is ever dearer than the dearest to woman, he is pre-eminently wise and full of noble deeds. His senses are completely under control. His mind intense in concentration, is engrossed in thoughts of Brahman. His inspired speech flows like the Devata who is the beloved of Lakshmi and he is able to enter another’s body.’
Vibration of life

The Hopi Indian says that the heart is a vibratory organ or centre pulsing with the vibration of life itself. In his heart man felt the good of life, its sincere purpose. He was of one heart that is, of one purpose with life and the Creator. But there were those who permitted evil feelings to enter. These were said to be of Two hearts.

Eileen Garratt describes her sensations in this area as leading ‘to an expansion of the torso and a stimulation of the circulation of the breath throughout my being; this change of tempo causes the spine to relax and become flexible.

Another woman, with very marked awareness of Kundalini says, ‘I figured I would see Divine Light best if I put out my own candle. My knowledge now seems to come from deep within me without any conscious thought on my part, and in my silence I learn something different every day’. This is the same woman who said, ‘still climbing, it reaches my chest, around the heart. It seems to be groping for the very innermost centre as if the very soul resided there. This brings forth groans. I feel like pouring forth all the love in my being.’ Echoing this, a man says, ‘I experienced it as a melting of my being, a willingness to be a fool for love.’

Why have men and women, for thousands of years referred to the Heart as the home of their soul? Can one really be heartbroken? Are these statements intuitions of the role lotus plays in our life?

The Chakras – Part 4

The spirit that moves

On a clear night in 1925, Pak Subuh was out walking alone, when he became aware of a bright light above him. As he wondered about this, the bright light came towards him and touched the top of his head, immediately causing him to tremble and shake. He thought he was ill and went home, surrendering himself to death. But instead of dying, a force took hold of him and led his body and thoughts into a spontaneous movement outside his conscious volition. Later he became the leader of a world-wide Brotherhood, Subud, the members of which also experience spontaneous movements after being ‘opened’ to the Life Force or ‘Power of God’. This opening is said to occur when the influence or force is passed to the one being opened.

Franz Anton Mesmer, experimenting with magnets as a means of healing, found that many people began to tremble and shake when these were applied. As he experimented further, he came to see that the same thing happened even when no magnets were used. The trembling and shaking led to people having what he called healing crises – that is, emotions or fears which had caused psychosomatic illness were experienced consciously and thus removed, resulting in a cure. People flocked to him for treatment, and he found it sufficient to touch them or come near them, to start this quivering or emotions.

Like Pak Subuh, he felt that a power, that he called ‘animal magnetism’ passed from him to the patient. Also like Pak Subuh, he felt that the power that was released in the person, was the power of life, the same power that moved the planets. Extraordinary and well authenticated cures were produced. The same applies to members of Subud but the members go beyond ‘cure’ of illness. Through constant surrender to the power that moves them they move on to find spiritual growth.

Surrendering the conscious mind

In 1922 Dr. Wilhelm Reich started his work as a psychoanalyst. Gradually over the next few years he developed his technique of helping a patient to drop psycho/muscular tensions. He found that as these tensions were released, the patient began to tremble, shake and convulse, as the ‘life force’ was released in them. These are so like the convulsive ‘healing crises’ of Mesmer, there can be little doubt that similar forces are at work.

In the experience of Pak Subuh it was only when a person completely relaxed or surrendered their conscious will, that the power could be released in them. With Mesmer, his techniques produced a state where the conscious mind yielded and relaxed to the influence he brought to bear on them. The common denominator is therefore the relaxation or state of surrendering the conscious mind to the innate power within.

Throughout the ages, when men and women have surrendered their conscious hold on themselves, an inner power has often arisen and caused them to tremble, shake or feel strong vibrations through their being. Edgar Cayce advised a man who had begun to tremble when reading ‘Varieties of Religious Experience’ that he knew of several who had experienced a similar state: Swedenborg, as he studied, Socrates, as he meditated; Paul, when he fell from his horse; Buddha when he meditated in the forest. A man who often meditated describes it as follows:

“Sometimes I am aware of my whole body vibrating for many nights consecutively. This is not simply my own impression, as my wife can actually feel the physical vibration. Also it sometimes occurs that I experience this as an energy reaching out to P. and weaving in with her own energy. This too is a shared experience, though not always. As this has gradually developed I can’t help wondering what the further stages of its development will lead to. Sometimes in deep sleep I am aware of what this energy is doing in my being, how it is flowing and where blocked. But for long periods I then lose any awareness of it.”

The Pentecostal experience described in the New Testament also tells how the disciples who were gathered in the ‘upper room’ were spontaneously moved and looked to others as if they were drunk.

In the seventeenth century, the Quakers were said to ‘quake in the sight of the Lord’, and many ancient races, experienced spontaneous movements in their dances or ceremonies. I was present when a man relived traumatic experiences from his childhood, and this was precipitated by the trembling.

This was recently mentioned to a Zen Buddhist monk, who said that in Zen training such shaking sometimes occurs and is a sign of cleansing of past shocks and emotions. Undoubtedly, this has occurred in Christian monasteries, but unfortunately, the people were often thought to be possessed of the Devil, and tortured or killed. Where it occurs in modern psychotherapy it is simply called ‘abreaction’, and not persevered with. Only Subud and Wilhelm Reich, have used it as a long term method to bring personal development or growth. Both George Fox, founder of the Quakers, and Pak Subuh developed healing ability, prophecy and ‘openings’ to knowledge coming from an intuitive source.

Unfortunately the medical profession has no awareness of this at all, as shown in the letter at the end of this feature. Therefore many people are led to believe they are sick in some way.

However, past cultures nearly always connected this trembling with an opening to the divine. Reich and Mesmer simply described it as the cosmic life force. See The LifeStream

But what has all this got to do with chakras? When we open to the kundalini and it begins to work on us, developing our being to a higher pitch of expression, the spontaneous movements or emotions are one of the possible results. At first this is experienced as a form of cleansing. Past painful or negative experiences are brought to consciousness as their results are healed. Cayce says ‘In meditations, some individuals experience a vibratory sensation which seems to move the body from side to side or backward or forward. This may become a circular motion within the body, bringing a fullness and whirling sensation in the head.’ The reason why these movements, often dramatic, have been mentioned so fully, is because although they only occur in a few cases, if they happen without being understood, they can be very frightening, and make a person believe that he or she is ill. That is not the case.

Inner moods

Returning to the Root Chakra (the four-petalled lotus,) it is basically the doorway or source for the creative power or sound of the Word to act upon us. As can be seen, people experience the entrance in different places. Pak Subuh had his initiations through the head! But the root chakra represents potential that has not yet expressed.

Perhaps it is safest to think of the chakras as inner moods, soul conditions through which we can discover various aspects of ourselves. The soul mood of the Root Chakra is Earth; receptiveness, fertility, submissiveness, and offering of self as material for the Word to act upon. This enables or attracts the Power to express or incarnate itself more consciously into our life. This Lotus is the centre dealing with our physical relationship to our life of sensual awareness. Therefore, as it opens in us we become very much more conscious of the physical pain others suffer.

This centre is also sensitive to our own hurt, and can be felt to close or tighten when we are hurt, or to open when relaxed. Another of its petals is sensitive to the state of other people’s relationships to Life – whether they are open or closed to the Word at a physical level.

Reich describes a block at this pelvic level showing as a retracted pelvis, buttocks being pulled back: tense muscles at the base of the abdomen; a contracted anal sphincter muscle; often constipation, little or no sensitivity in genitals, and so on. These are usually quite unconscious, but can sometimes be brought to awareness by tensing the rectum and genitals many times during the day, and learning to drop the tension. It is then noticed that a tension exists in these organs most of the time.
the six petalled flower

Now we come to the Swadisthana Chakra, just above the genitals. The lotus has six petals of a vermilion (Yoga) or orange (Cayce) colour. Each lotus emits a colour and sound – mantra – which is an aspect of the one creative Word, just as the spectrum or rainbow shows aspects of light. The Shat – Chakras – Nirupana says, ‘He who meditates upon this stainless lotus, which is named Swadhishthana, is freed immediately from all his enemies (i. e. his six passions) .. . He becomes a Lord among Yogis, and is like the sun illuminating the dense darkness of ignorance. The wealth of his nectar like words flow in prose and verse in well reasoned discord’. Its element is water.

The centre of creation and destruction

The action of this lotus appears to be connected with the plexus hypogastricus, and thus to the genitals. It is the centre dealing with creation and destruction, attraction and repulsion, thus links with the creative action of the sex organs, and the breaking down, and ejective process of the bowel. Just as the Root Chakra was the centre of sensuality, this the centre of sexuality.

Edgar Cayce says:

When we attune ourselves to the Infinite, the glands of reproduction may be compared to a motor which raises the spiritual power in the body. Understanding the influence of the testicles or ovaries helps us to understand the work of this centre.

As the hormones are produced in greater amounts at puberty by the sex glands, our secondary sexual characteristics arise. In the man this is the growth of hair on the face and body, deepening voice, development of musculature, deepening of chest, growth of sexual organs, hardening up of the body and arousal of sexual desire.

In the woman this shows as growth of pubic hair, development of breasts and hips, a rounding of the body, arousal of tenderness and sexual longing.

If the sex glands of male or female are removed before puberty, or fail to function properly, these characteristics do not appear. The sexual organs remain small, the voice never polarises, the person is sluggish, the men given to fatness, the woman to facial hair and mannishness. The males become rather female, the woman rather male, and both given to vindictive and petty schemes.
Growth of personality

The personality growth that occurs as the sex glands mature, is not just to do with sexual desire. Also comes a greater sense of beauty, the development of religious feeling, greater personal awareness and idealism. The eunuch is lazy, suspicious and undependable, whereas the sexually active person is more loving, energetic and creative. The gonad centred male is lean, mentally alert, creative, idealistic and attractive. The woman is curved, tender, mentally and emotionally active over a large range and attractive sexually.

We tend to think of castration as a physical cutting away of testicles or ovaries. Unfortunately, we can be castrated and yet maintain the physical organs. This occurs when we ‘cut off’ our sexual feelings through fear, guilt, shame or misplaced religious idealism. This effectively deadens the lower chakras and does not allow them to develop. The higher chakras ( i. e. higher up the body, not higher in purpose) can still develop, but they function in an unbalanced way.

A friend recently mentioned an Indian guru who said one must never ever think of lower chakras because it was sinful to do so. The reply was that as the Root chakra is the centre of power, the Svadhishthana of warmth, relatedness, and creativeness, this would make him very idealistic in an abstract sense, but without the power to bring his ideals into physical realities, and lacking the warmth to relate well to people and have them understand him. This, it appeared, was exactly the guru’s problem.

Powerful sex drive

To kill our sexual feelings is to murder a part of the creative Word (GOD) in us. On the other hand, there is a tremendous power in the sex drive. So powerful can it be in fact, that many have felt ‘possessed’ by this force, and attributed it to the Devil. The attitude being, ‘this force overpowers my ego and sense of self control, therefor it must be evil as it threatens me.’ But as we gain humility, we rephrase it, saying, ‘My ego had so ruined the equilibrium of my being, that my sex drives seem more of an enemy than a friend, like a fire on the carpet instead of the grate.’ The fear in the past, has been that if the sexual desires were released, the result would be licentiousness, rape and sexual abandon.

In fact, quite the reverse is true, as can be seen from the absence of crime, homosexuality, rape and sexual criminality in unrepressed societies. It is the pressurised and guilt laden instincts that became criminal and destructive.

Therefore, in the development of our lotuses, the aim is not to kill out or repress sexual feelings. Rather, it is to release them and then hold them out to be directed or used, by the highest in you. Pak Subuh says that in the beginning this is not always easy, and when sexual desires are experienced, offer them to God, and in this prayerful and loving attitude, have intercourse.

As we become more aware of the Life Force in us, we will find our sexual feelings naturally directed and harmonised with the Infinite within us, instead of being aroused only to be a desire for gratification. This must not be understood to mean that the Infinite kills our sexual desires. It does nothing of the sort. The sexual instinct is an expression of Life in us, but often we use it for our own ends. What happens is that the Creative Word in us takes over the direction of sexuality again, and arouses it in its right context. This, needless to say, is in connection with love and tenderness – not lawlessness.

When these forces are brought in harmony with your total self, regeneration of your being begins to take place. Without the sex urge, humans have only the instincts of self preservation, desire for food and animal comforts. With sexuality a whole world of new relationship begins, that opens up the way for yet finer feeling. Like a plant, it is difficult for the blossom to open unless the stem has grown from the roots deep in the earth.

Letter received by Yoga and Health magazine in response to the article.
Dear Editor, Chakras

It was with much interest that I read the article by Tony Crisp in the May issue of YOGA & HEALTH concerning the Chakras.

Many years ago, over a period of about two years, I had constant experiences of the shaking and trembling which Mr. Crisp described in his article. I was very young at the time, happily married with a baby daughter, and although considered to be highly strung, was neither repressed nor mentally disturbed.

These ‘attacks’ would come upon me almost every night. I would be quite relaxed … and then the quivering would start, very gently at first. It would begin in my toes and then gradually work upwards throughout the whole of my body until it increased in intensity until I seemed to be one great overwhelming vibration. At this point I would feel that something or some power was trying to take over, and I would sweat with the effort of holding onto myself. There seemed also to be a great void full of brown light opening beneath me into which I could feel myself sinking.

I saw several doctors and specialists (my family were very worried about me) but they could find nothing wrong; the symptoms were something they could not account for at all, and they eventually decided that my strange condition was due to ‘nerves’.

Eventually the experiences ceased, but very soon afterwards, I began to be very interested in Yoga with which I have now been actively associated for nearly twenty years.

Deep within my heart, I knew that what I had experienced all those years ago was not due to ‘nerves’, and am now convinced that, had I not been overcome with fear, I would have been fortunate enough to undergo some enlightening spiritual experience.

Because of this knowledge, although practising Hatha Yoga for physical and mental fitness, the real area of my interest lies in the study of Yoga as a whole … as a way of life and as a path towards enlightenment and liberation. And I know too that the experience I had thought to be meaningless and frightening had after all a meaning far beyond my comprehension. Thank you Tony Crisp for confirming and deepening my belief. Mrs. J

The Chakras – Part 3

Sex and Kundalini

DURING an experimental LSD session with a psychiatrist, a man who had for some years been practising yoga, experienced an insight into kundalini and the Chakras. Writing about the experience he says:

During the previous hours, I had passed through, what seemed to me, at the time, my major unconscious fears and problems. I had faced sexual desires I previously had not known existed in me. I had relived a child-hood medical operation that had left unknown terrors and shock in me, and I had emerged cleansed.

I had, in brief, gradually gone backwards through my life, sorting out the tangles, and eventually regressing to the life in the womb. As it happened, I realised this was not life in my mother’s womb, but in the cosmic womb. In other words, I had descended to the most basic or fundamental level of awareness.

I then reached a point where if I went back any further I would cease to exist as an individual. I was confronted, in fact, with the formless, dark unknown which had created me, and from which I had emerged. I suppose this is what people call God: our source of being.

It was without any form, and simply existed, everywhere. But through years of meditation I knew I could trust it implicitly. I knew with utter conviction that it had created me, and therefore, even if I cast myself into its depths and was lost in its dark void, it would not matter, as this was my real self, and nothing would be lost. Therefore I let go. I let myself drop into the void. I surrendered myself to it.

Instead of losing myself, it was as if the power of life itself took hold of me and began to grow me in to a new manhood – a rebirth. Gradually, from the foetal position, I opened out like a seed. It was like the way plant growth is speeded up on film, and I saw how as an individual I was experiencing the power of life growing into physical existence, and realising itself as a man – as me.

