The Spirit is in the Flesh
All of us know that what is
real is what is physical. Unless we can get a physical sense of
something, it just isn’t real. We don’t believe in it if it can’t be
manifested either in some thing or in the behavior of some thing or
some person. Thus the religious and mythological traditions have always
used physical manifestations—sacrament, ritual, and meditative
visualization—to convey the spirit.
The myths reveal that the multiple layers of reality
are all continuous with and contained within our own bodies. That too
is behind the Christian myth of the resurrection of the body: we take
our bodies with us into the Kingdom, for the Kingdom is in the body. It
is not somewhere or sometime else. It is how we see the world we live
in, how we transform our senses.
His body was “his mind’s present image of itself,” wrote Arthur C. Clarke of the newly gestated Star-Child in his 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Isn’t that true of all of us all the time? Our bodies are our minds’
images of ourselves. Our bodies are how we experience ourselves. Our
bodies are our way of locating the various functions of consciousness
and of extending experience into three-dimensional space.
Meditative systems frequently superimpose the
macrocosm of the many-layered universe onto the microcosm of the
individual body. Primitive shamanistic meditation leads the initiate in
trance to experience dismemberment, evisceration, and reconstruction of
the body with objects, like quartz crystals, that are believed to
possess spirit power. The Kabbala presents the Sephiroth, the levels of
manifesting being, as “organs” of the body of the perfected,
transpersonal being, Adam Kadmon, so that meditators can locate these
mystical organs in their own bodies. Astrological imagery correlates
areas of the anatomy with the zodiacal influences so that adherents can
find their physiques visited, and perhaps renewed, organ by organ, as
the sun passes through the year, constellation by constellation.
Indian and Tibetan mythology teaches that our
physical bodies (anna-maya-kosa) are but the densest of five sheaths
which crystallize from and around our consciousness. Interpenetrating
them and becoming finer and more subtle are the sheaths of our vital or
breath bodies (prana-maya-kosa), personality or thought bodies
(mano-maya-kosa), consciousness or spiritual bodies
(vijñana-maya-kosa), and universal consciousness or bliss bodies
(ananda-maya-kosa). The physical body, nourished by food and enlivened
by breath, though the most limited and spatially and temporally bound,
is penetrated by all the other bodies. It is the link between heaven
and earth, the “sacrament” by which personality, depth consciousness,
and enlightened bliss are manifested in the world of experience.
A variation on that mythology in kundalini and
tantra yoga describes power centers in the body, called chakras, that
correlate both with physiological nerve plexuses and with psychological
states of consciousness. Chakra meditation focuses on these energy
centers in order to open the energy flow throughout the whole mind-body
system. Such meditation is believed to improve the working of the body
as well as to enlighten the mind. By locating the functions of
consciousness within the body, the system of chakras reveals the body
as a surface in three dimensions of a being far more complex and
dimensionally extended.
The system of chakras appears in various myth systems all around the
world. (It is what is represented, for instance, by the familiar
medical symbol of the caduceus.) Being part of the interest in
“Oriental religions” of the ’60s countrerculture, it has been
discovered in the West. Especially because it places the sexual
functions on a continuum with the psychological and the spiritual, it
forms the basis of many current discussions of sex and spirituality.
I first learned of the chakras from Dr. Kimberley
McKell, a Jungian psychologist who taught at the California Institute
of Asian Studies (which later became the California Institute of
Integral Studies); Kim introduced me to whole new world of spiritual
thought when I arrived at the Institute in 1971, fresh out of Catholic
religious life. (There's a page on this website about Kimberley McKell, PhD.)
Later
I learned a specific technique for focusing on the chakras from
Adolphine Carole, a meditation teacher in San Francisco. Adolphine,
slightly older than me, has a boyish look and charm that make her
curiously ageless. She’s been an actress and a producer of TV shows and
commercials. She’s always been a little psychic. Some years ago, bored
with TV production, she took a course at the Berkeley Psychic
Institute. She discovered her intuition was often uncannily accurate
and her practice of psychic meditation healing and transforming. After
completing the full course of studies at B.P.I. she began teaching on
her own.
(The photo is of Adolphine in 2015.)
