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altered states
January 2009 
Riding the Kundalini Dragon: Integrating Altered States
Jim
This post is my contribution to the symposium initiated by Julian Walker titled, "Riding the Kundalini Dragon: Integrating Altered States."
I'm a boomer, and I developed a strong interest in transformation and spirituality when I was in high school in the late sixties. By the time I was in my third year of art school I'd experimented with meditation, psychedelics, and Primal Therapy. I had many breakthroughs and peak experiences, but more important to me were the periods of clarity and openness that followed many of my “big” experiences.
Wanting to learn ways to cultivate such clarity and openness, I began to study with an Indian Acharya as well as an American teacher in the Ananda Marga Yoga organization, and I changed my diet and lifestyle accordingly (fortunately for me, my girlfriend who would soon be my fiancée was on the same path).
It was around this time that my meditative experience began to intensify. I would often enter into deep blissful states during meditation which would leave me with a kind of “bliss hangover” (i.e., a most wonderful hangover rather than the kind one seeks a cure for) that would last through the following day (I usually meditated in the evening). I also went through periods when for several days in a row I would be lucid around the clock, both during normal waking activities as well as when dreaming, and sleeping without dreaming.
I continued to meditate after drifting away from Ananda Marga, and at one point I decided to stop using the mantra I’d been given in AM and to instead use the sensation of breathing as a concentrative focus in meditation. This is when things changed dramatically for me.
The first time that I meditated by focusing on the breath (specifically by gently focusing attention on the sensations of the breath coming and going at the rims of the nostrils), I found myself entering into a familiar blissful state, but then I found myself going beyond that into a condition where my “gross physical body” as I sensed it sitting there in the lotus position seemed to be but an infinitesimally small speck in an infinite vastness. And then even that infinitesimally small speck seemed to disappear so that all that remained was vastness.
The next day, instead of having a “bliss hangover,” I came down with a fever unaccompanied by any other symptoms. The fever abated in the evening as suddenly as it had come, and I couldn’t help but associate it with my meditative experience of the night before.
This happened several more times, always after particularly powerful meditations. Sometimes I skipped meditation out of fear that I’d get a fever the next day.
Then I began to have pains in my lower abdomen after meditation that I’d never had before. (I’m not suggesting that a direct causal relationship necessarily existed here; I’m only reporting things as I experienced them at the time. At the time I assumed that the pains had something to do with energy pushing its way through psychophysical blocks. All I can say about it today is that I don’t know.)
One evening after meditation the pains were so bad that I could not sleep, so I stayed up and chanted (inspired by the 1972 record album “Ah” by Bhagvan Das). By around 5 AM the pains were so bad that I asked my fiancée to take me to the hospital.
I was admitted to the hospital for appendicitis, but it turned out that my appendix was fine and that the problem was that my lower intestines had inexplicably gotten twisted up (the same thing that killed Maurice Gibb of The Bee Gees). I was told after my operation by my well-meaning dad that the surgeon who’d operated on me had told him that my chances of post-operative survival were “fifty-fifty” (there had been complications during the operation). I began to sink into a bottomless pit of despair, but then I remembered what I’d learned from my many psychedelic and other non-ordinary experiences, which is that the way out is in. And so, instead of resisting my unfolding experience I opened to and surrendered into it. The next day my vital signs were good enough to warrant my being moved from the intensive care unit to a regular hospital room.
During the next few days I had some extraordinary experiences, including out-of-body experiences, visions, and a near-death like experience.
For example, one afternoon I felt as if I—in a disembodied form—was rising above my gross physical body, through the ceiling of my hospital room, through the room above mine, and finally through the hospital roof. I continued to ascend until I had a bird’s eye view of the town I was in. I could see traffic moving below, and I saw my father’s car in the parking lot of his workplace within blocks of the hospital.
One evening I felt as if “I” was attached to my “gross physical body” by a fragile, nearly invisible, slender thread, that would break by the slightest act of will on my part. I then again felt myself ascending, only this time I did not ascend through ceilings into the sky but seemed instead to be inside a wide, cavernous tunnel at the end of which was a blazingly brilliant white light. I saw figures ahead of me, and as I got nearer I saw that my recently deceased uncle and grandmother were there, encouraging me to continue toward the light, and reassuring me that there was nothing to fear.
The closer I got to the light the more I felt that I was entering the overwhelmingly loving presence I’d become familiar with in the midst of many meditative and other non-ordinary experiences. The presence seemed to silently and wordlessly communicate with me that it was my choice to either stay with, in, and ultimately as the presence, forever blissful and eternally happy, or remain in gross physical form. It flashed through me with certainty at that point that my life had a purpose (i.e., not a single specific purpose, but purpose), and I chose to live.
For the next several days I felt as if I was dwelling in “the Self” (in the sense in which Ramana Maharshi spoke of the Self) constantly, from moment to moment (Ramana Maharshi was an important spiritual figure to me at the time, as was Ramakrishna). I also felt as if I’d been granted a vision of the world without many of the usual filters, as if a curtain had been rent or pulled back. I felt my heart melt open and I felt as if I could really see past the persona of everyone I encountered in the hospital to their true heart.
It became obvious to me that enlightenment is the natural state (exactly as Ramana Maharshi said) and that ignorance was the result of “seeking” (e.g., in the sense in which Franklin Jones discusses “seeking” in the original version of his spiritual autobiography, The Knee of Listening). And I could really see how incredibly subtle this type of “seeking” was, and I could see how strong the tendency to “seek” in this sense was within me.
When I was strong enough to sit up after returning home, I assumed the lotus position for meditation, and within minutes I felt an energy and intensity coursing through my body with such overwhelming force that I knew I could not physically handle it, and so I immediately stopped. (I’m 6 feet tall and my weight had dropped to 135 lbs. after my operation and I’d become anemic.) I didn’t attempt formal sitting meditation practice again for several months.
