Topic: Divinity and consciousness: the differences
w.c.
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Should be an interesting Monday for you.
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mateusz
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W.C., I totally support your decision. I'd like to express my feelings about it, but not here, since it's not a space for it - what is your email address?
Reading one of your posts I remembered an insight I had some time ago about the difference between Christianity and non-duality (although I didn't develop it in my mind thoroughly). St. Paul writes that whoever unites (the Greek word he uses is more like "to join to things together", as far as I recall) with the Lord is one spirit with him. All the other mystics say that we have to become one with God or become God. I realized, however, that non-dual masters, when they speak precisely, say that we cannot become one with the Mind or even become the Mind, for the simply reason that we ALREADY ALWAYS ARE THE MIND - we only "realize our divinity". In Zen or Dzogchen the very attempt to BECOME the Mind is an obstacle to the final state of realization. This made me think that either St. John of the Cross, saying that the soul becomes God doesn't understand what he experienced, or he really "became" something he wasn't before, and he didn't simply realize the priorily existing union. Btw, the union that already is there and can be realized, is the "first kind of union", that with God sustaining everything in existence. But Buddhists and Wilber when dealing with Christianity tend to forget about their "always already enlightened" stuff and say that we have to "become one with". There is no becoming - it's enough to read "Heart Sutra" - "there is no liberation... there is no achieving anything, and there is nothing to achieve" (quoting from memory). So much for "realizing our divinity".
And I fully agree with what you describe as an experience of the Holy Spirit. The Otherness, that's the one thing, and it is simply like God is drawing you out from non-duality and even kinda "creates and sustains" your and His otherness/duality in the experience, which reminds me of "create a pure heart in me" from a Psalm. So the Otherness, which is ontological but isn't felt in the luminosity of mind's essence, is restored in the experience (in my case, also "the inner-ness" is restored, which is funny, because I thought that the absence of inner/outer distinction was gonna last and deepen. Phil, you write than in your case the inner-ness disappeared, but probably it's a still further and deeper stage).
The other thing you captured pretty well, W.C., is the feeling that it is not "natural" what happens to the soul. I have a very powerful experience and conviction that it is given (the virtue, especially, and love towards people) and it doesn't come from me. I feel that the very moment the grace is withdrawn I end up with all my weaknesses and bad habits again. There's something like a restoration of primal innocence of the image, but in my experience it is all given and I don't feel like I found my innate goodness and charity. I had found to a certain degree my inner luminosity, awareness, boundlessness, relaxed state and a kind of bond and compassion and love to others, but this is not the same, at least doesn't feel like it. So I agree with you, W.C., that it is the experience of grace that convinces us ultimately that it doesn't come from our being, that it is given, even if it comes from within and flows out in all directions.
And the heart too. I feel recently that other chakras, like 6 or 2 are operating and being purified by the energy of the Spirit, but the heart is a "center of operation" and the heart expands and enlarges to receive God's activity. There is also a certain interchange between the heart and the 6th chakra. For example when I close my eyes I see either green or indigo coloured shapes. I thought that the colour I saw was "violet" indicating 7th chakra, but I just checked in the wikipedia for "indigo" and this is the color I see, so I'm sure 6th chakra is activated along with the heart. So this is interesting that it may mean that the metaphysical awareness is somehow being integrated with the heart's love, or whatever. I already wrote somewhere here that along my spiritual path I felt the heart was active, even in metaphysical states of awareness - probably it means that God was sustaining our relation, saving me from going astray in non-dual direction, which I'm very grateful for.
Of course, I understand that New Ager won't be convinced by it. I shared they ideas about innate divinity and I know it's almost impervious. Even if a thought occurred to me that I might be wrong, I managed to keep out of the mainstream of my reflection in very proficient and skillful ways. The "faith" in non-duality can be very strong, fundamentalist and proselytizing, so I needed a few years to be liberated from it. And I don't think that it would happened if God didn't show me his Spirit. My problem was that if I didn't put my finger into his wounds, I wouldn't believe...
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Yes, delightful Monday! Very little sleep last night and another flight delay today. But, hey, God was there.
