Initiation
Spiritual initiation is an event in Eros, and like love cannot
be conjured or contrived. It either happens or it doesn’t.
Kundalini is operating in all of us to a degree, occasionally however it sparks
up into what is known as a kundalini awakening, transmutation, metamorphosis,
transfiguration, spiritual alchemy or spiritual awakening. In this book you will see
me call this initiation “popping.” People pop to various degrees. Some fizzle like
soda, without the cork popping drama of champagne. Others pop spontaneously
at 17 years like Ramana Maharishi without any prior spiritual practice. He just
read a book on the lives of the saints and so identified with them that he practically
instantly became one. His experience of going into death, was his ego recognizing
its own demise as the Atman arose within. Gobi Krishna’s initiation was through
meditation. Philip St. Romain was sparked off through prayer. Meher Baba
awakened when he was hit on the head with a stone as a boy. Joseph Chilton Pearce
popped in his 60’s by Shaktipat from Muktananda. Some spend all their energies
in resistance, preventing themselves from the Ego-death of popping at all and so
never really come ALIVE and live. As Sir Francis Bacon says, “I do not believe that
any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.”
The kundalini probably follows the 7 year growth cycles that Joseph Chilton
Pearce pointed out. Know that there is a lot of subterranean activity going on below
the level of conscious registration. For example we can be heating up for 2-3 years
without being aware that an awakening is on its way. I popped spontaneously at 28
and 40 years. If we are uninformed we will not even know a kundalini awakening
is upon us when it is blasting us full force to Kingdom Come. We will tend to
think it is external conditions that have propelled us into a psychic breakdown
or illness. We normally interpret these intense rapid initiations as some form of
“outer” influence impacting on us, because of the sudden jump into a different
state-view which doesn’t appear to be the familiar us. We are not normally aware
that we have an infinitude of windows of being that we can enter and see out of.
The myriad of factors that contribute to an awakening include: High altitude, air
and water quality, diet, exercise, stress, relationships, degree of being on purpose
and acts of generosity. Risk, adventure travel, exposure to the elements, novelty,
new experiences and environments, and the breakdown of habit and torpor. Various
elemental changes and shocks to the body like alternating hot and cold such as
saunas and cold showers, light and dark. Determination to adhere to soul rather
than social convention, genetics, and both the good and bad conditions of one’s
upbringing (stressors and satiety). Other factors include latitude and longitude on
the earth’s sphere, seasons, sun and moon cycles. Chronological and biological
age, spiritual practice, having to use a new set of skills. The calling of the Muse
and the future time stream...that is the individual Eros, and perhaps the needs of
the human species as a whole—expressed through the psychosomatic tension of
revelation, known in history as The Oracle.
It is the differential between the old and new growth that initiates the dissolution
of the old brain and resurrection of the new. So a rapid growth in cognition, change