It was about a year later when my fiancée and I, who was then my wife, traveled from NY to CA so we could spend a week visiting Bubba Free John’s spiritual community. We’d checked out Baba Muktananda and Chogyam Trungpa but were most strongly drawn to BFJ. My first experience sitting in satsang with BFJ didn’t strike me as being particularly powerful when it was happening, but the next day, bang. I was doing some volunteer work in a community-owned bookstore when I was knocked on my ass by a sudden fever. Someone drove me back to the community household where my wife and I were staying, and for the rest of the day, while everyone in the household was out and at work, I writhed around in a state of delirium on the living room floor having all kinds of visionary experiences and powerful apprehensions.
The fever was gone by the time everyone who lived in the household had begun to come home from their jobs, and when I shared my story, everyone nonchalantly said, “Oh, that’s just shakti fever.”
We ended up joining Bubba’s community and living and practicing in it full time through the end of the seventies. Despite my many strong criticisms of Franklin Jones (by whatever name) today, on the whole I feel that I benefited from my experience in his community. Back then at least, Jones placed strong emphasis on the idea that “sadhana must be built from the ground up,” meaning that one must create a strong foundation for “higher” spiritual experience and practice by working on issues related to what he called “the first three stages of life” (which roughly correspond to everything in Ken Wilber’s hierarchical stage model through his “existential level”).
At one point circa 1976, Bubba showed the community a science fiction movie titled Dark Star, about a group of hippies, basically, who traveled into outer space and had all kinds of problems because they were incapable of handling the technology they were dealing with. Bubba explained that we were like those hippies when we focused our attention on having higher experiences that we weren’t developmentally equipped to handle.
I had a few more “shakti fevers” when I was in Bubba’s community, but eventually they stopped.
After leaving Bubba’s community, among other things I studied death and dying work with Stephen and Ondrea Levine. This was in the early eighties when the AIDS crisis was beginning to peak in SF. My wife was literally the first social worker in SF to work exclusively with people with AIDS (or an “AIDS population,” in social welfare terminology). Thanks to her, I got to do some volunteer hospice type work with people with AIDS related illness—back then everyone diagnosed with AIDS related illness seemed to die within about 2 years of being diagnosed—and I feel that this helped ground me in the heart (i.e., emotionally) to a degree I’d never before known.
I went on to study and earn a credential in Arnold Mindell’s Process Work, and I feel that this helped me further ground and integrate the inner fire that burned within me. Briefly, a key idea in PW is that integration of altered or non-ordinary states must take place in all channels of experience, i.e., somatically, in intimate relationships, in community relationships, in relationship to the global community, in relationship to nature and the environment, etc. (Mindell began as a Jungian analyst and went on to develop PW in the seventies, and there is a tremendous amount of emphasis in PW on integrating what Jungians call the shadow.) The idea is that anything we may experience as an edge or boundary to our sense of identity is an opportunity for inner and outer work, growth, and integration. And we of course experience edges in relationship to various aspects of our “inner” experience, in relationship to others, in relationship to community and global situations, and so on.
I grew up in a tenement apartment building on the edge of NYC. My mom was meek and my dad was drunk most of the time. When I was an infant he accidentally spilled hot tea on me, resulting in my parents having to rush me to a hospital and leaving a scar on my arm. I have no memory of this but I’m told that I screamed bloody murder. The neighborhood was such that I began carrying a straight razor for self-protection by the time I was ten (I also smoked when I was around ten). I have a scar from the razor too (due to a clumsy accident).
I’ve had my share of childhood trauma and there is no question that I have at times used “spirituality” as an escape from emotional pain. Many so-called higher state experiences involve somatic ascent, and somatic ascent is an ideal way of turning away from whatever difficulties with embodied experiencing and difficult emotions that one may have. I feel that Process Work in particular helped me with this, and I think that any kind of good, grounded somatic-oriented work, such as that which Julian offers, can be of immense benefit to those who are drawn toward integration.
Another thing that I think can be of immense benefit is group work in live (versus online) groups. More edges seem to come up in real time face to face relationship to others than anywhere else.
Thanks for listening!
Access: Public
jim this is juicy and rich.
would have loved more detail on how the models you have learned and work you have done with others has engaged with the powerful experiences you have had.
so, questions:
1) can you describe a kind of arc of experience form the really scary childhood world to the psychedelic experiences to meditation to adi da to process work…. viz integration, dissociation, deep feeling etc?
2) i would love to hear more about the adi da days viz a) what you were critical of (perhaps a link to some of that writing) and b) what you think was going on with the others in the community who were not critical of those things…
3) the million dollar question: what do you think about adi da's psychograph, the nature of his altered states and how his psyche integrates them?
4) what do you think about the psychographs of those drawn to teachers like adi da and do you have a sense of both the benefit and the shadow inherent specifically in the altered state/shakti experiences that happen there and how they are interpreted/integrated (or not)?
i know, i know - just little questions…. :O) but i feel like if we are going to introduce this subject into the mix it would be good to look at it through these lenses.
Thanks Jim for your great contribution. I really enjoyed reading about your journey.
You know, I'm just now catching up with the symposium again, and need to read through everyone's posts and comments. Yet there is something that my attention is drawn to once more in this symposium: the integration/experience of childhood pain.
There is a book I listed as a recommended text in my preamble Gopi Krishna post:
Wayne Muller:
Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood
This book spoke to me from the minute I began reading it several years back. And I can't help but feel from your sharing that once again, pain/suffering can serve as rich fertilizer to grow from spiritually. And this does not mean that pain and suffering is something that I promote in childhood. It is simply interesting to note that it (the shadow) can be used as an abundant resource to develop a yearning for spirituality and inner strength.
Last night I awoke in a fuzzy half-conscious/half-dream state. And I could hear all these sentences and thoughts that when translated into a real time waking state would make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Yet in the moment there was this feeling…a very rich feeling of comprehension. And I wondered for the first time what it means to comprehend something. What does it mean to have comprehension? Understanding?
