Sat Nam Pieter and All…
Thank You for your reply!! What an exquisite way to describe the experience of the practice!!!! Sometimes words for a spiritual, experiential and yet scientific and practical expansion of consciousness brought on by the teachings can be a challenge. Your description of the process that takes place was beautifully done. I like the point about staying with the teachings because I do see there are many ways to experience the “I am that I am in the all”, and staying with one recipe long enough to “get it ” has great value. There is no other practice that I have been involved in that has the same effect. I still enjoy practicing other yogas but I always keep up Kundalini as “bought forth” ( I like that) by Yogi Bhajan, because it’s just WOW!!
With Love, Miri Piri Patty
Message #12327 May 8, 2010 Subject: Re: Ownership of ancient knowledge???
Sat Nam
I do agree with one post – why hasn’t your teacher training helped you with these questions?
Somewhere on my path, I stopped needing so many explanations about Yogi Bhajan and everyone else. I have also stopped needing prescriptive meditations (although they can be fun to do anyway). I just do a kriya and Aquarian Sadhana everyday if I can, and there are no more questions and all my problems are eventually solved. My answers don’t come from books trademarked by anyone, they come from the time I spend in meditation from my own being and Higher Self.
Maybe it is time to stop asking everyone else and listen to yourself. The answers are right there but you have to trust that you are capable of having such perfect knowledge and awareness.
Sundari Satnam Kaur
Message #12329 Subject: Re: Ownership of ancient knowledge???
The whole purpose of the practice of radiance inherent in Kundalini Yoga practice is to bring one’s frequency and voltage into attunement with the ever free unconditioned source of all power, even the substratum and source of the radiance we develop through practice.
Thus, there is an ultimate power, which is to get linked to the source of Being, Consciousness and Power Itself (Shakti/Love/Creation). For that you need to also read scripture and try to figure it out. What most people don’t seem to realize is that Yogi Bhajan, while teaching Kundalini Yoga, was speaking about and referring God and stories about God, the Saviors and Saints constantly.
Scripture, whether Christian, Buddhist, Hindu (Vedanta), Sufi, Sikh, all has in it, between the stories of the lives of the Saviors and Saints and their non-dual teachings, an inherent Truth that the Self of each one’s self “hears.” Kundalini Yoga is a very quick way to enable practitioners to”hear” the Truth, and it happens spontaneously.
You can get books of Ramana Maharshi, various Vedanta Texts, Tulsidas’ Ramayana, the Bagavad Gita, the Ashthavagara Gita, the Ribhu Gita, the Avadut Gita, and there are many Buddhist texts, such as the Diamond Sutra, the Heart Sutra and so many others of Buddha, as well as texts of the Zen Patriarchs, such as Faith Mind of the Third Zen Patriarch. There are also so many Christian Texts, with references to the Bible, such as Confessions of St. Augustine, the Tresis of St. Thomas Acquinas, the books of Meister Echheart, as aids, together with non-dual texts of other Religions, to get into the meaning and Teachings of Christ, which are really all a radical form of sudden enlightenment.
A number of Tibetian books are helpful as well, such as Naropa, Marpa the Translator, Milarepa, the 100,000 Songs of Milarepa, Tibetian Secret Doctrines by Evans Wentz. I was reading all these books as inherently part of my Kundalini Yoga practice to try to figure it out. I was also reading the Jaap Sahib of Guru Gobind Singh, the Japji, the Anand Sahin, and considering the meaning of the many Shabads and the lives of the Sikh Gurus themselves.
The reading and consideration for yourself the meaning and implications of what is written in Scripture is implicit to every practice. Without the Scripture, it’s like getting in a car and revving up the engine but not finally putting the car in gear. Something needs to trigger the flow of Consciousness inward back to Its source. Then the limited outward perspective and flow of attention suddenly becomes unlimited, so that even attention is abandoned. Attention is like using a flashlight to see this and that in a dark room, but when the windows are opened and the light of the sun is revealed, the focus of attention, in the flashlight is dispensed with. Let’s just say that we use the flashlight to find the windows and open them. Then That’s that. Yogi Bhajan always spoke about God in all his classes, because THAT was the trigger. Ultimately Kundalini Yoga needs to be taught in his way, where the “trigger” is included, so that practice is not just revving up one’s engine and then nothing…
The energy related problems sometimes mentioned from practicing are all because the radiance has to finally impact the source, which is Infinite. Then “Impact!” and your bright candle becomes the Sun, and all the pressures and energy cysts and other physical and mental pressures resulting from intense practice, just vanish. You are no longer the generator of the power, you awaken to realize that who and what you really are is Power Itself, and That Sun of shear Power is discovered to be the Light of your life, the Substratum of the manifestation of the body and mind, Creation Itself. At once, you relinquish attention to the flows of energy and abide as single, all pervasive uncaused, beginningless Being, Consciousness. You abide in a state of relinquishment, non-attachment. All these sorts of words will suddenly have meaning, a meaning you will feel in a way that happens instantly at the moment of “Impact” “hearing” “Awakening.”