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w.c., this was extraordinarily insightful:
quote:It occurs to me that this depth of the will, which most often operates subconsciously (see Benjamin Libet's studies), intimates the nature of the creature with the Creator, in that the will's relational nature is never fully realized as would be the case for the alleged full realization of cosmic awareness in the enlightened person. Whereas cosmic awareness saturates the third eye chakra, the will, usually located in the heart in devotional terms, opens to the mystery of being upheld by God beyond our own powers. And so the elightened state of consciousness, depending upon the degree of heart opening, appears complete to itself (lacking humility, as among Buddhist "crazy wisdom?" adepts and so many half-baked gurus), even though the will continues to function beneath conscious awareness in as much as the enligthened person is still functioning at the privilage of his or her created organism in so many subtle physical and energetic ways.
mateusz, your elaboration was very clarifying, too.
This has become an extraordinary thread, complete with Wayne's detractions, which actually helped to clarify a few things as well (not that the responses seemed to be assimilated, however).
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BTW, the exchanges with Wayne clearly show that what is at stake with heresies is the integrity of the relationship between the human and God. That is, ultimately, what doctrines safeguard, and many were developed in response to heresies. It's a typical straw-man argument to present doctrinal teaching as imposing constraints on intellectual life, but that's not at all what they're about. Every one of them can be qualified in terms of addressing the relationship between creatures and God, and the most minimal clarification is that these are two orders of being. The link below is to a thread that addresses precisely this issue: - http://shalomplace.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=000240
[ January 26, 2009, 03:49 PM: Message edited by: Phil ]
-------------------- "The Light shines on in darkness . . ." - John 1: 3 - Posts: 7539 | From: Wichita, KS | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Originally posted by mateusz: So maybe we could talk about the limitations of our choice and will, how this affects our spiritual life.
If you discuss this topic with atheists many will tell you that if there is an all-knowing God, then free-will does not exist... they want you to believe that if God can foresee the action you will take in the future, then this "fore-knowing" somehow removes your free-will "because you now have no choice but to step into it"... I, of course, think this is nonsense, but many atheists want to make this argument...
Do you think free-will distinctions between humans and God could be qualified somewhat according to Time/Eternity notions? IOW, God is present to all times and places, in every individual and every creature, by virtue of being the heart of Eternity Himself. And so His seeing all possibilities isn't necessarily predetermination. Not that it would make a bit of difference to most atheists. OTOH, did you see Anthony Flew's book - the one written since he left the atheist camp? I haven't read it yet, but it's taking some nasty hits on Amazon from apparent former atheist comrades.
Mateusz and Caneman:
One way I notice this difference between relative goodness within my heart and God's supernatural goodness is how, when the Holy Spirit touches, I sometimes withdraw after a few minutes, or even a few seconds. I withdraw because my own goodness is really indequate. There is a sense of saying to God, "Comfort, yes, but radical transformation, yikes!" And His goodness isn't just love as comfort, or merely the healing of wounds, but an alteration of basic character. And from this, over maybe the past two year or so, is a grief, a sense of possibly not letting Him fully have His way with me. Very sad, actually. But there's some hope in feeling the sadness.
Phil:
That's really interesting about the proper characterization of heresy. Not the popular spin, for sure!
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w.c.
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To continue a thought which Mateusz gave reflection to . . . . .
As the third eye becomes saturated with cosmic luminosity, might it be possible for the heart to somewhat atrophy, or become occluded? IOW, the deeper sense of creatureliness which the heart uniquely bestows via adoration might be lost when the upper chakras are activated so stronly, and, one might say, prematurely. I think this distinction between will and awareness, which either Phil or Mateusz first noted, is really crucial for understanding these things. Might the loss of self, or the loss of the ability to consciously self-reflect, be, in part, this saturation of cosmic awareness, where it can no longer see its source, since the source is a relational dynamic in the heart? And since the heart is overshadowed with siddhis, etc . . . . or overwhelmed with nondual richness, could the heart's greatest power of adoration be diminished? I can sort of see where the heart diminishes in importance as the upper chakras become the main focus of attention, or embody most of the attention of the soul.