I had a tremendous insight into how we relate to life, and how it is expresses in stages or levels. A plant, for instance, starts with a seed. The next stage is the growth of a root. After that the stem and leaves develop. A man or woman starts as life, which attaches to a fertilised ovum and opens it up, in the sense of developing a body. It roots into the fertile ‘soil’ of the mother’s womb.

At a certain stage, awareness is lit in the foetus, and it is conscious of sensation. Sensation is the very basis of personal development, but out of sensation develops like and dislike, attraction and repulsion.

This I felt was centred in the root Chakra. Out of all the variations of sensuality, attraction and repulsion, sexuality gradually emerged, centering on the abdominal Chakra. I saw that without awareness sensuality couldn’t arise, or without sensual awareness, sexuality couldn’t develop. It could be compared with a flower without a stem or roots.

From sexuality there developed relatedness. The Chakra for it being the navel. Through being able to relate in finer ways sympathy emerges, and compassion. This is centred on the heart Chakra. Next came a finer degree of sympathy – empathy – the direct experience of someone else’s feelings. ‘This was possible through the throat centre. The brow Chakra was an extension of experience, a summing up of experience, which we call knowledge or understanding – understanding what we experience, and fitting our life into the universal scheme of things.

At the crown, God in man flowers, buds out, so all below is lifted into an opening to the cosmos. I saw that if I could but keep casting myself into life; if I could but keep in harmony with my source, it would grow me into my full stature. Then life spoke to me as if in silence, and said: ‘Come to me daily and offer your whole being as you have just done. Then I will grow you’. Then I too made a promise – ‘I will come’.

Magnetic field

In what has been said so far about Kundalini, the Aura and Chakras, a great deal of information has been gathered together. Perhaps now we can look at each Chakra in more detail, trying to define its functions, bodily connections, and ways of development. One last thing remains to be said before this is done though: the Chakras themselves are in the aura or magnetic field of the body, but each connects with definite points in the body as by a flower stalk or root.

Traditional Yoga says that each connects with the spinal cord or brain at different points. The spinal cord is depicted as itself the stalk of a Lotus, having its root in Muladhara (root) Chakra. The stalk puts out stems, or lotuses – the Chakras – and blossoms in the crown Chakra. But none of the lotuses can open, or become a part of conscious function, until the Kundalini power, still unexpressed after its creation of our body and personality, is aroused and rises through the spine.

The spinal cord is called the Sushumna Nadi, a ‘nadi’ being a pathway of the creative energy. What this amounts to is that our latent or dormant possibilities – our potential for growth – are aroused or allowed to express themselves. Yoga and the Occult both say that man has the possibility of becoming aware of cosmic rather than of individual consciousness, and of seeing levels of life that are at present invisible. Through this rising of Kundalini up the spine, the negative and positive energies comprising our being (Shiva and Shakti or creative energy and body) are brought into a state of unity.
sympathetic nervous system

On each side of the Sushumna Nadi is another ‘nadi’ – the sympathetic nervous system, which in Yoga are called Ida and Pingala. These are the physical trunk lines or nadis for the creative kundalini in its negative and positive aspect. This is why the sympathetic nervous system is the system which controls the creative, healing and destructive activities of the body.

If the latent Kundalini is made to rise through one of these nadis instead of the Sushumna, the whole being will be polarised in a negative or positive manner – i.e. hyper active, over heated, flushed skin – or inactive -cold – blood withdrawn from surface. Such accidents usually occur only when a person is trying to rouse the Kundalini in a forced way through personal effort, or an event kicks it into operation unnaturally. It can be redirected.

The Sushumna Nadi is the axis along which the kundalini flows. As an axis it has its negative and positive, also has its core or equilibrium. The root Chakra is negative and the source of (internal) power. The crown Chakra is positive and is the centre of wisdom, and the equilibrium or balance is the heart Chakra, the centre of love. These three, Power, Love and Wisdom, interact in the other centres.

Occidental systems of description agree with this generally, but point to the endocrine glands as the physical powerhouse of the Chakras. The staff of mercury, for instance, with its twining snakes around a central pole, symbol of the medical profession, is looked upon as representing the creative energy, with the snakes as negative and positive aspects. It is the same as Sushumna with Ida and Pingala.

The two wings near the top of the staff are the two-petalled lotus, and the bulb on the top is the Sahasrara Chakra.

Jewish symbolism is said to use the seven candles to represent (within the temple, which is the human body) the seven lights. Christian mysticism also uses the number seven in similar ways. The seals and the seven churches, spoken of in Revelation, are said to symbolise the lotuses. But although Western mysticism has mentioned the lotuses directly or indirectly for centuries, as in India, different writers described them in different ways.

Greater detail

However, let us now look in greater detail at each Chakra, starting with the Muladhara Chakra. This is also called the Mulhadhara Lotus or Root Chakra and it has four petals.

In Yoga tradition, it is shown with a seven-trunked elephant within a central square. Within this square is an inverted triangle, with a snake coiled round a lingam. The lingam represents the male, creative force; the snake is the female creative force; the elephant is the cosmic mind or energy, and has seven aspects. The symbolism of the snake may have come about because when cut open, the spinal cord probably looks like a thin white snake lying between the anus and the brain.

The stalk of this lotus is said to be connected with the ‘mouth of the Sushumna’. Lama Govinda gives it as connecting with the sacral plexus. All list this as being governed by the element Earth. The Sat – Chakra – Nirupana says, ‘By meditating thus on Her (Kundalini) who shines within the Mula-Chakra, with the lustre of ten million suns, a man becomes Lord of speech and King among men, and an Adept in all kinds of learning. He becomes ever free from all diseases, and his inmost Spirit becomes full of great gladness. Pure of disposition, by his deep and musical words, he serves the foremost of the Gods’.
no different from the rest

Despite these wonderful promises, most people who experience an ‘opening’ of the Chakra, remain very much like the rest of us. Also many people do not experience the start of Kundalini at the base of the trunk, but at the top of the head as as a downward flow in the body. One thing they have in common however, wherever it begins, that point often feels like a door. In other words, it sometimes feels as if something in the body opens, or suddenly lets go. When this is at the base of the spine, it feels as if a tension has dropped; an opening of some sort has occurred, releasing an influence into our being. Occasionally a peculiar feeling occurs in the rectum, or thereabouts. See The Descending Divine Energy

Sometimes a buzzing is heard, or a vibration felt. But for each person it is slightly different. Eileen Garratt says ‘In the first state there is an instinctive reaction which registers in the nerve centres of the stomach, accompanied by an intense and primitive desire’.

A man says, ‘It is as if there were space under my hips – as if something opens’. Cayce describes it as:

Vibrations which are emanations of life from within, a material expression of a spiritual influence, a force that emanates from life itself.

When we quiet the physical body through turning the mind toward the highest ideal, there are aroused actual physical vibrations as a result of spiritual influence becoming active on the sensitive vibratory centres in the body.

When we attune ourselves to the Infinite, the glands of reproduction may be compared to a motor which raises the spiritual power in the body. The spiritual power enters through the Lydigian glands (located above the genitals). This Lydigian centre is like a sealed or open door, according to the use to which it has been put through spiritual activities. (A Search for God. A.R.E. Press).

It is reasonably easy to understand this root Chakra from the analogy of a magnet. It is the negative end of our ‘axis’. Like the negative end of a battery or magnet, it attracts or is receptive to and open to current coming to it. But it is positive internally. That is, the power received from outside is projected through its own system. This is why it is spoken of as a ‘door’. We have already seen how Wilhelm Reich found that ‘orgone’ energy flowed from the base of the spine, but was blocked in most people.

This illustrates how the door can be open or closed by our attitudes, our inbuilt characteristics. The crux of whether this ‘door’ is open or closed, rests then on how we relate to life itself.

Are our conscious and unconscious attitudes or reactions life negating? Do we say ‘NO’ to life in us, negating our emotions, our instincts, our love and creative ideas? Or is our being a ‘YES’ to life? This is the door we open or close. If it is open, More of life can express in us. If it is closed …?

The Chakras – Part 1

The Mystery of the Chakras

This series of features about the chakras was written for the magazine Yoga and Health in the 1960’s. The first paragraph was the editorial introduction to the features.

Many books on Hatha Yoga are written without any reference to the CAKRAS (pronounced chakras). From the western writer’s point of view this is understandable since at least by western medical standards it is almost impossible to identify exactly what the chakras are. Swami Satyananda refers to them simply as ‘psychic centres’ but shows how they are linked to the various plexuses and endocrine systems. Swami Yogasuwaranand states that they are ‘situated in the spinal column’. However all teachers agree that they are amenable to control from the mind. Dr. Reich considered that health was achieved when all of the areas of the cakras became relaxed. The traditional yogic teaching has been that the chakras need to be ‘opened’ to permit a free flow of cosmic energy. This is the first of a series of articles on the nature and control of the chakras.

ARE you more wonderful than you have ever dreamed? Are you in fact a being of light?

Just before the First World War, Dr. W. J. Kilner of St. Thomas’s Hospital, London, spent years researching human radiations. Everybody is aware of radiations emanating from other people. If we place our hands close to them, we can feel heat. Sound and smell are two other widely experienced radiations.

But Kilner felt that there are radiations like light, which become less and less perceptible to our senses. He devised a light filter or screen which makes the eyes more sensitive to light rays in the ultra-violet range. The filter was made with an alcohol solution of decyanin, a coal tar derivative.

An aura surrounds us

Staring through this screen at a bright light, Dr. Kilner and his associates then looked at undressed patients standing against a plain background. Every living person was seen to be surrounded by a faint but definite mist, extending up to two feet from their body surface.

Applying various tests, it was seen that this radiation was very vibrant in a healthy person, and less clear during sickness. Dr. Kilner was able to diagnose illness with this method, as the area of radiation over a diseased organ was diminished, often causing a depression in the egg-like shape of this subtle extension.

Sometimes, when directed by will or emotion, the radiations could be seen to reach out and extend to another person, like light from a torch.

In his book THE HUMAN ATMOSPHERE, Dr. Kilner described things that Yoga and occultism had been teaching for hundreds of years. He found that this radiation from a living human being was not only a direct expression of their health and personality, but it also acted as a screen:

Just as looking through red glass changes the appearance of things, so our ‘atmosphere’ or ‘aura’, enhances or decreases the way things outside of us impress us. In seeing a person’s aura, his thoughts, feelings, health and personality begin to be perceptible to us. It has also seen how his or her inner make up conditions what he or she sees or experiences of other people and the world.
the surging of colours

Just as there are a few people who can ‘hear’ a radio broadcast without using a radio, so there are many people who can ‘see’ the human aura without using a screen to sensitise their sight. To them, the aura appears as light projecting from us – light of many colours. Describing this, one such person has said, ‘The most varied tones of colour surge in the aura. And this surging is a true picture of the inner life of the man. As this changes, so change the colour tones. But certain permanent qualities such as talents, habits, traits of characters, express themselves also in a foundation of permanent colour tones.

In fact we are all aware of one radiation, heat. Now through modern medical equipment we are aware of many more. In recent years, Dr. Shafica Karagulla tried to extend the research done by Kilner. With the help of a financial grant, she experimented with many people who could ‘see’ the aura.

Reporting the results in her book Breakthrough to Creativity, she tells how she was able to develop a clinical method with these subjects. They found that different parts of human nature gave off different levels of radiation, all of which interpenetrated. Thus the body, mind, emotions and passions, all had their own frequency of radiation.

This is so similar to up-to-the-minute research using electronic instruments, that it would be ridiculous to deny its validity. A group of scientists working on a super sensitive radio receiver began to pick up mysterious signals which they could not trace. After much confusion, they discovered that the signals were actually coming from their own bodies.

Further research showed that each organ has’ its own special signal or wavelength, which can be tuned in to. Age and health greatly influence the strength of these signals. Also, each disease has its own frequency, which can be checked out on this radio diagnostician. Perhaps, if the frequency of a disease can be altered by bombarding it with a different one, the illness itself will be cured.

Humans can diagnose more accurately than machines

But so far, the human being seems to be far more sensitive than any artificial apparatus. Dr. Karagulla’s subjects were capable of reporting all that the radio receiver did and more. Accurate medical diagnoses were made by them. Healers specialising in changing the colour (frequency) in a sick person’s aura, have cured their illness.

But one thing the doctor’s subjects saw which has so far not been scientifically verified, were vortices or whirlpools of energy at particular points in the aura. In each person, these vortices were in roughly the same place.

Studying them, the doctor found they were centres of energy exchange. They could be seen to draw energy from other fields, or to give it out. It was noticed that the out-going energy could change the quality of another person’s aura or force field.

Perhaps we can get an understanding of this by comparing it with this:- if a circle of red light is projected on a white screen and a circle of yellow light is brought to overlap, the overlap becomes not red or yellow but orange. In a similar way, the energy radiations from people can alter when they come in contact.

‘Cakra’: wheel or vortice

It is said there is nothing new in the world. Certainly these vortices have been spoken of for some thousands of years. Yoga teachings, have called them Cakras or Lotuses. The word ‘chakra’ means wheel or whirlpool or vortice, and in Yoga tradition there are said to be seven of these chakras in man’s being.

In western occultism these vortices were also spoken of, and called psychic centres.

Buddhism lists six such activities in man. The American Indians, similarly teach that man has five centres in his being where he contacts cosmic forces. They said that man was a reflection of the forces that created heaven and earth. Like the world, man too has an axis, which in his case is the spine. Along this axis were vibratory centres which “echoed the primordial sound of life throughout the universe” or sounded a warning if anything went wrong.
seven levels of consciousness

In our own century, some great figures arose who from direct experience spoke of these chakras. Through working with the sick mind, Dr. Wilhelm Reich defined seven segments in the human being. Eileen Garret, working with scientists and doctors, found seven levels of human consciousness, or seven aspects of human function.

Edgar Cayce, who could see the aura and diagnose from it, said there were seven centres, and gave details of their function.

But despite the agreement as to the seven chakras spoken of in Yoga teachings, defining their functions and descriptions of techniques to develop awareness of them differed.

As science also disagrees about the precise meaning and function of many discovered laws (as all human thought is only relative, never encompassing infinity), such disagreements are only to be expected.

But all do agree on one thing – the chakras are direct expressions of a single factor – energy. Without an understanding of this energy, in fact, we cannot properly understand the chakras, what part they play in our life, how we can deal with them, or how we relate to life in general.

Just as a doctor would explain the body differently from a dancer, yet each would be right, so the explanation of what we are can be approached from innumerable viewpoints, each of them valuable.

In explaining the chakras, several approaches will be given to produce a balanced view. Starting with one of the Yoga views (for there are many – Tantric -Vedanta Sankhya – Patanjali) the very basis of our being is beyond opposites of action or inaction – good or bad – male or female – life or death -consciousness or unconsciousness.

The Hopi Indians describe this by saying that the basis of all life was Tokpela – Endless Space. There was only Taiowa the Creator who was this Endless Space. There was no beginning, no end, no time, no shape, no life. Just an immeasurable void that had its beginning and end, time, shape and life in the mind of Taiowa.
Creative Forces

Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah, say the basis of our being is Ain Soph, the Unknown God. Ain Soph is unknowable by intellect. Yoga teachings state the same. Both also say that out of the unknowable issues a creative force – a cosmic word or sound. Hindu and Christian holy books say, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God.’ This sound has been represented in the East by the word AUM, and in the West by Omne or Amen.

Sound is a power, a force. So the ancient teachings are saying that a huge creative vibratory power issued out of the void. This word – Aum – was negative and positive, and manifested eventually in the cosmos as two powers – matter and energy – consciousness and unconsciousness.

In our solar system, the sun is a manifestation of the positive aspect of the Word, and the earth or planets of the negative. Human existence is a result of these two basic forces.

From this point of view, our body is held together by an energy or force. This is why, when this energy leaves it at death, the body begins to disintegrate. The body is like a vehicle or surface in which mind realises itself as an individual instead of an undifferentiated cosmic awareness.

