May 16, 2009, 12.21am IST
ANUP TANEJA.
Kashmir Shaivism texts say that God takes on a human body and conceals Himself within it. The basic purpose of life therefore is to unravel the mystery of Self that dwells within us by delving deep inside through intense meditation.
A spiritual seeker can attain Self-realisation if he endeavours to invoke the blessings of Chiti Kundalini that remains dormant at the base of the spine within each individual. According to Siddha yoga master Swami Muktananda, if a man’s Kundalini is asleep, he is wrapped in folds of night; he is not truly awake, not awake to the Self. He may be very effective in his practical life, but, even moving in his every-day world, he remains asleep. It is only when, by Guru’s grace, the great Shakti Kundalini awakes within him that man arises from his sleep. A sleeping man is aware neither of the gorgeous kingdom of Chiti within his own heart, nor of the true nature of the external world.
Yoga scriptures inform that a true guru is the grace-bestowing power of the Supreme Being — one who has the authority to awaken the dormant Kundalini within a seeker. And once the Kundalini is stirred awake, the fire of yoga begins to blaze spontaneously within a seeker, purifying him at the physical, astral and causal levels and thus paving the way for his evolution to the highest level of consciousness.
As the throbbing pulsations of the awakened Kundalini begin to move in the central nerve of the seeker, the foundation is laid for the piercing of the six chakras. At times the powerful pranic currents released by the Shakti operate with such a great intensity that the seeker loses weight rapidly for a brief period.
However, despite the loss, he feels no weakness; on the contrary, his energy level goes up and his memory becomes sharp. Swami Muktananda advises that during such phases in sadhana, seekers should not lose their equanimity but should adopt an attitude of absolute surrender to Mother Kundalini. The inner eye of knowledge of the seeker gets opened and he begins to perceive the Blue Being — the eternal, self-luminous consciousness — in sahasrar, whose radiance permeates the entire universe. Dark clouds of ignorance then get automatically dispersed and the seeker begins to perceive the universe from a totally different perspective.
Called the Vast Ocean of Unfathomable Depths by yogis, Chiti, the consciousness — the dynamic aspect of the Supreme Being — appears as matter in material objects and consciousness in conscious beings. She becomes grahya, the perceived world and its objects and also grahaka, the perceiver and knower of worldly objects. A true seeker who is blessed with Divine vision is able to see a pot as clay without the need to break it to pieces in order to reduce it into clay.
The Blue Being is our inner Self that witnesses the waking, dreaming and sleeping states of consciousness — without getting tainted by the impurities of these states. Swami Muktananda said: “In the waking state the seeker functions in the gross body and experiences gross objects with the five organs each of perception and action, the five forms of prana and the fourfold psychic instrument. In dreams he experiences the subtle objects of that state. And in deep sleep, he experiences joyful and dreamless oblivion. That Self is Parashiva who is revealed in turiya.
Today is Swami Muktananda’s birth anniversary. The writer is an editor with the Indian Council of Historical Research.
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