Kundalini – A Baptism of Fire: The Journey of the Mystic

Prologue

The first mystical experience I remember was in a dream as a five-year-old.

A tall lady made of white light, seemingly floating above the floor, came to my bed to wake me up. She said without using her lips to follow her. I felt she was benign so I was not afraid. She took me to a cave. There were others like her there but she was the leader. She ‘said’ that I was one of them and that I was never alone. They were always with me.

I never forgot the experience. I always carried it with me and felt protected by it.

The mystical experiences never stopped. In my twenties, I learned that the types of experiences I was having were called mystical.

Many people are interested in and impressed by the people having mystical experiences, called the mystics, in different traditions. But they belong to a mystical past and are not expected to exist now.

What seem to be profound truths uttered by those since long gone, may be met with suspicion when uttered in the present.

What is seen as saintly and holy in the past may be seen as too good to be true in the present. Kindness can be seen as a weakness and be taken advantage of. In contrast, people who love power can easily be allowed to wear the robe of holiness.

Also many of the mystic saints in their own time were seen with suspicion, even by the traditions they were part of. Many of them, challenged the hierarchies of their time simply by existing. Some of them were not considered saints until after they had died.

This book is an attempt to understand my life as a mystic through the lens of some mystical traditions.

The traditions I am concentrating on in the book are those that I have worked with and that have deeply affected me; the teachings of Christ and the yogic tradition.

Since Buddha was a part of the yogic tradition as well as a very important developer of that tradition, Buddha is also mentioned as well as the Buddhist Tantras as part of the yogic tradition.

This book does not attempt to be an all-encompassing description of any mystical tradition specifically or of mystical traditions at large.

The Awakening of the Buddha

The texts of Buddha were written about 500 years after his death and most consider them to be symbolical in nature.

Buddha is believed to have lived around 500 BCE. He was a prince in a small kingdom in India. It is said that Buddha, named Siddhartha Gautama, was prevented by his father from encountering any suffering as he grew up. This was because of a prediction made by some seers at Siddhartha’s birth. The prediction was that Siddhartha would either become a realized being or a world conqueror. Since the king wanted Siddhartha to inherit his kingdom and make it great, he didn’t want Siddhartha to be unsatisfied with the life he lived as a prince but kept him constantly satisfied and undisturbed by anything.

When Siddhartha encounters suffering, this sets him off on a spiritual quest. He realizes the inevitable facts of life that are sickness, old age and death. To find a solution to these, he becomes a wandering seeker.

Siddhartha studies with several teachers/gurus but he still cannot find a solution to the problem of suffering.

He becomes an ascetic and torments the body to purify himself of past karmas and to transcend the body, but as Siddhartha is near death still unrealized, a memory comes back to him. The memory is of him as a child, attending a planting festival with his father. Siddhartha remembers mourning the destruction of the homes of the insects and the death of the small animals in the field, a feeling of compassion and union with all of nature and living beings, and a feeling of happiness and bliss in that.

This experience becomes the turning point for Siddhartha’s asceticism. In the legends, it is said that he decides to accept some food after this remembrance. He washes his body for the first time in a long time, and it is said that he puts his begging bowl in the river and asks for it to flow upstream if this is the day he will become enlightened, and it does.

He is then said to have sat down under a Bodhi tree, wowing not to get up until he has reached enlightenment.

As he was sitting there, Mara, the God of death, came to tempt him. He tempted him with what is desirable and tried to scare him with what is not desirable (passion and aversion). The last test Mara subjects Siddhartha to is saying that he, Mara, is the greatest and that all of his armies could attest to that, but that Siddhartha has no one to attest that he is worthy of reaching awakening.

It is said that Siddhartha reached down his hand and touched the earth, and the earth shook.

Mara as the lord of temporal fulfilment and death, rules over the world of men. But Buddha as the awakened one has discovered an order beyond his grasp, an underlying truth that the earth can bear witness to.

It is said that the Buddha awakened after this night of temptation as the morning star (Venus) rose. And he is said to have said, As the earth is my witness, seeing this morning star, all things and I awaken together.

Buddha wakes up to the true nature of reality and sees the world ‘as it is’; yathabhutam. He sees his own and others’ previous births, the laws of karma and he is released from the cycle of death and rebirth resulting from karma (samsara).

After Buddha is awakened, he wants to stay in the peace that follows. He also thinks that even if he tried to teach this, no one would understand, or be interested in doing the work required to awaken.

Ayacana Sutta: The request, translation by Thanissaro Bhikku.

Enough now with teaching.

What only with difficulty I reached.

This Dhamma is not easily realised by those overcome with aversion & passion.

What is abstruse, subtle, deep, hard to see, going against the flow—those delighting in passion, cloaked in the mass of darkness, won’t see.

It is said that the god Brahma Sahampati comes and begs him to teach what he has learned; his dhamma (Sanskrit: dharma). He says that there are those with a little dust in their eyes, clear enough to understand and to want to do the work. Buddha then agrees to go out to teach.

Ayacana Sutta: The request, translation by Thanissaro Bhikku.

Teach the Dhamma, O Blessed One:

There will be those who will understand.

Then the Blessed One, having understood Brahma’s invitation, out of compassion for beings, surveyed the world with the eye of an Awakened One. As he did so, he saw beings with little dust in their eyes and those with much, those with keen faculties and those with dull, those with good attributes and those with bad, those easy to teach and those hard, some of them seeing disgrace and danger in the other world. Just as in a pond of blue or red or white lotuses, some lotuses—born and growing in the water—might flourish while immersed in the water, without rising up from the water; some might stand at an even level with the water; while some might rise up from the water and stand without being smeared by the water—so too, surveying the world with the eye of an Awakened One, the Blessed One saw beings with little dust in their eyes and those with much, those with keen faculties and those with dull, those with good attributes and those with bad, those easy to teach and those hard, some of them seeing disgrace and danger in the other world.

Having seen this, he answered Brahma Sahampati in the verse: Open are the doors to the Deathless to those with ears…

After going out to teach, Buddha first encounters another ascetic. Buddha tells the ascetic that he, Buddha has gone beyond what is deathless and has reached knowledge of the absolute truth. The ascetic asks Buddha for the name of his teacher/guru and Buddha answers that he has reached the state by himself. The ascetic doesn’t believe him, and since Buddha has no teacher to testify for him, the ascetic leaves Buddha.

Buddha then goes to teach his former ascetic friends who abandoned him as he accepted the food when he was close to dying. They are said not to want to talk to him at first, but as Buddha claims to have gone beyond, they accept to receive his teaching. After listening to his teaching, they become convinced that he has found a way to experience absolute truth. They become his first students.

The Temptations of Christ

Also, Christ goes through a process of fasting and temptation after his baptism by John the Baptist, when the Spirit of God descends on him.

The baptism can be understood as an act of showing obedience to God. The voice from heaven seems to indicate that Christ is without sin, totally obedient to God.

Matthew 3:13–17 (all quotes from the Bible, New International Version if not stated differently)

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?

Jesus replied, Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness. Then John consented.

As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.

Fasting probably in both the case of Buddha and Christ is a means of overcoming temptations. Overcoming the temptations marks the start also of Christ’s ministry/teaching.

Matthew 4:1–11

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.

Jesus answered, It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’.

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. If you are the Son of God, he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written:

’He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone’."

Jesus answered him, It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’.

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. All this I will give you, he said, if you will bow down and worship me.

Jesus said to him, Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only’.

Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

Luke 4:1–13

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days,