There’s also a matter of proper practice, which includes recognition of the active and passive aspects of practice of each Kundalini yoga exercise, kriya and set, without which the intent of the practice is not fully realized nor the energy generated resolved within the system. And there’s the need to be aware of and experience the prana AND the apana, where quite often, the apana aspect of the practice is forgotten, resulting in an inability of the body to absorb the prana. The result is that the higher centers, which are very delicate do not open and the energy forms cysts in the lower areas the torso that can result in a weakening of health, emotional imbalance, etc. So, proper practice of the basics is necessary.
The whole area of the spine, shoulders, neck, the brain stem and the brain needs to have this experience of dissolving expansion of radiance where you should feel a decontracting, a disengagement of pressure and tension and focus into pervasiveness. You might say it’s like having on the one side 2 magnets that always snap into each other, versus 2 magnets that constantly repel. Then imagine a sense of inward repelling or disengagement of tension throughout the body, the shoulders, neck and head. Many people practice and try to focus the sense of energy in the head, but when you direct attention through the body down to the legs, knees and lower body, you will discover that the upper body, neck and brain begin to decontract, allowing a greater flow of pervasive radiance.
This is why Yogi Bhajan mentioned that the energy needed to be brought down, not up. Then you will feel yourself shining like a sun, where you radiate without a focal point, without attention having a source in the brain. You will feel the singular absorption into pervasiveness. What happens then is that the Sun in the Spiritual Heart begins to shine, and the sense of “I” relative to thoughts diminishes and you abide in the Spiritual Heart (“Ik Tar”) (not the Anahata chakra), which you discover to be all pervasive. Suddenly, you pause into timelessness. The “I” pulsing and reverberating throughout space, as its source.
The chakras have in them aspects of Consciousness, such as love, compassion, but also eventually inwards reflection into the source of seeing and knowing. But all these are only triggered when you try to figure out what is being said in Scripture. Suddenly, while you are reading and trying to figure out and understand the scripture, they all turn on by themselves. A different kind of Radiance is felt penetrating through the body and mind, because you are so intent in trying to “hear” the meaning of the scripture. And, what’s more important, is that they stay on without practice. Surely, one will naturally keep practicing, but the practice has other intents after awakening, but the awakening doesn’t leave you, and you become inexorably drawn into the abiding sense of pulsing of the “I as I.”
Baba Ram Dass once said, back in 1968, that you could be on a subway in NYC standing next to a fully enlightened Buddha and probably not know it. It’s this pulsing of the “I”, an inward reverberation that has no sound, but has the effect of dissolution of the mind and body into space-like all pervasiveness of a Singularity, behind which is the Infinite, Timeless Substratum. The Nameless Name. The thing is that It’s always there, always here. Immanent / Imminent.
Who we each are is beyond the radiance, but the experience of Radiance dissolves the intensity of identity and attachment to emotionally charged thoughts, impressions, predispositions and tendencies. With the reading of these texts, there arises an inward sense of remembrance, of recollection. All the religions mention this as the beginning of realization. Hearing, Recollection, Abiding. These terms are used throughout the teachings of Christ, Buddhism, Hinduism (Vedanta) and Sikhism. This “hearing” is the moment of “Impact” that Yogi Bhajan mentioned, the beginning of the soul’s Crystallization (Pradupati). All his teachings and the teachings of all the Religions is to get to THAT innate Self, which is who and what we are. Single all pervasive being, unconditioned, uncaused, timeless.
With Crystallization (Pradupati), one starts as an opaque diamond which through practice becomes clear. Nevertheless, right from the beginning, i.e., when yoga or union happens, an inexorable process sets in, where one knows and abides in the Truth. But many practice Yoga and don’t even know about the “purpose of Yoga” which is stated clearly in the very beginning of the Yoga
Sutras of Patañjali, to “Isolate the Seer.” At one point in the Gospels, Christ tells the Apostles that he’s always used Parables to teach, but now he would tell them the Truth directly and says: “The eye is the light of the body. When thine eye be single, thy whole body will be filled with light.” Luke 11:34. Which is simply rephrases as “That part of you that sees, the Seer” is your light. When you hold the Seer singly, without attention to anything else, you will have the Enlightenment of the Whole Body.” The words, if we can “hear” them are powerful, radical and direct. All the Scripture has this in it. It’s like presenting remembrances to an amnesiac until through glimpses, he suddenly remembers who and what he is.
Hope this is useful.
Regarding establishing one’s self, as a Teacher, starting people off with what I wrote above may not be conducive to getting many people in the door. But later, as you have this experience, which is also brought about because, as a Teacher, you connect subtlety to the source of the teachings, i.e., the Creator, you will discover that you can speak about the experience and those in your classes, who have felt the Radiance, will also “hear” you, as in your words, they will recollect and also experience their True Self.
What drew people to Yogi Bhajan was the Spiritual side, the Truth and possibility to realize the Self, the Akal Purkh. Everything else was secondary to that core teaching. A profound teaching of Yogi Bhajan is in his 1969 poem that he wrote before he came from Canada to LA, which is in the Liv Singh rendition of “Adorn with Honor.” You should play it. “Inside outside, everything is Whole” “Inside outside, everything is God.” “Electric Radiance enjoyed” “Akal Purkh illuminates me” “Oh Yogi in the Harimander… my union with God took place.”
