December 6, 2004 Monday, Teacher Training Class
Auras;Mental/Emotional Distortion and Stages of Consciousness
Opening not recorded. We have been talking about transitions in consciousness and the means available to be aware of these. Barbara began to talk of what she learns from the aura.
Barbara: We’re talking about aura. I’m aware of four levels of aura. The inner level that I see relates to the physical body and speaks of both the present and karmic aspects as form and energy. Let me explain this further. Each heavier body – physical, emotional, and mental – has an present form level, which is the outer expression, and an energetic level. Let’s relate it to the nirmanakaya and sambhogakaya expressions of the body. In the body, we can see this easily as the solid hand, for example, and the energy body of the hand. Both those levels reflect the state in the moment, and how that relates to past karma. With the hand, we see the health or distortion of the form body, and of the energy flow, as it expresses in this moment and is it relates to old karma. Thus, the hand may appear healthy and perfect, but there may be a karmic distortion that shows in the aura. This is where we seem to try to compare apples and hockey pucks. We’ve got different terms that seem to relate, but there’s not always the same relationship.
So the most inner level of the aura tells me about the physical body, the etheric body, at both the form level and the energetic level, and tells me about the karma of the physical body. The colors tell me the most about the energetic level. The intactness or lack of intactness tells me most about the karma and how resolved or unresolved it is. And the radiance tells me most about the present form level. There are many possible combinations. For example, around my left foot with poor circulation from an accident 40 years ago, the aura is now intact which tells me the karma is resolved; there is a moderate radiance, with some fluctuation that tells me the tissue is in relatively good health, and there is a bit of red in the otherwise cool yellow color around the foot, that tells me the energy is still not flowing fully. Because the aura is radiant and intact, I know the lack of energy flow is mostly from the habit of not bringing energy there. This tells me I’m still “cutting off” the foot, so to speak. The more I pay attention to it, the more the color changes to a healthy one.
If I see an aura that has a general radiance, but there are a lot of breaks in it, I know the tissue is healthy but that karmically there are issues. The radiance can be superimposed on the breaks. It’s like seeing through a transparent film. So I would see what seems a very radiant, very healthy physical body right now, and yet there are breaks underneath that radiance that let me know there’s unresolved karma in the body at those points.
As to color, please understand this is usually not just a solid ribbon of color. As example, it might be mostly red and with areas of yellow and here and there places that almost move into lavender and blue, violet, and then back to red again. But there’s an overall color. That overall color tells me about that energetic level of the physical body. Generally but not always, very hot colors are places that where energy is not flowing. That lack of flow could be in the present physical body because of damage to tissue, or it could be blocked energetically because of karma.
The second level of aura tells me about the emotional body, in very much the same way. The same three aspects, radiance, color, and intactness, tell me about the form and energetic and karmic levels of the emotional body. As there’s more wholeness, more resolution of both old issues and present trauma and distortion, the colors tend to cool.
The next layer tells me more about the mental body. The second and third layers, emotional and mental, in most people tend to merge. So I tend to think of those as one level, around the astral body. When I say there are 4 levels, the first is physical or etheric. The second is the merged emotional/mental or astral.
The third level really tells me about the stage of consciousness. And the 4th level, the outermost level, tells me about the maturity of the causal body, by which I mean how stably that has been developed.
This is very oversimplified. Each chakra also has an aura. These are seen as overlays on the whole body aura. There is a personality level of aura, an level of aura that tells more about such traits as introversion or extroversion. I’ve read that aura can also tell about astrological birth signs but I have not seen or understood that part of it. So what I describe is just what I use personally to tell me about someone’s health and mind state.
Q: Are they all separate colors?
Barbara: In Aaron, they’re all white! The inner level has just little bits of a very cool icy blue, here and there. It’s more just ripples of energy. There is no inner two layers on Aaron, so all I’m seeing are the third and fourth levels. And the third level just has little tiny bits of blue in the white, and then the enormous brilliant radiant white outer layer. The bits of blue would be because he holds himself in 6th density, and is not 100% in non-dual consciousness, but retains enough mundane consciousness to speak with us.
