 | Enlightnement: Journey into Awakening (part 2)By Kiara Windrider
During this time I also began to go through a powerful kundalini awakening. During my teen years I had read Autobiography of a Yogi, by Yogananda Paramahamsa, and had felt a profound connection with the immortal yogi, Babaji, who was the head of his spiritual lineage. Years later, I discovered a spiritual master in North India, Herakhan Babaji, who many believed was an incarnation of this yogi, and felt an equally profound connection with him. I started attuning to him in my meditations, and gradually felt a deep work of transformation taking place in my body.
Shortly after I enrolled at the California Institute for Integral Studies, I began to feel a kind of dissolution of the self, as if my subtle bodies were coming into a vast state of union with this master. For many months I felt that my own sense of identity had dissolved, and I would wake every morning with strong currents of energy coursing through my body. I was in a state of bliss that lasted through this entire period of time, accompanied by many realizations about the nature of the universe and the adventure of human consciousness.
After graduating, I worked for some years at an alternative healing center known as the Pocket Ranch Institute. It was founded by Barbara Findeisen and Tony Madrid, whose dream was to provide a safe place for people to go through spiritual crisis and kundalini awakening. Affiliated with the Spiritual Emergence Network, we had various programs for people to release emotional traumas from the past, and to reconnect with their higher selves. It was a unique program, and I loved working there and seeing people go through such beautiful awakenings.
It was situated in 3000 acres of forested wilderness, in land that had been held sacred as a place of spiritual visioning for hundreds of years past. The streams and the ancient oaks became my own sanctuary as well, and in between times I was holding space for others, I was continuing to have my own awakenings as well.
My home during this time was in Mount Shasta in California, considered by many to be one of the most powerful vortexes on the planet. I spent a lot of time up in the alpine meadows, communing with the spirits of the mountain, and of the ascended masters whose presence is so tangible there. It was a beautiful time, and broadened my vision of what our planetary journey was all about. I also spent time in Hawaii, playing with dolphins and whales in their ocean world, allowing them to teach me about oneness.
continued in Part 2. Gradually, I started putting various pieces together that seemed to point to a world of new possibilities. I studied various calendar systems and prophecies from around the world, I researched little-known scientific findings that pointed to huge shifts in consciousness coming our way, I found myself inspired by future visions that people were having all over the world, and even found myself “channeling” aspects of myself from other timelines, all of which pointed towards a collective shift that awaited humanity in the near future. I wrote a book about all this, “Doorway to Eternity: A Guide to Planetary Ascension”, which immediately won a number of awards, and glowing commendation from a number of people who were beginning to come to the same conclusions.
What was missing, however, was a plan. It was all very well to say that this is where humanity was headed, and even to feel the truth of this on a very deep level. Still, I felt somewhat schizophrenic sometimes when I would read about another round of terrorism in yet another corner of the Earth, whether state-sponsored or otherwise, or hear about another tribe of indigenous people displaced as their forest was destroyed so that yet another corporate entity could profit from the blood of the living Earth. Where was the point of convergence between my deeply felt inner visions and these deeply fractured outer realities?
In early 2002 I met a woman who later became my wife. Grace and I made a journey to India later that year. We became attracted to the works of Sri Aurobindo, a freedom fighter, mystic, and highly accomplished yogi who had lived much of his life in deep contemplation in Pondicherry, India. Joined in this work later by a Frenchwoman, Mirra Alfassa, who eventually came to be known as the Mother, his great task was to anchor into the collective consciousness of humanity what he referred to as the “supramental force”, a force that he claimed would most surely awaken humanity into her true evolutionary destiny as a supramental species, as far beyond the current human species as humanity is now beyond apes.
Grace and I spent much time in Auroville, the city of human unity founded by the Mother after the death of Sri Aurobindo. We connected deeply with the spirit of these two visionaries, and had some powerful experiences of the supramental realms which they had promised would soon be manifested in the mass consciousness of the Earth.
Late in 2003, when we were least looking for it, our paths led us to an avatar named Kalki, also in South India. I had been invited to speak at an event called The Oneness Festival, co-sponsored by Kalki’s Golden Age Foundation, and the Swedish Experience Foundation. Towards the end of this week-long event, Grace and I, along with the other teachers a the event, were invited to have a darshan with Kalki.
Kalki is also known as Bhagavan, which is a devotional term signifying an avatar. Meeting him was an unforgettable experience. We experienced Bhagavan as a warm, wise, pragmatic, and very transparent human being. When asked about what he does, he claimed to be able to transmit states of enlightenment through a process known as the “diksha”. He referred to himself as a technician, and said it was possible to permanently shift the consciousness of the seeker by shifting the neurobiological structure of the brain. He said this has nothing to do with religion, and cannot be achieved simply by our own efforts. It can however be received through grace, and as an avatar whose specific mission it was to bring enlightenment to humanity, he knew how to give it. It was an astounding claim to make.
Fascinated, we both enrolled in a week-long “mukti” program, and I watched Grace go through an amazing process of transformation resulting a few days later in her enlightenment. My own process has been somewhat slower. Kalki told me that part of my soul’s purpose is to go through the process gradually enough so I could chronicle this journey for those who wished to follow. I have been doing this, and have almost finished writing a book about this amazing phenomenon. Six months later, I sense that my own enlightenment is not far away, and I expect that the last chapter of this book will be written from the other side of the river.