It seems to me that to comprehend is to belong. It is to merge and integrate into a shared consensus reality. Because in the greater universal scope of things within this cosmos, there is no language and no words and no ideas and concepts. These are things that belong to our shared human minds. These are the songs we sing together. And to comprehend is to be in harmony with people within this world.
In childhood, when there is pain and suffering—we cannot comprehend this. We do not want to accept this consensus reality. And so we seek other realities. And in many of our cases, we find them. We find more beautiful, lovely and compassionate realities.
And I would say that your life, Jim, does have purpose. Your living itself brings a more compassionate reality into our consensus reality. And I for one am grateful.
Thank you for living, Jim, and sharing your compassion so generously. Thank you.
Hi Julian. I very much appreciate your questions. There was much more that I would have liked to touch on in my initial post but length was a concern, and I wanted to stay in the spirit of personal sharing that has characterized this symposium. But now on to your great questions.
1) can you describe a kind of arc of experience form the really scary childhood world to the psychedelic experiences to meditation to adi da to process work…. viz integration, dissociation, deep feeling etc?
One night when on LSD when I was around 18 I was in my parents home after they'd gone to bed, when I heard my father stumbling around in the kitchen, half-drunk and by then probably half-hungover. I went out to see what was up and I began to hallucinate on him. At one point I saw him vividly before me as looking exactly like the “She-Creature” (a monster from a fifities' sci-fi movie), and I then saw that what was before me was a human being who was suffering profoundly. In that instant I stopped hallucinating and saw my dad for perhaps the first time, and I saw that he wasn't a monster or threatening, but was an incredibly hurt and wounded human being.
On another similar occasion when I was high on LSD I heard him staggering around the house talking to himself. I went to see what was up and he drove his fist into a glass-framed picture of Jesus on the wall. His hand began to bleed quite a bit and he began to cry, and I took him into the bathroom and washed and bandaged his hand.
Later that summer he quit drinking, for good, with the help of a psychiatrist, AA, B-12 shots, prayer, and according to him, me. He was 50 then, and he never had another drink until the day he died at age 84 a few years ago.
For me, the experience of really seeing my dad for the first time, really seeing him as a suffering and often confused human being, was a breakthrough for me into beginning to recognize “the first noble truth,” i.e., the “truth of suffering.” By seeing him as real, I began to recognize myself as real as well, and this was indeed “sobering.”
However, it wasn't enough to cut through a deep need in me for a strong father figure image, which is what I found in Franklin Jones, which leads to your next question.
2) i would love to hear more about the adi da days viz a) what you were critical of (perhaps a link to some of that writing) and b) what you think was going on with the others in the community who were not critical of those things…
In 1996 I wrote a paper on my experience in Da's community (which was in the seventies), and I sent hard copies to a number of people within the transpersonal/integral/transformational community. I wrote to Wilber care of Shambhala Publishing to see if he would like a copy, but I did not receive a reply. However, John White (author of Kundalini, Evolution and Enlightenment) phoned me and insisted that I send a copy to Wilber and he gave me Wilber's home address. I did, Wilber wrote back to me to thank me, and about a month later Wilber made his first public statement about Da on his Shambhala Forum website.
Here's a link to my 1996 piece on Da.
As for people in the community who were not critical of the things I critique in my paper, I think in some cases some folks were simply tranced out (i.e., dissociated from real feeling), and in other cases, some folks honestly believed that Da's so-called “crazy wisdom” approach was actual “crazy wisdom.” I think that what many people consider “crazy wisdom” amounts to little more than piss-poor, unsophisticated, cheap, amateurish attempts at some kind of psychotherapeutic intervention, all in the guise of spirituality. The Dalai Lama has spoken about the difference between authentic crazy wisdom and pseudo crazy wisdom, in response to a question posed to him about Trungpa's drinking, as I recall.
3) the million dollar question: what do you think about adi da's psychograph, the nature of his altered states and how his psyche integrates them?
I think Da is a perfect example of what John Welwood began to refer to as “spiritual bypassing” back in the late seventies or early eighties. I think Da developed certain technical capacities of the human nervous system and brain but stopped developing psychologically and may have narcissistic personality disorder. I sometimes think of him as the Michael Jackson of contemporary gurus. He has some real talent, but you don't want to leave him alone with your kids.
4) what do you think about the psychographs of those drawn to teachers like adi da and do you have a sense of both the benefit and the shadow inherent specifically in the altered state/shakti experiences that happen there and how they are interpreted/integrated (or not)?
Speaking of myself, inretrospect I would say that part of my being drawn to Da way back when was for good reasons. At the time, the early to mid-seventies, his teachings were pretty radical coming from an American. He never denied that his community was an experiment, and I was ripe for that. But I also see pathological reasons for my being drawn to him, such as my need for an all-knowing father figure and authority figure, because I didn't have that kind of figure in my life growing up.
I think that some teachers use “higher states” and shakti experiences, etc., to snare students into feeling emotionally and psychologically dependent on them, in much the same way someone who is a really hot sex partner but otherwise lacking can use their sexual wiles to manipulate someone who happens to have a weakness for really hot sex partners!
I once had the pleasure of meeting Jerry Jampolsky, founder of the International Center for Attitudinal Healing. Before he founded AH he was a practicing physician and at one point he saw Baba Muktananda at the Oakland, CA Siddha Yoga Center. At one point Muktananda somehow zapped Jampolsky with shakti, sending Jampolsky into a deep altered state so strong that he had to be taken to a private room. He says that this state was profoundly blissful, etc., etc. Afterwards, Muktananda personally talked with him and asked him to become involved with Muktananda's organization. And Jampolksy said no.
That story impresses me because here's someone who despite getting this powerful zapping didn't have his will weakened by it. Experiences are just experiences. They aren't the point, and in fact they can become a real distracting influence if not an addicting influence. (Shakti addicts apparently do exist and I believe I've met some.)
