k~Blog

Mr. Semple; 

I have started GFM several weeks ago. I am listening to binaural tones via stereo headphones while doing the GFM. The GFM is usually 30 to 45 minutes, twice a day. Do you know if there is any added benefit of doing GFM while listenning to binaural tones for raising the Kundalini?

I am also doing Pranayama twice a day in different sessions. Pranayama has different inhale-retention-exhale timing. The ratio is 1-4-2 for inhale-retention-exhale, as opposed to 4-4-4-4 for GFM. I do Pranayama twice a day in 45 minute sessions. Do you know if any one else tried to mix Pranayama, binaural tones with GFM and have they noticed any acceleration in raising the Kundalini.

I am doing this mixed meditation for several weeks only. I have little to report in terms of actual effects. Well, I am not sure what the effect ought to be since most masters advise against expectation of any outcome.

In any case do you see this effort as positive? Any comments will be helpful.

Sincerely,

snm

Mr Semple:

In you last email you asked me: "By the way, is there any interest in this subject [Kundalini] in Australia?"

I cannot say whether there is more interest in Kundalini in Australia than there would be in the U.S. However, I have noticed over the past 30 years a growth in interest in, what one person called, "the New Dark Age" exotica (fairies, crystals, witchcraft, sorcery, amulets, divination, animism, prayer flags, extra terrestrials etc.). Since 1975 (the end of the Viet Nam war) and with the end of the White Australia Policy there has been a growth in Asian migration to Australia. This has resulted in an increase in the number of followers of Buddhism. The Dalai Lama is now here in Australia for a visit and has been met by our Prime Minister [much to the anger of the PRC (i.e. China)]. Tibetan Buddhism has grown in popularity here, probably because of the personal charisma of the Dalai Lama and the large number of publications in his name. Yes, from a critical thinking perspective, the “New Dark Age” is distressing, especially considering Gopi Krishna’s effort to put Kundalini into scientific perspective. The tide has certainly turned from rational investigation of spiritual phenomena. Sad, because the Dalai Lama suggests an empirical methodology for examining all religious precepts. See my recent blog entry.

During meditation practice, all physical actions like diaphragmatic breathing eventually produce reactions [cause & effect]. Are some of these reactions “spiritual?” I don’t know. I do concede that somewhere down the road a practitioner might experience an inexplicable reaction. For instance, a person who activates the Kundalini Life Force might spontaneously begin to speak a language he/she had never studied or been exposed to. Since there is no physical explanation for this phenomenon, I call it a metaphysical reaction. I’m reluctant to label an occurrence such as this “spiritual.” That’s because I’m working from a hypothesis that supposes that, if the proper Meditation method is used, it will produce the same physical, and eventually metaphysical reactions every time. With the help of people like yourself, I hope to eventually prove this. As for spiritual, I’m not sure we are capable of recognizing, classifying, or labeling reactions/effects as spiritual at this point in our evolution, because labeling of events as “spiritual” is so subjective and to my mind, gratuitous.

One thing I can say fairly confidently is that Australians seem to be less religious than Americans. I have heard on TV that an atheist could never be elected as President of the U.S. That is not true of Australia. For the most part, we are not interested in the religious affiliations (or lack of them) of our politicians. So far so good, but thanks to the simplistic answers people accept, fundamentalism is spreading worldwide.

Practice matters:
Sometimes I find it difficult to hold my gaze on the tip of my nose. I presume that I should literally focus both eyes on my nose in a cross-eyed fashion. I find that quite stressful for my eyes and some times I have had to quit after 10 minutes because I had uncontrollable tears flowing from both eyes. My tears were not emotional but were due to the physical stress on my eyes. Am I doing the right thing? You should not strain yourself in any way so that a particular muscle starts to twitch or tears start to flow. Definitely not by crossing the eyes. Try locking on the tip and then closing your eyes gradually, all the while retaining a visual image of the tip in your mind’s eye. If you can do this, it should relax you so that you can begin the diaphragmatic breathing, which you want to do at the same time. Make this a two-step process: 1) lock in the tip of the nose, close the eyes gradually, etc., then, 2) begin diaphragmatic breathing. After a while, open your eyes half-way. See if this works. Don’t worry about closing the eyes and then reopening them; the goal is to relax.