To use analogies, around us at this moment are unknown forces, words, pictures and energies. These are unknown to us unless we provide the correct vehicle for their realisation. In this case the vehicles needed would be a wireless or TV. These forces would then be realised in time and space. Similarly, light is invisible until some object reflects it and makes it visible as colour. Each object brings out a different colour from light.
our body acts as a radio receiver

The analogy is simply to make understandable the statement that mind or consciousness is like an energy throughout the universe. Our body acts as a radio, picking up and manifesting a little of the mind’s vast possibilities. Rider Haggard, in his book ‘SHE’ made Aisha say, ‘No Holly, the soul is not in the body, the body is in the soul.’ A radio wave is not in the radio, the radio is immersed in the waves. Eileen Garret says –

‘Mind, in the universal sense, I know to be without and not within the body. I am able to see the impressions emanating from the outer universe register in the magnetic field (aura) of all living organisms. As such ideas, sensations and emotions reach man from without, they are, I recognise, received by certain centres located within his own magnetic field; these impressions are then passed on to register within the physical body.

‘In each phase of evolution all changes in states of consciousness become enveloped in an external form appropriate to its degree of being. Higher states would inevitably evolve corresponding forms of being. And this I know to be true from my own personal experience of seeing and living in supernormal areas. Although I penetrate these levels through the direction of mind and the control of breath, I do so with the accompaniment of a swiftly vibrating magnetic field. The form of this field although invisible to normal sight. is the body which accompanies the functioning of the superconscious in man. From MY LIFE – published by Psychic Press.

Perhaps we can therefore think of ourselves and the chakras in this sense: Like a radio, our body exists deep in a vast sea of energy or mind. Because of our body’s form, we ‘pick up’ only a tiny part of this cosmic mind. Our body and the cosmic mind are two interrelating aspects of the Word. They relate through harmonics. A radio needs an aerial to vibrate in harmony with the signal. The signal is then changed and amplified.

The chakras are like aerials or valves which change the vibration from one octave to another. They are the points at which we can vibrate in harmony with the various levels of the energy without and within us. Emotion, thought, desire, are expressions of energy at different levels. Different chakras respond to these levels and can be translated into definite impressions. But what does it feel like to be aware of the chakras?

Secret Teachings of Tibet

Down to earth meditation

MYSTERY and romance are words that most of us would immediately associate with the mysticism of Tibet. Nor are these false associations. Yet few people realise the truly scientific nature of Tibet’s secret oral teachings.

Far more fanciful and imaginative are our own occidental, materialistic and spiritualistic philosophies.

So searchingly do they lay bare our human conceits and desires, that many people find such teachings unacceptable. There are, of course, the obviously scientific statements that deal with the phenomenal and intangible world. “Movement”, they say, “constitutes the objects which appear to us-they are nothing but movement.” They teach that this movement arises as flashes of energy that vary infinitely; or, as we would call it, vibration. These flashes of energy form conjunctions, just as two notes on a piano form a third sound. These conjunctions form yet more unions, and these unities we call the various types of matter and objects.

THAT is easy enough for us to accept, because it seems to be so impersonal, and does not attack our convictions about ourselves. But the Masters of these secret teachings lead to more personal issues. They tell the student that “ALL AGGREGATES ARE IMPERMANENT.” That is again easy enough to accept. A house is the result of many bricks and timbers being put in a certain order. If these pieces are taken apart the house no longer exists. Therefore, no unity of two or more constituents is permanent.
Secret oral teachings

The secret teachings then go on to say that “ALL THINGS ARE DEVOID OF SELF” (Atman-Ego or Soul).” This leads us to the more personal issues. Human consciousness, man’s sense of having an individuality or ego, are the result of many things coming together. When these things separate there is no longer an ego or self, just as, above, there was no house.

The fact that an ego may continue to act without a body is no proof to them of immortality. It is still a unity of various forces, and may as such be dissolved. All that is permanent is what they call the VOID, which is primal and has no unity.

It seems likely, then, that all thaat is attainable through life is possibly a consciousness or realisation of this void. As the void has no form, is without ego or self, it is difficult to see this as a promise of individual immortality.

THESE Masters even smile at the theory of reincarnation that so many are fighting to promulgate here in the West as an Eastern teaching. Certainly this is a Hindu doctrine, but the secret oral teachings of Tibet seek an analysis that gives the theory a completely different look. A man may he moved by the forces set in motion by Napoleon, Jesus and Franklin, but it does not mean that he is any of those people. An ego is a unity of all the forces that were set in motion in the past, along with the physical forces of his body and environment in the present. John Smith of today may be comprised of and moved by forces set in motion by an Arab of a hundred years ago; and those forces in turn were each moved similarly.
Nothing is permanent except change

But, they say, this does not suppose a permanent ego that moves from body to body like a man moving from house to house. There are certainly a host of others in us, but we are not they, and they are not us. Our only connection is through the influence they throw on this life through the forces they set in motion. Also, besides these past personalities, any practising psychiatrist can observe how we are also the union of present people. Our mother and father, friends, and even books we read or films we see.

Whether that may, or may not be, the author finds more interesting the methods these Masters use to teach, and the disciplines they recommend. For instance, although the teachings they give are said to be secret, they clearly point out that the “Secret” depends, not on the Master, but on the hearer. Because of this they give their teachings only to those they consider to be on the verge of “seeing” ; and within their simple statements such students find tremendous power. After all, their aim is not to show the disciple a secret, but to give him methods to realise the secret for himself, and these methods really consist of mental attitudes.

An illustration of this last statement is that the very first suggestion they give to the student is to DOUBT! It is only through doubt that one will come to analyse truly and understand those things their attention is directed to. Following this they are given this advice, spoken by the Buddha. “Do not believe on the strength of traditions even if they have been held in honour for many generations and in many places ; do not believe anything because many people speak of it ; do not believe on the strength of sages of old times ; do not believe that which you have yourself imagined, thinking that a god has inspired you. Believe nothing which depends only on the authority of your masters or of priests. After investigation, believe that which you have yourselves tested and found reasonable, and which is for your good, and that of others.”

WHEN the disciple asks with what be is supposed to investigate things and test them, he is told to do so with his senses. The Tibetan Masters say that there are six senses, the mind being the sixth. As to the psychic senses, these only present a similar type of information to the physical senses. This information does not constitute actuality, and is therefore not Transcendent Insight. It is purely the mind’s conception of forces that are contacted through a psychic sense, just as we have the mind’s conception of forces contacted through a physical sense. Being a psychic contact does not make it any the less a mental concept.

It is said that these Masters do not see their students very often, and do not give them set lectures. They merely have what seems to be informal conversations with the disciple, listening to his conclusions concerning the last talk. The student may have meditated upon such a conversation for months. However. upon confronting his master with his conclusions, these are likely to be smashed and tumbled by just one searching question. The Master’s aim by this is to produce a mental shock, and an upsetting of habitual ideas.
Transcendent insight

IN searching for the reason that this is done, we do not have to seek very far. Transcendent Insight, the very thing the disciple seeks, is not to be found in mental forms of concepts. Therefore, every time the disciple builds a new concept or idea. the Master shows him that it can be torn down, and that the opposite is equally true. They teach that it is by going beyond wisdom, virtue, vice or opinions ; it is by going beyond all of the mind’s activities and the opposites that Transcendent Insight is realised. This they call the “”Short Path”, the one that goes straight up the mountain. and breaks the Two Chains. These two chains are the iron and gold, the chains of vice and virtue. For a man who binds himself to virtue is as bound up in his own mental concepts as the man who binds himself to vice.

It is interesting in this regard to watch people react to blasphemy, swear words, or smutty jokes. If the person reacts in the way of either repulsion or delight, it shows how strongly they are being influenced by their own mental and emotional contents. Instead, we are told to view them, and even our reactions, as images seen in a dream, interesting, but VOID.

These Masters are not silent upon how one may go beyond these opposites and mental concepts. It is done. they say, through non-activity. This is not to be confused, however, with the quietism of certain Christian or oriental mystics. Nor does it deny one a normal everyday life, or demand rigorous disciplines of emotion or body. To exist is a kind of activity, and it is but normal to eat, sleep, walk, read, speak, laugh, love, breathe, etc.
Power of non-action

The non-activity they mean is “that of the disordered activity of the mind which unceasingly devotes itself to the work of the builder erecting ideas, creating an imaginary world in which it shuts itself like a chrysalis in a cocoon”. This is very reminiscent of Jung’s suggestion to patients that they allow fantasies to arise in the mind, and then to watch these fantasies, attempting to see their cause, and the underlying forces at work. It is an attempt to step back from our convictions, ideals and morals; to set them loose, and watch them as a silent watcher, who does not interfere, condemn, or condone. The aim in the Tibetan teachings however is to recognise them for what they are – mental and empotional creations that vanish like mist as the next image arises.

Masters of the secret oral teachings point out that this Short Path is one that many prefer not to take. The guiding forces of morality and social rights have been removed, and the student may fall into one of the pits of extremity that he was previously fenced from. To quote from Alexandra David Neel’s book on the subject (Secret Oral Teachings of The Tibetan Buddhist Sects, to which I owe this article). “It may indeed be foolish to preach to an individual of ordinary mind that there is neither Good nor Evil; that his acts have no importance, and that, moreover, he is not the author of them, because he is moved by causes whose miscellaneous origins are lost in the inscrutable night of eternity.”

True, it may be foolish for the multitude. But for some, these ideas come as a delightful shock of confirmation to intuitions half formed and half sensed within themselves. To some of these latter, if they persist, may come Lhang Tong – Transcendent Insight. As the Masters say, the student may persist for years with no result ; and then suddenly, one day, while looking at a stone. or feeling the wind upon his face, he is possessed by Lhang Tong and from all the ties and chains he had found RELEASE.

Grof’s Influence

Tony: What has happened in the West in recent years is, as far as I can see a sort of outcrop of this Christian view of transformation, and is seen in the development of psychotherapy in its various forms. This has become a very powerful influence in society toward the transformation of self. And I believe this is an amazing step forward. Although many psychotherapists will not agree with me, I believe that in the broadest sense psychotherapy is a tremendous tool and advancement in the process of spiritual growth.

I say this because as far as I can see, nowhere in the past was there a real meeting with the effects of life in the womb, the trauma of birth, childhood traumas, and the sexual dilemmas and pains many of us suffer. Today when we take the spiritual path, the meeting with these blockages and infant traumas is part of the cleansing mentioned already. The best of the psychotherapies looks at the whole of the human being and includes body mind and spirit in its approach to transformation.

What I have seen is that if you press far enough into the deep renovation of yourself you cannot help but confront a widening of awareness. That, after all, in the essence of the spiritual.

Chris: You used to talk about Grof a lot. How do you connect his work with what you have said?

Tony: Yes. This was because I see Grof as a leader in the field of modern psychotherapy. He encompassed an enormously wide view of the human being. He moved beyond the limitations of Freud and Jung, and gave a much more detailed and extensive map of the human being than we had previously. Of course he was not alone in this. During the period of his major work he was accompanied by other giants in the field of exploring the human psyche. (See the work of Dr. Frank Lake, Otto Rank, Wilhelm Reich, Medard Boss).

Something that links with what I said in regard to the spiritual path and the addition that psychotherapy has made to it is that very often in the past the meeting with oneself often remained in symbols. Or to put it another way, the traveller on that path never got beyond the symbols of what he or she was meeting.

To give what is perhaps not a very precise example; the person might have a powerful vision or experience of being in a frightening cave, or of meeting the devil, or an animal; perhaps even an angel. What people like Grof did was to break through the symbol into the reality underlying it. For instance Grof clearly defined the various stages of the birth trauma often represented by the symbol of a cave, or being tortured or threatened by a devil.

An interesting insight into what the avoidance of going beyond the symbol might lead to has been given by Ralph Frenken Ph.D. in his review of Christian mystics. He believes that, “The psychodynamics of mystics, their symbol formations and their actions are based on excessive early trauma. . . . There is evidence that medieval mystics were deprived and also emotionally and sexually abused as children.”

There is still a great tendency to remain in the symbol with many people on the spiritual path today. However, when we do frequently have the courage to break through the symbol and meet the reality of our own experience, the reality of who we actually are. We are readier to confront our real history and experience how it shaped and wounded us. So I see the path toward growth and change is enormously enhanced. I believe this adds great power to social change as well as individual change.

Another aspect of Grof’s contribution was that his early work involved the use of LSD as an aid to psychotherapy. From his observations of thousands of patients he arrived, after much questioning, to the realisation that human consciousness can transcend all the boundaries we usually believe limit it. He sums this up by saying, “There is at present little doubt in my mind that our current understanding of the universe, of the nature of reality, and particularly of human beings, is superficial, incorrect, and incomplete.”

To quote one example from which this conclusion was reached I quote from Michael Talbot’s book Holographic Universe:

Beyond the Limitations of the Body

In one particularly unnerving session a young man suffering from depression found himself in what seemed to be another dimension. It had an eerie luminescence, and although he could not see anyone he sensed that it was crowded with discarnate beings. Suddenly he sensed a presence very close to him, and to his surprise it began to communicate with him telepathically. It asked him to please contact a couple who lived in the Moravian city of Kromeriz and let them know that their son Ladislav was well taken care of and doing all right. It then gave him the couple’s name, street address, and telephone number.
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The information meant nothing to either Grof or the young man and seemed totally unrelated to the young man’s problems and treatment. Still, Grof could not put it out of his mind. “After some hesitation and with mixed feelings, I finally decided to do what certainly would have made me the target of my colleagues’ jokes, had they found out,” says Grof. “I went to the telephone, dialled the number in Kromeriz, and asked if I could speak with Ladislav. To my astonishment, the woman on the other side of the line started to cry. When she calmed down, she told me with a broken voice: ‘Our son is not with us any more; he passed away, we lost him three weeks ago.’”

Grof also gives examples of people remembering events that occurred to their parents or grandparents long before they were born and of which they previously knew nothing. Some memories seem to come from periods far in the past, and the patients were able to describe in detail events and environment they were remembering.

Past Lives or Collective Unconscious?

Chris: So, do you mean that they were remembering former lives? Or were they tapping into a collective consciousness?

Tony: What is the difference, for to remember the long journey  of our spirit we must go beyond the memory stored in our brain, that is simply the memory of this brain and body, and we need to go deep into what is called the huge consciousness. It is called many names – the unconscious – the spiritual – the higher self.

But I am not sure that Grof tried to carefully define a philosophy around these experiences. I personally refer to it in a very open sense. I think we can make the mistake of very quickly saying it is a past life, or it is the connection with a collective consciousness. There are so many theories about what these things mean. We are a long way from being certain of where they arise from. One serious researcher, seeing the universe and the mind as holographic, believes that dreams themselves are created in another dimensions of reality. So we need to leave such questions open.

What we can say with some certainty is that we are capable of extending our awareness far beyond the limitations that are generally accepted. See Extending Your Awareness

Expanding Mind

Chris: Under what circumstances or conditions can we do those things?

Tony: Looking back at the information that past cultures left us, it seems likely that early human beings at first accidentally stumbled on the possibilities of extending their awareness. The picture is of a petrograph – a rock carving – of what is called the Bee Shaman. I was found in a cave in Tassili, and dated about 9000 or 6000 years ago. The mushrooms shown growing out of him were most likely the first way that these ancient people extended their awareness using psilocybin mushrooms.

Also, we still have thousands of records of near death experiences occurring to people in the past, and still happening today. One of the common features of such experiences is the person witnessing verifiable events occurring at a distance from them, or at a time when they appeared to be in a coma with their eyes closed.