Okay, I'm sure I've only partially addressed your questions but that will have to be enough for now.
Jim :-)
Jim,
Thanks for this. Its comforting to hear another boomer's “trail of tears and joy” story. I know the “Shakti fever” sensation - how it always seems to be accompanied by a flood of emotions - “Shit! Am I dying here or what!”
I just read this for the first time and caught up with Julian's questions (good ones) and then your answers which I will now read and get back with some observations and reflections.
Yer pal,
Michael
Jim,
Thank you for this honest and detailed post. I love the interweaving of personal and transpersonal threads in your story.
From only a first read:
It does seem that for many people who join a “spiritual community” what happens is they are given a larger canvas to work out the unresolved issues of their family of origin. The guru becomes Mom or Dad or both. The brothers and sisters of the community become living, moving parts of a big messy psycho drama. Everyone's personal story and projections get entangled and acted out. On top of all this, throw in some genuine transpersonal experiences and large doses of shakti and the potential for explosive drama and psychological projection is huge. Interestingly, not everyone does it _ just those who stay….:-)
Some come staggering out with deeper wounds than when they entered. Others, such as yourself, seem to come out with a deeper understanding of the work to be done and a more balanced attitude of what is required. “Sobriety is a prerequisite for achieving Authenticity” as Michael Brown says in his book The Presence Process. And sobriety comes in many forms: physical, psychological, relational and spiritual. I find it telling that some of your early LSD experiences centered on perceiving your father as a human being who was suffering, how powerful and how courageous of you not to look away or try to save him. “Here Dad, drink this….”
One way that I use to think about sobriety (and by sobriety I mean clear mind, clear thinking and clear body) is through the strength and intensity of my projections. It's difficult to see projections directly from one's own position but quite obvious when being with another. A helpful guide for me are the stories that I catch myself telling myself about others. If I am self aware, I can witness my own inner story teller and ask the question fatal to all stories “Is it true?” Then I can do the sometimes painful process of reeling (realing) the projection back in and owning that particular fragment of myself.
I also notice that in those situations where I am the authority, there are some people projecting onto me. Now there's a drug of choice for many teachers as you eloquently point out. And as you suggest it is barely a metaphor since “hot” sex was part of the teaching. I can see from your narrative that Da was not immune to this attention. It takes great integrity not to abuse those who willingly give their power away. I like your story of Jampolsky for just that reason. He clearly cherished his autonomy despite being 'blown away' by Muktananda and Shakti. And, since it doesn't appear that J. asked for that shakti pat, I consider it an act of spiritual abuse on Muktananda's part.
Enough for a first take.
Thanks for contributing to this symposium. I can see why you were invited.
coyote
ps I love the image. Your work?
thanks so much jim - i look forward to more!
Thank you, Jim!
Cheers!
~ Tom
I really enjoyed that, Jim–some of which I had heard from you before, but also with some new (to me) elements. I admire how you have entered into different approaches, groups and spiritual practices, yet do not speak from or as an advocate of any specific orientation…other than your own (“Jimism” ;O).
A few questions and comments inspired by your post:
You echo various teachings when you speak of “enlightenment as the natural state.” I would like to hear more as I've never heard you use this phrasing before. Why, do you think, if enlightenment is our “natural state” is it so rare? Is this is because of a developmental process, why call it our “natural state”? Would we need to develop into our naturalness? Or do you see the rarity of it having more to do with cultural pathology, even a “Fall” of some kind? For in our culture “seeking” seems to be the natural state.
Which leads me to a related question: Do you find that spiritual practice actually helps alleviate seeking and bring about this natural state? I ask because it seems that modern spirituality in its various iterations–as an outgrowth of “seeking culture”–by and large is not only a kind of amplified “seeking,” but one that self-perpetuates ad infinitum. I am reminded of something Trungpa said about tantra, and perhaps spirituality in general–along the lines of “better not to start in the first place.” I think it was at the same time that he described tantra as being like a snake in a tube–if you don't continue forward you die (or worse!). Do you think that one must “go through the tube” to attain the natural state, or can the whole path of “amplified seeking” be bypassed, or at least greatly diminished and contextualized within life, rather than one's life being contextualized within their spiritual practice?
My personal sense is that one must go through some kind of “tube”–and that, ala Jung, the way out is through (or in). Even the most diehard “anti-seekers” and/or “anti-developmentalists” went through some kind of process. But I wonder to what degree modern spirituality merely reinforces seeking, especially when it becomes commercialized.
I really liked what you said about seeing your father as a human and the first noble truth–it resonates strongly with my own experience (if different in specifics). I continually find that my own experiences of suffering and trauma, to whatever degree, open me to the suffering of others. It can be quite overwhelming…but on the other hand I find that this openness brings about, almost paradoxically, a lessening–even eradication–of my own suffering through a lack of focus on “me-ness.” This is not a diminishment of “I”, but of self-obsession (and contraction).
I also enjoyed your emphasis on “purpose” over “a specific purpose.” I am reminded of James Hillman's acorn theory, where we all have a “soul's code”–a path of blossoming, from acorn to oak. I take this not to mean “a specific oak”–as in we are all pre-determined to be a specific shape and form (if we do things right!), but that there is a wide degree of variation as to specifics. This is a kind of integration of free will vs. determinism, where there is a pattern and a process of unfolding that the more we surrender to and consciously embrace, the less we suffer, but that we also have much freedom to decide how and what that unfolding entails (it could even be that the “natural state” and this process are two aspects of the same thing).
Regards,
Jonathan
Jim,
Thank you for sharing your life story and compassion.
