One walking man,
walks through many forms
many times,
many places
only to know
who he always was.
Davidya
This popped out right after the first. Reminds me of this:
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
– T. S. Eliot
One man devotes his life to the world as real and solid, worthy of his confidence.
Another man devotes his life to the world as illusion, a mirage or waking dream.
Yet another man devotes his life to God, and the world as an outpouring of love.
Yet another man devotes himself to the world as himself, intimate with all that is.
The last man knows there is no world or illusion. He devotes himself to reality.
Who are these men? They are the same man at different points on the journey home.
Davidya
Conflict is an appearance. It arises due to our relationship with and response to circumstances. Often in retrospect we can see that the challenge was a transition underway, an emergence of a new way of being. The apparent conflict was only between what was falling away and what was arising.
If we understand that change is the falling away of the old and the emergence of the new, we’re less likely to fight it. Just that small shift in perspective can make a huge difference in how we experience transformation. In fact, how we experience much of life. Do we fight it and find ourself in conflict? Or do we step into the flow of change? We’re in a time of profound transformation now.
If we watch the news or read the paper, we see an astonishing array of trouble. But the media is attuned to people seeking what’s wrong and who’s to blame. In order to feel right, an identified ego has to make other wrong. It needs conflict, even if it’s not in our best interest. The media give us ample examples. However, this is not an approach that will support our journey. Usually it just makes us feel bad anyway.
This is not to say that some of the challenges arising in today’s world are not immense and real. But these give us a sense of the scale of transformation that is underway.
If we extrapolate some of the issues, we may conclude civilization is courting disaster or going down the tubes. But much of what we’re seeing is the struggle of the old, fighting to hold on. What is emerging is not very obvious yet. And in many ways, it is outside our experience so we have little conceptual framework to go by. Lots of people make conflicting projections about where it’s going.
But like a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, the struggle of transformation ensures we emerge strong and prepared. Don’t hold on to your struggles. Just keep going and let them fall away as the transitions complete.
Yesterday I was lunching with friends on a busy street patio. A Canadian Swallowtail butterfly landed in the middle of our table. I had not noticed before its bright blue and red markings near the back of its wings. Same kind of blue as on my logo feather – an optical illusion. Some First Nations see the butterfly as symbolic of transformation.
Here’s a few quotes that came up on the subject…
Davidya
“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself”
– Joseph Campbell
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
– Dr. Seuss
“The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form – all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void.”
– Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces
“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning. ”
– Louis L’Amour
“Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have one before us, the labyrinth is fully known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”
– Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Recently, I was on another retreat with Lorne and Lucia. It was a profound exploration, brought about by a young woman who had recently had a clear shift into Brahman. This only a few months after her initial awakening and Unity. Such a thing was at one time astonishingly rare.
Unlike her shift, the Brahman Consciousness (BC) shift can be a two-stage affair not unlike the initial awakening. First, transcending Atman into a kind of dry phase where we can be more conscious of those aspects of Unity that we’ve lost or are falling away than the new perspective. And then a second stage where the fuller value unfolds. I explore this more here.
The profundity of the shift cannot be over-estimated. As I’ve noted, the grace people often talk about is Brahman. The true driver to the awakening process is Brahman. It is, fundamentally, all that is. And yet it neither is nor isn’t. It is beyond that duality.
Describing BC is an art in itself. As the old saying goes, the Tao than can be described is not the Tao. Brahman is beyond the conception of even someone in Unity. It is beyond existence, consciousness, even the most rarefied, abstract understanding of pure Being or Isness. Transcending Atman, it is beyond I and Am.
To avoid larger concepts over Sanskrit terminology, Lorne called it “Beyond Consciousness“. Amusingly apt and playful. Even calling it a stage or state of consciousness is erroneous as it is beyond that too.
BC is said to be the final stage of Unity but is quite distinct from Unity within Atman. The ancient texts called it The Great Awakening due to its profundity.
While In Unity, we recognize both ourselves and the world as my Self (Atman). This makes it profoundly intimate, even right in the senses. In BC, we transcend all that and discover there is no world. Nothing is happening or ever did. Note though that this is not the same thing as an emptiness that may first be experienced in pure, content-less awareness. There is no devoid here.