posted
And so the fullness of the will is even beyond the automated bodily processes. Thinking of how little control even the enlightened guru has over his body, not being able to prevent its deterioration (in spite of slowing heart beat, generation of heat, conservation of breath/energy etc.), we can wonder about this depth of the will. Even from a bodily point-of-view, the will is not ours; it is, in a sense, the faculty least under conscious control. Our bodies, as expressions of subconscious will, are rightly considered temples of the Holy Spirit in as much as the Holy Spirit is the true home and Master of the will seated in the heart of the body which we don't create and which brings us to death. We can undergo enlightenment without being anointed by the Holy Spirit, as the mind is no ultimate help in understanding the will or disposing it to its Source.
posted
And of course the freedom of the will is rooted in conscience itself, which recognizes the will's imperfection, as well as its hidden depths, outside of the full transforming affects of grace. Libet's studies show that the most consciously realized state of the will is in being able to resist an act; whereas intiating an act shows conscious intention to lag behind subconscious "readiness potential" by a second or two. And so here is yet another way in which the heart, embodying the deep subconscious will, waits upon transforming grace within the conscience for our freedoms to be more like our Creator. Perhaps this is reflected in St. Paul's description: "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do."
quote:One way I notice this difference between relative goodness within my heart and God's supernatural goodness is how, when the Holy Spirit touches, I sometimes withdraw after a few minutes, or even a few seconds. I withdraw because my own goodness is really indequate.
One thinks of Peter kneeling in his boat at the feet of Jesus when he realizes who Jesus really is. "Stay away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" (Lk 5: 7-8)
and:
quote:As the third eye becomes saturated with cosmic luminosity, might it be possible for the heart to somewhat atrophy, or become occluded? IOW, the deeper sense of creatureliness which the heart uniquely bestows via adoration might be lost when the upper chakras are activated so stronly, and, one might say, prematurely. I think this distinction between will and awareness, which either Phil or Mateusz first noted, is really crucial for understanding these things. Might the loss of self, or the loss of the ability to consciously self-reflect, be, in part, this saturation of cosmic awareness, where it can no longer see its source, since the source is a relational dynamic in the heart? And since the heart is overshadowed with siddhis, etc . . . . or overwhelmed with nondual richness, could the heart's greatest power of adoration be diminished? I can sort of see where the heart diminishes in importance as the upper chakras become the main focus of attention, or embody most of the attention of the soul.
I think those are very important questions, and from my own experience, I think it certainly is possible that overly energizing the higher chakras can leave the lower (including the heart) depleted and "unmotivated." The critical principle, here, is that energy follows attention, and if we engage in meditative methods that make use of mantras or other techniques that tend to inflate awareness, then one can become "top-heavy." I've experienced such times and definitely enjoyed the sense of unity and vastness they bring, and I also enjoyed the deep sense of detachment that came with it. On the other hand, there was little sense of love, energy -- passion -- for anything; I was just kind of empty and lifeless inside. It seemed my approach to God was more via 3rd eye than the heart, and that 3rd eye was being energized without going through the heart. This happened during a period of time years ago when I was practicing zazen and/or centering prayer; my spiritual director and I eventually concluded that I needed to back off these practices awhile to allow attention/energy to re-balance, which eventually did happen as I renewed lectio divina and gave utterance to glossalalia (saved my butt many times -- the ultimate "re-balanc-er").
One of Teilhard de Chardin's critiques of Eastern religions was that they seemed to lead to a passive renunciation of the world and an apathy about "building the earth." That's exactly how one feels when one is awake in the higher centers to the detriment of the lower: this world is considered relatively unimportant (even an illusion), and one's natural passions are viewed as an annoying interference to the experience of unity.
[ January 27, 2009, 11:05 AM: Message edited by: Phil ]
-------------------- "The Light shines on in darkness . . ." - John 1: 3 - Posts: 7539 | From: Wichita, KS | Registered: Aug 2001
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I found an interesting webpage a few months ago (but have spent the last hour trying to find it again without any luck) that described a less commonly held position regarding kundalini.