In some people they’re very different colors, like 4 layers of a rainbow. In some people, they all tend to be one shade so that the inner level may be a more turquoise blue and then at the emotional/mental level, just a little bit of green and yellow in it that shows me areas where there may still be something unresolved. And then the third layer, moving out into a very deep bluish white, little bits of lavender in it. And then the fourth layer is almost indistinguishable from the third because the person has deep access to the causal body, and the outer layer seems like just an expansion of that.
Q: So when the aura is fluffed up, when someone’s aura is open and radiant from energy work or meditation, are we experiencing all of those levels? What do you see?
Barbara: What I often see when I sit with people – less so in a short sitting, more so in a retreat – is that the inner layer, the physical body layer, doesn’t change all that much, not in the course of one sitting or even in a weekend retreat. But the emotional/mental levels change radically. At the beginning of a retreat there are a lot of fiery-looking emotional/mental levels and by the end of the retreat it has all calmed down and there’s a lot of blue and lavender everywhere.
Similarly – less at the end of a sitting, more at the end of a retreat, but I see it in both – at the end of a sitting, people’s outer auras have begun to open as the second level quiets. The outer levels are just fluffing out, open, beginning to radiate. The light is coming through.
Let Aaron say something here.
Aaron: I am Aaron. There are a few details to consider here. First, there is a direct correlation—let me backtrack for a moment. At the very beginning of class, Q said it sounds like there are many factors that influence the progression of consciousness and whether it is smooth or erratic, many factors that can bring forth an unstable opening to a stage of consciousness.
Please understand that this is not a linear picture, “This feeds this and this and this, and that feeds that and that and that,” but everything is circular and mixed. But two major factors here are the opening of the chakras and the opening of the kundalini, and these of course relate to each other.
If the upper chakras are very open, what we’ll see is a very open, radiant outer aura, but much more of a division between the first levels of aura and the outer two layers of aura. Sometimes we will see a person in whom the outer two layers of aura are very cool-colored, very radiant and open. Let me rephrase that, the outermost layer is that way. The energetic layer is also relatively open.
The first layer may look like somebody took a dark red marker and simply outlined the body, very intense, very tight, with a lot of breaks in it, often what seems to be areas of black or dark brown. The emotional and mental level may be either a very hot color also or it may seem non-existent, which would involve almost total suppression, complete closing of the lower chakras.
The clue that lets us know that this is not a person who is fully awakened and therefore has released those two inner levels of aura, as Barbara describes seeing in my aura, is that their tight inner layer will send streaks of hot color radiating out. No matter how tight they close it in, it radiates outward.
When the chakras are all relatively open, each layer will be distinct and have about an equal power to it. The outer layer is much like the dharmakaya itself: it holds everything. Therefore the healthiness of the inner layers of aura usually also can be seen in the size and radiance of the outer layer. But if a person has moved in an unbalanced way into the upper chakras, truly abandoning the lower chakras, there may still be a radiance and largeness to that outer layer. But it’s kind of like Swiss cheese, it’s poked full of holes.
When the chakras are fully opened, and if kundalini energy opens in a balanced and wholesome way, accompanied by a balanced movement through the stages of consciousness, each of these layers in turn will appear cool and radiant. When I say cool, it’s not always cool colors. I don’t mean just blue and lavender- blue.. There can be yellows in a cool spectrum of yellow. There can even be reds in a cool spectrum of red. No hot colors, though. But a healthy aura may be mostly cool ytellos, reds, tan, green. It doesn’t have to be blue. The color is more related to life work and personality. The warmth or coolness of the color is related to mental or physical health.
I want to give you enough information here to give you a sense that this is happening, but I don’t think it’s useful to spend a lot of time on it, because most of you do not experience aura in this way. So it’s just something to reflect on. Enough has been said. Let’s put it aside.
The question was raised about trauma as it effects progression through the stages of consciousness.
