Kundalini and the Collective Consciousness

In the spiritual community we often hear the cliché about a general Kundalini Awakening being the Next Great Evolutionary Leap for Humanity.  But the details are vague regarding ‘how so?’  Perhaps it’s comparable to the distinction between Theoretical Physics and Applied Physics, where we have known about the Theory of Quantum Mechanics now for 40 years, but still the cars, sewing machines, flashlights and airplanes are still designed and run the same way Isaac Newton would have had them run 300 years ago.   I suspect that nobody will ever really understand Quantum Mechanics until we dry our dishes with a Quantum Dishtowel, or something like that.   And, likewise, the Kundalini Energy will remain oddly mysterious until it is found to be good for something.   

 

So, yes, I also subscribe to the cliché about “the next big evolutionary leap for humanity”, but after decades of thinking about it I have an idea about just what it might consist of.  Perhaps the Kundalini can be used to Link into the Collective Consciousness.   Well, how did I arrive at that hunch, or perhaps the more appropriate question for now would be why would I want to think so?

 

Back decades ago I had a few personal experiences which go a long way in explaining why I would want to think there is an actual existential Collective Consciousness that we could tap into, particularly two very Big Dreams I had.   In the first dream, back when I was still a young man and not very philosophically sophisticated, I came upon the grave of one of Europe’s Greatest Thinkers and it had been defaced with graffiti saying that “______ would not live beyond the grave”, but instantly I had muttered that “everybody lives beyond the grave”.   But whatever Higher Wisdom that had been directing that Dream was not to allow me to get away with such an unfounded assertion without some kind of a challenge and so suddenly a large oak tree on the crest of a nearby knoll erupted in flames of multicolored lights, and out of it billowed a Voice that said “Not all men will live beyond the grave… but ______ will”.   Oh, I need to mention some details that indicate just how significant that Fiery Tree and Voice must have been in the context of this Dream.  The instant the Tree ‘Lit Up’ my legs gave way out from beneath me and I came crashing down on my knees, on what seemed like hard granite, but I felt no pain.   Also, tears sprayed from my eyes, but I felt no emotion, which puzzled me even at the time.   Now, one would suppose that I would have been speechless in awe, but, since I felt no overwhelming emotions, I was intellectually quite curious about the Mortality Issue that the ‘Tree’ had brought forward and so without any hesitation I asked “Well, then, what about me?  Will I live beyond the grave?”   Well, the Tree did not immediately give me an answer, seemingly wishing that I should have a little time to contemplate just how possibly disturbing certain answers to that question might be for me, and the Tree’s apparent point was not lost upon me, and I got really nervous really fast.     But finally the Tree spoke and said “Yes, you too will live beyond the grave, but remember one thing: Birth is but an Illusion and Christ is the Life in All Things”.  Now even at the time I did not see the allusion to ‘Christ’ as being in reference to any historical individual, but rather to some kind of All-embracing Spiritual Status – some disembodied Cosmic Christ.   And of course the notion of “Life in All Things” speaks of a Collective Consciousness with no need for further elaboration.

 

Then there was the second Big Dream not many years after the first.  I appeared to be in a sparse landscape, that seemed as dry as some areas in North Africa, the Near East or the American Southwest, but still there were some clumps of grass, some bushes and a tree here and there.  I seemed to have just arrived on the Dream Scene when suddenly this young man appeared just in front of me, so close within my personal space that it made me feel a bit uncomfortable.  But what instantly caught my attention was the young man’s boundless smile – it quite radiated joy (one can approach duplicating such a Smile with your Kundalini Energy simply by imagining that all your Chakras are like Flat Horizontal Plates which you can turn up at the edges, along with turning up all the Muscle Groups in your body, like turning up a Smile, with the Idea that they are like Flowers Lifting and Unfolding to the Sun Light.  I do that before walking into strange new places with people I never met before.  It seems to help in putting both them and myself at ease.)    Well, in that Dream, I had never experienced such a powerful smile, and his eyes were very entrancing.  The Young Man, as a person though, was not very impressive.  He was thin to the point of emaciation, dark but one would say more ‘brown’ than ‘black’, with a narrow face and a thin nose, and for a beard he had just a slight tuft of curly hairs.  But I could not help but be moved by his perfect joyfulness.  In this Dream I seemed to have been rendered ‘speechless’.   Well, since I had nothing to say, the young man turned and began walking off, but before he was 20 meters away, the same voice as in the other dream spoke up and said from out of the blue, “He went out into the wilderness and became One”.   With that the Young Man developed a silver blue aura.  Then, what was more remarkable was that the nearby grasses and bushes began picking up that same silver blue aura, and then I noticed that even the trees out in the distance began to shine silver blue.  It became clear that everything that was alive had the same aura and that it was connected and centered on him.  I had a hunch at the time that he was experiencing all of that as part of himself – that he felt the Oneness.   Maybe that is what made him so happy, or was it being so happy that made him One with everything? 

 

Also, I might add that that dream is suggestive of what we hear about some traditions of Shamanism whereby it is reported that some Shamans can transform into crows or cats or coyotes or whatever, but what I suspect is probably really happening is only that a Shaman can opportunistically reach his or her consciousness out and partake of the perceptions of crows, cats or coyotes or whatever else is already out there and part of the landscape which the Shaman is concerned with knowing about.