The author maintained that while raising kundalini from root to crown was important, the spiritual work was left incomplete if one did not encourage the descent of the energy back down from the crown into the heart.
It was the cultivation of the energy in the heart that led to true spiritual growth and development.
- wish I could find the site again -
-------------------- Much Love in the Lord Jesus
Jacques Posts: 325 | From: South Africa | Registered: Aug 2005
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mateusz
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W.C.
just in a response to a part of your reflections. thank you for sharing your personal experience of "confrontation" with God's goodness. I think I can imagine this, but in myself it's rather a sort of anxiety - "where will He lead me? what will I have to lose?". A sort of DEMAND of love. Ultimate demand. I'm not very eager to give myself fully to it, either. Part of being human, I guess.
In relation to your thoughts on the chakras. Yes, I suppose you're right about that. Sort of what I experience now is I think an attempt of God to (re)integrate the heart and the third eye in me. I feel not only His presence in the heart but sometimes also a pressure between the eyebrows and in the brain. I also see colors of those two chakras interchanging, so I guess it may be a kind of some harmonizing process. What I don't feel is a "flow" between the heart and the third eye - but I don't know if it has to be there. I feel my throat is not purified so maybe there's a barrier of some kind. But I don't care, it's just that I think of what you said and I suppose that what Phil describes, also in his case, is a sort of harmony between metaphysical and relational mysticism, with the latter being a center of gravity. So "ordinary good Christians" may experience the heart without the third eye, and non-dual mystics the third eye without the heart, but a challenge is to have access to both, which of course in not needed for salvation nor union with God's love.
Jacques, it's a pity you can't find the site... I remember Adyashanti (a non-dual mystic, you can find on the youtube) spoke about an experience of the heart. He was at a funeral, very sad, and suddenly he felt a little smile in his heart, and the smile was growing on and on, until it expanded and took away the pain. Sth like that. It doesn't sound relational, but a heart chakra activity, no doubt about it. Chogyam Trungpa said something about being enlightened and being very sad at the same time, and he referred to the heart, I believe, describing the sadness of compassion.
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mateusz... you know what is interesting is that the Hesychasts of the EOC believe there are four regions in the body that are like the chakras: between the eyes, the mouth/throat area, the heart, and the stomach...
"where will He lead me? what will I have to lose?". A sort of DEMAND of love. Ultimate demand. I'm not very eager to give myself fully to it, either."
Yes, this is mostly what I meant by fearing alteration of character far beyond consolations or healing of old wounds in the heart.
As for blockages within the energy channels, my guess is that devotional attention in the heart, and wherever the Holy Spirit draws, will resolve these according to His will and our own particular psychic needs and capacities. I have seen the interior of nadis before - beautifully luminescent, alive/living light - and other interior perspectives - but all this came spontaneously. And, as you allude, my own sense is that trying to achieve these visuals could really be dangerous. And I suppose even the saints had their blockages. One can only speculate (I mentioned this on another thread), but St. John of the Cross, shortly after his death, was found to have a small chain around his waist that had grown into his skin. Such mortification we can't reconcile ourselves to, even as we benefit so much from his wisdom and guidance. But given that psychological growth is always shaped within cultural limits, he may have had his blockages as well. Hard to imagine a human being, however "perfected," without them.
quote:Originally posted by Phil: ... I've experienced such times and definitely enjoyed the sense of unity and vastness they bring, and I also enjoyed the deep sense of detachment that came with it. On the other hand, there was little sense of love, energy -- passion -- for anything; I was just kind of empty and lifeless inside. It seemed my approach to God was more via 3rd eye than the heart, and that 3rd eye was being energized without going through the heart. ...
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I went through something similar Phil, a time of wanting to do scant more than lay in bed feeling the whirling of energy fly through my head and a detachment from the world of form...this proved quite destructive to my family, as you can imagine, as it felt nearly impossible to remain contracted in my 'self' and thereby able to connect with the world in a meaningful way. Sadly, I lacked awareness of the seriousness of my withdrawal. So was it a case of my being "top heavy" with energy that did not go through the heart? IDK., seems more severe than that.