Is the diaphragmatic breathing a means of strengthening the constitution of the body in preparation for the arousal of the Kundalini? Or is it a technique for the actual arousal of the Kundalini itself? Both. Diaphragmatic breathing leads to the ability to control your heart rate (metabolism). When this occurs, you will be able to make your breathing inaudible. In other words, you will begin to focus on the sound of your breathing—exhaling/inhaling. You will modulate your breath until you are no longer able to hear it. Yet, at the same time, you will take in as much air as usual, only more slowly. By the time you are doing this, the diaphragm will be almost working automatically. This, in turn, will give you the ability to recognize the property of direction as the air enters your belly. Once you have learned to breathe silently, you will shift your attention to your lower belly. A series of actions on your part that provoke reactions in your body. Your job is to initiate them and then recognize when the reaction occurs, then take the next action.

I get the feeling that the gazing at the tip of the nose is similar to "third eye" gazing, which some say actually stimulates the pineal gland. Is that correct? Think of it as a “centering mechanism.” If this helps with the tip of the nose thing, go for it… Here’s what THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER has to say:

“What then is really meant by this? The expression "tip of the nose" is very cleverly chosen. The nose must serve the eyes as a guideline. If one is not guided by the nose, either one opens wide the eyes and looks into the distance, so that the nose is not seen, or the lids shut too much, so that the eyes close, and again the nose is not seen. But when the eyes are opened too wide, one makes the mistake of directing them outward, whereby one is easily distracted. If they are closed too much, one makes the mistake of letting them turn inward, whereby one easily sinks into a dreamy reverie. Only when the eyelids are lowered properly halfway is the tip of the nose seen in just the right way. Therefore it is taken as a guideline. The main thing is to lower the eyelids in the right way, and then to allow the light to streaming of itself; without effort, wanting the light to stream in concentratedly. Looking at the tip of the nose serves only as the beginning of the inner concentration, so that the eyes are brought into the right direction for looking, and then are held to the guideline: after that, one can let it be. That is the way a mason hangs up a plumb-line. As soon as he has hung it up, he guides his work by it without continually bothering himself to look at the plumb-line.”

From your descriptions of Kundalini I get the impression that the Kundalini is like the reset button. That is, the aroused Kundalini tries to reset our system to its "default" or "factory" setting, to use a computer metaphor. Wherever possible, I first try to look for a simple explanation for something, and one which does not involve the supernatural. The ancients had no choice but to describe the Kundalini in flowery terms but I believe we do not have to follow them. Rather a toggle switch than a reset button.

By the way, I love your approach to understanding. These things need to be explained simply. It’s not easy because they seem to exist outside our experience. But as you actually become familiar with the actions/reactions taking place in your body, it will be easier to understand them.

I jog for about 30 minutes most days to keep healthy and I have been doing so for a number of years. Lately I try to breathe diaphragmatically while jogging, but not to the 4 x 4 count. Will that help? Yes. Inhale while counting 1-2-3-4 over four strides as you jog. Then hold your breath and count for four. Exhale over four strides while counting to four. Hold four. Start over.

Is your Kundalini still active? Yes. It’s 24 hours day. Do you need to do anything special to keep it active? Restorative Meditation activates the Life Force permanently. Once activated by Restorative Meditation you’re on automatic pilot…

I now have The Secret of the Golden Flower, which I downloaded from the internet at: http://www.rexresearch.com/goldflwr/goldflwr.htm . Neither my local municipal library nor the State Library of Queensland had it.

Couple of questions for you:
    Have you experienced any reactions yet?
    Is there a Kundalini/Life Force group/organization in Australia?

Keep your questions flowing, Jonathan…

JJ Semple

Another inquiry from Australia. Thank you, Jonathan, your questions are always welcome…

When I inhale, I find that by the time I reach the fourth second, my inhalation is very deep. I fill my lungs close to their maximum capacity. Is that OK? Similarly, my lungs are thoroughly evacuated by the time I reach the fourth second. My inhalations and exhalations are nevertheless sustainable for twenty minutes or so. Don’t try to stuff your lungs; every cycle should be relaxed to the extent that you’re not forcing it. You’re not after quantity, but quality. That is, a relaxed breathing cycle that improves over time. What do I mean by improve? I mean that the diaphragmatic breathing you’re practicing opens up other air pockets besides the lungs, namely behind the kidneys. Over time, this breathing technique should make your breathing deeper and more rhythmical, but not by forcing it.

