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Archive for the ‘The Science of Kundalini’

What do the “awakened” ones do?

December 13, 2007 By: Sahiti Bharadwaj Category: The Science of Kundalini

(this is just my attempt to answer the question logically. Again, my definition of “logic” may differ from yours :o))

 

 

Suppose there is a campus with a high boundary walls on all sides, where unhealthy ppl live all their life. Every person there has been going to the hospitals taking medication, living on pills which provide temporary relief all their life. The toxic waste after digestion has to be removed thru medication/tubes…etc Imagine that almost all of their normal physical functions are suspended. They are living but on machines and the whole day is spent thus…just being physically alive. The inmate doesnt know life otherwise and that is how life is for them. They get up in the morning and first thought would be “I have to insert tube for urination”. “Where are my morning pills” …Can i get in time to the hospital queue get the respiratory cylinder changed, will my BP increase more if i hasten….so on and so forth…

 

Now, tell a person living there that there are perfectly healthy humans living outside the campus, who need no medication at all!!!! They need not think at all about natural activities of the body like breathing, sweating, BP, sleep, urination etc…they are all natural and normal.  The inmates may exclaim that such healthy ppl have almost all the day to do whatever they like, what do they exactly do? Isnt that life boring? Without any excitement?? without anything to DO?!

 

The ppl living outside can only be amused at the inmates limited knowledge.

 

In the above example we are talking about physical health. We can extend the same a little further and say that there is sth call emotional health / spiritual health.  The concept of healthy soul living in a healthy body, the way our ancient rishis saw it! On their scale of spirituality, we are all hopelessly unhealthy, dependent on “external” happiness, the way physicall unheatlhy ppl depend on external respiration..etc

 

If one does the pranayama, eats as stipulated, does yoga, controls his desires,…etc…he will be a heatlhy body-mind-soul..at his 100% best. A kundalini awakened soul, a sthita pragna who lives his full life (100 yrs) and his full potential, discovering the “internal fountain of happiness”

 

But to a ordinary man, that predicament may seem quite useless and boring. Who wants to live 100 yrs? who wants to be always healthy? Most of the diabetics would prefer being diabetic, eating sweets/or whatever they like and taking insulin, than changing food habits altogether where they wont be diabetic(need medication) any more! It is written “cigarette smoking is injurious to health”, yet ppl smoke. Ppl know booze is unhealthly, yet they do (social driking doesnt kill dear!)It is the same every where. Look around and you would see ample examples. The point is, we prefer to die early having “pleasure” bcos we dont know what to do with life! Rather we think that the fleeting pleasure we feel is itself the purpose of life! We bluntly refuse to think beyond!

 

Here we are the inmates of a place called earth with bounderies of 5 senses, happy taking in pills (things that give feeling of pleasure) that give temporary respite or a feeling of well being. We know that the respite is only fleeting and the sense of loss/confusion/dissatisfaction would eventually return. It is only a matter of time! You buy a luxurious car, happy for 1 yr….wonderfull villa…happy for may be 4-5 yrs…but every “happiness” comes with a expiry tag. And there is a race to get more of it before the previous one expires..and the race is what we call life!!!

 

Now, tell this bunch of ppl that there is possibility of being always happy and always satisfied and they would be puzzled! If i am always happy and always satisfied..what am i supposed to do with the whole life? Just sit giving a beatific smile all my life with a halo around my head? That would almost look senile… only mad ppl are always happy and always smiliing! They are already/always happy and dont have to do anything, no compulsive drive???? what do they actually DO then???

 

I/We can only guess. Just like the inmate from the above imaginary campus who cannot imagine what a fully healthy person would do all through the day and “whatelse” other than physcial relief and “health” would anybody want !

 

My guess is that they very much do what we do, externally! But “how” they do differs. From outside, from afar, they look and behave the same, like any of us. But that should not fool us about their state of mind and their capability. They would know the future, but that doesnt mean they should run around demonstrating, telling ppl,”Hey! You know, you are going to die next week” “Hey I know the lottery number thats going to get the bumper prize” etc.

 

Basically such siddhis or capabilities come only to ppl who have such self-control and sense of responsibility. Then, what do they use it for?  It could be used to help fellow seekers find “truth” about life that they have themselves found. It could be used to help such seekers overcome any obstacles on the path.

 

How does such a person make any difference to you? Well, he wouldnt if you seek “material” posessions. But if you are a seeker of “Truth” yourself, the company of such a person is all u may ask for!!

 

 

My Musings

 ”The Truth” as per me is knowing who we really are. The Truth about the creation and Creator. Scriptures say that this world is “Maya”. Maya is misinterpreted as illusion. But it is not. It is not even reality. It is some where in between….a reality caused by illusion!!! And hence difficult to dispell!!

This world is likened to a dream. We live in our dreams too…we aspire, we love, we hate, we fear, we cry and even die…and even fear death in dream..!

Once we wake up, soaked in sweat and all tensed up, we are like “Good Heavens! That was a dream! I almost thought I was dead!!” and you are happy( though you died in the dream, you are happy! Thats bcos you realized it wasnt “YOU” ! But you very much experienced death in first person till a moment ago!!!)

 

Also you wont develop a grudge on someone who caused you some harm in the dream. You dont say, let me sleep again, dream and take revenge!!! You have no bitterness towards that person that you had in the dream once you wakeup !

 

Now let us suppose group dreaming is possible. ie different persons can sleep, meet in dreams and live life. The catch is that only those who are aware of the fact that it is a dream are in control of the dream! Others are just living it for “real”.

 

Imagine, then one fine day, you wake up and you are amused at the whole dream that you were so much absorbed into. Only you in the whole group are aware that it is actually dream-life, not “real”. Then what do you do When you meet someone dying in the dream? What do u do when you meet a dear friend in need, all drepressed, needy and desparate?