Because we transcend Atman, the Self looses its sense of Self, of being, and we are beyond all that is. When Atman knows Brahman it is Brahman. As has been famously put, the Knower of Brahman is Brahman.
Some may imply this is a greater wholeness than Unity but it’s not. It is beyond such differentiation. But the supreme value of wholeness is revealed. It is a simple, causeless completeness.
Paradoxically, this does not mean there are no experiences or that it’s a blank emptiness. But there are no actions, just a kind of lively alertness. The devata value or seeing continues, along with love and bliss. Yet as it is beyond Maya (creation); the appearance is non-existent. We come to see other people not as individuals but as patterns of devata.
As is said repeatedly in the Yog Vasishtha, there are no causes, so there are no effects (creation). Thus, all those former experiences of the nature and layers of creation all dissolve in a heap and our understanding of what is real vastly simplifies.
You’ll notice this description is full of paradoxes and logical inconsistencies. This is the fault of language and the lack of reference points we may have for such statements.
While we may certainly place a very high regard on someone in BC, it’s always good to put such things in perspective. In the Kala model of stages, the most evolved humans reach about a 7 on scale out of 16. In other words, there are beings who are more than twice as advanced and talented as the most evolved human.
We do what we can. 
Davidya
On this blog, I’ve discussed how the demonization of the ego and mind as the barriers to enlightenment was false. I’ve suggested it is actually the identification with them that causes bondage. Both remain after awakening, only now they are aspects of the person rather than the “me”. They become secondary, without a battle.
Today, a friend sent me an unexpected quote that takes this a little deeper. Even identification is not the culprit. It is only when Being (Self or silence) is overshadowed by identification that identification is trouble. When Being is strong or clear or established enough, identification does not overshadow it.
“…identification is not bondage. What is bondage is the inability to maintain Being along with identification. What is bondage is the inability to maintain Being while indulging in the field of experience and activity.
If identification were bondage, freedom would be possible only in the state after death, in which one ceases to experience and ceases to be active. As long as one is alive…it is impossible to avoid identification…
Identification is not bondage, because freedom must be lived in the world, and living in the world entails identifying oneself with everything for the sake of experience and activity.”
– Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in The Science of Being and Art of Living, pg. 233-4 (originally published 1963)
Now, with awakening, there is a shift in identification from the ego to the cosmic Self. So identification remains, it just shifts and no longer overshadows Being. And the Unity experience of becoming whatever the attention is on (the earth, a bird, a tree, etc) is also a form of becoming or identification. Self identification ends with the Brahman shift.
We can say there is layers of truth here. Identification with the ego is an aspect that prevents recognition that we’re Being, that I Am. But that identification doesn’t end. Instead, it shifts. It’s a subtle but important point.
Davidya
We can say that there is ‘not awake’ and ‘awake’. Like waking from sleep, we are sleeping or we’re awake. But we can notice that there can be gradations in the waking process. A point where we’re groggy, perhaps where we don’t know who we are, or perhaps the winding down of a dream, and so forth. In a similar way, the shift into spiritual awakening has common stages that some people will experience.
Some will go straight from being ego-identified to being clearly awake. But many will step through some intermediate stages in the process.
Here are common steps that come to mind.
1 – Concepts – some people study deeply and develop a mature understanding of this process. But as long as it remains conceptual it is just mind and has no reality. As well, such expertise can become a barrier. Partly because our concepts of it are never it. (the map is not the territory) And partly because it can culture a conceptual arrogance or certainty, even though our concepts will never meet our direct experience. To quote Igor Kufayev “Liberation cannot be achieved on the level of mind. No matter how clear is the grasp of Ultimate Reality on the intellectual level, it is still a concept.” Concepts characteristically offers no freedom. It is however a form of devotion to and focus on spiritual knowledge. And it is potentially an intellectual illumination. But nothing more.