I suspect it's not merely a lack of going through the heart chakra that causes problems (i.e. delusions about who God is, who we are). There must be other mediating and moderating factors, besides what the kundalini is doing, which influence one's experience of God's Presence and capacity to receive His guidance. But I defer to you and w.c. and those who've had more experience with kundalini.
It's interesting that speaking in tongues helped you, Phil, during that time of rebalancing your energy / intentions back to Christ perhaps.
(I know there's another thread on this, and I know how much it irritates you when we get off topic :mad: ;) , but it is truly amazing that the Holy Spirit can literally be speaking through us in the gift of tongues! I have had that deep experience of absolute knowing, while I've felt led to pray in the Spirit, that what God is speaking through me is literally repairing me or strengthening me up in some profound way that my mind or spirit cannot possibly understand. :) It's like the HS has to knock you out--your mind and all the inferior intuitions--and bypass your language by replacing it with His! Amazing!)
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w.c.
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Shasha:
What comes to mind as I read your post is how disturbance or imbalance in kundalini, when it is severe/chronic, can be described as a symptom, not merely a cause in itself. And so deep turmoil in the subconscious, joined to the will's intention to embrace that power, can easily diminish virtue. And when power overcomes virtue, then we are vulnerable to "principalities." And so while I think there is a tendency to over-identify the psyche's unintegrated shadow with evil, there is also an ongoing vulnerability to more powerful aspects of the fallen creation in those kundalini states.
And when we read the gospels, it seems that Jesus' healings of the heart often were accompanied by the banishment of evil spirits. But it is very questionable to me for folks like us to assume this kind of responsibility if we are early on in our spiritual journey (as I am). I think far more dangerous foolishness goes on than good, as so many in the church are prone to identify evil based upon exiled parts of their own psyche, especially folks that get a taste of the Holy Spirit and may be in the honeymoon phase . . . just as we see, in another fashion, among New Agers smitten with k.
posted
I agree with W.C. in terms of evil spirits. In my New Age period I was of course convinced there are a lot of "evil energies" waiting for me at every corner, even felt an evil presence once at night at home. Then, in my Zen period I believed these are only manifestations of the shadow archetype and for some period I didn't believe in the Satan at all. Now I look for a more balanced perspective, because I believe of course that fallen angels exist and they are active in the universe. However, I have never experienced anything that would gave me assumption that an evil spirit was active in my personal case. Well, once I experienced something, but I'm trying to be sceptical. I was reading a book revealing the rather horrible truth about that guru we mentioned on this forum, the one allegedly "materializing" objects. Suddenly I couldn't read any more, I felt some force paralyzed my thinking, but it didn't feel like samadhi state, it was unpleasant. I tried to pray in words, but couldn't. After I while it went away. It made me suspect that the guru is somehow involved with evil forces or just using kundalini in an evil way. My fiancee told me that once she was going by tram and some woman started to talk about all the things that the guru was doing in India, and suddelny there was an accident of the tram. No-one got hurt, but it was frightening. I heard other stories like that concerning that person, so even my scepticism is not enough...
I hope we didn't go astray to much, since we're talking about consciousness (of evil spirits) and its influence on our own consciousness via kundalini
I have a question about the 7th chakra, the sahasrara. We mainly talk about the effects of the 6th chakra being open without the 4th one. But what is the function of the 7th, if not non-dual awareness which Wilber speaks of. Is there a particular danger in getting to the sahasrara by-passing the heart? Is it even possible?
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mateusz
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Caneman:
thanks for your short remark about the "chakras" in the Hesychast tradition. I didn't know about the four of them! It seems really a universal experience. Btw, when we cross ourselves before listening to the Gospel during a Catholic mass we make little crosses on our foreheads, mouths and hearts. It struck me as an extraordinary rite, a remnant of the chakras experience in the Christian tradition, perhaps. A way of saying: "Lord, open my heart, my thinking and my intuition for your Word". I wonder if some other Catholics here gave any reflection to that? (As to the 7th chakra in our tradition, there are halos of course and laying hands on the head as a sign of transmitting the Spirit)
Btw, what do you think about Father Keating's idea to translate the 8 beatitudes into 7 chakras expressed in the "Invitation to Love"? Is it his own idea? Kind of interesting, I think.