When there is strong trauma in this life or as unresolved in a past life and brought into this life, that can lead a person to be more stuck in an earlier stage of consciousness. Another pattern we see is that the person moves out of what we might call gross consciousness, as there is a desire to get away from the physical senses. Such, I can only call it escape, causes an almost traumatic opening of the supramundane senses. But it’s done as an escape from the physical senses. The person finds that it’s a workable hiding place, but it’s a bit like balancing a 500 square foot house on a single pole, there’s nothing to stably support it. We’ll return to these patterns. Let me pause here to hear your specific questions.
Barbara: Let Aaron say one thing. He is saying, as you look at all of this, these are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle; you’re going to get these pieces put together and those pieces put together, but don’t know how the whole puzzle fits. Don’t worry too much about that right now Just get the pieces, and work with them also in your own meditation, and it will begin to come together.
Q: D asked the question on Saturday that caught my attention. I think he said something like, how does our understanding of either the state or stage of where we are most stable, how would that understanding inform our practices? Do you have any initial comments?
Aaron: I am Aaron. First, let us resolve one question. In all of you, the etheric body is open. For all of you, the etheric consciousness is stable. For all of you, the astral body is open. For some it is more stable than for others. All of you are at least stable in the low astral consciousness, that is, the stage of vision-logic consciousness has been opened and stabilized. For some of you, psychic consciousness is more stable, more accessible, than for others. For some of you, subtle consciousness is more stable and accessible.
Most of you have touched on the causal state. For all of you, the causal body has at least begun to open. None of you are stable at the causal state. What that means is you’ve all touched on the stage of consciousness we call Christ Consciousness or Buddha Nature, some more deeply than others. None of you can fully live from that stage yet.
Okay, put that questioning of “Where am I?” aside! Knowing that you are working now to stabilize astral consciousness, I think what’s most helpful in practice is to observe the occasional shift into, let me phrase this carefully, the shift into self-identification in etheric consciousness. There will certainly be etheric level consciousness. As soon as you bring attention to the breath coming in and out, you’re with the body. It’s a physical experience. This is the etheric consciousness.
What we’re talking about, here is the pole, that tree with its roots in the ground, its body or trunk in the air, and its crown up above in the heavens. The tree can’t lose touch with its roots, but it knows it is not just its roots. Even at that level of awareness where it rests up above the atmosphere, the crown of the tree, it knows the roots and it knows the trunk. The tree does not bring this to conscious awareness, but you do.
From the astral level, you are aware of the nirmanakaya experiences, the form body experiences. You are aware of the occasional dharmakaya experience, not yet stable there. You are aware of that whole transition, sambhogakaya. Put in another way, we have awareness that is aware of the bodies – the physical body, the emotional body, the mental body – and we have awareness aware of itself, aware of awareness. There is the intention to hold that whole spectrum.
I know there’s nobody in this room who has not at some time in the last day or two, literally slipped solidly into the most elementary levels of consciousness, a moment of impatience or boredom or rage, a moment of confusion. With you practice, you can feel the mind begin to churn, with the tensions of fear.
Fear taken as “self,” by which I mean the whole self, lost in fear, is very much an archaic or magical consciousness level experience. The difficulty as you know is not that there is a touching on fear but is at that point where you lose the wider awareness because you shift down to the narrower. Using the ramp metaphor, the difficulty is not that you slide down the ramp but that you forget there’s a ramp above you, and that higher consciousness is accessible even while you’re down here in a more basic consciousness. As soon as you recognize that pure awareness is still present, then even though you’re down here for a moment, you’re still back up there. You are the whole ramp. Then there is no longer self-identity with the more elementary level of consciousness. Another way to phrase this is the simple asking of the question, “Where is rigpa.?” You have all done this as practice with me, resting in rigpa, noting that while rigpa is always there, the contact with it comes and goes. When we note that we seem to have lost it, that which notes is awareness. Come home!