A related conceptual issue here is people using spiritual concepts to avoid life problems or traumas. This is also called spiritual bypassing. A big one is “world is illusion“. While this is a real experience of a deep witness, building a belief system based on a concept of this can be a deep form of disassociative denial. That does not support life or a spiritual journey. Spirituality is about forgiveness and accepting what is. Denial keeps us locked in illusion.
2 – Tastes – all of us have had some experience of being expanded or awed, of profound love or happiness for no reason. Sometimes, it can be a life-changing experience that begins or increases a spiritual seeking. And sometimes, little mental impression is made and they are easily forgotten.
3 – Witness – the sense of being a detached observer of our life can arise then pass or arise occasionally. Some inquiry techniques try to culture this. It might be called Self Consciousness as the Self becomes known but not yet fully. (this can indicate the kundalini has been rising above the throat, consciously or not)
4 – Makara – when the kundalini reaches makara, above the third eye, the witness becomes stable and ongoing. The kundalini stays up. Reaching makara may be experienced as a brilliant, all-absorbing, flash of white light. One that stays lit thereafter.
5 – 3rd eye awakening – some people may begin to have celestial and inner perception prior to awakening. This can be a distraction from awakening itself but opens vast vistas previously unknown and undreamed of.
6 – Actual awakening – when we shift identification from the ego or me-sense to the cosmic Self (or no-self). This is Cosmic Consciousness or Self Realization. This is not an experience but a shift in being. It is also not something we do but rather allow. This never matches our concepts of the mind. It’s also often a surprise in timing, simplicity, and normalcy. Everything changes but nothing does.
As the distance from makara to awakening in the crown is short, many gain the witness, makara and waking one after the other or all together. But I know a few who gained makara but didn’t awaken for many years. All were young and still growing at the time.
I’ve noticed 5 typical ways the awakening shift is experienced subjectively. All of these are the same thing, just seen uniquely due to differences in orientation, understanding, culture, and practices. If someone awake is nearby, they will also experience the awakening as it is the same Self waking.
1- a sense of ego death or ending, becoming cosmic Self (actually just the end of ego identification)
2- a sense of ego death into no-self (the term depends on teaching or experience)
3- a sense of ego expansion into universal
4- devotional or related surrender of the ego, perhaps yoking to God
5- a quiet, gradual shift that clarifies over time
Of course, we could categorize the experiences other ways. The key thing is that we shift from being a me to being universal or boundless. The initial experience may have a focal point outside the body, but its an edgeless focus. A deep silence and bliss may or may not yet be present.
Awakening itself can come in gradations.
- the actual shift may be very clear or subtle, intense or mild.
- there can be a “honeymoon” followed by the minds attempts to dominate again, largely due to long habits. Mind can take 6 months to 10 years to finally let go according to Adyashanti. Thus, the waking can become overshadowed to some degree for awhile. Obviously, a clear awakening is ideal and effortless meditation does seem to help prepare for that.
- there can also be a simple, clear awakening with little clouds. Mostly just settling in.
The test is simply time. If it’s not stable and permanent, there is some processing to do. If it is, more will unfold.
Some do a lot of doubting, underestimating their progress. And some tend to overestimate, confusing experience with being. And some are a little too concerned with labels and the map.
It appears that clear, simple shifts are becoming more common over time, due to prior shifts paving the way. Recently, someone I know has gone through all stages clearly in a few months. They will undoubtedly still have some processing to do and certainly lots of learning. But their clarity means no falling back. This would have been profoundly rare not so long ago.
Mature awakening is sat chit ananda – absolute bliss consciousness. Typically, the freedom and peace comes first and the bliss a little later. No bliss means not fully established yet.
We could now say a person has graduated from the kindergarten of enlightenment. The higher stages are yet to come.
Davidya
What We Notice
The primary factors that influence a subjective experience are the clarity at the time, the existing general development or overall perspective, and where the awareness is positioned relative to the object of experience. How the mind then interprets that experience from its concepts and memory further influences interpretation. Not to mention how open we are to it. Do we see a pattern in a series of experiences? Is it really there? Are they stronger subjective experiences related to what’s purifying and leaving rather than developing? Shakti may just blow in and create whatever circumstance is required. Thus someone may associate awakening with almost any chakra. Depends on what the last barrier is too.
