having severe problems with extreme energy, aberrant mental states, heat, fear and
pain. Although there was very little help available for him (even in India at the
time), someone did tell him that if the energy goes up the right sympathetic trunk
(pingala) that his could result in the symptoms he was experiencing, and possibly
end in death. During the height of his suffering he had the intuition to concentrate
on directing the current up the central channel of the spine. After success at doing
this, his torturous symptoms abated and he entered a more gentle, blissful and
illuminated awakening, which lasted the rest of his life.
Those who have had a childhood of abuse, neglect of dysfunction, tend to
have more catastrophic awakenings because their systems are built for repression
and dissociation. This is not always the case but it is a pattern. One can imagine
that the more loving-touch and self-validation, the child receives the more
efficiently wired their nervous system will be, and the fewer psycho-somatic and
emotional blocks they will have. But consciousness will out no matter what the
formative structure.
The nature of one’s individual awakening not only depends on one’s past
history it is also determined by one’s future history. That is, what one is to become
and experience is already at play in one’s present. In-forming us trans-temporally
in ways the rational mind cannot perceive. The tree is already inherent in the
seed. The future magnetically draws us toward it, almost as though the karma of
the future were enacting on the present. It seems like the more open, surrendered
and evolved one is, then the more challenge one is faced with in incarnating one’s
soul. Because there is more at stake for the person of depth to be brought to their
creative climax, as the species evolves through the successful realization of these
outstanding individuals. So here’s the rub...the more spiritual preparation one
does, the larger the flow of kundalini coursing through one. Traditional spiritual
practices were developed to both bring on an awakening, give one the strength and
skills for navigating the awakening and to substantiate the awakening in the life of
the individual and his/her relationship to the world.
Pranotthana is Sanskrit for intensified, uplifted life-energy. I find it endlessly
ironic that the hardest thing we will ever have to face in life is the pranotthana
of our Self. Fortunately now with modern science we can largely understand the
unusual and disturbing symptoms, raise our homeostatic coping ability and avoid
a lot of the dangers posed by radically increased life force. Although they had
traditional medicines and intuitive wisdom, the amazing Realizers of the past did
not have the comfort of scientific rationality by which to understand and accept
what was happening to them.
After several episodes of samadhi, Ramakrishna told his disciples that he
actually feared that he would no longer be able to look after himself. Because the
old has to die before the new emerges, there will always be this feeling of being
completely “out of our depth” during some leg of the journey. However through
rational understanding, self-inquiry and reassurance from the experience of others,
we can greatly reduce secondary stress, resistance and negative coping mechanisms,
such that we can learn to flow with the evolutionary force, rather than fight
against it.