This is where we practice. We practice simply by noting how that elementary level of consciousness feels. What is the direct experience of it in the mind and body? Just reflecting in that way, with mindfulness, re-opens you to higher consciousness. Another experience with which I think you can all identify is this. When there is something happening, and you try to figure it out rationally, there’s a contraction of the body, of mind, and energy field, trying to figure it out, really trying to control it, in a sense. This is fear-based rational consciousness. You know how it feels when you note this tension, fear, contracting, wanting to control. Take a deep breath and allow it all to open out. And suddenly there’s an intuitive insight into the resolution of this situation. Rational consciousness couldn’t get to it, the intuitive level gets to it.
So I think the strongest place for practice is simply watching this shift, which you have been watching all along anyhow. Now you simply have some labels for it. The other place where these labels can help is that when there is supramundane consciousness, even if just for a moment that non-dual seeing comes and then passes, it’s very helpful to know it was there. You don’t have to wonder about when it will come back, or what it means. Just know it was there.
Eventually it becomes quite helpful to understand the distinction between divine consciousness and non-dual consciousness, not intellectually but what each of these experiences feels like. This way, when there is divine consciousness, there can be some level of awareness that non-dual consciousness is right there. It’s accessible. Of course you can’t say, “Now I’m going to get it.” Just noting the direct experience of the divine consciousness, Christ consciousness, Buddha consciousness, as we call it, and noting that there is still the tiniest sense of self in that, that subtle edge of boundary falls away and the non-dual consciousness becomes accessible.
Are there questions about this? I pause.
Q: Is it possible to be able to assess stage of most stability with a student, as you do with us? And then suggest a practice that is tailored to their experience?
Barbara: This is from me, what Aaron has taught me. He’s used my children as an example. When they were little, and how if one of them was very scared, crying, nightmare in the middle of the night, “Mommy! There’s a monster!” that that child in that moment had no access to rational consciousness. There was great certainty there was a monster. Mythical consciousness. Maybe even magical consciousness. But by the age that they could articulate the fear of a monster, more mythical consciousness.
So trying to explain that monsters are a figment of the imagination is not particularly helpful because that’s not where the child is; they can’t hear it. When I see where the person is, I can see what level that person is able to hear. Then I can offer, in the case of the child, the hug or whatever is appropriate; in the case of the student, the practice that’s appropriate. Aaron said earlier, most people who are coming here as students have already at least begun the opening of vision logic consciousness, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t still get stuck in the lower levels of consciousness. Let Aaron speak.
Aaron: I am Aaron. I think this will be a helpful example. Consider the student who is deeply stuck in the notion of unworthiness, for whom a feeling of unworthiness is a persistent and difficult companion in practice and in life. The student may be opening to vision-logic consciousness. In their practice they may be aware of movement of energy. They may relate in their daily life intuitively with others. You may see a real sense of mutual respect with others, really sensing of the divine in others. But, through some trauma perhaps, mind keeps returning to a very elementary level of consciousness where the persistent belief in unworthiness keeps coming up.
In order to take that student beyond unworthiness, we employ rational consciousness, and much of vipassana is rooted in rational consciousness. This is working with the 5 physical senses and mind, observing the arising and passing away of objects through the employment of rational consciousness. The student begins to see how the idea of unworthiness and the physical sensations that accompany that thought of unworthiness are conditioned and arise when certain conditions are present, maybe certain words or specific kinds of situations.
So we employ the rational to clarify and transcend the mythical. We cannot employ vision logic, psychic or subtle consciousness to deal with the mythical. To resolve the mythical we must use the rational. As the rational becomes stable in this respect, the student begins to see into the whole nature of the concept of unworthiness, how it’s a story, how it arises from conditions, and to move past the belief in any self who is ultimately unworthy. They stop living based on such a belief. As they begin more stably to be able to release this belief each time it arises, to see it arising as an object and not self-identify with it, they become stable in awareness, using the rational consciousness as tool. Then we reintroduce vision-logic consciousness, employing the practice to help them rest more deeply in awareness itself. We reintroduce it by inviting the use of awareness itself as object. The student then begins to see the simultaneous conditioned and Unconditioned nature of awareness.