The overall process can be mild, medium or intense. For some, it will be very vivid but for others, almost unnoticed. For many it will vary – some things noticed, some quietly shift. It depends on how it unfolds and how suddenly a big knot is released. Everyone will certainly have some experiences of the energy physiology purifying but that may or may not be associated with energy or even seemingly related at all. Maybe just an odd day or some vivid dreams or twitching. Our energy physiology is a network of many thousands of channels (nadis) throughout the body. Many of the smaller shifts will be seen as passing experiences, unrecognized as marking anything. Other minor things may seem very important.
The experiences will also relate to our dominant guna and our dominant sense. Are we seeing through the eyes of world-as-illusion or world-as-divine-play? Will it be visual, heard, felt or a blend?
As well, certain practices will tend to encourage or reduce certain kinds of experiences. Some kundalini techniques encourage “pushing” which may result it more intense experiences but also in a rougher ride. It’s better to let this process unfold naturally.
Where It’s Actually Happening
To further confuse the interpretation, the apparent location of an experience may not be the source. You’re probably familiar with how Chinese medicine can stimulate a point on the skin and bring relief to an organ or muscle in another part of the body. Similarly, we can have subjective experiences in one place that actually originate in activity somewhere else in the body. Body awareness techniques teach how to follow the attention back to the source to help facilitate a release. But we may not notice this during a spontaneous experience.
You may have noticed back on koshas that the Prana level is relatively dense. Changes in subtler bodies will shift the energy more profoundly yet the source may be too subtle to recognize. Again, we’ll attribute it to the sensations in the more gross areas at the time.
Another player in this is where we’re experiencing from. Inside the koshas, we’ll tend to experience things relative to that kosha. For example, how the chakras (wheels) are experienced. You hear descriptions of chakras as multicoloured energy spirals or as flowers with petals and roots or as geometric forms. These lead to some of the symbolism we see. Closer to the physical, energy healers describe cones of spiraling energy coming out the front and back of the body near the chakras. Same chakras, different viewing.
Some describe how there is in actuality only one cosmic body, appearing as all of us. All purification is actually taking place only in the cosmic. (an Atmamaya kosha perspective) This means another persons purification may affect your clarity and vice versa.
Each of the traditions we discussed are founded in someones or a group of people’s experiences and the minds attempt to model the process they recognized as occurring. They’ll likely be led by specific practices. Some teachers will be relating their own experience and some expounding a teaching derived from someone else’s, often historical.
Thus, some of the variation may be the same process but with different aspects and locations noticed subjectively. But more deeply, the kundalini process is not what drives awakening. The process itself is something much deeper that comes to the surface in our subjective experience as this or that happening here or there. Most of this is just opening and clearing, revealing what is already there. And that is the far more important part than the experiences we had in the process.
More
Understanding the energy system is a useful way to understand how we are in the world and why we experience it in certain ways. But the underlying process of awakening is driven by something much deeper than kundalini or prana. Deeper even than our cosmic self and cosmic body.
That cosmic body is shared by all life. It is seeded with one set of 7 chakras in this universe. Our individual forms draw energy from those 7 centres to structure the apparent body. All 7 express Shakti but do so at different qualities and density, allowing us to express and function on all levels, if we’re awake to it.
Awareness is aware of itself both globally (omnipresently) and at every point. Ultimately, our apparent body is simple interactions or relationships between clusters of points of awareness; the devata that express creation; the self-interacting dynamics of consciousness.
These relationships are the music of life.
Davidya
Awakening
Because the physiology is what supports the direct experience of awakening, it must be purified and refined to handle the new experience. That process is said to be done through the pranas (life energy) or vayu (air or wind) which are Shakti in coarser form.
In Ayurveda, they describe how we come into this lifetime with influences from 6 bhavas (houses). Half of these are from the body (bloodlines and care), the other half from our soul (jiva). Two of those are Atman (Self) and sattva (purity/clarity). Whatever development we cultured prior, we bring into this life and pick up where we left off.