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w.c.
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mateusz:
Yes, that sounds similar to the few times I've experienced evil. Down right malevolent. And through Focusing I've been dealing with deep subconscious energies, and a mostly active kundalini, for almost twenty years, and the dark exiled parts of the psyche always have a longing to give and receive love, however obscure at first. As dark as they are, as critical, wounded, angry, etc . . . they are never malevolent. Evil is also an intrusive "other" presence, rather than this projected, disowned aspect of self attempting to get my attention. Love is poison to evil, and the name "Jesus" banishes the evil, as in these incidents I'm alluding to in my own life.
You guys, don't worry too much about being off topic. The concern Phil and I have is mainly with those being trollish. This subject is fine for this thread, unless it needs its own thread, which anybody can start if they want.
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Yes, absolutely -- not to worry about meandering, as this thread generally seems to come back to the topic at hand. If we get going in earnest about something too far off course, we can start a new thread.
Re. opening the 7th chakra without going through the heart -- I guess that's possible. While the 3rd eye might be understood as the soul's experience of spiritual awareness prior to reflection or conceputalizing, we could think of the 7th as the soul awakening at the ground of being, or what the Lonergan folks call the "apex" of the soul. When Wilber and others speak of this as "co-arising" with the rest of creation, what I'm hearing is an awakening to one's being in that very deep place -- where we receive our existence from God. Looking about at creation from that vantage point, there is this profound sense of unity, as one's perception is non-conceptual and non-reflective, much as with the third eye, only deeper. I think most contemplatives come to this awareness, eventually, as it seems the Holy Spirit comes through the crown to awaken the heart, then all of our being, to God's love. For the contemplative, however, a full crown awakening would come about from a deepening and integration of contemplative graces -- as Teresa describes with her 7th mansion. The unity, therefore, would be understood as participative -- a "seeing-with" Christ, which is also possible in the other chakras as well. So the reason for the halo with Saints, I suppose, is to say that the Spirit works in unimpeded fashion in their being, coming and going through the crown.
Personally, I've had only brief periods of crown experience that seemed more metaphysical than contemplative. The oneness was so overwhelming that I pulled back from it, as it seemed it would annihilate me, but for no good reason. It was also difficult to concentrate on any particular thing, and I sensed that wouldn't be unto any great adaptive advantage.
-------------------- "The Light shines on in darkness . . ." - John 1: 3 - Posts: 7539 | From: Wichita, KS | Registered: Aug 2001
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w.c.
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Along these lines which you are all reporting, I've had two kinds of experience with the 7th chakra, at least which I can recall. The most common seems when the Holy Spirit appears during prayer as a descending sweet mist - love - bathing and holding me, but also somewhat activating the crown chakra, at least as a way into my body, sometimes moving further down into my heart. Again, it seems that these differences we report have somewhat to do with our uniquely individual organisms and developmental needs.
The second encounter with the crown is similar to what Phil is reporting. At rare times I see the thousand petaled flower during acupuncture, opening and closing like a camera lense, but really a flower. I guess I'd say it looks like a chrysanthemum. Maybe I'm not evolved enough for a lotus yet! The other case was a single instance when I was working with a New Age healer - someone really gifted, whom I still occasionally have contact with. During that session I heard and felt about a foot or more above my crown: "I am that." It was something like this nondual, metaphysical expression of kundalini, perhaps an activation of one of the auric sheaths, the one called the causal body. But as Phil relates, definitely a metaphysical awakening to some higher dimension of beingness, not a contemplative, transcendental grace given beyond the creaturely faculites. And I have to say, as profound as it was in the moment, it didn't seem that important. I had already opened to Christ in prayer, and so those metaphysical moments just have never seemed important except as secondary, kundalini-based responses to the Divine indwelling.