Awareness transcends the rational. One cannot rest in awareness, one cannot rest in rigpa on the rational level of consciousness. One can only begin that work within vision-logic consciousness, and one can only stabilize that work as the causal body opens. Does this answer your question, and if not, can you state a question specifically? I pause.
Q: I thought you said earlier that one must be resting stably in one body level to deeply understand it. One thing that has always frustrated me in my practice is I seem to get deep understanding of levels beyond where I’m at, and I can’t hold them there. How does that happen?
Aaron: I am Aaron. I smile at your question. I know it is shared by others in this circle. Some of you at some times in the past have been at a higher stage of consciousness, have experienced the opening of a higher state of consciousness. Some of you have experienced that in human form, some on other planes, without a body.
Without a physical body, the meaning of the lower chakras changes. We’re still involved with them but the meaning changes. Some of you have been beyond 3rd density, have been 4th or 5th density beings. Whatever you were doing out there, it was clear to you it wasn’t working. Something was missing. You noted, “Whoops! I missed some steps,” and decided to come back and clean it up, and now you are here. You’re all here in 3rd density and here as part of this sangha with me as your teacher because it is your intention in this lifetime to make the structure stable. Otherwise you would have gone to a teacher whose intention was to teach you just to be “out there” somewhere. Already seeing that that was not successful, you’ve come back to make it stable. I can only ask you to trust the process which consciously or unconsciously you have chosen. It will take you where you wish to go, and in a much more wholesome, joyful, and stable way.
When you get to the higher level, enjoy it, and also note that more foundation is needed and come back to the basic practice. I pause.
Q: Thanks. I’m still looking for the joy.
Barbara: Aaron says, the problem about an elevator is that after it goes up, it has to come down. The ramp is on all levels at once. Questions?
Q: I’m still confused about the lower astral and higher astral.
Barbara: Let’s let somebody else explain this, if there’s anybody who feels confident about it, just to give you practice. Anybody get this?
Q: I could say what I think I heard. Lower astral, we’re just beginning to realize our intuitive abilities and psychic abilities. And higher astral, we’re moving toward the realization of Christ consciousness or Buddha consciousness.
Barbara: That’s pretty close. That’s right.
Q: But it goes from vision logic at the lower end, to what?
Barbara: These are not cut and dry, and different systems of metaphysics define them differently. But the rational stage is part of the etheric body, and this is the etheric state. With the opening of vision logic consciousness, we are moving into the astral state. The astral body is beginning to open. This is the lower astral body. Then vision logic consciousness; that stage opens to the stage of psychic consciousness, we could call this the mid-astral body. Then psychic consciousness opens to subtle consciousness; we could call that the higher astral body. So the astral body usually opens in that progression of the stages of vision logic consciousness, psychic consciousness, and subtle consciousness.
Q: I’m just seeing the chart here in Barbara’s handout, which is good. Aaron also said we spend about 30 years in causal consciousness, sort of the last half of our lives?
Barbara: He’s chuckling; he says please remember that perhaps 50%, perhaps 70% of the population of earth never gets beyond rational consciousness in any lifetime. People are just trying to get up into rational consciousness. He says of those who enter the astral state, for whom the astral body opens, this may only then be about 30% of people. Those for whom the causal body opens may only be about 3% of people. He says, think about all the people in Ann Arbor and how many of those people are doing any kind of spiritual practice that might lead them to the astral level of awareness. How few of them are doing any kind of conscious practice that might lead them to a causal body opening. He says it’s not enough for the causal body to open, there has to be an awareness that it’s open. Remember, the causal body is always there, it just has to be consciously invited to open. To do that you need to be doing some kind of spiritual practice, whether it’s Sufi dancing or prayer or vipassana. Based on our karma, certain types of practice will be more suitable for different people. If the astral body is open, and if we move into a stable opening of the causal body and to the stage of divine Consciousness, then it may take up to 30 years for the opening of non-dual consciousness. But remember that if there was already a very stable opening of Divine consciousness in the prior lifetime, and almost to non-dual before leaving the body, once there is a stable spiritual practice, the next stage may open quickly.,
Q: Is it possible to practice seeing auras? And if so, how can you tell if there is any point to it, since some of us have the capacity and some of us do not?