These 2 aspects have a big influence on how we experience awakening. The primary awakening is to Atman, our cosmic nature. This is known as Self Realization or Cosmic Consciousness (CC). It is Self waking up to itself. But even this is not driven by Self. It is driven by that which is beyond consciousness, sometimes called grace or the mystery or That. It does not necessarily follow any particular convention. As we are essentially here to have a unique experience of the whole, our process and awakening will inherently be somewhat unique.
The other aspect of awakening, sattva, is experienced as refining perception and feelings. Thus we come to see some of these mechanics for ourselves, plus the way the world comes to be. This includes all the layers of creation between source and the gross physical, both in our body as koshas and chakras and in the world as expression. This phase is known as God Consciousness (GC) or by some euphemisms like Divine or Celestial Consciousness. Unlike the other stages which start with a realization, this stage reaches its realization at the climax in God Realization, after the later Unity shift.
This refinement can begin long before spiritual awakening or may begin well after. It’s a kind of parallel process. But subtle perception is not spiritual awakening. And awakening without subtle perception is more limited and flat.
The awakening to Self deepens into Unity with all expression until we transcend Atman into Brahman.
These stages of development beyond Self Realization are understood by some traditions, particularly Vedanta, Tantra and Zen. We could say stages of awakening are punctuation marks in a much larger process of evolution that is ongoing.
Shakti
With the context of stages of awakening, we can come back to kundalini and Shakti. Understanding Shakti is a little like trying to understand consciousness: both arise before the mind and thus cannot be understood by the mind until their foundation is directly experienced. In fact, they are the essence of mind itself. Mind can be said to be the inside surface of self-aware consciousness. It’s activity is driven by Shakti.
The counterpart of Shakti is Shiva. Shiva is representative of absolute, pure Being and the observer. Observation or awareness flows with attention and intention, with Shiva and Shakti.
Those with a powerful awakening may have vivid experiences and a clear sense of a kundalini awakening. But until we can view it after the fact, from outside the process, our perspective will be localized. Those with mild shifts and few direct experiences of the energy process will tend to lean on others to fill in the gaps. The only real way we’ll understand it is with a clear inner vision of the energy physiology throughout the process. That’s not very common yet.
Kundalini Rising
While Shakti expresses within creation, because it’s motive force arises beyond it, it is not bound by any of the conventions we might make about it. We can describe typical pathways but Shakti is never limited to them.
It is typical for Kundalini to open and then rise and fall through the sushumna (spine) nadi until it reaches makara (just above the 3rd eye) where it becomes stable. From there it rises to bindu and the crown. Shakti rises to join Shiva. Some experience this process beginning with the root chakra, while others in the feet or somewhere else.
How it is experienced may depend on when and if it gets noisy and where the noise is experienced as coming from. We may become aware of the process part way in. Much of it remains very subtle and out of awareness.
How I see the process aligns with my interpretation of the Kundalini Vidya tradition, as described by Joan Harrigan, PhD. Awakening, Cosmic Consciousness or Self Realization happens when the kundalini reaches the crown chakra. Then, through “advanced process”, Shiva and Shakti descend together through the chakras, awakening more subtle values. These correspond to the further stages mentioned above – GC at the heart, Unity at the gut, and Brahman at the root.
This also aligns with Zen’s Adyashanti, describing “head, heart, gut” and his conversation with Loch Kelly in “Journey After Awakening.” And it aligns to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, with a Vedic background, as seen in one of his rare talks on the subject (Lake Louise, 1968): “The Kundalini finds its absorption in all these centres…and eventually here in the cortex… a thousand-petaled lotus.
And by the time Kundalini comes here, everything, the whole thing becomes full of light. Full of light means full of awareness. Light means not this light, but pure Being. And when this whole area becomes aware of Being clearly, then it is Cosmic Consciousness.”
When Shakti completes the descent, Kundalini Vidya describes a rising again to a chakra based on the needs of the life. In two cases I know (Myself and Igor), Shiva has instead descended whole-body to the heart. This may be equivalent or something different. (see below)
For a time, I took this process to be the underlying energetic dynamic that lead to the subjective experience of awakening stages. However, various kundalini traditions describe it taking place in two other ways. Not as alternate possibilities but as how it actually unfolds.