There are also many records collected by anthropologists and also verified, of tribal people dreaming of particular herbal remedies to cure ills. Some of these dreamt remedies have been taken into the modern pharmacopoeia. Namely such things as quinine. Also, in the past and in today’s world, sometimes dreams present information that the dreamer does not have, has not learned, has not heard, and has in no way taken into themselves from outside.

From such experiences older cultures gradually developed the concept of having a soul that could dissociates from or be independent of the body. Some cultures, especially those in India and the Far East, explored ways of purposefully bringing about such extended awareness. It seems as if at a certain period the human body and mind became a laboratory in which those cultures tried out all manner of things to see what the results would be.

Of course, some of the techniques used were quite crazy. This probably arose because the underlying principles were not really understood. For instance, fasting gradually reduces the physical and emotional energy to a point where the mind and emotions become very quiet. But the active principle, so to speak, is not the fasting, but the quietness of the mind and emotions.

It was also noticed that to really explore these further reaches of consciousness certain qualities were necessary. A certain amount of confidence and fearlessness were needed to meet the further reaches of mind. Some cultures, such as the native American Indians, also realised that if one could not meet a reasonable amount of pain, then you could not really dive very deeply into that wider awareness; if for no other reason than the wider awareness breaking through the narrow and limiting boundaries of the ego of personality can be felt as pain.

Opening to the Spirit

When we see the moon and it is not full, we can see the edge where there is very marked light on one side and darkness on the other. Human life is very much like that. There is a sharp and dividing line between waking and sleeping, between having self-awareness and being as we call it unconscious. Mostly, what we call the spiritual path is about crossing that line, going over that border, moving beyond that frontier in one way or another.

Best understood if we approach it using the old definitions of human nature as being a body, soul and spirit. It can then be seen in context. In this sense the body is a living process of change that is born, matures and dies. It is subject to time and the physical limitations of space.

The soul is the experience of personal awareness and personal memories. Rudolph Steiner points out that while the body feeds on physical substance such as food and water, the soul feeds on the experiences gathered via the body. In this way it learns, and we are referring to the soul when we say something like, “Through that experience I learned something.” The ‘I’ being the soul.

The spirit is the polar opposite of the body. It is not born and does not die. It is your fundamental core beyond the limitations of time and space, with no beginning or end. It is probably the same as the core of the universe we exist as an integral part of. Just as our physical universe – according to the big bang theory – emerged from a condition prior to the existence of time and space, so the human being emerges from and is rooted in that same mystery.

So taking the ‘spiritual’ path would mean opening your personal ‘soul’ or self to the influence of the timeless that gave rise to your present life.

I know some aspects of spirituality are said to be about living a good life; about being kind, charitable and loving to others. Well, there may be truth in that, but I do believe that unless one achieves some level of awareness of one’s own internal nature through whatever path one takes, there has not been any real awareness of the spirit. In fact I define the spirit as pertaining to what doesn’t change, what does not shift in human nature, what remains as the foundations of existence. It has everything to do with something that stands beyond life-and-death. And that is why I link it to crossing of that border, that frontier between waking and sleeping. It is about exploring the dark side of the moon.

But often the spiritual is described as if it is something far off, ephemeral, very divine or difficult to attain. What I have come to over the years is these ideas give a wrong impression of it. My simple explanation is that your spirit is you when you remember yourself fully.

What I mean by this is mostly we do not know who we are because we suffer a form of amnesia. It is a memory loss that in our culture is assumed to be normal. We fail to remember our childhood, our infancy, our birth and conception, yet these are all available to us.

When we do take our memory back to include all these and go beyond that to our life in eternity, we remember who we are. Then we know what spirit is – ourself.

In fact, one of the stated facts of what we have called the enlightened human being, is that they never sleep. By this is not meant that the body does not go into a state of what we call sleep. What it means is that while they sleep they have focused awareness still and do not lose themselves in unconsciousness. That is why lucidity is such an interesting subject. When we penetrate these levels in sleep or in waking we begin the process of remembering who we are. This is what happens in learning what I have described as LifeStream.

Carl Jung describes the consciousness of a human being, with its experience of being awake and asleep, as being like a sphere. He said that on this sphere, or ball, there is a small spot of light about the size of a pea in relationship to a tennis ball. This small spot of light, he says, depicts our experience of waking. It is a tiny part of our whole self, the rest and greater part lies in the shadows of unconsciousness, of sleep.

Of course, most of us have glimpses into that dark world when we remember a dream. Therefore, as Freud suggested, dreams are a royal road to the unconscious. But there are many other paths that have been developed through the ages. Most of them in one way or another are ways of throwing the spotlight of awareness into the darkness of that large sphere that is our total being.

See Opening to Life – Life’s Little Secrets – The Dream

The Enlightenment Intensive

During the explosion of new or improved self-help techniques that emerged in the 1960’s, Charles Berner started teaching a modification of an age old form of Eastern meditation. The approach was very well known, and Kipling describes it in his book Kim. It was also the method recommended by the sage Ramana Maharshi. It is simply to ask oneself the question – Who am I? This was usually done alone, and took possibly years to carry the meditation through the surface layers of self to a direct experience of ones fundamental nature. Berner discovered that by working with a partner the results of this technique were speeded up to an unbelievable degree. The results were that one uncovered and experienced who one really was, beyond surface doubts and uncertainties. Berner called this technique Enlightenment Intensive.

Although Enlightenment Intensives do not start from the point of free flowing movement, I see them as connected to inner-directed movement because they directly allow the same process to work. They encourage an open allowing state of mind that allows whatever you truly are in yourself to emerge and be known. When that emerges in the process it does become strong feeling and movement.

The format is very simple. A group of people work together. You sit opposite a partner who asks a question you have previously chosen to work with. The question can be ‘Tell me who you are’, or ‘Tell me what you are’. After making an intention to have a direct experience of who or what you are, you take note of what you experience each moment, and report it to your partner.

It is stressed that you keep an open allowing state of mind. When I experienced this way of working I was reminded of a vacuum cleaner. The open state of mind resembles a vacuum that sucks up any debris lying around and so cleanses one of attitudes and concepts that have been lying around for ages.

An example of this is given by a man: “I had been using the method of  being asked the question, “Who are are you?”  for a couple of days, But I can describe what happened to me in a few words, I got to the point where I realised that the answer I was looking for was myself. So, why was there any need to make an effort to find oneself? The more one sought an answer, the less likely one was to find it. All effort dropped away and I existed in a simple state of being, of clear existence, for hours. My ego seemed to melt, yet it was still there, it hadn’t been destroyed or overcome, or denied. It had simply dropped like effort from the limbs when we sleep.

In this state I had a wonderful sense that I had been let into the Garden of Eden again. Everybody was always in the Garden but they cannot see it because they have lost their innocence. They have covered up their perception of it with too many thoughts, opinions, struggles, attitudes, fears, dreams and hopes. I could see that we play thoughts and attitudes like records, and these were not ourselves. I knew myself as the empty awareness of existence. It was heaven, it was peace, it was beyond any effort.

At one point I suddenly realised the meaning of the Cheshire Cat in Alice In Wonderland. I was touching the radiance, the self existent gentle joy of existence, and my ego was not there. It had melted, disappeared. And this was what I saw had happened to the Cheshire Cat. All that was left was the smile, hanging in emptiness. That was how I felt, like a smile hanging in space.”

This is the total practice, but its simplicity hides a great deal of value. Although it may sound very cerebral – that one sits and responds to a question – in fact the thinking mind is transcended. At times the body is powerfully affected, along with the emotions.

Availability

Practised as a intensive process over several days. This means it is an occasional event rather than an ongoing practice. Therefore availability depends upon whether you are near to Intensives being run. These are not frequent but are reasonably accessible.

Costs

Fairly expensive because it needs the use of a premises and helpers over several days. I paid £140 for three days, inclusive of food and lodging. The unwaged can get a lower price.

 

Yoga and Japan

In 1984 Tony Crisp went to teach in Japan, and in his evocative two-part report he gives his impression of the social and spiritual attitudes he found in Hong Kong and Kanazawa

In the middle of 1981 a letter arrived out of the blue inviting me to teach in Japan. It was from an American Dennis Hoerner who with an enthusiastic group of Japanese and some Europeans had started a Bioenergy Centre in Kanazawa.

I was asked to lead two or more Life Energy Groups”, or as we usually called them, Bioenergy Workshops. The description of these workshops in the leaflet sent me said All the Life energy Group workshops are rooted in the philosophical and practical concept, derived from the work of people like Wilhelm Reich, that ‘health’ means the harmony of the mental, physical and spiritual aspects of the human being. Each of our group leaders, although different in style of working, strives towards the goal of harmonious integration of body, mind, and soul.”

My immediate question was, how had I been so lucky? David Boadella had already held Bioenergy workshops in Kanazawa and had recommended me; David is one of England’s most authoritative and active writers and teachers on Reich and Bioenergy. He felt it important that my approach to modern psychotherapy from the standpoint of meditation, and through it the tapping of the self regulating (homeostatic), self healing forces active in each of us, needed representation.

So in November I found myself on a flight heading first for Hong Kong, where I would have a one day stay before continuing to Tokyo. I remember the flight for its good food, its real fruit drinks served on demand, and Mr Lee, a Hong Kong businessman who sat next to me smoking incessantly. But I was grateful for his easy friendliness and realised as he talked that he lived in a mental world which considered everything in terms of money, business and family. When I walked the streets of Kowloon and Hong Kong I understood his view. So many millions of people struggled to earn a living in such a small area of land, you either survived or went under. There is no social security or welfare benefits to ease the burden of business failure or loss of employment.

But despite the enormous differences between the rich and poor, Hong Kong is a very friendly place. The Chinese find it easy to come up and talk to you in the street. On one occasion I stood outside a bank early in the morning with my suitcases, waiting for it to open to get Hong Kong dollars. I wanted to take a taxi as my cases were too heavy to carry far, and had no local cash. As I waited two young women came up to me smiling and asked if I were lost, and I explained about the taxi and bank. Their response was, well, why not go by bus, it was only 15 cents. When I explained I didn’t even have 15 cents they thought it a huge joke. put the money in my hand, and walked off to work.

Because business is so competitive, to look casually in a shop window often means the proprietor may quickly be beside you strongly urging you inside. This occurred to me at a clothes shop. The Indian owner had an unfortunate skin condition which caused him to be piebald. He assured me I needed a suit, which he could make from any of the materials he showed me, and have it ready the next day. I explained I never wore a suit, but this didn’t deter him.

In between our wrangling and my trying not to stare at the snow white areas on his brown face, I noticed he had a picture of his Guru on a shelf in the shop. While trying to sell me a shirt, he also mentioned yoga, and said a class was being held nearby. The teacher was a Professor Po.

With him still calling down the street after me about suits and shirts I went in search of the Professor. The place was difficult to find because so many shops are crammed in such small space, or share a single doorway. The entrance was actually that of a restaurant, but a doorman assured me the Professor was on the third floor.

As I emerged from the lift two Chinese women tried to show me to a table to eat. When I asked for the Professor they asked if I wanted the strip show in the restaurant. Eventually, by demonstrating yoga postures, they understood, saying Ah, Professor Po, and pointing to the left. When I got there the place was full of tables and chairs. It was explained to me that the Professor only used the space in the mornings, early, before the restaurant opened. Space was so scarce; he had already gone.

THE TEMPLE

My first evening in Hong Kong coincided with the time I was usually preparing to get up and have breakfast – when everyone around

me was getting ready to sleep. I felt as lively as a cricket. Feeling I ought to rest if I could, I went to bed at midnight and managed two hours sleep before it escaped me completely . The night air of I long Kong. even in November, was beautifully warm. I usually hate bathing. but now after an hour’s yoga postures I had great pleasure in taking a long hot shower at three in the morning. During the day. because of the scarcity. water is turned off during the day, so) I made the most of the dark hours.

Afterwards I stood on the balcony of my room looking across the harbour to the island of I bong Kong. The lights o)f many colours rose from sea level up the mountain. As the plane had landed the lights had looked like fine oriental jewellery made of finest gems shining with inner light, woven into towers of filigree. A taxi driver later told me it was known locally as Oriental Pearl.

As the dark hours passed I sat and wrote letters home. Gradually people began to throng in the streets again. Because the shops stay open till nine o)r eleven at night, they have a slow start in the morning. mostly opening at ten. But many people were about early, and at seven I decided once again to seek the inner life of the Chinese in what was left of my short stay.

On my map I found a Buddhist Temple marked near the YMCA where I was staying, just off Nathan Street. I found the road, which served as a vegetable market; great square lorries were parked waiting to be unloaded. Only a few people were about. At the kerb a barrow stall stood with varieties of joss sticks for sale. At the end of the road a new skyscraper rose looking as if it were still in its original wrapping with the scaffolding of bamboo covering its entire surface. But I could not find a Buddhist Temple. I asked someone, who didn’t know, but asked someone else – and there was the Buddhist Temple next to the joss stick stall.

How had I missed it? An ornate and colourful gate, small but attractive, stood before a neat row of pillars covered with plants. This turned to the right and before me stood a huge open fire boiler like a large whisky still, Wondering, I entered the door beyond the boiler, A large passage led to the left. A small cot bed, recently slept in stood in the space; beyond was an area with odd tables and bits of wood stored. I went back and out to check if I had entered the correct door. There weren’t any others. This was the temple. Going in, I saw a woman who appeared also to be using the area to sleep in. Beyond the market stall table affairs, something vaguely like an altar stood. Nobody spoke English there, so I couldn’t enquire, but it looked like the temple also served as a dormitory, and at present was more dormitory than temple to meditate in.

THE PARK

Feeling somewhat disillusioned I walked across the road and found the entrance to Kowloon Park. It was about 7.15. As I got further into the park I noticed more and more people. Then, as I came to the main area of the park. I realised my discovery. All around men and women, very young and gnarled old, were practising Tai Chi Chuan,

Alone, in groups, in circles around trees, under cover, in the open, people were happily exercising. talking. laughing, gracefully moving. Some of them used wooden swords in a form of Tai chi Chuan I had not seen before. But here in the open air, in the early morning I had found the happy temple of the Chinese. It was so beautiful to see the very old exercising just as happily as the young. Completely without shyness they stood anywhere in the park, many alone, doing traditional Tai Chi Chuan, or whatever movements they enjoyed. What a happy people they looked, and with such lovely traditions, which took them out so early too share the morning with each other exercising.

Later I found a Taoist Temple, small but attractive. To reach it I had walked through a street market near the Airport. Many strange creatures were on sale for food live frogs and turtles, chicks hatching there in the road – some shops specialised entirely in joss sticks and the aromatic wood they are made from could be seen being ground. Chinese I Health Clinics were also right there in the midst of the market , exuding strong smells of camphorated oils, and people being treated in view, with the enormous variety of herbs, seeds. and substances standing visible. But the Temple stood beyond the noise . many joss sticks burning outside and drums beating within. A ceremony was in swing when I arrived. To sky and earth, incense smoke and prayers were offered.

As I sat and watched . sharing veneration with them, I could feel within me understanding and contact with these ancient Gods. I Here in the worship was evident the collected wisdom and love of the people I had seen in the market. (Out of their collective struggle against illness poverty, and death – from their shared pleasure and pain, this attitude too nature, , its energies and the cosmos, had arisen. It was older and wider than any individual, and the goods themselves perhaps were made out of human longing, loving, and transcendence. I felt respect.)

THE ARRIVAL

My first workshops were too be held in Kanazawa, a university town, and centre of ancient crafts. The great Zen teacher Suzuki was born and studied in this town.