Barbara: I think we could do it in this way. I would not want to use one of the class as a model and have everybody look to see what they see, because I think that would be a little uncomfortable for the person sitting in the middle. But I could imagine bringing in Paulie or some other animal and people can just talk about what they see. Then I can tell you how that jives with my experience.
Q: I remember an exercise from somewhere long ago where we were invited to look at our hand, and look at the space between the fingers against a plain background, against a white wall, and just begin to see the energy between your fingers. I spent a certain amount of time practicing that kind of way. Or, gazing with soft eyes at a plant or animal, sleeping animal, or child, I love doing it with my grandchildren. Just watching the edges of their, just around here. I think we can learn to see better, whether we’ll become skilled at it or not.
Barbara: L says babies’ auras are very visible. What color is L’s baby’s aura? I need to remember…The inner level is a cool yellow. An unborn baby’s aura is often different. It will change dramatically when it’s born. The inner two levels are yellow and the outer two levels are blue and white, moving into sort of a darker blue and more whitish blue, cool. But remember, for the most part, I am only seeing in the baby’s aura the spirit’s aura and not so much the body’s aura. And also L’s aura comes into the baby’s aura. When the baby is born, he will sleep right here during class and we can look at his aura!
I will reflect with Aaron about whether there are some suitable ways we could look at auras, and about seeing auras, if people are interested in that.
Q: There’s a workshop!
Q: Would it be fair to say that most of the work of a teacher like yourself would be to help stabilize a certain level rather than buoy or help push one up to a different level?
Barbara: Both. I think the role of the teacher, it’s like that quote from Ajahn Chah when he says, go right, go left. If you’re falling off the road to the right, he’ll say go left. If you’re falling off the road to the left, he’ll say go right. One doesn’t have to see the aura to do this; it’s accessible to all of you, to look at your students and see where they’re going too far this way, where they’re going too far that way, and help them balance. As you help them to balance, you also can inspire them to keep going and not just balance by standing still. The progression takes care of itself when everything is in balance. But sometimes inspiration is helpful.
And also a huge amount of patience because you have to really tell when people are ready to hear something, and telling them before they’re ready to hear it is useless. No matter how many times you say, “Go right,” if they’re intent on falling off the road to the left, they’re going to do it. You have to be willing to let them do it, and then just help them get back on track and remind them again. Eventually they’re ready to hear it.
Q: If we as a group are working to stabilize astral consciousness, and the dream state is astral consciousness, I remember Aaron giving us exercises to do while we were dreaming. Lucid dreaming! Would it be useful that we get back to that?
Barbara: The practice of lucid dreaming is always a helpful practice. It’s just vipassana in the dream state.
Q: I remember something about fear in our dreams, years ago. Looking at fear while dreaming, and then something…?
Barbara: The lucid aspect of lucid dreaming is resting in awareness. That which is aware of dreaming is not caught up in the dream. From that level of awareness, instead of running from the proverbial dragon and getting caught in the story of the dream, you stop and say, “No, this is a dream.” If we’re willing and able to do that in the dream state, we can do it better in this waking-dream state. We see the energy that takes us back into mythical consciousness, into the old stories. Aaron’s using the idea of the story of unworthiness. Whoosh! I’m into that story. No. I’m not going there. I don’t have to do that. Coming back into rational consciousness again.
Aaron would like to speak, to bring us back to consciousness stages and mental and emotional disorder.