Another kundalini tradition describes a circulation of the vayus (airs) clearing the channels, then the descent of Shiva as grace, without a Shakti rise. As Harrigan points out in Kundalini Vidya, mantra meditators are inclined to notice little in the way of obvious kundalini experiences until the rise reaches the third eye. Many could thus align their experience with something like this but I don’t know the details of such traditions and Kundalini Vidya aligned on many points.
The third perspective sees awakening during a single rise. It begins in the gut, with CC at the heart and Unity at the crown. This does not align with my own experience but is how Vamadeva (Igor) saw it unfolding for himself and others. Because he experienced a more intense kundalini process, he has studied the kundalini traditions in more detail.
In this variation, after Shakti rises to the crown, it descends to the heart via the amrita channel. It takes the mind with it, dissolving the mind in the heart. That is what he describes as full release, full embodiment. This puts the heart descent I mentioned above in a different context.
[UPDATE] Igor indicates this part is supported by the Kashmir Shaiva scriptures and Spanda (The Doctrine of Vibration) in particular.
It occurs to me this version of the rise may occur when the upper channel is more clear than the lower and Shiva descends to meet Shakti part way up. Thus the awakening, the meeting of Shiva and Shakti, occurs at a lower level. Or it may simply be a variation in how it is subjectively being experienced.
A related example: the white light in the head common around awakening Igor attributes to the pranas coming together in the gut, but experienced in the head. However, I attribute it to the opening of makara above the 3rd eye. A drop of the Divine Mother. I can note that once open, makara can be seen by some others as a white light in the head. All this suggests interconnected events being experienced different ways. And indeed, the KV tradition tells us the crown manages the opening of the lower chakras but we typically only experience the effects in those lower centres. More detail is necessary to clarify.
I’ve also run into some individual variations that describe other combinations, like a concurrent step-by-step rise and descent. But in some cases, I have to wonder if concepts are directing experience.
If we come back to the Koshas, we can see that most of our subjective experiences revolve around the body, energy changes and perceptions. These involve only the grossest 3 bodies. Many of these are side-effects of deeper changes out of our clear experiential range. Thus, there is no one obvious energy process that fits all people.
Clearly, the energetic process is not the underlying mechanism I once thought but rather the physiologies adaptation to a deeper shift and the experiences that result from that.
Broadly though, we know there is purification, refinement and opening taking place on all levels while the body is prepared for, then adapting to, unfolding awareness.
Let’s clarify this further by going into a little more detail on two aspects of subjective experience: What we notice and where it’s experienced.
Davidya
Several months ago, I discovered my understanding of the energetic process underlying enlightenment was flawed and incomplete. While it corresponded to a number of traditions, it did not address how everyone experienced the process. This article in 3 parts reviews the exploration and results. More is yet to be unfolded. -D
Understanding Kundalini and Shakti in Awakening
Our physical existence is dependent on much subtler energetic interactions which are in turn dependent on virtual fluctuations in a vacuum. This is a physics perspective. Our bodies are composed of complex fields and structures that interplay to form our apparent physical body. Those on a spiritual journey and/or who are unfolding subtle perception are more likely to experience these finer energy values directly. Most prominently, we notice the energy nodes (minor and primary chakras) and the main channels (nadis).
The Vedas explored this subject thousands of years ago and have given us much more detail. Our body is built up in progressive inter-penetrating layers described as koshas or sheaths. You’ve probably heard of the etheric, astral and causal “bodies” but that’s a little misleading. It’s not separate entities but rather a series of progressively denser fields.
The 5 commonly understood koshas are:
Annamaya – literally “food” sheath, the physical and etheric
Pranamaya – prana or energy sheath, called vital, emotional or astral
Manonmaya – lower mind, mental
Vijnanamaya – higher mind, intellect
Anandamaya – bliss, vibration, causal
Another way of modeling this sequence is vibration/sound, subtle geometry, subtle fields, gross fields, physical.