I arrived in darkness very tired,. and my first impressions came as I stepped out of the car which had driven me from the local airport, for I had flown from “Tokyo. The quiet after the engine noise revealed the sounds of cicadas calling in the night. Across from where I was going to stay a typical modern Japanese bungalow greeted me. The front garden. a few feet wide and one foot deep. held in it the beauty of the shaped trees I was too meet everywhere. And going into Dennis’s house . I had my first social lesson; take your shoes off. It became to me a symbol of Japan, the shoes removed and left just outside the front door. Even in large civic buildings one still removes shoes. But large amounts of slippers are supplied, and to the toilet yet another type of slipper are there to change into.

Dennis has a Japanese wife, Tomoko. Their home mixed East and West for me. That night I slept on the futon. the Japanese folding mattress used on the floor. It is comfortable and practical because it Is so easy to use or store. I insisted on going for a walk before sleep, though. and my hosts were worried I would get lost. Kanazawa’s streets are designed to confuse invading soldiers, like a maze. I didn’t get lost, but it did start to rain, and on my way back I saw Tomoko coming to meet me with an umbrella. That was my next social lesson. Japanese, next to the slipper rack, have lots of umbrellas. Japanese couldn’t grasp the idea that I didn’t mind getting wet.

The next morning Dennis introduced me to Kanazawa. There are so many new impressions I could mention, but some of my delights were seeing men sweeping a river clean and, with brush and dustpan, cleaning leaves from it. The leaves weren’t blocking it. just untidy. I stow women digging roads along with the men and working in the municipal gardens. Trees were being tied up for winter to protect them from the snow. Japanese love trees. When one main road was built in Kanazawa the lovely old firs were left standing. and they jut right out into the road. Many people in Kanazawa wore gauze face masks. In England the general idea is that the Japanese did this because of the smog in cities, but the air of Kanazawa felt clean. The masks were worn because the wearer had a cold, and thus would protect others from their infection.

THE WORK

That afternoon I worked with three women individually. It was my first real contact with the oriental soul in a Therapy session. My work is based on two main principles. One is the practical use of awareness meditation techniques to help individuals become conscious themselves of what they are doing in and with their life to create problems. The other is teaching individuals how to release their own self regulatory healing and growth forces.

I was amazed and somewhat bewildered by the time the three sessions had ended. Each of them load exhibited exactly the same life situation – lack of emotional pleasure and warmth in their marriage. Obviously I had met this in European men and women, but never so stereotyped. one after the other. In one woman’s face I felt I saw not just her struggle and misery, but that of the collective soul of Japanese women. So much hunger for contact and love. I had also expected rather passive, reticent women; instead I found a degree of directness, frankness. and daring seldom found in European women. They were directly willing to explore emotions and physical contact with me, to see what they were doing in a relationship.

I found them not at all neurotic but painfully locked in accepted social attitudes, just ready to energetically change these when they understood how. Two of the women went home and used what had been learnt, and both husbands agreed to attend future workshops.

Yet another difference between East and West. Mostly it is women in the West who wish to improve the quality of their life in the emotional sense.

Later one of the women wrote to me. The letter is an example of the directness and honesty.

Thank you very much for embracing me warmly. I can now find what is lacking in my life. First time I met you I was expecting sexual satisfaction very much, but our being together was very comfortable and cosy. I gradually find my irritation that I am not fully satisfied by my husband owes almost to my attitude to him. That’s to say, I don’t see him as a living creature who is also eager to be warmed by me. By my change to him, we find each other that we are a better partner than we think we are. Thank you for being kind to me. I’ll remember you every time I find myself happy.

Love Irradiates The Universe

What I saw was that the Big Bang utterly shattered the existence of what had been before. That ocean of energy and consciousness destroyed itself so beings such as ourselves might exist. And then, as it died, at the very last moments of its death, it shot out something to penetrate all that was coming into being. It radiated love. It gave us love as its parting gift so that if any beings got lost, if they were troubled or overcome in their experience of growth, they could reach out for that love and be helped. They could touch the love, the heart and soul of which was self giving.

The death of that being also meant that every particle of the universe and what has arisen out of its death is the very substance of that great creative being and its act of self giving. There is nothing in the universe that is not the body, the broken and fragmented body, of that being. Every tiny fragment of our earth, of our bodies, of our universe, is the essence of that being. Every tiny speck of the universe is a seed that has the potential of that being within it. There is nothing that is not that being and a seed of that being. The potential to know that is within each of us. It is within each of us to be that wonder. We can grow and realise we are the children of that.

That is what I see as the beginning of things, the origin of our universe and ourselves. But I was also shown that our corner, our small part of the universe, has certain qualities that maybe other parts do not. One of them, especially in regard to ourselves, is the shortness of life. We are tiny, short lived, biological creatures that have emerged out of the amazing processes of this world in its interplay with the cosmos. We can see ourselves in one sense as little bags of shit. We can be thought of as little digestive reproducing bags. But because of that potential in us, there has always been a possibility of more in human life. As this species we have managed to emerge beyond the other living forms of this earth. We have developed complex language and enormous curiosity and creativity. But the shortness of our life is a big factor in our experience of ourselves. I was shown that this shortness of life is really important for us. This because an essential part of the mystery of the universe is death. Therefore death is an enormous key to understanding the universe and life. Understanding death means that we become capable of letting go of ourselves, of delivering ourselves, of being able to give ourselves away to the mystery underlying our existence. The importance of this is because, if what has been said above is correct, then death is at the very centre of the mystery of life. It is at the foundation of our physical being. It is behind the urge that leads parents to a sort of death in giving themselves to the new being that emerges, to parents giving of themselves to their offspring. The sun gives of itself as it is dying. Through its dying life can exist on earth. This is part and parcel of the processes out of which our universe has emerged.

Chris: Need that concept of death have the ideas of love attached to it?

Tony: No, but that is what I felt. Maybe it is our definition of what we think of as love. Also, I did understand that I was looking at, or experiencing what arose, out of my own limited human awareness. The experience was interpreted into my own human terms. All I have is my vocabulary and my range of experience. But it did feel like a love beyond what I could understand. It felt like an enormous self giving.
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Chris: And that enormous self giving in scientific or, physics terms, is what?

Tony: Well, we can look at from all sorts of perspectives. I don’t think any of them are false. We can look at the universe in a purely analytical sense; we can look at it from the point of view of an investigative science; we can look at it from an artistic point of view; we can look at it as a chemical or energetic event; we can look at it with the sense of awe or wonder; we can look at it from the point of view of geometry or mathematics, we can approach it or relate out of feelings of love.
Venus and Earth Cycles

Diagram of the dance Venus and the Earth make during an eight year cycle. (From A Little Book of Coincidence by John Martineau.)

Some people who have a full grasp of, or an eye for mathematics and geometry, explain our solar system in ways that are quite incredible. They can demonstrate patterns and interrelationships between the planets that are of such wonder, order and symmetry, that it leaves us realising that an amazing art and wisdom is embodied in every tiny aspect of the universe and ourselves.

So I believe that if we look as closely at the universe as mathematicians have, we also find that embodied in every tiny part of it is what I have called love. Taking an overall view of life on earth and interrelationships of the species in the food chain, it seems to me that life is constantly giving itself to itself in that act of giving.

So coming back to the theme of death in life, I do feel that this is a huge lesson for us to learn as human beings. And something I didn’t say about that last enormous projection of love, the incredible emanation in the death throes, is that I believe the human race met that emanation of love very fully 2000 years ago. I want to say that my experience of the radiated love in the death throes I can only describe as being akin to a parent’s feelings at their death, and their doing all they can to care for their children in those last moments. Almost like saying, “What can I leave with you to help you?”

Our name in the West for that Comforter that was left is Christ. I don’t know if there was a historical Christ, because humans tend to project outwardly what they sense inwardly. It is innate in us to give an outer form to, or to see as something outside of ourselves, what we sense within ourselves of any wonder. So I can see the possibility that humans gave an outer form to what we call Christ. Just as we have given an outer form to what we call the devil.

It is difficult for us to claim as a part of ourselves something of such wonder. So we tend to put it outside of us so that it is not too near. Then it doesn’t make us feel small and baby like in our own growth. We often cannot bear to see what we call the Christ as our own personal potential that we are constantly crucifying, denying, and washing our hands of. Nevertheless, we have that embodied in one of our world religions.

Chris: Just one of our world religions?

Tony: Well it is there in the others, but often not as clearly stated. For instance the Indians call it Krishna. And Christianity itself cannot be thought of as a stand-alone religion. It emerged out of what had existed before it. The area of the world in which it arose was a crossroads between East and West, and Christianity in many ways appears to be a synthesis of what existed before it.

Chris: When you talk about Christ, because it is a term that has been hijacked by people, what do you mean?

Tony: What do I mean? I have defined it in various ways. I liken it to something we find in nature — for instance people have defined the human body in many different ways. Also we can go on and on discovering more and more about any aspect of nature. So I see Christ as no different to any other natural phenomena.

To me, the Christ is a process in the universe that we’ve become aware of. It is also a process in us, because we are shaped out of the forces of the nature and the universe.

One could of course ask the question as to why, recognising that human beings express love and it is a fundamental part of life, that we do not simply call it human love. I believe the point is that the love I’m talking about is far more than what we see in the relationship between a man and woman or parents and their child or between human beings in general. Much of human love is so interwoven with pain, possessiveness, anxiety, childhood needs, jealousy and fears of abandonment, that we cannot help but see the difference between this cosmic love and what we presently know in our human relationships.

Another way that I have defined the Christ is to call it the highest possibility we have in us. In other words when we meet it we recognise it as something beyond our present stage of growth; something that perhaps we can reach to or grow towards. Because, when we meet the Christ, it seems to be something far beyond ourselves, we tend to project it outwardly and to see it as something outside of and different to ourselves. We believe it to be an external being. What I said about the original being leaving seeds of itself relates to this. Our innate potential is something far beyond what we presently are expressing. This potential is often represented in some form of symbol or other, and Christ is one way we represent it. But Christ is simply a name we give to something I felt was innate in the universe. It is a name that unfortunately has become mired in a lot of dogma.

The times I have met the Christ and communicated with it (and I refrain from using the terms he or she here because I don’t think they are appropriate), I always have this paradoxical feeling that what I meet is far beyond me — yet it is also myself. Sometimes this being is felt to be so far beyond me that I simply fall down on my knees before it in awe. So in this sense we can think of any meeting with Christ as a confrontation with our own amazing possibility, our own potential. Any communication that occurs is therefore a dialogue between what we are at the moment and what we can become.
Christ of the Andes

Christ of the Andes

Some people have been capable of allowing that amazing potential within them to express in some measure through their everyday life. Then we see them as a holy being, or a saint.

As I explained, this sense of the Christ connects with the beginning of things, where that amazing creative death set the scene for the possibility of other beings to emerge. In Genesis the words used and put into the mouth of the Creator are, “Let us make them in our own image.” And so this potential carries with it the image of the Creator. Therefore the meeting with Christ is the meeting with the possibility that was given us in the beginning.

I believe that the human race met this potential, this Christ, very fully about 2000 years ago. But of course there are other older religions that also in some way embodied a similar principle by different names, as in India in the use of the name Krishna.

Life within Change and Constancy

Rudolf Steiner explains parts of this process very clearly. He points out that from conception through to death our physical body goes through a process of continuous change. There is never a moment when changes are not going on in the body. Also, part of this change is that physical impressions last for moments only. One impression gives way to another continuously through the day and the years. But as mentioned above, something in our nature builds up a sense of self and meaning from these fleeting experiences. In fact, without these experiences through our senses we would not develop as a person. So in quite a real way our personality, or our soul as it used to be called, feeds on physical experience and develops a defined self from them. This is similar to the way the body builds up its defined shape through the continuous passage of food water and air — physical substance — through it. See: Rudolph Steiner’s Philosophy of Life and Death

So, in both cases, from ever-changing and transitory experiences, something more permanent is built. In the case of our physical self we build a body that has a certain level of constancy during change. With our personality or soul, we similarly build a sense of self from experiences we gained through our shifting physical senses. Again there is a level of constancy during continual change.

It is fairly easy to see that there is yet another level of this within our everyday experience. Our personality or sense of self that we build through our many and changing experiences, and that in itself is also changing, builds up concepts that are more lasting than the shifting sense impressions and ideas it experiences. As humans, in this way we have built up concepts about the physical nature of the world, gravity, music, astronomy and the many other things that can be passed from one person to another as ideas. Such ideas can survive not only during one’s lifetime, but pass from one person to another for immense periods of time. Here again we have constancy during change.

If we are lucky, during our lifetime we can observe that not only our physical experiences lead to the development of our personality; not only does our personality gather understanding from the many separate experiences we meet; but occasionally the concepts we arrive at are seen to gather into a higher synthesis again. At such times we glimpse or experience a universal understanding. We see how the everyday things that we experience, the concepts that arise from them, in some way connect with the universal principles in the cosmos and in life. With wonder we see that the ordinary everyday things and events around us are expressions of processes and human endeavours that flow through our lives from ancient times, perhaps even from the timeless.

This sense of the universal which in some cases is called enlightenment, or cosmic consciousness, is an experience of what has been called the spirit. In other words it is an experience of the constant underlying the ever shifting experiences of our body and our personality. And just as our personality gathers the shifting impressions of our senses into a realisation of its own continuing existence, so the spirit gathers experiences of the personality into its own continuity. This is like the tulip bulb hidden behind the short flowering of the tulip. The question to ask yourself is – What is it that in myself is the constant underlying the shifting experiences of my life?

One way of understanding this might be in saying that just as your genetic material is the gathered experience of thousands of lives, so your personality is the gathered material, the essence of thousands and millions of experiences; and your spirit is the gathered material of the finest realisations and concepts gathered by your personality. It is very likely that the cosmic processes that we experience as humans and see as universal in nature do not stop there, but have yet a higher synthesis.

The difficulty with accepting these ideas is not that we cannot see them working in nature, but some of us fail to grasp personally what our spirit is. Only a few of us have the wonder of a direct experience of it. This is because it is the very thing with which we try to grasp it with. As Laing says in his poem The Bird of Paradise, “The truth I am trying to grasp is the grasp that is trying to grasp it.” Your spirit, the constant within change, is the very foundation of your personal awareness. It is what exists behind the constant shifting sense impressions, thoughts and feelings. It is the blank mirror in which all your personal experiences seem to have existence. Take away all the images of your thoughts and emotions, your sense impressions, and you have the clear beingness of your spirit. Try looking at the mirror of your consciousness instead of the images, thoughts and sense impressions the mirror reflects.

While I was working in Greece I experienced something that puts all this in a more human context. I had led a Seed Group meditation, and then took a turn in being the Seed myself. (See: Meditate). Being a Seed in such a group is often a very strong experience. At that particular time I met death in a way I had never done before. If you have never used the Seed meditation in such a way, it needs to be explained that it is rather like having a very vivid dream while you are awake. In a dream we are convinced that what we are meeting is really happening. We feel all the feelings and experience it as a reality. So what I met was an experience in just that way. It wasn’t a daydream. It wasn’t a sort of, ‘what if’ type of experience.

As I entered into the process I felt my life coming to an end. I met the experience of seeing that everything I had lived for and done was finishing . I felt that I was losing my children and I would be dead to them. I would be dead to everything that I had hoped for, reached for, it was all ending. It was an extraordinary experience to feel myself dying in that way.

I died. The experience carried on, so I was then a bodiless and exterior observer of what was happening. I was a point of awareness watching, and there was my dead body lying on the ground. As I watched I saw my father — who was already dead — approach the dead body and lift it and carry it across a threshold. He placed it in a meadow and stood back. As I watched, the dead body was resurrected. A wonderful change took place in it. The body, no longer physical, was brought to life. I was witness to what brought it to life. It was a wonderful and joyous experience to see the resurrection. What brought life to that dead form was everything that I had given of myself to another person. I may have given an idea; I may have given anger that reached into their being and taught them something. I may have given that person warmth or support. I may have been a parent for them, or given myself in some other way. But I realised as I saw the resurrection that it is not simply the thought of giving something to another person, but it is what reaches into them and is absorbed to become a living part of their nature. It is something that then lives in them. It therefore has life. It may even pass on from them to others and have life in many people.