“Enlightenment is very easy”, ended Kalki in one of his talks, “and everyone should get enlightened”. After all, he says, it is only the beginning of the true spiritual riches that are available to us as incarnated souls. Kalki claims that humanity is on the threshold of a mass enlightenment, perhaps similar to what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother envisioned as the descent of the supramental force. He says that once 64,000 people get enlightened, the mass enlightenment will begin. As the Avatar of Enlightenment, he promises this will happen before 2012 AD. Once this has happened, this will effortlessly solve the environmental, political, social and economic crisis that is looming so heavily before us today.
This was an even more astonishing claim, but as we continued living at the ashram, I was witnessing this phenomenon unfolding around me every day, and especially so with my own wife! I realized that my path had very purposefully led me here. In a very pragmatic, matter of fact way, Kalki was telling us that the Golden Age would assuredly be here by 2012. Thousands had become enlightened already, and were exhibiting states of consciousness similar to Buddha or Christ or Ramana Maharshi. Extraordinary miracles were happening all the time, performed not only by Kalki but by countless enlightened people, ranging from physical healings to rainmaking to raising the dead. My research into the evolutionary history of humanity had convinced me that a Shift was imminent. Here, I was seeing history unfold before my own eyes.
What are some of Kalki’s teachings? Once you know that enlightenment is possible, that it is a relatively simple neurobiological process, how do you become enlightened?
The mind is a funny thing. Its very existence is based in duality. It therefore creates a “self” based on a its belief in separation. This self is an illusion, but it is held together by the perceptions of the mind. It is the same illusion as matter, which is mostly empty space, perceived by the mind as solid. Once freed from the illusory self-created by the mind, reality can be seen for what it is.
There is only One Mind, teaches Kalki, and this One Mind shapes our collective reality. Therefore, humanity has developed a shared perception of external reality that we consider to be the only reality there is. Just because everyone believes it is true, however, doesn’t make it true. If the One Mind is based on illusion, then would not the “reality” created by this shared mind also be illusion?
A good example of this is quantum physics. The equations of quantum physics inform us that what we call matter is mostly empty space. It informs us that the foundation of all matter in the universe is a sub-atomic particle known as the quark. In fact, some theoretical physicists go as far to claim that the entire universe is but a single quark continually replicating itself in parallel dimensions of space and time. All matter is related, therefore, they claim, and the appearance of separate existence in matter is simply an illusion.
Mystics, yogis, and shamans have always known this. Their perceptions of the universe are based in non-ordinary reality, a reality that has unplugged itself from the reality created by the matrix of the Mind. In this non-ordinary state of reality, what Carlos Castaneda refers to as the “nagual”, the illusions become revealed for what they are. “All things are connected” in this reality, as the Native Americans shamans keep reminding us. Only Oneness is real. This is the reality we begin to experience directly once we become enlightened. Enlightenment can be defined as simply de-clutching from the Mind, and relating directly to the Indwelling Presence.
All consciousness is a field. The Mind is a field. The Enlightened State is also a field. Rupert Sheldrake, a British biologist, refered to these fields of consciousness as “morphogenetic fields”, or “form-generating fields”. These are the fields that have shaped our evolution, shaped our memories, shaped our biological forms. Every time one of these morphogenetic fields gets reinforced, it gets stronger. Every time someone “unplugs” from these fields, it gets weaker.
What this amounts to is that every time one more person unplugs from the matrix of the mind, the One Mind becomes weaker. Every time another person becomes enlightened, the morphogenetic fields of Enlightenment become stronger, making it easier for everybody else to also become enlightened. These two fields are in a see-saw relationship with each other. Soon will come a time when critical mass will be reached, swinging the entire human consciousness into the state of enlightenment.
There is a very interesting study done by an American psychologist, David Hawkins. Using the science of “kinesiology”, he devised a “consciousness scale” going from 0 to 1000. On the bottom end of the scale were highly charged emotions such as guilt, shame, terror, and rage, and their corresponding states of consciousness. On the upper end of the scale were love, joy, and various states of enlightenment. Hawkins discovered that one person who was vibrating at the higher end of this scale could offset thousands, even millions of people, who were vibrating at the lower end of this scale. He also affirmed that one Avatar vibrating at 1000 could offset an entire Planetary Mind hell-bent on extinction!
I certainly believe that Kalki vibrates at 1000, or at least very close to it. It is based on this principle of resonant fields that Kalki says that it will only take 64,000 people (one in 100,000) becoming enlightened for the entire planetary consciousness to follow suit. When a person becomes enlightened, their consciousness makes a huge leap on this consciousness scale, which directly affects all consciousness in the surrounding area. At the critical point represented by 64,000 enlightened people, the morphogenetic field of Enlightenment will counterbalance the morphogenetic field of the Mind, making it possible for a mass enlightenment to take place within the matter of a few months.
Kalki maintains that the 64,000 will be reached by 2010 at the latest, and perhaps a lot sooner. This means that by the time we get to the year 2012 AD, which is a critical point as far as cosmic cycles go, we will be ready to step into the next galactic spiral as an enlightened planet. Kalki emphasizes that the planet must and will achieve mass enlightenment by the year 2012.
So what does this mean for each of us personally? If you have read this far, you are probably one of the 64,000. How do you begin this journey of breaking free of the control of the Mind?
Kalki says that the next best thing to enlightenment is knowing that you are not enlightened. This is not a frivolous statement. Many of us on a spiritual path have built up a spiritual persona around ourselves that is as difficult to break through as any of the darker expressions of the Mind, and perhaps more so. The main obstacle to enlightenment is not in the particular quality of the self-identity that we create, whether it be coarse or refined, hedonistic or spiritual, but in our degree of attachment to that identity. We assume that our journey towards enlightenment is a linear progression, and that we can become better and better people until suddenly we’re there.
Continued in part 3 |