Some further describe 2 more koshas. In early stages of awakening, these may not be recognized as sheaths. Atman, for example, is seen as boundless. However, it later becomes apparent that it too can be transcended. These are non-individual or shared layers:
Chittamaya – storehouse of impressions/ memory, subconscious
Atmamaya – Atman or cosmic Self
Including these correctly maps the 1 into 3 into 7 progression seen as a principle in this creation. (similarly there are 7 senses and elements but the highest 2 are largely virtual.)
These koshas are driven by a set of primary chakras, from which a network of channels run out, supporting the nervous, circulatory and limbic systems of our physiology. Chakra means wheel, in this case a wheel of vibrating, spinning, & circulating energy (prana, vayu or chi). We’ve all seen those images of 7 chakras in a tidy rainbow of specific colours but that’s largely symbolic. Kundalini operates more subtly than in the colour spectrum of human sight. And each chakra tends to be a blend of colours, unique to each person.
Keep in mind that chakras are not physical things and so their appearance depends more on how they’re being observed. Some count just the primary 7 chakras and some include other secondary nodes like the feet. Some count fewer as main ones. Some will see further chakras above the head and some will see those same chakras as folded over the original 7 in subtler form. Thus, some describe higher stages above the head after kundalini rises and some see those same stages during a descent. I’ll come back to this shortly.
Irrespective of the apparent physical body and its position, the chakras run in a perfect line, equally spaced. This is because they’re not individual chakras inside your body but rather a common set used by all beings in this universe.
Where we experience them arising in our body, bottom to top:
Root of the spine, lower belly (2” below navel), solar plexus, heart, throat, forehead (third eye), and crown of the head. The crown isn’t a chakra wheel but rather a centre that directs the lower chakras, often depicted as a thousand-petaled lotus flower.
These chakras drive the physiology and power the koshas. We can thus see a correspondence between the koshas, chakras, elements, senses and layer of existence.
| Kosha | chakra | element | sense | layer |
| Annamaya | root | earth | smell | physical, etheric |
| Pranamaya | 2nd | water | taste | astral/emotional/vital |
| Manonmaya | 3rd | fire | sight | lower mind |
| Vijnanamaya | heart | air | touch | intellect, causal |
| Anandamaya | throat | space | hearing | bliss, celestial |
Note however that these are a relationship, not a one-to-one correspondence. It’s more the chakras provide the energy qualities which are structured by the rules of each progressive layer of form. And they build in layers to full expression on grosser levels.
For most people, the energy system is plugged up with a kind of waxiness that restricts the flow of prana (energy). This is not unlike a subtler version of the buildup of plaques in the blood system. Granthi’s or knots that block the main paths are also common. These bigger blocks create more significant experiences and changes when they open.
In the root chakra at the base of the spine is a potent form of energy called Kundalini. Kundalini means coiled. Once it uncoils and begins to rise, it is Shakti though many still call it kundalini. Shakti is the divine power or energy or flow of That. Shakti is seen as feminine as she is the creative and motive force behind all experience. She is the Mother of creation, also experienced as pure love. She originates in the fundamental liveliness of That.
Davidya
During the SAND (Science and Non-Duality) panel discussion, Mark McCooey mentioned the point that “knowledge is different in different states of consciousness“. Another panelist, Igor Kufayev, wrote a related article called The World Is As You See It, reflecting how stages of development change what we see as real. This also reflects the panel title, The 3 True Levels of Non-Dual Reality.
How can one reality have 3 different levels? Because we come to know it in stages. This has been true since we were born.
Igor’s article was originally published in InZicht, a Dutch/Belgian publication specializing in non-dualism and radical self-enquiry to coincide with the SAND Conference. He raises a number of good points about the process and it’s worth a read.
Also notable though is that he centres awakening and Oneness in the heart. For him, the stages of enlightenment occurred during the rise of Shakti, culminating in a descent to the heart. For me, awakening took place at the crown and the later stages during a descent. The heart was a key stage but not the way he frames it. There are traditions that describe both processes and I’ve been exploring the differences for several months. I have a longer article on this distinction.
Meantime, enjoy The World Is As You See It.
Davidya
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