But I also saw that what I had received from other people, that I had left myself open to receive from others, their ideas, their love, their anger, their personality, their traits, their abilities; whatever I had taken into myself from them was also what gave me a spiritual life after death.

What I understood from the experience was that we only gain a life beyond physical death from what we have given to and received from others. It is only what life itself takes up and absorbs of our nature; it is only what life in us has taken from others that continues our life after death. It is only what exists beyond the boundaries of the personal self that can live on. Just as the flow of food, water and air keeps our body alive, so, as we take in from the life of others, and flow to them, does our spirit keep alive.

Self-Help Techniques To Use

The important point being made is that although this core of life process within us is unconscious in a general way, it is still accessible to us if we approach it in the right way. Of course, this is not a new idea arrived at in our times. It is so important and universal that cultures in all periods explained it in their own way as sacred information. At times it was so revered that it was often a subject of worship or of religious belief, and has been given a multitude of names. Many ways of meeting it and being healed or guided through a fuller relationship with it have also been described by these different beliefs and cultures. So all I wish to do here is to remind you that in meeting the changes that you and I will be involved in during the coming years, remember you are not alone in the universe or on this earth. No matter what difficulties you face, when you get to the end of your own resources, reach sincerely into the larger realm of life and consciousness. It doesn’t matter whether you call that MORE of yourself the Core, the unconscious, God, Spirit, the Creator, Life. What matters is that your passions and need, your love and struggle to meet what is in front of you transcend your own limitations.

What matters is that you draw into your life and action the power of that wider wisdom, power and love of which you are an integral part. That also means other human beings who are struggling alongside you. Be of mutual support. We are all a part of the web of life. See:

What Is The Unconscious – Life’s Little Secrets – Martial Art of the Mind – Avoid Being Victims – Habits 

The Winged Mind

There is an old saying that life sleeps in the minerals, dreams in the plants, wakes in the animals, and knows itself in man.

Certainly we have arrived at self awareness, but few of us know ourselves as Life. Mostly we are sure our consciousness is inextricably linked, chained, welded onto our body. This is not a universal view. Many other cultural viewpoints are very different, but the Western rational mind or worldview is largely one of the body being the source of and container of personal awareness. From that point of view, at the death of the body the awareness we call self blinks out like a guttering candle. However, this is not how thousands of people worldwide who have met a near death experience see it. (See I Died – But I’m Alive; The Near Birth Experience; An Amazing Near Death Experience; Out Of Body Experience).

From their experiences they know that consciousness exists without a living body. They know that they have a ‘winged mind’ that can enter into realms of experience unknown though our physical senses. They know that while our body has been a sort of mother and father to our personal awareness, we are not limited to life in the body. The human possibility is to grow beyond the limitations of the senses and gradually become inhabitants of dimensions beyond the narrow three dimensional world we grew up in.

To put it another way, unless we gradually penetrate the realms of consciousness lying beyond the senses, our race will be trapped in its own home town.

Start reaching beyond the frontier that is sleep. Even a remembered dream is a step beyond the boundaries of the physical senses. Reach beyond your own limitations. Just as you intend to stretch an arm when you reach out to open a door or touch someone, intend to reach out your imperishable body of mind and touch a friend, or stretch to receive knowledge beyond what you have read or seen with your eyes. Intend to fly with the winged mind.

Someone who loves you

Being in the company of someone who loves or cares for us is one of the greatest blessing life offers. To receive love is to receive the greatest medicine and healing and I am not talking about someone who has sex with you. It doesn’t matter if you do not accept the New Testament as a historical account of a man called Jesus, the story of Christ healing others by touching them or being with them is an illustration of the power of love to change a person’s life and body. See Learning to Love 

Any relationship you are in, whether one of close intimacy, or one in which you deal with someone in passing through your work place, calls on you for love and understanding in some measure. And don’t think of this as something you give as a sort of charity to another person or creature. It is nothing of the kind. To give love is to experience love. To experience love is to be healed, moment by moment.

But sometimes the giving is hard. There are shadows in us that block the light, rocks that stop the flow. And so the giving of love and the receiving of love challenge us to deal with our shadows and bend our back to shift the rocks.

Yes, we all have shadows. Perhaps there was a time when someone you depended upon or trusted hurt or betrayed you. Those things hurt deep down. We recoil and things happen inside us that sometimes we are not fully aware of.

My story is that my mother did things to me that led me to pull back from her and sever any loving or trusting connection with her. I was only five at the time, but strong willed. Unfortunately for me, in severing any emotional connection with my mother, I cut the trust I had for any woman, and suffered years of being unable to get really close in a loving relationship. I was married, but not truly partnered, being what I called independent.

Of course that was a sort of lie. It really meant that I was scared of really loving in case I got hurt again – and when you are little, hurt is devastating. How much better it would have been to forgive my mother and express love. That would have wiped out all those years of living in shadows.

So learning to love is not a charitable giving of something to another person. It is a courageous facing of oneself in claiming the most wonderful gift you have. It takes guts to love. You have to become a full woman or a full man – and that doesn’t mean a macho strongman or a extreme feminist. It means you become a whole person and can meet other people face to face, body to body, love to love.

The standard to measure oneself by is to ask yourself if you can love unconditionally. And that simply means that you love the person for who they are and not for what you can get or need to get from them. It means accepting them as they are, and not forever wanting them to be someone or something different. It means being able to let go of them if they wish to let go of a close relationship with you. And that does not mean disinterest. Someone you love forever has a link with you, and you with them, despite where they go or who they go with. Lastly, unconditional love means we never own the person we love.

But of course we are not perfect human being. So unconditional love does not come easily. Also it does not mean complete acceptance of the crazy or hurtful things people do, or that you yourself do.

That may sound like a contradiction, but unconditional love is being presented here as a guide to your own ability to experience and give love. It is a handy guide, not an absolute measure.

For instance, if the person you love turns to another person and gives them more attention and time than they give to you, and this leads to you being deeply hurt and trying to hurt them, or to pester and try to control them, then the idea of unconditional love gives you a reminder of your own problems. It gives you a mirror to look in and see what shadows still haunt you, what pains are still in control of your life. It is not a command that you must still be a victim to the other person and their behaviour. But it is a way of finding your own healthy reactions to a changing world and relationships.

So unconditional love is not a moral issue. It is not about being ‘good’. It is a guide to help you begin to face up yourself when you start to feel you own someone, or try to control them through jealousy or through your own emotional pain, probably arising from childhood. It is a wonderful feeling to gradually drop those childhood urges and miseries away.

What happens if we do not blame somebody else for our own pains and jealousies, is that we begin to confront ourselves. We begin to own the pain as our own, and discover what a hold the pain or jealousy has on us. Like weeds, we can then begin the process of rooting them out of our life.

See:  Ages of Love.

A new relationship with everyday life

Self Observation

Observing your own ebb and flow of thoughts and feelings, your own habits and responses to things, is one of the most powerful of tools to use in transforming your life. This also leads to a fuller connection with your intuitive connection with your core.

Much of our behaviour is largely or wholly unconscious. Becoming aware of something can by itself produce a change. If you are not aware of how you act or respond, there is less likelihood of satisfying change.

Such observation can begin anywhere and should be continued until it becomes a habit. Once you learn it in connection with one thing the skill can be used in any other direction in your life or in your own behaviour.

But before you start, remember that some things you do are not comfortable to become aware of. Personal growth is not a constant delight. There are growing pains occasionally.

Remember also that self observation is not aimed at correcting wrong behaviour. There are not a set of right things to do. But there are ways you can discover of satisfying yourself more fully, and there are ways of responding and living that have the opposite effect to producing satisfaction and peace.

Another important thing to remember is that most of what we do is habitual. It takes no thought or effort to do it. Habits feel right because they have been done for so long. Even emotional responses are often habitual. So when you change you are going to confront a habit. Practising the new thing is necessary. Practice until the new thing is itself a habit and easy.

How Do You Do That?

When I was a child a nurse came to the school I attended and examined every child’s feet. I was one of the children who was told that I had flat feet, and myself along with others were shown how to use our feet in a different way. In fact we were shown how to be aware of the way in which we walked. I made a habit of this until it became second nature. What I learned over 50 years ago is still a part of the pleasure I experience today in walking.

Becoming aware of how you walk can be an easy and pleasurable way to start self observation. It seldom confronts you with any great emotional hurdles to cross, but it can produce a real change in the way you feel about an everyday part of your life.

Approach it slowly. To start with, choose a time when you can spend perhaps 20 or 30 minutes playing with the process of observing yourself walking. It might be best to start off indoors, or where you cannot be seen. Then be aware of every movement, every motivation, that goes into the process of walking. Take a step, but do it slowly watching each movement.

At first this will feel very awkward. It is natural to feel that, so do not be concerned. As you make your slow moves, observing how you place your foot on the ground, how your body feels as your balance shifts, and notice how the rest of the body moves in the process of taking a step. This is rather like doing something in slow motion, and of course it feels strange. In fact it is strange. But the point of it is to notice exactly what you are doing with your body, especially your legs and feet.

If you take time with this there is an extraordinary amount to learn about yourself. You can learn not simply how you are walking, but what from your past has gone into walking the way you do. what attitude or fear is involved. So questions to consider as you observe yourself at this point are things like how am I using my feet? Am I placing them flat on the ground, or am I using the heel toe movement? If I were watching these movements on video would it look as if I am using my body well, or are my feet flying out at angles wasting energy? If so, see what it feels like to walk with your toes pointing forward instead of out to the side. Place your heel on the ground first then roll forward and push off with your toes.

Whatever you notice in the way you walk, see if you can bring about a sense of greater ease, motivation and pleasure or well-being in what you are doing. Experiment in this by using your legs and feet slightly differently. Watch the way the rest of your body feels and improve that too, perhaps by a slightly different posture or way of moving. But remember that what is habitual, even if it is posturally damaging, feels right. So any improvement in walking may feel strange at first.

If you have worn high heels for any period of time, you may have lost the natural heel toe movement, and need to relearn it. Whatever it is you carry into the improved and more pleasurable sense of walking, practice this until you can walk at a normal rate or speed still maintaining that sense of pleasure and well-being.

Once you have reached that point use your self observation at times in your everyday walking, to see what feelings, what posture or stance, even what motivation you are expressing in the way you walk. For instance sometimes we walk as if life is a great burden. Other times we might walk with real energy or pleasure. There are frequently attitudes we unconsciously express in the way we walk, and thereby in what we are expressing of ourselves to other people. Take time to see if you can create a different attitude that allows you to walk with a greater sense of life and fullness.

Renovating Your Living Space

All of us live in a world largely of our own making. Considering that when you are asleep or knocked unconscious there is no world, no people, no body, no taste, no sound that you are aware of, then your consciousness, your self-awareness IS the whole world. Nothing exists outside of your awareness.

The television picture you watch on a screen is translated from signals the TV set is sensitive to. The TV changes these signals into pictures, colour and sound. The signals are not in themselves images, colour or sound. Similarly your eyes and ears, nose and tongue, along with your nerve endings in your fingers, receive ‘signals’ that are not in themselves, images, sounds, sensations or smells. As with the TV, the world you feel so sure you are seeing and experiencing, is one your brain has created in order to enable you to deal with survival.

Considering that you only experience a virtual reality of the external world created by your brain – and that is itself limited to a tiny fraction of what is actually surrounding you – you cannot take seriously your perceptions of the world or people. There are so many radiations, energies, and depth upon depth of texture in the cosmos and objects around us, that in effect we are almost blind and deaf. So you do not know much of what is actually going on in the world anyway. Your eye, as a lens produces an upside down image of your surroundings, and this is ‘corrected’ to help you move around more easily.

You Are the Creator

So it is true to say that you live in a world, in conceptions of yourself and your surroundings that are a self-created virtual reality.

Even if you cannot accept this completely, it still means that much of what you experience is self-created and therefore in some measure capable of being transformed by self observation and developing a new relationship with yourself. This can be done, not in one great leap, but step-by-step. Just as you learned to speak word by word, so you can transform your being one bit at a time.

So here are some possible feelings for self observation that can bring very big changes.

1) Notice what you are editing or blocking in your thoughts and feelings. Much of the time we have blocks set up to stop ourselves thinking or feelings things. Sometimes this is because our cultural training has told us that certain things are not good or right to think about. We may also have had personal experiences that we do not wish to consider again. Unfortunately this means that we often close down the flow of energy and creativity that we allow ourselves to express. So observing what you allow yourself to think and feel, what you edit, can produce a revolutionary change.

Because we block much of who we are because of social training about right and wrong, good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable, we have hugely diminished ourselves. Becoming aware of how we are holding ourselves back is a massive step forward.

2) Notice how often you blame events or other people for problems or difficulties. Blaming someone else or outside influences leads to a loss of power and initiative. It means you take no action yourself to change things. You might argue that it is really true someone else was at fault. Nevertheless, as a general rule, transformation comes from taking responsibility and not blaming.

3) Observe how you deal with other people. For instance do you truly recognise that the person you are dealing with is a completely different person to yourself, with their own unique desires, dreams and needs? These may in no way match your own. But through negotiation and communication you may find ways of achieving a mutually satisfying relationship. See if, through observation, you can begin to recognise the other person’s uniqueness, what they want and seek, and who they are.

Listening to Your Intuition

Intuition is one of the greatest of life skills you can use in living a life that is creative and expressive of your own relationship with the directives arising from your core self and from observations of everyday life.

Some of us feel we do not have any intuition, but in fact we all use intuition – often called wisdom or experience – more than we do reasoning or thinking about things. This is because we seldom take time in daily life to analyse situations. Instead we act on what we feel, or on the impulses arising from within that comes from past experience. So intuition frequently arises as a strong feeling, or what people sometimes call a hunch or gut feeling. But if we have not learned to know the difference between intuition and anxiety, or hunches and feelings arising from anger, or ingrained patterns of behaviour, we can easily act on prejudices or fears. So the ability to use intuition consciously and well needs some training and practice. In many older cultures some people were trained in this way. Their intuitive faculties were then tested to see if they could receive accurate information and guidance. See Intuition – Using It

Steps to Develop Intuition

Laura Day in her book Practical Intuition says there are seven steps to effective intuition.

Step One – Opening. Much of the time we are focussed on our physical impressions, and the sort of responses and memories associated with what we experience through our senses, and what we are involved in. This is a bit like running into a store to look for what we want and not finding it there and hurrying on. But if we ask the storekeeper if he has what we are looking for he can often find things that are not immediately on view.

We not only have a lot more memories and experiences than are immediately available to everyday thinking, but our mind at times reaches right beyond what we personally know.

Some years ago a friend of mine, Cliff, broke the neck of his guitar and couldn’t afford to get it mended because he was saving to get married, and the price at the local shop was high. I suggested he sit quietly for a while and imagine standing right in the center of a large round room, representing his mind, and say to himself that he was allowing all the doors of his mind to open, so he could access information that would solve his problem. When I saw him the next day he told me he sat and did what I suggested and nothing happened. Then he smiled and said, “But as soon as I gave up I remembered an old music shop near where I used to live. I knew this was the answer, so I drove there right away. I showed the owner the guitar and he said he could fix it for a fraction of the price asked at the other shop.”

Cliff created a situation in which he opened himself to a wider influx of memories or impressions than he usually allowed. There are many other methods of doing this than the one he used. See: Using Your Intuition; Arm-Circling Exercise; Seed Meditation.

Noticing.

Cliff took notice of what he received when he opened to his intuition. Also he tested it and found it to be correct. This is important because unless we take notice and observe what we receive in times of being open, we do not retain what arises. Testing it also helps to refine and develop the skill.