And so it is instructive in a really important way to know the difference between moments of awakening to being, and touches of the soul by God Himself. One touch by Him and the matter is mostly settled. Without the latter, it is so easy to assume the powers of the soul to be Divine - especially since those powers are saturated at a point well beyond any known psychological experience. But what I think we find is that from the pov of graced contemplation, even the highest regions of the soul's awareness, or the ground of being, are subject to fallenness, as nothing necessarily virtuous or Divine results. In fact, those moments may be close to the Eden story of nearly reaching the tree of life without full surrender to God.
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. . . . . and so perhaps this saturation of our capacity for self awareness with the ground luminosity of being, out of which we were created by God, leaves us unable, without full devotional surrender in the heart, to continue seeing the difference between creature and Creator, even though we never attain to our Creator's powers. Since the will is mostly subconscious, it's further constriction in the heart during an imbalanced state of enlightenment makes it impossible to see/experience creaturely devotion, or be drawn in that way, as attention has overcome subtler sensitivies of the will in the desire for power. We have, in effect, eaten of the tree of life without having been transformed via the Beatific Vision.
posted
thanks for your observations, very interesting. I remember some of my own experiences, I'd say, CONNECTED
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mateusz
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Phil and W.C.,
thanks for your observations, very interesting. I remember some of my own experiences, I'd say, CONNECTED with the crown. They preceded my first, small realization of emptiness. One was quite funny, because I was sitting in samadhi and feeling that energy wants to push through my head, but it can't. So I thought, "the energy wants to go to the seventh chakra, what was it's name?" and I spent few minutes trying to remember the sanskrit name of the chakra. Perhaps, it reveals more about my psychological profile, than anything spiritual, but I managed to remember all six names of chakras in sanskrit, but not the crown, which I knew I remembered pretty well at other times. And suddenly, after I stopped thinking about that, the name "sahasrara" sounded in my head and the energy instantly got above my head.
I occasionally felt in meditation that my center is above my head, few centimeters above it, and that there's an immense silence there. Before realization of emptiness I spent some time in what I called then "a silence of sahasrara", very peaceful, dense energy, annihilating thoughts and emotions. But what puzzles me is that these experiences weren't associated with any particularly deep inside into the non-duality of awareness. So I guess it wasn't a real opening of the crown, but rather some shallow contact with it.
I also have had a similar experience, as you, of the Holy Spirit coming down through the crown into my body, but, again, didn't particularly "non-dual" in comparison to my deepest glimpses into this state.
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mateusz
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W.C.:
since you mentioned Adam and Eve, perhaps we could discuss a bit their spiritual state (of course, phantasizing about it... ). I'm interested in a theological perspective first, and then in the experiential.
Am I wrong to think that the state of innocence in Eden was inferior to the state that we are given by Christ's death, resurrection and ascension? Was it that God's "plan B" in fact gave us more than the "plan A", when we were walking with God through the Garden? Is restored innocence better than the first one? I remember only St. Ambrose's "felix culpa", "fortunate guilt" that could be transformed by God's Incarnation...
If I'm right supposing that our life in Eden was supposed to be more like metaphysical, kundalini (which doesn't seem right, since - what about the relation with God?) transformed life, were all the chakras opened and energy awakened? Was it the sin that closed the chakras and put kundalini to sleep?
Any answers to that? Any ideas about the effect of the sin in this context?
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w.c.
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mateusz:
You might do a Shalom google for two past threads which explore the Eden story:
Fallen Human Nature
The Evolution of Consciousness ____________________________________
Here's one of my posts in the second thread, which may indirectly address your question, although the topic is so beyond any of us to really understand:
Stephen:
Yes, forever cloaked in mystery. But I've been wondering about this for decades. Nowadays it's more of a metaphor to explore how we assume the mind's activity is really our personal authorship, which it seems is not usually the case. Here are some of my own meanderings spawned from various sources over the years:
For a more intellectual treatment I like Owen Barfield's book "Saving the Appearances," which also is an inspiring read if you can be patient with his complex grammar and idiom. You may know the book, or Barfield as a friend of C.S. Lewis, who was one of the Inklings. In short, if I'm not distorting his basic ideas, he describes the gradual loss of "original participation" of the ancient as an emerging subjective/internal space of identity that also accounts for the loss of the world's animation. IOW, self and the world as a source of identity weren't strongly differentiated, embodying a different psychology. And so as fallen as this still was, thinking wasn't experienced as privately authored as we assume today. In fact, other authors treat this as the domain of the gods, some reductionistically, others without losing a sense of Rudolph Otto's “mysterium tremendum.”