I really enjoyed your point about PW and how that has helped you “ground” yourself and as integral part of your practice. I feel that any type of “grounding” work is beneficial as well besides having some sort of “blissed” out states or peak experiences through meditation, etc. I'm finding that there needs to be a integrated framework of eastern spiritual practices with what we know so far of western psychology/philosophy. I feel there's so much more work to be done in the field of both understanding the biology of the brain as well as psychology. It seems like we are only on the trailhead of a large mountain.
Hi Delia,
Thanks for your comments. I very much appreciated your preamble on Gopi Krishna, as reading his autobiography as well as another book by him was very helpful to me way back when. (I still have my original copy of the 1971 edition of his Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man with commentary by James Hillman, published by Shambhala.)
I'm familiar with Muller's book and that type of work (e.g., Alice Miller), and I agree with you that pain and suffering can be rich fertilizers for spiritual growth. I like what you say on what it means to comprehend.
Thanks again for your kind comments, and for all that you have shared here at Zaadz.
Jim
Hi Michael,
You said:
Its comforting to hear another boomer's “trail of tears and joy” story.
That's exactly how I felt when I read your contribution to this symposium a couple of days ago.
Your pal too,
Jim
Hi Coyoteyogi,
First, in answer to the question at the end of your comment, yes, the snake & yin/yang symbol image is something I drew and painted (in pen & ink and watercolor) quite spontaneously near the end of a 5-week Process Work intensive course in the early 90's. It was since used on the cover of an issue of The Journal of Process-Oriented Psychology, and I had it printed on t-shirts which I sold in the US and Europe.
You make many astute comments about how family-of-origin issues can mix with spiritual communty involvements. I had not heard of the book The Presence Process until reading your post. It looks interesting and I will return to the site you link to and check it out.
Yeah, how you mean “sobriety” – “clear mind, clear thinking and clear body” – is exactly how I meant it in my previous comment.
The story about Jampolsky and Muktananda, by the way, is recounted by Jampolsky in his 1983 book Teach Only Love. Here is something by Jampolsky on the incident which I just found online:
He [Muktananda] touched me with peacock feathers. I began to have the impression that our minds were joined. He touched me again on the head with his hand. After this, beautiful colors appeared all around me, and it seemed as though I had stepped out of my body and was looking down on it. I saw colors whose depth and brilliance were beyond anything I had ever imagined.
I began to talk in tongues. A beautiful beam of light came into the room and I decided at that moment to stop evaluating what was happening and simply be one with the experience, to join it completely…. For the next three months, my energy level was heightened and I required very little sleep. I was filled with an awareness of love unlike anything I had known before.
Thanks again, Coyoteyogi. I've been enjoying your comments in this symposium.
Jimthanx jim for your contribution…i'm a Ramana Maharshi groupie too!
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for sharing that you enjoyed what I wrote, and thanks for your thoughtful questions and comments.
Regarding an association I made between certain intense meditative experiences and abdominal pains, I said in my post that “I’m only reporting things as I experienced them at the time.” That also applies to what I wrote about “the natural state.”
You wrote:
You echo various teachings when you speak of “enlightenment as the natural state.” I would like to hear more as I've never heard you use this phrasing before. Why, do you think, if enlightenment is our “natural state” is it so rare? Is this is because of a developmental process, why call it our “natural state”? Would we need to develop into our naturalness? Or do you see the rarity of it having more to do with cultural pathology, even a “Fall” of some kind? For in our culture “seeking” seems to be the natural state.
I would say that you never heard me use that phrasing before because I no longer use that kind of phrasing.
I'm going to respond to something else that you wrote in your comment, and then I will come back to your questions about “the natural state” and “seeking.”
You wrote (at the end of your comment). about:
…a kind of integration of free will vs. determinism, where there is a pattern and a process of unfolding that the more we surrender to and consciously embrace, the less we suffer, but that we also have much freedom to decide how and what that unfolding entails (it could even be that the “natural state” and this process are two aspects of the same thing).
In philosophy, what you call a kind of integration of free will and determinism is called ”compatibilism.” Simply put, compatibilism is the idea that free will and determinism are logically compatible or that determinism is logically consistent with the idea that we are free, e.g., free to make moral choices. Obviously, philosophical focus on this is conceptual, and you are pointing beyond concepts or to nonconceptual integration of free will and determinism, but since we are communicating here in words, sentences, and concepts, I think it's relevant to put some focus on how free will and determinism may be integrated conceptually, even as we acknowledge the limitations of conceptual integration.
I would say that nonconceptual integration of free will and determinism is exactly what Zen teacher and scholar David Loy is talking about when he writes about “nondual action” in his book Nonduality. What Loy means by “nondual action” is sometimes referred to as “effortless effort,” which is of course not the same thing as effortful effort or effortless effortlessness.
You're a dad, and I reckon your daughter is not yet at the age where she's hopping on bicycles without training wheels. When you teach her to ride a bicycle, you're probably not going to say, “Try with all your might to balance! Make an effort to balance! Scrunch up your face and grit your teeth, because balancing on a bicycle is really hard!”
Balancing on a bicycle is “natural” in the sense that it requires not effort but effortless effort.
This is true for meditation, lovemaking, playing a musical instrument, swimming, and many other things. I would say that what is often referred to as being “in the zone” is a matter of getting into a groove where there is effortless effort.
But there is, I would say, a big difference between being in the zone when doing sports or playing music, and being in “the natural state” in the sense of abiding in the deepest sacred,. spiritual, or holy space one can know. (This isn't to suggest that one can't be in a deeply sacred space when doing sports or playing music, but I would suggest that while Keith Richards may be “in the zone” when playing guitar, he is not in what I would call a profoundly deep sacred zone, whereas I would say that in his best moments, Philippe Herreweghe is in a profoundly sacred zone when conducting. And I could be wrong about Richards.) There is something it is like to have a sense of the sacred or holiness or being filled with the presence of Spirit or however one might put that, which can be distinguished from not having that sense.