The Psychic Institute does not seem to produce the
crackpots its name might suggest. Adolphine seemed to have an
open-minded and intelligent approach to the psychic world. I was always
surprised and pleased to find how sanely she spoke of such odd-ball
topics as pyramidology, aura reading, spirit guides, UFO’s, and the
like—topics I’d heard too often as signs of incipient psychoses. I had
come to understand these psychic and pseudo-scientific phenomena as
metaphors for experiences of alternate realities. But I’d seen that,
like the metaphors of myth and religion, some people took these
metaphors too literally. Adolphine appeared to have found in herself
and her own spiritual process a way of passing right over the bizarre
exterior to the symbolic truth beyond.
In teaching the chakra meditation Adolphine ignored
the complex Vedic and Hindu mythologies and esoteric symbols. Kundalini
and tantric practices, I had heard, could be powerful and even
dangerous. The Indian holy man and British civil servant Gopi Krishna
reported that his unprepared practice of the meditations left him
anoretic and virtually schizophrenic for years (Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man,
1967). Adolphine’s method seemed simpler and safer precisely because it
avoided the techniques and breath practices that could unleash the
torrent of neurological activity called the kundalini. Her method
worked simply to normalize energy flow, activating the potential levels
of awareness in a smooth rhythm.
Adolphine
led her students, usually eight to ten at a time, in guided meditations
on energy flow. She suggested visualizing the energy as movement of
color through channels in the body, and, holding up a telescoping
vegetable steamer from her kitchen to illustrate, she suggested
visualizing the chakras as valves that open and close to control the
flow through these channels. The aim is to be able to open and close
them appropriately, even intentionally.
Encrustations develop on the chakras that block
control and result in neurotic traits (fears, obsessions, rages,
denial, and the like) that prevent people from fully experiencing life.
As we visualized each chakra and the emotional/intellectual state
associated with it, Adolphine explained, the blocks would surface as
memories, distractions, or fantasies. The blocks could be opened by
observing them and running energy through them, thus “discharging” and
“grounding” them.
Over a period of weeks, Adolphine taught us how to
localize consciousness in the center of the head and ground ourselves
so that our thoughts were not being constantly tugged at by outside
concerns, then to attend to energy moving through us, and to visualize
the seven major chakras along the spine and the minor chakras in the
hands and feet (which are the basis of palmistry and foot reflexology).
She taught us to be aware of ourselves not merely as bodies stuck in
space and time but as energy beings, in fact, able to move in time by
means of memory and anticipation; in space by way of imagination; and
in consciousness by visualization and intentionality.
“At
the base of the spine,” she explained, ‘‘is the first chakra. This
chakra controls the simplest, most primitive, and often autonomic
aspect of the person. Here are the survival mechanisms of the body:
metabolism, immunity, and the will to live. When energy is blocked here
you feel insecure, threatened, diseased, desperately grasping for food,
for goods, for attention, and sure that there must be a scarcity of
such things. When the chakra is closed down, you feel uptight and
compulsive; when it is open all the way, scattered and out of control.
“The second chakra is at the level of the genitals.
Here are your primary pleasure centers. Here the body joins with other
bodies in direct chakra-to-chakra contact. Here infatuation and erotic
relationship, as well as procreation of new life are controlled. From
the second chakra are also regulated endocrine functions: the juices
that keep you young-looking, attractive, vital, and appealing to
others. When the chakra is closed down you look and feel unattractive,
the body ages and affections wither, the thought of other people making
love seems repulsive. When it is open all the way, you are buffeted
about by sexual urges and compulsions, your emotions seem out of
control and your behavior unpleasantly outrageous. When the chakra is
operating smoothly you feel sensuously alive, attracted and attractive,
responsive to other people’s affections. Encrustations on the chakra
may be experienced as guilt or as memories of parents or authorities
telling you to behave yourself or as obsessions with sexual images or
compulsions toward fetishes.
“The third chakra is located in the solar plexus.
Here are your emotional and motivational centers. Here you experience
rage and ambition, as well as fright and ‘butterflies in the stomach.’
When the chakra is closed down you feel timid and weak, impotent and
feckless. When it is open all the way, you feel irrationally confident
or strong, driven by anger or competition. When the chakra is
functioning smoothly you have all the get up and go you need as well as
the control over your emotions.
“The fourth chakra is located in the heart. Here the
energies of the lower chakras are transformed by love and compassion
and carried up into the spiritual and intellectual realms. When the
heart is closed, the lower passions drive you. Concerns of security,
pleasure, and power dominate consciousness. When the heart is totally
open you lose your identity in the oneness with humankind, and you may
become nonfunctional. When the chakra is functioning smoothly you
remain aware of yourself and your feelings, but you also feel involved
with other people. You can love and be loved.