Julian Jaynes book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," "The Greeks and the Irrational," by E.R. Dodds, and Bruno Snell's book, a title that slips me, are ones that take up this issue directly. Jaynes' book, as compelling as it is in other ways, in my view fails for its reductionism. He chronicles the history of change in consciousness but assumes that everything arises from brain activity. A better treatment comes, indirectly, from "Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt," by R.T. Rundle Clark. Although Clark doesn't identify it, the symbols of transformation of consciousness are easily identified as kundalini-driven archetypes. I've also seen these during meditation, related to chakras, etc . . . And so it appears Jaynes fails to account for the increased psychic awareness of the ancient who wasn't as withdrawn from the vitality of his surroundings by a strong inner subjectivity. We know from certain studies, such as Rupert Sheldrake's, that animals can function according to non-local psychic means of communication, perhaps more so because that aren't encumbered (or blessed, depending on how you look at it: mixed, it seems to me) with a neocortex as complex as ours. Not to say that this was all good, as we know kundalini without the Holy Spirit can go bad just as often as good. And we could speculate that the human desire for a prolonged taste of the non-dual is rooted somewhere in this anthropology.
So without a strong sense of self as interior and nearly completely private as in the last 3000 years, the archetypes were supposedly experienced externally as the gods. It may also be that the archetypes are themselves a sign of the fracture in the psyche due to the Fall; whereas fully in the presence of God there is a graced unity of all faculties, with self continually released and renewed within the fathomless Triune Presence. For pre-fallen humans, in this scenario, there is unity without a history of disunity such as the contemplative experiences today.
Here's a summary of those distinctions drawn from the sources mentioned above, with an ample smattering of my own foolishness:
Pre-fallen humans:
Unified interior and exterior; no archetypes/no subconscious; multiplicity as creation manifesting the inexhaustible Divine; thoughts as openings to worship rather than enclosures of a private self .
Fallen humans/Bicameral society (Julian Jaynes' notion with flavors added):
birth of the subconscious that is nearly completely unconscious; archetypes projected as gods; relative lack of internal/subjective/private mental space; intermingling of the numinous with the faculties that see their identity arising from the gods;
Post Bicameral Humans
birth (or fallen-rebirth) of interiority as the gods are lost and then over time regained as archetypes once internal private mental space becomes visceral enough; as the unconscious becomes conscious, kundalini is realized as an ascending internal force that can be manipulated by the will, giving rise to the existential and the possibility of despair
The Eden story suggests a kind of discovery of self separate from God, which sounds more like Jaynes' theory of ancient pre-conscious man's emerging sense of self as inner identity. So he tells it as the loss of the gods as structuring psychological life, but misses the psychic nature of those faculties which the iconography depicts, in my view, as cultural awakenings and transformations of Kundalini.
Since I'm not bound to the Eden story literally, yet also not a big fan of Darwinian evolution, I take license (nobody to offend anyway) with some of this and suggest that the Eden story is the only way conscious man can remember his own pre-conscious history; this is similar to Jaynes, but departs with considerations for what kundalini means related to the Fall. IOW, conscious man could only allude metaphorically to the history of god/archetypal-directed pre-consciousness since it was then largely his unconscious, and not yet re-discovered, except by sages, symbollically. My loose rendering of history would have the highly psychic pre-conscious man the first step post-Fall, with the Eden story missing the mark in some ways, but suggesting the theological truth otherwise.
So humans emerge from the Fall without an interiority-exteriority sustained by God, and collapse into a state where unconscious archetypes embody the vestiges or memories of having belonged to grace; hence the birth of the gods and a language that tries to capture that change - first literally, then metaphorically as awareness is internalized.
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Very little sleep last night and another flight delay today. But, hey, God was there. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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