Now of course there are contemporary people who imply that they are constantly in the holiest, most spiritual, most sacred space possible. To which I say, don't tell us about it or hint that this is where you are at, show us by your actions. Die on the cross while forgiving those who put you there. Show us that you can live without fans and adulation and a huge “non-profit” income.
As for “seeking,” I would simply define “seeking” in the pejorative sense as “effortful effort.” In other words, effort without grace, effort without ease and balance. Mindfulness meditation teacher Larry Rosenberg says that one of the most important things to be learned in meditation is that the way to get from A to B is to really be at A. This does require effort, but effortless effort rather than effortful effort. Making an effortful effort when trying to balance on a bike will probably lead the would-be bicyclist to lose her balance. Just so, effortful effort in sitting meditation tends to lead the would-be meditator to get caught up in “monkey mind.” And effortless effortlessness in sitting meditation may lead to a pleasant snooze, and perhaps some refreshing deep relaxation, but not much beyond that.
I think there's probably more in your comment that I could address, but this will have to do for now.
Thanks, Jonathan!
Jim
Hi Lucidity,
Thanks for your kind comment. I agree with you about the need for grounding work. You say:
I feel there's so much more work to be done in the field of both understanding the biology of the brain as well as psychology. It seems like we are only on the trailhead of a large mountain.
Amen to that! I am looking forward to a forthcoming book by Owen Flanagan, who is a practicing Buddhist as well as a philosopher and professor of cognitive neuroscience, neurobiology, brain sciences, and psychology. The book, which I believe is based on these Templeton lectures by Flanagan, is titled The Really Hard Problem, and is forthcoming from MIT Press.
Cheers!
Jim
Hi Starlight,
Thanks. I love this video I got around ten years ago of footage of Ramana with narration, titled The Sage of Arunachala. I don't know if it's on DVD. (I got it from some Ramana place in Santa Cruz.) I love the part in the video where the narrator describes how Ramana would go to the ashram kitchen around 3 AM every day and would insist, against the wishes of the kitchen staff, on sitting on the floor and cutting vegetables for the daily communal meal.
Cheers,
Jim
Jim,
Thank you for your reply. I'm a men's medium if there are any T-shirts left. (or cards)
I enjoyed your reply to JB and your thoughts on effortless effort, very nuanced, very well considered. I've heard “the natural state” also referred to as the “stateless state” _the absolutely empty, silent and infinitely clear container for any and all states. What also comes into play is the issue of identity. What and where is that which you identify as yourself. This inquiry I've found to take much effortless effort to unfold. Is there anything more difficult than sitting with a question while neither resisting nor grasping at the many answers that present themselves? The cushion is a great leveller of 'talent' and ambitions, spiritual or otherwise.
thanks again and keep breathing
coyote
Hi Jim, thanks for the reply.
I think you make an important distinction between Keith Richards and Phillippe Herreweghe–that there is, or may be, a qualitative difference in their experience of “the zone.” I am reminded of something Trungpa said about animals and enlightened beings both being in the present moment, the difference being that enlightened beings are fully conscious, fully awake (this is not to say that Keith Richards is an animal, mind you!).
Rudolf Steiner greatly emphasizes that “supersensible realms” are to be approached with I-consciousness, that to engage mysticism without that consciousness is to revert to older forms of consciousness. This is roughly synonymous, I think, with Trungpa's wakefulness. Both of which relate to what you say here:
There is something it is like to have a sense of the sacred or holiness or being filled with the presence of Spirit or however one might put that, which can be distinguished from not having that sense.
The “sense of the sacred” equates with being awake to what one is experiencing, to engaging it as an “I”. One cannot have a “sense of” anything without this awareness. One can be “in the zone” without that I-ness, but the sacred marriage, so to speak, does not occur.
I like what you say about effortless effort–it reminds me of what Gary Lachman calls the “Goldilocks ideal”–not too little, not too much. I know that in some early experiences of deep meditation, or lucid dreaming for that matter, I have gotten, ah, excited and thought “Wow, this is frickin' awesome!” or “Holy shite, I'm dreaming and I'm conscious!” And then…well, you know. Game over, man ;-)
oh this makes me happy! cant wait to read all the comments!
Jim darling, I loved your addition to the Zymposium (your artwork is fabulous :-) Like Delia, I am just now returning to the games after being away for a few days… and wow!!
Briefly, I wanted to thank you for sharing the “shakti fever”…. it validates my experience of two weeks ago that I am still trying to integrate and tease out. My “fever” lasted a few days and it was of an intensity like no other… what was awesome was the *capacity* that I was feeling into (the experience was catalyzed by two… decade-long obstacles being obliterated and some new love with intense resonance being felt). My typical tools or riding gear were nearly useless… which added to the intrigue and adventure, and integration.
And to all others: thanks for the fantastic comments, questions and dialog.
Delia: looking forward to checking out the book, Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood.
Cheers, ~ Stacy
i too had a fever that lasted from the day before the symposium began - after shooting and editing the open sky bodywork video and writing bascially all day - though day one of the symposium posting and discussing my long piece - temperature, fatigue, general weakness - waves of heat…..i really thought i was getting sick, but by friday i was fine…
well i think that book title could be a jumping off point for a very rich discussion…. ne c'est pas?
Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood.
you mean that book title? i have stuff to say about it too….
ummm ya i mean that book title….
what do you think daate?
HI Tom, Thanks and cheers to you! - Jim
Hi Teenie-Dakini Stacy, Thanks for your comments. I like the pic of you with the chain saw, ha ha. I've done a lot of work with chainsaws. Very grounding, earthy work! Cheers, Jim
jim,
such a rich story…its so very interesting how many of us in this symposium have such different experiences with it coming down to the same thing…trials, tribulations, and beautiful emergence…i particularly enjoyed your emphasis on purpose and what that means to you…also, your way of presenting effortless effort was quite on point…i am wondering what you meant by somatic ascent, however…and how that showed up for you…
Hi Sa'Rah, Thanks for your comments! I should have explained what I meant by “somatic ascent” when I introduced the term, so thanks for asking.