 

a) As you alone are aware that it is dream and in control of your “dream”, you can dream that the person got whatever he wanted and is happy..and Lo! It would be so!!!   But this is only temporary solution. If that hopeless person lands in a hopeless situation again, he is no better!!!

 

b) As you alone are aware that it is dream, instead of taking control of the dream you say to your friend “You Idiot! Dont cry! Just Wake up! ” and try to wake that person up. This would be a permanat solution..right?

 

It is said that once we wake up to “the supreme reality” our condition would be the same!

 

But the problem is that we are in the dream. And it is impossible to know it is a dream in the dream! There has to be some other state, say, “wakeful” state, to know you were asleep and it was a dream!!! The catch being, we cant imagine what is “wakeful” in sleep/dream!!!

 

so we dont know where it leaves us, which state we would be in, if we realize that our “reality” is a dream! And hence we refuse to wakeup!

 

Hey after penning down these musings, the answer to the Q "What do the awakened ones do" seems to be so simple. "They wakeup others" J

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Kundalini awakening series…the basics

November 02, 2007 By: Sahiti Bharadwaj Category: The Science of Kundalini

When we want to learn a subject, any science, we first need to know the language of that particular science, I mean, the terms, definitions or so called "jargon".  There is no way someone can convince anyone of the Newtons laws, or the gravitational laws, objectively and scientifically if one refuses to understand "Force", "inertia" "velocity" and "acceleration". For the uneducated layman, who does not know/understand these terms, the laws can only be explained by general observations, which may make him believe them as "some observed phenomenon" and hence subjective and some absolute truth or "the law" per se, as known/appreciated by the scientist.

 

Similarly, anyone who even wants to scratch the surface of the Meta physics or "super" science called Kundalini, there are a few basics and few terms to be known. I have already written about them in few of my previous post. However I shall touch upon them for the sake of continuity/revision.

 

The ancient rishis of the yore discovered that breath is the "key" to EVERYTHING. (I cannot substantiate this claim right now, as it is not mine. I cannot rubbish it bcos I am not an expert in the subject "Breath". For now, I take the stmt it on it's face value and I keep evaluating it!)

Interested persons can click on the category "science" and read in chronological order to see the previous series on breath and the ancient science. For one who has not got much time, let me summarize J

 

Learning practically makes one absorb new ideas/concepts easier and faster. So lets try that! Hold your breath for 60 secs Now try to observe your thoughts . Are there any, in the first place? J None, isn't it? Surprising, but yes, holding your breath takes you to the "thoughtless" state instantly! Generally the streams of thoughts going on in our mind are multiple and it needs at least some practice to be able to ignore them and a lot of practice to be in a “thoughtless” state. When you hold your breath, you need effort to think, than effort to be thoughtless! Yes, that is the magic of “breath"!

 

The moment you hold your breath, the thoughts vanish! So, what are the thoughts feeding on? What is the origin of the thoughts? Whether breath is the source of "thought" or whether "thought" feeds/thrives on breath or whatever (read note1) I do not wish to debate that here. But the cause ' effect relation between breath ' thought is established bcos of this experiment and observation.

 

The moment you control your breath, you can control your thoughts. Controlling emotion through breath is better known these days. All of us know that we take short and rapid breath when we are angry/tense and long deep breath when we are happy/relaxed. So what do the physiologists suggest these days to ease anxiety? Take long deep breaths to relax .to put it the other way, breathe like a happy/relaxed person and eventually you would become so! 

 

Ready for one more observation? Hold your thumb and index finger across both ur nostrils, feeling the breath. What do u observe? That you breathe more hot air though one nostril, than the other? Yes, that's perfectly fine. But no, that's not all. Remember the norstril thru which u r breathing hot air and observe again after one h half hr approximately. Now it would be the other nostril.. J I was surprised when I observed this first. This was new info for me then that we breathe hot air thru one nostril and cold air thru the other and that these breaths swap the nostrils during the course of the day!!!!

 

So the lessons of the day:

 

  1. Breath is the key.
    1. Jargon: Breath is called "Prana" which means life. A person may survive without food/water/sleep, but cannot survive for long (a person may survive for a max of few mins, depending on the usage of lung capacity, which is a matter of practice and can be increased thru "Pranayama". Playing sports also results in the same in the long run wrt lung capacity)

 

  1. The hot and cold breaths aka Solar and lunar breaths
    1. Jargon: Ida and Pingala. Breath predominantly in the left nostril is described as cool, and sometimes referred to as feminine. The flow of Prana on the left is the lunar, and is called Ida. Breath flowing predominantly in the right nostril is described as hot, and sometimes referred to as masculine. The flow of Prana on the right is the solar, and is called Pingala.

 

  1. Nostril dominance shifts: Usually we believe that we are breathing through both nostrils, although breath is normally dominant in one or the other. The dominance shifts from time to time during the day. For one with a well balanced body and mind, that shift of nostril dominance happens approximately once in ninety minutes. For other people, the shift may be much different. Sometimes one can be so off balance that one nostril remains dominant, which is a symptom of some physical, mental, or emotional difficulties.

 

More About the jargon, Nadis ' Prana - chakras in the next post

 

NOTE 1: My take is that the thoughts "feed" on breath. To oversimplify what am trying to say,  they are related the way sweet and ants are. You see a sweet with ants all over. Someone comes and askes "hey, why are there so many ants here?" and you say "It's bcos of the sweet" The origin of ants is not the sweet but that's surely the reason for the ants being there. Similarly, the origin of the thoughts is not in the breath, but "thoughts" are there "feeding" on breath.  So u "hold" the breath and thoughts vanish. thats my, a laymans, metaphor! :-)

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