Aaron: I am Aaron. Let us return briefly to mental disorders, mental illness. Your science today offers terms “neurosis” and “psychosis”. There is a difference, of course. It is more a difference of degree, because in neurosis there is also a chemical change in the body as you move more into the neurotic pattern. But with what you term psychosis, that chemical change has shifted to the point that the rational state may no longer be accessible.
There are so many factors here. We could have a 4-year college study on this, not just 10 minutes of discussion. But most of you are not psychologists, and I think what is most useful to you is to recognize what is happening in any state of mental imbalance, and how it can be attended. With that experience of unworthiness, the belly might clench up, the face turn red with feelings of shame, the body might start to tremble, even with a panic attack. There’s a chemical change going on, plus just the old conditioning of the body at a more surface level.
For the person experiencing this as a neurotic pattern, even if it’s very difficult, it is possible to work with this with rational consciousness. As I suggested a few minutes ago, vipassana is one tool of rational consciousness at this level. That is, the mental noting of arising and cessation.
For the person experiencing what you term a psychotic episode, there is a chemical imbalance that creates a short circuit. During the period of that episode, there is no possibility of stabilizing to a rational consciousness. My experience, and I am not an expert here, but what I have seen is that within a psychotic episode there is usually a regression into magical or archaic consciousness. One is very much in the issue of survival. The body chemistry during a psychotic episode often parallels of that in the fetus in the birth process.
One approach then is anti-psychotic medication that can transform, neutralize the chemistry to the extent that there is the possibility of return to rational consciousness. This person may or may not need that anti-psychotic drug through their lifetime. In my final monastic lifetime in the 1500s, we had no anti-psychotic drugs. When people reached that level of total lack of control, I found that what was most helpful was to bind them the way you would swaddle a newborn baby. This unfortunately has sometimes been distorted in the modern world to tying a person to some kind of straightjacket in isolation. But the pressure and swaddling is only half of it, and human contact is the other half.
This returns us to many of the findings that Stan Grof offers in holotropic Breathwork and the move through that fetal experience, that birth experience. He has noted that many mental distortions are related to the birth experience in this or a past life. This is an answer to several of you as why I have felt the mix of Breathwork and vipassana is such a useful tool, and my regret that we are present not able to offer it. I hope in the future we will find another way to do so.
Moving on. Since you do have so-called anti-psychotic drugs and they are effective, this would seem to me to be the helpful and humane way of helping a person through such experience. But they would remain dependent on the anti-psychotic drugs unless that which set off the distortion is uncovered and resolved. Often what set it off is either in the pre-birth or past-life experience. Because so few mental health workers understand this, the belief has grown up that such a person cannot be “cured,” and that is an erroneous belief. It’s simply that people have not gone to the root of the difficulty.
Can you work with such a person with vipassana? First there must be access to rational consciousness. Can that be opened without drugs? Only through means such as suggested above. In the right setting it can be done. Here, you do not have the means to attend to a person around the clock and for the many months that could be necessary to do this without drugs, however, if such means are available, I think it can be more useful than drugs because it can release the old trauma rather than just push it away chemically. Conventional therapy cannot get to the past life or birth trauma. Other means are needed.
One more area I would like to cover briefly. Please think of the awakening of kundalini energy as a small current started near one shore of the ocean. The ocean is flat and you put your hand in and push the water. That push builds up momentum over thousands of miles. Only when it finally reaches the further shore does the current you’ve set in motion begin to build up into a wave, because the shore is there to oppose it.
All of you are in the process of kundalini awakening, in different stages of it. What we think of as an awakening kundalini experience is merely that last several hundred yards of the progression of the wave.
You can see from the image that what creates the surge is the presence of the other shore, the steepness of the other shore. I don’t want to over-simplify this; there are many factors that create the steepness or graduality of that far shore. The stabilization of insight by vipassana, the stabilization of mindfulness, the stable move through the stages of consciousness, the progression of the insights and knowledges opened to through vipassana, these all help to change what had been a cliff into a flatter piece of land so the wave may just push against it in an easy painless way, instead of that wave smacking and erupting because the bottom rose up abruptly. If we have a very steady raise in elevation over the last hundred miles, the wave gains a slow steady momentum. You experience the chakras opening. You experience the kundalini arising. But there’s no sudden impact. Without that graduality, there is the shock of impact.