Others have mentioned the book Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter Levine in this symposium. Levine explains how mammals, including us, will instinctively enter an altered state of consciousness when death appears imminent or when danger is sensed. For a small child, mommy and daddy having a loud fight may be suffficient to trigger this response. The altered state in question is trancelike, and certainly pleasant compared to the state one was in before entering it, which was a state of “fight or flight,” fear, and apprehension.
This type of self-protective state tends to be a dissociative state.
I think what happened for me is that I became familiar with this type of state early in life, and I learned to feel my way around in it (sort of like the little girl in Pan's Labyrinth), so that it became a familiar safe haven that I could return to whenever I felt the need, which was often.
When in my late teens and early twenties I began to access so-called higher states, e.g., in meditation, this was in a sense a continuation of what had gone before in the sense of me learning to access a self-protective space where traumatic events can't touch me. I know, for example, and it's painful to recall this, that I protected myself this way when rejected by a girlfriend after high school. Instead of feeling, I subtly shifted into states where I didn't have to feel.
In my personal experience, and many transpersonal theorists seem to agree, entrance into such trance-like states entails what may be described as somatic ascent. It's somatic because it involves the sensing body, and it's ascent because it involves a subtle directing of attention toward the crown and away from the “lower chakras.” And I would say that it is in the “lower” depths of the body or soma which is where “buried feelings” are hidden.
I want to quote Arthur Janov on something related to this. His rhetoric is overblown, but I think it's worth quoting this just to make a point. He is of course the founder of Primal Therapy, which had its fifteen minutes of fame in the early 1970's (thanks in large part to John Lennon's endorsement of it), and this is from a book by Janov published in 1991 (and when he talks about “the minds” he is referring to the triune brain):
The New Age thinkers talk a lot about consciousness and the higher mind. They believe you can transcend to higher levels of mind unknown to ordinary mortals. They concoct rituals to rise to these levels. Yet, the only way to rise to a higher consciousness is by descending to lower levels. That is the true dialectic of mind.
It is paradoxical. Those who claim to have achieved a state of bliss and cosmic calm come to our research laboratory, where we find a mind that is racing a mile a minute and a body in a panic state. Billions of neurons are busy in the job of repression. It works, and the person believes he is calm or has achieved nirvana. Repression's job is to deceive. There is nothing quite as infinite as self-deception - the great gift of our advanced civilization.
Those into magical thinking want to believe in some special mind that is cosmic, God-like. It is nothing like that. What some seem to want is to ascend to a state of peace or bliss. It is when one descends, however, and makes the unconscious conscious that one finds peace and calm. There is no greater inner harmony. It means the end to inexplicable tension. The minds are finally unified.
What Janov means by “descending to lower levels” here has nothing to do with what Ken Wilber calls “descent” and certainly nothing to do with what Wilber calls “pathological descent.” It has instead to do with deeply opening somatically, in terms of bodily sensing and awareness. I think Julian has covered so much of this so articulately that it should not be necessary for me to recapitulate what he’s already said in any number of his blog posts.
For me personally, through Primal Therapy in the early 70’s and later through various approaches, including Process Work and insight meditation or vipassana, I was able to come back to my senses, so to speak. (Morris Berman’s book Coming Back to Our Senses is about the history of somatic ascent in the West, and he attributes the Nazi phenomenon to imbalanced somatic ascent, and explains how their use of spectacle was clearly designed to draw people into dissociated “higher” somatic states. I would love to say more about that but time and space does not allow at this time. I would say that what happened at Jonestown had to do with somatic ascent, and I would say the same about what happened in the Heaven’s Gate cult.)
Unfortunately, when I have talked about this elsewhere on the web, I have sometimes been misunderstood to be saying something that is biased against ascent and in favor descent. This is not the case at all. I think, and I know Julian agrees and I imagine many if not most of us would agree, that we are interested in wholeness that integrates the sacred and the secular, ascending currents and descending currents, the “gross physical body” with “the subtle and causal bodies,” etc.
The only thing I’m biased against in this regard is the idea that ascending to higher states will somehow automatically resolve all the so-called “lower” stuff that one has not dealt with, faced, and worked through. It just doesn’t work that way.
I hope this isn’t way too long a response to your question, Sa’Rah!
Jim
hi jim,
thanks SO MUCH for that post. i agree completely and am so grateful to see it in print (well, on the web.) julian has articulated a lot of it and i think adding personal experience to the whole thing is invaluable. i've found that nothing leads to grounded and embodied bliss and love more than working with the lower chakras (if they're imbalanced and you've sort of gone the dissociative route); particularly the first and second, where emotions seem to reside. i can relate to your learning to navigate the dissociative states as well. i've lived life with the highest three chakras pretty wide open and the lower ones frozen, and am only now beginning to see the beauty and wholeness that comes from unfreezing and opening the lower ones, being present with what's been buried there, honoring it, and integrating it into the whole system. i've been doing a lot of work lately on the root chakra, as i know a lot of stuff is trapped there in the nerve cluster around the coccyx, and found that i feel almost like an entirely different person when the traumatic energy there is discharged or less activated. the world is safer, i'm more present with people, my body is a flexible container for emotions, and i'm, well, whole. so then there's no need to “transcend” anything, at any rate. so thanks again for noting these differences which can seem so subtle but which are really so huge. i'd love to hear more about your process and what it has personally felt like for you to “descend.”
the clarity and time you took to respond to me is so very appreciated, jim…i definitaly understand the switch into the dissociative response…also, the janov quote was educational and well said…thank you…
and daate…here's to the opening of the root…so our trees can get the nourishment of the earth and our branches can reach even further!
yum yum yum.
love how well you put it jim - and that quote from janov is dead-on … i don't think i have read anyone other than myself saying it so directly - and this is probably a quote from the 80's yea?