“The fifth chakra is in the throat. Here are located
in the thyroid the function of controlling metabolism and in the larynx
of speaking to other people. The chakra is associated with discipline,
especially religious discipline and ritual, and with teaching and
communication. Communication is the major way of shaping your
environment and discipline is your way of shaping yourself to fit your
environment. When the fifth chakra is closed down, you may feel
inarticulate and tongue-tied; you may seem obsessed with rituals—from
Church services to neurotic compulsions—but unable to understand what
the rituals are for. When the chakra is opened totally, you may find
yourself talking uncontrollably, rambling tactlessly, unable to
discipline yourself and resenting others’ discipline; the fact that
people enjoy going to church, for example, might seem galling. When the
chakra is functioning properly you are able to communicate openly and
tell the truth; you are secure in your ability to perform your duties
and you can profit from social rituals and religious practices.
“The sixth chakra is located in the center of your
head. Here your experiential world is created. Through the eyes and
ears, primarily, enters the information on which you base experience;
in the way you sort that information your universe is created. Here
also, through your ‘third eye,’ spiritual sight is experienced. When
the chakra is closed down you feel a victim of the world you see,
unable to take any responsibility for what happens; the world seems
desolate and two-dimensional; time seems to drag on; nothing is
pleasurable. When the chakra is open all the way you feel ecstatic, but
spaced-out, deluded into thinking you can control the universe for your
whims; you may feel prideful and self-righteous. When the chakra is
functioning properly you see the beauty of the world and you perceive
it as the figure against the ground of divine being; you can realize
the attractiveness and splendor of the physical world and the
multiplicity of worlds that coexist with it.
“The seventh chakra, called the ‘thousand-petalled
lotus,’ is located a few inches above the top of your head. Here God
sits as in ancient Hebrew tradition YHWH sat on the extended wings of
cherubim atop the Ark of the Covenant. Here is your connection with the
One Being who lives the life in all and who sees through your
perspective. When the chakra is closed down there is no energy entering
your body from above. You are alive but life seems a burden. There is
nothing to do but eat, excrete, and reproduce; and the work you have to
do to accomplish these makes it all seem worthless. When the chakra is
open totally you, as a separate entity, are gone; your perspective
disappears and you may simply discorporate and turn into light. Then
you end the game and your universe dissipates; your perspective is lost
to God. In moments of mystical rapture you may feel blessed that the
chakra has opened, but you should remember in those times to stay
grounded so that you don’t discorporate. When the chakra is functioning
properly you feel light and easy in life, detached from taking worries
too seriously, but prudent in your affairs, realizing how precious life
is and what a treasure you possess and cherish. Only perhaps at the
moment of death, when all the chakras are tired and you have exhausted
this perspective, will you want to open the seventh chakra fully and
gratefully return the life you were given. You should remember this
experience, associating it with thoughts of a good death, so that when
the time comes you can do it for real.”
Traditionally, Western religious life has
been based on vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience—that is,
surrender of material security, sexual pleasure, and personal will.
These are the issues of the first three chakras. The vows were intended
to divinize these issues. And the way to do that is to see them through
the love and compassion of the heart. The first three chakras are
mirrored in the heart as the upper three chakras, as discipline,
creative vision, and spiritual security.
The heart is the pivot. It controls how we value the
world around us, whether we love it or resent it. It controls how we
value the experience of life and of our plurality of selves, whether we
deny the range of the chakras, focusing (for the venal and profligate)
only on the lower three, or (for the abstracted, spaced-out, or
moralistic) only on the higher. It is from the heart that God utters
the divine assessment: it is good.
Adolphine’s meditation reminds us that life is
multi-faceted and that it takes all the chakras smoothly opening and
closing with the flow of energy to make our lives. The goal of
meditating on this fundamentally sexual energy, called kundalini, is to
sacramentalize the experience of being embodied so that the physical
manifests the spiritual and the spiritual perceives itself and acts in
the physical.
Excerpted from In Search of God in the Sexual Underworld by Edwin Clark Johnson, ie., Toby Johnson
Two
Spirits is available as an
audiobook narrated by Arthur Raymond. 