Pretending. Maybe this one could be called imagining or creativity. People with satisfying and productive lives take what resources they have and use them. They also try out new ways of using what they have. What you receive from your intuition is often of great value. It therefore needs to be used and built into your way of seeing things and living your life. Cliff is a good example again because what he saw immediately fired his imagination enough for him to go and test his information.

Trusting. This is a tricky one because until we have tested what we receive from our intuition we are not sure whether to trust it. Trust comes from learning to use this resource of intuitive insight and testing it enough times to develop trust. But often intuitive information may seem to lead you into untried directions, and so you might decide to pull back. But if you have reached trust, go beyond your usual boundaries and thereby discover new levels of yourself and your place in the world.

Reporting. In a sense, this should be linked with Noticing. When we have received something definite from our intuition we need to record it in a journal. This becomes an amazing resource. From it you can look back and check how correct or otherwise your intuition has been. You can also gain great strength from the wisdom already gained and the suggestions received about directions to take and work to do. So it is worth while to also note developments and observations connected with the original intuitive information and insights. See: Journalling.

Interpreting. Dreams and waking fantasies are powerful ways in which intuition presents itself. But in such cases the information may be expressed in symbols that need to be understood in everyday language. Symbols in dreams, fantasy or visions are like the icons on a computer desktop. Click the image and it connects with a mass of information or processes held deep in the computer. Similarly, approaching the image in the right way can open up a mass of information or feelings that were connected with it. See: Introduction to Exploring Dreams; Peer Dream Work; Stepping Into Your Dream.

Integrating.

To integrate what we have received intuitively means to live it, to let it penetrate into the way you naturally respond in your everyday life. That takes time, but by using your insights they gradually become habitual, just as learning to drive a car or bicycle becomes second nature after long practise.

See: Using Your Intuition; Intuition and Common Sense; Developing and Using Intuition; Using Your Intuition in Business; Using Intuition.

A creative relationship with your dreams

If certain things are seen clearly from the beginning, then you can understand your dreams in a practical and useful way.

Firstly, you as a person are a tiny spark of consciousness, a little bit of self awareness riding an incredibly ancient animal you call your body. Remember that your body has formed from cells and genetic information that has gradually developed over millions of years. It holds that information in itself unconsciously.

If you are unclear about that take time to recognise that as a personality you are almost totally unaware of what is taking place in your body right now. You are not aware as personal experience of the huge history of evolutionary changes your being has gone through in order to become you. You perhaps have little conscious insight into the massive background of social, religious and family influences that go together to enable you to function as an individual and a social entity. Your self consciousness may not include awareness of how your present personality was shaped out of those influences. Maybe you do not know what the major life lessons are that confront you, or what your innate genius and passions are.

In general you are barely awake to who you are! But that is not unusual, most of us are in the same boat. Only here and there does an individual wake up and shine with light, love and creativity.

If you can accept that you are barely aware of your body and all you carry within you, that is still only part of it. You also exist in the midst of an incredible universe, a universe that we know most intimately in the processes of nature in and on our planet Earth. And how much of that interrelationship that you have with this planet and the universe are you aware of?

I am not asking you about philosophical speculations or beautiful poetry of idealism. I am asking about your day to day relationship with all that is around you and of which you are an integral part. See Dreams

Is This Relevant to You?

If you think that is not a relevant question – not relevant that is to your daily life as a mother, worker, lover, student, business person – then stop for a moment and realise that without the universe you do not exist. You have no existence outside of it. You only exist as a totally embedded part of it. If you have no awareness of a life giving and sustaining relationship with it, aren’t you missing something?

Perhaps you are also missing an awareness of the intricate web of language, ideas, perceptions and drives that have meshed into what you are as a person. In some ways this is like owning a wonderful car or computer, and not knowing how it functions or how to use it well.

Remember that without the bacteria in your gut you will not adequately digest your food. Without the constant flow of food, water and air you will not exist. That flow depends not on farmers and industrialists, but on the intricate web of bacteria, soil organisms, plant and animal life on this planet. And all that depends on the energy pouring from the sun as it dies. Like a love affair in progress, the sun and the earth together have given birth to us.

Okay, if you have come this far, let us take the next step. Sleep!

Your tiny spark of self awareness, existing as it does in the midst of this huge area of living processes that we call the universe, Earth, your body, the language and culture you express through, regularly slips back into its primal level of existence that we call sleep. In sleep we become completely unconscious – or at least, most of us do. Maybe at most we remember an occasional dream. Some people don’t even capture that. Their sleep is a period of total unconsciousness.

But for some that is not the case. They remember their dreams. Perhaps they even carry awareness into the world of sleep. In recent times this awareness of what is usually an unconscious world has been called lucidity, and if the lucidity occurs within a dream we call it lucid dreaming.

What remembering a dream and lucidity does is to extend your self awareness beyond the usual limitations and boundaries of waking life, and allow you to become more aware of the biological, sociological, racial and universal background, or underpinning, of your existence.

Take time with this because it is about something amazing that we all share. In dreaming or becoming lucid you are experiencing something of the usually hidden world of your body, of your mind, of your whole biological past, and life in you that lies beyond the frontier of your personal awareness.

Let us define that a little more. See Lucid Dreaming

The Starting Point – Your Body

Our most obvious fact is that we have a body relating to the physical world. Our body’s most immediate needs are air, water and food. This links us with the biological processes of our planet. And this biological aspect of us is quite wonderful. To state it briefly, over millions of years simple life forms emerged. These gradually developed into more complex forms, and these learned to work together in groups, and then as multicellular organisms, with different cells doing different jobs. In our body today we still carry these tiny life forms, trillions of them that we call our cells. But beneath that level of our being is another strata, the atomic and subatomic processes.

Those incredible levels of activity and process are the platform or foundation upon which your personal awareness is built and exists. In one way or another you are relating to them all the time, and sometimes that relationship is so bad that ill health occurs. To be more aware of what your relationship is with that deeply unconscious world would be of great help in remaining healthy and creative.

Breakthrough

Experiments in which people were stopped from dreaming led to them becoming desperately mentally unstable in a very short time. With animals doing the same thing, and carrying on the experiment past that critical point, all the animals died – just by stopping dreaming!!!!

Existing as an apparently integral part of your body is the self awareness that you give your personal name to. You only exist as Sheila or Dave, or whatever your name is, because you are awake, because you have consciousness. Without that self awareness you have no self, no identity or personality. But strangely enough, this sense of self also has levels.

Helen Keller, who became blind and deaf when very small, says in her autobiography that until she learned the deaf and dumb language she had no sense of herself. She was aware, perhaps as an animal is aware, but with no self, no personal identity. See Helen Keller – and Animal Children.

Today this sense of self is often called the psyche. In the past it has been called soul. A simple definition of it might be that your sense of self, of existing as a distinct person, comes about because you have memories and experiences that are distinctly your own. You exist in a body that is distinctly your own. So there is an area of awareness that is separated from everyone else. But as already suggested, this area of personal awareness is largely unconscious of what it exists in – the body and the environment that gives rise to the body. Also, what we can gather from the life of Helen Keller and children raised by animals, is that awareness can exist without having a psyche or self awareness. But self awareness cannot exist without language. So personal memories and a distinct body are not enough to bring about self awareness. You need the organising principle of language. Language is like a computer program that transforms the functioning of the body/brain/computer.

You are a Multilevel Being With Multiple Possibilities

So what we are arriving at is a multilevel view of what we are as a whole.

1. The universe. We do not exist without it, so are an integral and un-separated part of it.
2. The fundamental subatomic processes underlying atoms, molecules and cells. Without them we have no molecules, no cells, no body.
3. The biological level consisting of molecules, cells and the organs and systems they give rise to.
4. Awareness or sentience. Without self awareness this is experienced as a universal level of consciousness. This ties in with subatomic particles, because the latest concepts of reality all include consciousness as fundamental to the universe. See Levels of Awareness.
5. Self awareness, with its personal memories and idiosyncrasies.

Coming back to dreams and remembering dreams, if you can agree that a memory of a dream is a glimpse into a world or worlds beyond the boundaries of your waking consciousness, then you have a clear but basic picture of their value and possibilities.

Prolonged studies and exploration suggest that dreams and lucid dreaming can allow you:

• Greater insight into the functioning and health of your body’s organs and cells, along with insights into what is necessary to maintain or improve health and well-being.
• Awareness of your forgotten journey from conception, through birth and childhood. This enables you the possibility of clearing any difficulties of development that occurred in that unfolding.
• Gradual awareness of the incredible ancestral journey you are the end product of.
• Recognition and entrance into the level of awareness or consciousness out of which your personal self awareness has emerged and is immersed in.
• Beginning the journey along what has been called in the past the spiritual path. In plain words this means the slow entrance of your personal awareness into what exists beyond the frontier of sleep. Taking the focussed light of self awareness into the darkness of the unconscious world of sleep and the body. If you take this path, at some point you will confront the fundamental consciousness of the universe and recognise your existence in it.

So here, if you have the will to use it, is a master class on dreams. There is no financial cost. But there is something you need to give. It is your honest and persistent attempt to delve into that pool of wonder that your dreams provide. See Dimensions of Human Experience; Lucidity – The New Frontier.

The Mystery of Your Body

That mysterious and wonderful process of life that brought you to birth occurred quite without your conscious effort or participation. You share that journey from conception to birth in kinship with most other life forms that exist with you on this earth. But unlike most of the other creatures you developed self-awareness and can look back on your origins. Nevertheless, even though you have attained some level of self-awareness, the process that brought you into being still functions within you to continue your existence. Without it you would immediately cease to be. In fact most of the vital processes within you still occur without any conscious effort or participation on your part. Your ego, your conscious self, is a tiny and almost insignificant part of the process. However, what you do, what you think and what you feel can enhance or interfere with that core process.

Your body is far more than you perhaps generally consider it to be. Recently the National Geographic Magazine has started the Genographic Project. This involves a mapping of the development and journeys of the earliest of human beings to ourselves in the present. This mapping can be done because our DNA holds in it a full record of how life and then the human animal, evolved from the beginning of life on this planet.

Your own body, in your blood and in your cells, holds that record. You have in you the collected experience of life on this planet. Geneticists think of this only in terms of physiological, social and psychological development. But some explorers of human consciousness such as Stanislav Grof have found that we each hold not just physical memory in terms of our DNA, but we also can achieve a personal awareness of our long past. (See The Symbol and the Reality).

My work, over the past thirty years has been in helping people discover for themselves the wealth of history and of healing capacity they hold within their own body. I know from personal experience, and from working with many people, that your bodymind has little know abilities to heal and to unfold a wealth of its long history and wisdom to you. (See National Geographic Genographic Project; Rituals of Beauty and The Secret Power.

This becomes easier to understand if you think of yourself as a seed that has grown. This is not an act of imagination. You were a seed – the joined sperm and ovum – that was planted in a fertile womb and grew. As such, just like any growing thing your development took you through different stages as the potential within yourself as the seed unfolded. The most extraordinary and delicate shifts and changes occurred, all of it spontaneous. This process carried on its work after your birth, taking you through the wonderful odyssey of being a baby, through childhood, youth, and then into adulthood and perhaps old age. Strangely few people I have met give much thought to this incredibly amazing process of life within them. Few attempt to discover how it works in them now, here, today. Perhaps they even try to dull its sensitivity, or manipulate it with drugs and medicines. But few stand before it in awe and say to it – “Teach me. Unfold me still further.”

One of the wonderful and mysterious things I have found through helping people to listen to and cooperate with this mysterious life process within them, is that although its potential unfolded into who you are today, it still has what is perhaps an infinite potential still waiting to unfold. But to do so it needs your conscious willingness to go along with the process.

Let us backtrack a little. You are one of the life-forms on this planet. As such you are an expression of life. But life can be anything from a virus to a tree or an elephant. Life can be almost anything, take any shape, exist in almost any way. Sometimes people say to me that one needs oxygen to live, to be alive. Well, that is true at the moment, but in the earliest stages of life on this planet, 3000 million years ago, organisms formed that did not need oxygen. As time passed an organism formed called stromatolites that started pouring out oxygen. This led to an oxygen rich atmosphere that killed out nearly all the life that had previously existed. The surviving organisms were the start of the creatures from which we evolved.

But the point I am making is that life can take any shape. It has an infinite potential, and that potential is what lies behind your own growth and existence. But do you suppose that as a human being you have exhausted that potential? Do you feel you have even attained your own best? Have you reached a full flowering and fruition in your life?

Even if you have, there is still more, and cooperating with the process of life within you, learning how to let it unfold more of who you are, allows you to move toward allowing that mystery that is Life to know itself in you. That is an extraordinary possibility. It has happened to many people all over the world. It can happen to you. Like any plant that grew from seed, life in you reaches toward its fulfillment in flowering. In your case part of your flowering has been to become conscious. Further opening means to become conscious of yourself as life, as the mystery behind all life forms, as the most amazingly creative force.

Meeting your essence in this way means you will find the resources to face and deal with the social and world changes that appear to be arising. We must find our own personal transformation along with a new relationship with the processes of life on this planet. The very nearest planetary life processes to you is your own body. If you cannot become aware of the profound processes within your own body, you have little hope of relating in a meaningful way with other life processes.

So here is a Master Class on opening this doorway your bodymind provides. I have nothing to sell you. There is no trick in my giving this knowledge away to you. It is not because I do not value it. In fact I value it so highly that I cannot put a price on it. I do smile as I offer it though, as I know that some of the most precious things in life cannot be seen for what they are. See Big Bang and God are the Same

As I say, there are no tricks. In one sense life is extraordinarily simple. You were a seed. You grew from your own innate process of life. You can continue this growth if you consciously open to life again.

Helping Others is Often A Great Way of Helping You

See Your Guru the Body.

The power of Imagination

One of the greatest of mental powers, and one often largely unused or overlooked is imagination.

Many people will claim they have little or no imagination, and yet are fantastically capable with it, but are using it unconsciously and often to their detriment.

Most of us have an experience of this at some time. We enter our home and see a stranger standing in the hall and our heart races and we feel scared. Then we realise suddenly that the stranger is a coat hanging in an unusual light.

Maybe it wasn’t a coat, but some other thing we mistook for something or someone and we experienced the racing heart or the surge of hope. The point is that we believed or imagined that what we saw was someone or something and it wasn’t. It illustrates that when we believe something strongly and with conviction our body acts upon it exactly as if it were true. In this sense there is no difference between conviction and fact; between imagination and reality.

Perhaps it is difficult to simply arouse that level of conviction from a cold start, but we can certainly find ways of getting our conviction level rising up the scale. And if you can, then use the power of imagination to improve your health, change self destructive energy into creative and satisfying behaviour, and create your own future.

Life energy is like electricity. The wires carrying the electrical supply to the house are not in themselves the electricity. The current is invisible, but it has great potential for good or harm. So we usually deal with it carefully, and have means of controlling it via insulation, fuses and switches.

When the electricity is wired into the house, its potential can be expressed in a huge variety of ways. It can manifest as heat, light, and power to move or do things, such as with a drill or vacuum cleaner. It can produce sound or images as with television, and can, via programs for the computer, manifest in almost magical ways, storing and retrieving huge amounts of information and manipulating it.

So the potential of electricity is limitless. A new apparatus connected to the supply will manifest a new function. But, like the psychobiological energy of our body, electricity is only latent potential until given an apparatus to express through.

The usefulness of this image of the house with its electricity is that you can use it as an analogy of energy in your life. Your potential can express as cellular activity, or physical movement. You can experience it as sexual drive and pleasure, as emotions, as sight, hearing, sensation, smell and taste. You can express it as thinking, and vocalising in speech or singing, or as the creation of a personal virtual reality, as you do in fantasy and dreams. As with electricity, your potential is probably limitless, and depends upon the state of body and mind you use to approach and express it.