i have exciting news!! (actually a lot of you probably know this already but i'll share anyway.) ok so in massage school we're studying the autonomic nervous system and i just found out that the sympathetic responses in the nervous system comes from the nerves in the thoracic region of the spine (which is interesting, as this is where the frozen traumatic energy of panic attacks often lurks), and then that parasympathetic activity is found both in a few cranial nerves and also in the nerves in the sacrum—the very precise area i was talking about in which i sometimes get what feels like electric shocks in response to arousal or fear (which can really be so closely linked that the de-coupling work is pretty intensive.) i still haven't figured out why, if this region is parasympathetic, i would be getting that particular response there, but it was almost miraculous to have such a clear anatomical frame put around it—and as of right now, because it's been normalized and named, i feel less activated there.) of course this area is also the root chakra and where our sense of safety and belonging are—-and it would make sense that this is a parasympathetic thing, our very basic sense of being alive.
anyway. thought it was exciting. i'm off to bed and then to school tomorrow to learn more about the autonomic system…..:)
Hi Sa'Rah, thanks; great image of the tree in your comment to Daate. Awesome pic of you in front of your first mural! The largest mandalas I've painted have been on 4 ft. X 4 ft. sheets of watercolor paper.
- Jim
Hi Daate, Thanks for your comment! What you're learning in massage school sounds interesting and I'd love to hear more at some point.
You say, “I'd love to hear more about your process and what it has personally felt like for you to 'descend.'” I'll respond later.
- Jim
Hi Daate, now I'll try to respond to you saying:
i'd love to hear more about your process and what it has personally felt like for you to “descend.”
I recently checked here at Zaadz to see how many members listed Ken Wilber under the heading of “Teachers” and “Heroes” on their personal profile pages, and I came up with nearly 1000 for the former and 400 for the latter. Therefore I want to note that the way I’m using the term “descend” in this thread is related to what Wilber has called the integration of “ascending and descending currents,” and has nothing to do with what he calls “descent bias” or “pathological descent.”
Obviously, what we are talking about here is not about how to awaken ascending currents, but how to work with certain energies after such currents have been awakened and are moving within one (or we could talk about an increase in “chi,” “shakti,” or “life force,” etc.).
“At times in intensive spiritual training,” writes Jack Kornfield in “The Spiritual Roller Coaster” chapter of his 1993 book A Path With Heart, “or in extreme or accidental circumstances, powerful altered states and energetic processes open too rapidly for us to work with them skillfully. At these times, the degree of energy, the power of the experiences, or the level of release goes beyond our capacity to handle or hold it in a balanced way.”
Kornfield ends this section of the chapter from which I quote by relating a story about the Zen master Hakuin, who after many trials and tribulations encountered a teacher who gave him teachings for “grounding and balancing his inner energy.”
“One involves drawing energy from the top chakra down into the belly, using the belly and special breathing to ground the energy in the physical body. Secondly, the hermit gave him a series of energy-balancing exercises to circulate the energy through the body…”
In the same book, Kornfield talks about “taking what’s good” from problematic spiritual teachers. One thing that I took from my time with Da in the seventies was what I learned from him about the very kinds of exercises that Kornfield refers to. Back then, Da talked about this in terms of “conductivity,” and “breathing from crown to toe.” He recommended that practicing members of his community practice this kind of breathing through all waking hours and all activities, and to remember to always come back to it. So it is a kind of constant meditation in action (and is similar in certain respects to what Thich Nhat Hahn talks about in books such as Breathe, You are Alive, and what Gay Hendricks talks about in Conscious Breathing, etc., and we can relate this to Reich and Lowen and so on and so forth, and I would say that this is a sine qua non to development into what Wilber used to call “the centaur,” a developmental stage characterized by integration of mind, body, and emotion).
I was into it back then and I practiced it and kept remembering to practice it when I noticed I’d stopped, and I continued after leaving the cult, and (here’s the bad news, or good news, depending on how you look at it) after about two decades breathing in this way was pretty much second nature for me. Based on what I’ve read, the average resting rate of respiration for most people is 14-20 breaths (i.e., a round of inhalation/exhalation) per minute. My normal average resting rate of respiration is 6 breaths per minute.
My daughter was born in 1978, a beautiful home birth in a quite little house in Corte Madera with the assistance of a midwife, and now that I think of it I must also give a lot of credit to the physician, Dr. Lewis Mehl, who gave my wife and I breathing instructions during her pregnancy. Part of the idea was for her to use breathing to assist with the contractions, and to also use it to work with pain, given that she was not planning to and did not have any kind of anesthesia or any other kind of medication. And it worked, beautifully. The breath is so powerful.
I would say that the breath has been my anchor, and has helped me move into difficult emotions and buried feelings in ways that are gentle yet penetrating. Studying with Stephen Levine also helped me a lot with this, as he is quite masterful at getting down deep into buried feelings and emotions.
And I mentioned mindfulness, insight-oriented, or vipassana mediation somewhere in this thread. Some approaches are right in line with the kind of breathing I’ve been talking about, e.g., the approach described in Marshall Glickman’s book, Beyond the Breath: Extraordinary Mindfulness Through Whole-Body Vipassana Meditation. The key for me is whole body, not just upper chakras, bliss, light, and peaks, but also lower chakras, difficult emotions, shadows, and valleys.
:-) Jimthanks so much jim, that helps clarify. unfortunately breathing is one of the things—despite actively having done yoga now for about nine years—that i think i've neglected concentrating on. i know i could afford to do a lot more with breathing. it's also interesting, your having cultivated this whole exercise as second nature. like i said in my post, we are so disconnected in the west from the idea of breathing and movement being the keys to unlocking buried emotion. thanks for sharing the story about your child's birth, too, by the way.
:)
i will also have to read “a path with heart,” a book that someone else recently suggested to me as well. thanks again jim.