 

Also when I was a young man, I read of a Saint that lived in India just a bit more than a hundred years ago, Shirdi Sai Baba, whom is not be confused with the charlatan Sathya Sai Baba who set up his scam much later.  Shirdi Sai Baba… let’s just call him Sai Baba…  was claimed by both the Hindus and the Muslims to be one of their own, but more appropriately we could describe him as a Fakir – a kind of Sufi that stems from a tradition that predates Islam going all the way back to Persian Zoroastrianism, the first Moral Religion.  You see, Sai Baba had a Sacred Flame going which is the hallmark of Zoroastrianism.   Well, to get to the greater point concerning his influence upon my thinking concerning the Collective Consciousness, one of the things that Sai Baba was famous for was being able to relate objectively true stories from the viewpoint of both animals and people.  Later in the 20^th Century there was another Saint in Southern India, Ramana Maharshi, who could do much the same thing.   This Ability would seem to indicate that it is possible for individuals to harness and focus selectively within the Collective Consciousness.   Of course, in regards to anecdotes concerning Saints, there is a huge problem with both exaggeration and invention.  You see, these Saints accrue to themselves Followers who form Social Groups around them which seem to distribute Status among themselves on the basis of who can tell the best and biggest stories about their Guru.   I would not have believed the problem so chronic and pervasive unless I saw it in operation with my own eyes.  But, yes, it seems a bit paradoxical, but religious devotees are huge liars.  I believe that many such people believe so fully in their own good intentions that the heinousness of their lying about most everything is entirely eclipsed from their notice, but of course there are others who are calculating scoundrels and bad down to the bone.   Unfortunately I had arrived at this skeptical awareness only after decades of studying the lives of many of these various Saints.   So the greater part of that acquired ‘knowledge’ was subsequently cast into doubt but not before it had greatly influenced what was probably to be the greater part of my life span.  So almost from a kind of mental force of habit I retain a bit of hope in a super-natural possibility which still awaits some solid confirmation before I could in good conscience talk about it with any fervent conviction.   

 

But all that interest in the Saints, before I became largely disillusioned, led me to earnestly investigate Mysticism and Mystical Experiences.  Mystical Experiences are interesting in that people who have had Mystical Experiences claim that in their moment of excitement that they Knew Everything and that All Truth was Revealed.  However, the problem arises that they can provide few details after the fact.  The literature of Mysticism gives this problem a name – Ineffability.  William James, a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, in his classic “Varieties of Religious Experience”, circa 1905, talks a great deal about Ineffability.  The consequence of Ineffability is that it turns the Mystical Experience essentially into a purely aesthetic, even sensual experience – a Super High Buzz, but which in practical terms is good for nothing, or even damaging, in the sense that Mystics may become addicted to the purely Sensual Experience while ignoring their Social Duties and Obligations, like students getting high instead of doing their homework.

 

But maybe Ineffability is a Right Brain vs Left Brain kind of thing.  The Right Side of the Brain sees things holistically in complete flashes, images and intuitions, while Left Side of the brain sees things linearly, in some ordered way, with associations and connectedness between points of reference.   Or we can say that the Right Side of the Brain uses Pictures, while the Left Side uses Descriptive Narrative.    So perhaps the problem of Ineffability sources from focusing the Mystical Experience in the wrong side of the head (where right is apparently wrong).  If the Mystical Experience were to be generated from the Left Side of the Brain, the side that deals with Speech and Language, well it would probably be a whole lot more likely that we would come back from it with more to say, though the experience may lose something of its spectacular quasi-visual splendor that only the right side of the brain can provide in full.

 

There is also the issue regarding the various, different and often contradictory reports given by those exceptional few who purport to bring back some form of “eternal wisdom” from their mystical experiences.  Such wide variance would incline us to believe such ‘Truths’ to be subjective rather than objective, and if these Enlightened Truths are only subjective, well, that only means that it was ‘true’ in the sense that an individual really experienced them, and didn’t just make up a story.  But the broader definition of Truth, that a thing is plainly known to exist or its existence can be objectively confirmed, cannot be affirmed by subjective images or thought forms, not unless it can be demonstrated that such subjective impressions are widely shared.  After all, it is the proof of a general Objective Reality that the shared experience of Society confirms it.   And in regards to Religious and Mystical Experiences, we do not yet have this confirmation.  Again I refer to James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience” where you can see just how bazaar and off the beaten path some ‘enlightened’ realizations can be.

 

But we may be able to address this problem of Shared Objective Reality within our mystical experiences by determining whether we use our Kundalini to look Inwards, into ourselves, or Outwards, into the World and Society.   Looking Inwards has been the typical direction.  Most popular thinking these days seems fully on board with the notion that all wisdom comes from within, no matter how foolishly we see people actually behaving who act solely according to their own guidance.   We need to ask ourselves what we can learn from ourselves that we do not already know?  We get nothing new by watching old reruns over and over again.  Self-Inquiry is a labyrinth that can only circle the same old ground over and over again.  If we want to put the Kundalini to any positive use, we must point it Outwards and Think where we have never Thought before.   

 

True Civilization could become an achievable possibility if Humanity could be unified by a tangible shared Collective Consciousness.  Looking Outwards to Others will take us in that direction.  Looking inwards is only to look backwards.  We can’t take that next great evolutionary step forwards by always backtracking over our failures and shortfalls.   The Ancient Wisdoms got us into the mess where we are today.  With this surge in Kundalini Awakenings, we need to configure a new path forward.