However, all the time we are directing our energy, whether it is sexual or mental creativity, we are using what I have called imagination. To be clear about what I mean by that, supposing you have been invited to meet someone you really like, but you refuse because you feel inadequate, or believe you are looking too old, or no match for the person, then your imagination has been used against yourself. You have erected an imaginative picture of yourself that paints you as inadequate, or whatever the off-putting feeling was. So it is better to direct your imagination rather than be its victim. See Energy Sex Dreams.

Better still to remember that your life can never be summed up in one feeling or sense of yourself. So be suspicious whenever you label yourself or are labelled by anyone else. See The Wonder of Imagination

However, the great use of imagination, especially when it is spontaneous, is as a means of communicating with and staying in touch with ones core self. We see this so easily when we look at our dreams. Each night our creative imagination produces a new wonder of imagery and strangeness. Such imaginative scenes have not arisen from conscious intention. And if we accept that dreams show us something of our own inner world and life, then the images are forms of communication. A way to work with ones spontaneous imagination is given in The Arm Circling Exercise and Exploring Spontaneous Imagination.

In exploring your imagination in this ways you have to realise this allows the less focussed and conscious side of you to express. In a way it is like dreaming while awake, in that your body often acts out a theme or a mime. However, because you are witnessing this while awake, the theme can gradually emerge fully into words and direct insight. This needs help sometimes, and we need to think of the spontaneous fantasy or play as a communication in mime that you need to at and explore much as you would the game in which you guess a book name or play from a person acting out movements or facial expressions. Although this sounds a little like a poor form of communication, when become adept at it the process passes beyond just physical movement into subtle imagery and feelings that are often even more powerful communicative than words.

Reaching Beyond

I have recently been reading a book by Keith Reid called Nature’s Network. It is about the basics of ecology – (unfortunately out of print now, but available at Used Book Search). In the book Keith explains clearly how everything living is interwoven with every other living thing. Nothing can exist in isolation. Even the lowliest of microbes is necessary as part of the whole flow of living things. As explained in the section on A Creative Relationship with Your Dreams, our awareness as a person rests upon all the levels of nature that we see outside of us – from subatomic particles up to the air we breath, food we eat and water we drink. Within this scheme of things we have a personal awareness of our own memories and experiences, but the greatest area in which we exist lies beyond our personal memories and experiences.

In the section on The Core Experience on this website I examine this aspect of our total self quite thoroughly and call it the Core self. To quote a little of that:

That mysterious and wonderful process of life that brought you to birth occurred quite without your conscious effort or participation. You share that journey from conception to birth in kinship with all the other life forms that exist with you on this earth. But unlike most of the other creatures you developed self-awareness and can look back on your origins. Nevertheless, even though you have attained some level of self-awareness, the process that brought you into being still functions within you to continue your existence. Without it you would immediately cease to be. In fact most of the vital processes within you still occur without any conscious effort or participation on your part. Your ego, your conscious self, is a tiny and almost insignificant part of the process. However, what you do, what you think and what you feel can enhance or interfere with that core process.

The important point being made is that although this core of life process within us is unconscious in a general way, it is still accessible to us if we approach it in the right way. Of course, this is not a new idea arrived at in our times. It is so important and universal that cultures in all periods explained it in their own way as sacred information. At times it was so revered that it was often a subject of worship or of religious belief, and has been given a multitude of names. Many ways of meeting it and being healed or guided through a fuller relationship with it have also been described by these different beliefs and cultures. So all I wish to do here is to remind you that in meeting the changes that you and I will be involved in during the coming years, remember you are not alone in the universe or on this earth. No matter what difficulties you face, when you get to the end of your own resources, reach sincerely into the larger realm of life and consciousness. It doesn’t matter whether you call that MORE of yourself the Core, the unconscious, God, Spirit, the Creator, Life. What matters is that your passions and need, your love and struggle to meet what is in front of you transcend your own limitations. What matters is that you draw into your life and action the power of that wider wisdom, power and love of which you are an integral part. That also means other human beings who are struggling alongside you. Be of mutual support. We are all a part of the web of life.

See: Active Imagination – The Oracle Within; The Seed Meditation; Meeting Your Inner Child and Birth; The Power of Prayer; Probing the Power of Prayer

Spreading Your Wings

There is an old saying that life sleeps in the minerals, dreams in the plants, wakes in the animals, and knows itself in man.

Certainly we have arrived at self awareness, but few of us know ourselves as Life. Mostly we are sure our consciousness is inextricably linked, chained, welded onto our body. This is not a universal view. Many other cultural viewpoints are very different, but the Western rational mind or worldview is largely one of the body being the source of and container of personal awareness. From that point of view, at the death of the body the awareness we call self blinks out like a guttering candle. However, this is not how thousands of people worldwide who have met a near death experience see it. (See I Died – But I’m Alive; The Near Birth Experience; An Amazing Near Death Experience; Out Of Body Experience).

From their experiences they know that consciousness exists without a living body. They know that they have a ‘winged mind’ that can enter into realms of experience unknown though our physical senses. They know that while our body has been a sort of mother and father to our personal awareness, we are not limited to life in the body. The human possibility is to grow beyond the limitations of the senses and gradually become inhabitants of dimensions beyond the narrow three dimensional world we grew up in.

To put it another way, unless we gradually penetrate the realms of consciousness lying beyond the senses, our race will be trapped in its own home town.

Start reaching beyond the frontier that is sleep. Even a remembered dream is a step beyond the boundaries of the physical senses. Reach beyond your own limitations. Just as you intend to stretch an arm when you reach out to open a door or touch someone, intend to reach out your imperishable body of mind and touch a friend, or stretch to receive knowledge beyond what you have read or seen with your eyes. Intend to fly with the winged mind.

Being with Someone You Love You

Being in the company of someone who loves or cares for us is one of the greatest blessing life offers. To receive love is to receive the greatest medicine and healing. It doesn’t matter if you do not accept the New Testament as a historical account of a man called Jesus, the story of Christ healing others by touching them or being with them is an illustration of the power of love to change a person’s life and body.

Any relationship you are in, whether one of close intimacy, or one in which you deal with someone in passing through your work place, calls on you for love and understanding in some measure. And don’t think of this as something you give as a sort of charity to another person or creature. It is nothing of the kind. To give love is to experience love. To experience love is to be healed, moment by moment.

But sometimes the giving is hard. There are shadows in us that block the light, rocks that stop the flow. And so the giving of love and the receiving of love challenge us to deal with our shadows and bend our back to shift the rocks.

Yes, we all have shadows. Perhaps there was a time when someone you depended upon or trusted hurt or betrayed you. Those things hurt deep down. We recoil and things happen inside us that sometimes we are not fully aware of.

My story is that my mother did things to me that led me to pull back from her and sever any loving or trusting connection with her. I was only five at the time, but strong willed. Unfortunately for me, in severing any emotional connection with my mother, I cut the trust I had for any woman, and suffered years of being unable to get really close in a loving relationship. I was married, but not truly partnered, being what I called independent.

Of course that was a sort of lie. It really meant that I was scared of really loving in case I got hurt again – and when you are little, hurt is devastating. How much better it would have been to forgive my mother and express love. That would have wiped out all those years of living in shadows.

So learning to love is not a charitable giving of something to another person. It is a courageous facing of oneself in claiming the most wonderful gift you have. It takes guts to love. You have to become a full woman or a full man – and that doesn’t mean a macho strongman or a extreme feminist. It means you become a whole person and can meet other people face to face, body to body, love to love.

The standard to measure oneself by is to ask yourself if you can love unconditionally. And that simply means that you love the person for who they are and not for what you can get or need to get from them. It means accepting them as they are, and not forever wanting them to be someone or something different. It means being able to let go of them if they wish to let go of a close relationship with you. And that does not mean disinterest. Someone you love forever has a link with you, and you with them, despite where they go or who they go with. Lastly, unconditional love means we never own the person we love.

But of course we are not perfect human being. So unconditional love does not come easily. Also it does not mean complete acceptance of the crazy or hurtful things people do, or that you yourself do.

That may sound like a contradiction, but unconditional love is being presented here as a guide to your own ability to experience and give love. It is a handy guide, not an absolute measure.

For instance, if the person you love turns to another person and gives them more attention and time than they give to you, and this leads to you being deeply hurt and trying to hurt them, or to pester and try to control them, then the idea of unconditional love gives you a reminder of your own problems. It gives you a mirror to look in and see what shadows still haunt you, what pains are still in control of your life. It is not a command that you must still be a victim to the other person and their behaviour. But it is a way of finding your own healthy reactions to a changing world and relationships.

So unconditional love is not a moral issue. It is not about being ‘good’. It is a guide to help you begin to face up yourself when you start to feel you own someone, or try to control them through jealousy or through your own emotional pain, probably arising from childhood. It is a wonderful feeling to gradually drop those childhood urges and miseries away.

What happens if we do not blame somebody else for our own pains and jealousies, is that we begin to confront ourselves. We begin to own the pain as our own, and discover what a hold the pain or jealousy has on us. Like weeds, we can then begin the process of rooting them out of our life.

See: Unconditional Love; Social Priorities; Healing Social Relationships; Enrich Your Relationship; Healing Relationships Through Primal Awareness; Ages of Love.

Parents

Parents provide the environment in which we make the long and often difficult journey toward emotional and physical independence. During those early years the most fundamental lessons of our life are learned. As a child we have a desperately felt need to be wanted, to have emotional and physical shelter in which we can survive, and to be given love and attention.

Being a parent, especially if you are the mother, is one of the most demanding, fulfilling, challenging and rewarding experiences any of us can meet. Unfortunately, northern European and American attitudes to parenthood have moved into a strange artificial condition for many people. Yet being parents is one of the most fundamental expressions of being alive. It extends and nurtures life. It is a doorway through which the future emerges. And it can also be a way of exploring one of the greatest mysteries of life – the emergence of a conscious personality from a tiny mammalian life form.

As explained elsewhere, the personality of a child is not innate in the physical body. Left alone without being cared for or spoken to, no personality would spontaneously bloom in the body of the child. (See Animal Children). Any personality that does develop is an amazing weaving of parental and social relationships, interlaced with the quality and hereditary traits carried in the body. Nature and nurture work together within the framework of infinite possibilities. (See The Nature Nurture Debate).

Parenting is like a work of art, and the canvas you work with, while not a complete blank has an incredible range of possibilities. As can been seen from studies of poor parenting, and nurturing parenting, you can raise a stunted criminal personality, or a gifted radiant person. Some parts of the art need much work, that involves some pain and struggle. But great art is never done without a full engagement of the artist. So bring to your creation all the skills you have. Use your wisdom and discernment. Do not let failures turn you from creating what can be a great painting.

Being a Parent is a Spiritual Path

But looking at parenting from the light of personal transformation, being a parent is a spiritual path.

Strangely I have never seen this mentioned in books on mysticism, yoga or the inner life. Nevertheless parenthood has all the disciplines of great spiritual endeavour. (See definition of the word spiritual). In the incredibly intimate relationship between mother and baby, or parents and baby, you meet the mystery of LIFE face to face. In various spiritual disciplines or belief systems this is stated in a variety of ways. In Christianity it appears as, “Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.” In other words you are dealing with an expression of the divine in dealing with your child. In helping your child to discover its own depths and potential, you are helping Life to discover itself.

Perhaps the greatest preparation for this approach to parenthood is for you to have opened your life to the influence of your own Core or Spiritual influence. This amounts to an attempt to live your life with fuller awareness of how who you are and what you do interacts with the depths and heights of life around you, within you, and beyond your present knowledge. See The Core Experience.

Love is a Strange Word

Love is a word that is often used in all sorts of crazy ways in songs and in general use. But love is at the base of our existence in a very obvious way. It is at the very foundation of being a parent. The physical foundation of parenthood is the moment the sperm and ovum meet. The base of your own physical existence is the coming together of the sperm and ovum that formed your body.

That moment when the sperm and ovum meet is a mysterious and magical moment of love. When the two different tiny beings meet they give up their separate lives completely and totally merge to form a new entity. That total dying to what they were is an act of love that underlies every person alive. That act of love is fundamental to life on earth. It is something few of us can live up to or even get near to. Our own acts of love are so self centered and withholding in comparison. But this level of love is how Life works. It gives itself totally.

The mystery that is behind the phenomena of the universe is seen to give itself totally when it loves. This is a fact of nature. Life feeds life. The sun is dying as it pours its energy into mother earth. And mother earth surrenders her mineral wealth to her children, the plants, trees and creatures that the sun energy, and the earth have brought forth. Parenthood is a pattern throughout the universe. Your own journey into parenthood links you with this cosmic mystery, and that’s why it is a spiritual path. See – Woman – The Greatest Love Story in the World.

As parents we do not simply help create a body for a being who has never existed before. We are a doorway for Life to enter on another stage of its eternal journey into discovering its own wonder and place in the scheme of things. If we are open to it, we may consciously take part in this. My own experience of this was when I dreamt that a being wanted to enter into my wife. It asked me to have sex with my wife to form a body for it. We did this and I then dreamt my wife was pregnant with a son. See Knowing the Baby Before it is Born .

There is a mass of wonderful information on the page Your Baby and its Birth.

 

Here are some useful links – Dad Cafe – For Dads New To Fatherhood

These books are worth looking at if you are a reader.

How to talk so kids will listen By Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. Raising Cain by Dan Kindlon and others. Magical Parent, Magical Child by Michael Mendizza and others.

Spiritual –

Best understood if we approach it using the old definitions of human nature as being a body, soul and spirit. It can then be seen in context. In this sense the body is a living process of change that is born, matures and dies. It is subject to time and the physical limitations of space.

The soul is the experience of personal awareness and personal memories. Rudolph Steiner points out that while the body feeds on physical substance such as food and water, the soul feeds on the experiences gathered via the body. In this way it learns, and we are referring to the soul when we say something like, “Through that experience I learned something.” The ‘I’ being the soul.

The spirit is the polar opposite of the body. It is not born and does not die. It is your fundamental core beyond the limitations of time and space, with no beginning or end. It is probably the same as the core of the universe we exist as an integral part of. Just as our physical universe – according to the big bang theory – emerged from a condition prior to the existence of time and space, so the human being emerges from and is rooted in that same mystery.

I believe that the spirit can be seen as all the things we have never been able to define or understand about ourselves. For instance what are you? And do not come up with the time worn cliches, “I am a human being” or I am a woman, a man, a husband wife or mother, a worker of a director or my firm! They all are missing the point of what you are. We only give fragments of definition.

Also what is consciousness or life? Nobody, even the biologist as psychologist have been able to really say what it is. Yet consciousness and life are expressions of our spirit, which are therefore beyond definition.

We cannot put a form or colour on it, as it is formless and beyond our usual terms of thought, being being time and space.

So taking the ‘spiritual’ path would mean opening your personal ‘soul’ or self to the influence of the timeless that gave rise to your present life. See: The Core Experience.

Perhaps I can explain that through a conversation I witnessed. A man said to a woman he was confronting, “Religion! That’s surely a direction for failures and people who can’t really cope with facing reality?”

And the woman he is accusing of this inability to face reality said, “You poor man! Is your mind or awareness so tiny that you have never realised the forces and processes of your own body and mind are beyond anything you understand? Can’t you see that your very existence is brought about by things so far beyond your knowledge that it is only a statement of your impoverishment to suggest an awareness of God is an expression of some sort of smallness and failure? Have you never understood that? Have you not seen that religion is not only an acknowledgement of what we fail to understand and yet depend upon, but it is also an opening to it, a willingness to relate to it? It can also be something far more even than that. It can be an active loving relationship with what gives you life. And such love is an exchange, a sharing, a way of merging one with another.

Imagine that; a glorious love affair with the very spirit of life! A love affair with the invisible and forever indefinable. Is that something you are afraid of?”