So the stabilization of vipassana is one useful tool, but of course we have people who have a stable vipassana practice and yet have that crash. Another important factor here is past life experience. Some people have had that crash in a past life and for some reason the kundalini experience was never resolved.Kundalini never fully opened. It may have been blocked by drugs of some sort, or by a forced altering of life experience. The person seems then to be drawn karmically back then into that same surge. One factor is simply the energy of the physical body, how open the different meridians are, and such. One factor is the stabilization of all the previous stages of consciousness, for the opening of kundalini does bring the shift into the opening of the causal body. If the astral body is not fully open and stable, that move into the causal body can be a rough ride.
So these are just a few thoughts to give you a bit more insight into the whole process. Again I would be happy to answer your questions. I pause.
Q: How, specifically, does kundalini differ from opening chakras?
Aaron: I am Aaron. They are completely different. The chakras are the door; the tiger is the creature that walks through the door. When the chakras are open, it’s like opening a door. The tiger comes through the door. If the door is closed, the tiger may batter it down. If the door is open, the tiger can just walk through. I pause.
Q: My experience of chakras is that they are energetic centers, energy. They are vortexes of energy, and when they are spinning strongly, they are a strong energetic connection.
Barbara: The chakras are both the door and energy itself, but, … it’s hard to describe. We need to go deeper. There are the doors and the “wind:” that blows through. The Tibetan system describes this more accurately. We only have the one word, “chakra”. We talked about this some, back in Project Light, with the distinction between the doors and movement through them. When the chakras are spinning, picture centrifugal force and something’s spinning and it spins off. If I had water in this cup and I sent the cup spinning, the water would come up, out either end. When the chakras are spinning, the ends of two adjacent ones connect. Then the energy can move through. We say the chakra is open because both are both spinning and there’s movement through them. If one is spinning and one is not, then movement is blocked. The energy can’t move through. But the energy still exists.
If the chakra doors are not open, then the specific energy we’re calling kundalini energy also cannot move through. Kundalini is one form of energy.
Q: That’s what I’m asking. What is it.
Barbara: Kundalini is one form of energy. Aaron is saying, he’s using the illustration of the doorways and the tiger. That doorways are the chakras. Energy moves through the open chakras. The tiger called kundalini is a specific kind of energy.
Aaron: I am Aaron. When you open into the causal state, moving into divine consciousness and non-dual consciousness, you are coming to know the self in its relationship to all that is. You step out of any belief system of a limited self. You know the fullness of the self. The “tiger” that I’m talking about, I use the phrase tiger because kundalini is sometimes known as the sleeping tiger that awakens, this is really the energy of that-which-is. As long as you’re dealing in only the self-energy, moving through the energy meridians, coming in through the crown chakra, coming in through the soles of the feet, releasing, we’re still involved in the belief system of a limited energy. There is awareness of the limitlessness of the energy, but still dealing with “my” segment of it. But with kundalini we shift, beginning this opening into the causal state. The sleeping tiger of Eternal and Unlimited energy awakens. Roar! If the chakras are closed it batters down the door. Then there’s a lot more discomfort.
It is the ground energy, let’s call it, The Energy, capital T and capital E, as opposed to simply the limited expressions of that energy that have previously been known. For some people, if we could use this as an illustration, the tiger reaches up and stretches one claw, one foot, way up, to the crown, and the other foot stretched down to the toes. It slowly stretches and opens, helping the chakras to be ready to handle it. Maybe it turns around and puts its tail up, rolls around, puts it back down, so that some people experience the opening to kundalini in a much more gradual way. With some people, especially through the use of certain kinds of hallucinatory drugs, it’s like someone crashes a cymbal and the tiger wakes up, whoosh, and rushes through. I pause.
Barbara: We’re out of time. We’ll talk more about all of this.