At night time, when I look at the tip of my nose with half closed eyes, I have found that I need to turn on my bedroom light ˜ otherwise I cannot see anything. When I cannot see anything I do not know whether the focus of my eyes is correct. I presume that soft, diffused, indirect light is best. As you know, I practice while lying on my back. So, when I turn on my bedroom light I am facing a harsh, strong fluorescent light. My bedside lamp is also fluorescent. Do you think that I should use some candles? On the other hand, the flickering light from candles may be distracting. Perhaps I could turn on the light of an adjacent room? The light in the adjacent room sounds like the best solution. Enough light to work by. Over time you will develop a sense of approach to this part of the practice and may not need light.

Interruptions to my practice sometimes occur. My interruptions are not caused by external factors such as outside noise. My attention gets diverted by my thoughts ("monkey mind"). When I notice any mental chatter I turn my attention back to diaphragmatic breathing. That is, I re-start my diaphragmatic breathing. Normally I am not sure at which point I stopped (i.e. inhalation, exhalation, holding the inhalation or holding the exhalation) but I just start once again with an inhalation. Is that correct? Yes, always go back to the repetitious part of the breathing if you get distracted. However, under normal circumstances, you should not stop the diaphragmatic breathing during practice. It should become automatic—so that each inhalation begins with a diaphragmatic action. Count to four during inhalation. At that point, you stop inhaling and hold four beats, then exhale for four beats, etc.

I will try to get my hands on a copy of The Secret of the Golden Flower, starting with our public library. Who was the author? Was it Lao-tse (spelling?)? The authorship of many ancient books is sometimes questionable. Does The Secret of the Golden Flower fall into that category also? Do you prefer a particular translation or are they all more or less equivalent (I am presuming that there are a number of translations.)? I have the Richard Wilhelm translation, originally published by ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL, London 1931. There’s a lot of explanatory material in the front and the back, but I stick pretty much to the text of the two books.

Actually, for some time I have been looking on the internet and in our library for a straight forward method for raising my kundalini. As you know, most sources usually give dire warnings about raising one’s kundalini. Others dismiss kundalini on the grounds that it is a dangerous diversion from the main goal of enlightenment. Alternatively, some say that it must be part of a very long religious process that may extend over several lifetimes! On the other hand, your approach appeals to me because of its practicality, straight forwardness, and absence of mysticism. I think that it is unfortunate that we are stuck with the actual word "kundalini". The word itself is closely associated with Hinduism and perhaps the English words "vital energy", "vital force", "life force" (or French "élan vital") would not convey the same meaning. Yes, there’s a lot of basic information to be learned about Kundalini: how to activate it successfully time after time over a given number of subjects, how to live with it, and how to manage it. Also, its applications in the real world.

Your second point is very well taken. For some time, I have been thinking about terminology. My wife hates the term, Kundalini, says no one knows what it means. Well, perhaps not NO ONE, but it isn’t exactly a household term. And its very HINDU-NESS does prevent understanding and acceptance in the West. At the moment, I’m preparing a presentation I call ACTIVATING THE LIFE FORCE. Don’t know whether it will attract more attention than Kundalini. By the way, is there any interest in this subject in Australia?

JJ Semple

Jonathan Martin from Australia is practicing RESTORATIVE MEDITATION and has some interesting questions. My answers in grayed text follow his questions.

Mr Semple:

I received your book and CD in good condition. I have read it and listened to the CD. I understood the technique of diaphragmatic breathing, as explained in the CD and, I believe I can do that style of breathing when I put my mind to it. However, at this stage, it does not come "naturally" or effortlessly. Nevertheless, I believe I can do it.

First up, may I make the comment that your method ("RM") is breathtakingly simple (pun intended). I do not say that as a criticism. To the contrary, I think it is a plus.

If you have already answered some or all of the above questions on your website you may like to link me to the webpage.

Jonathan Martin

Since 1 June I have been practicing RM. May I ask you some questions concerning my practice? My questions are:
What length of time each day should I do RM? Is there any practical way of estimating the passage of time? I would say no more than 45 min-1 hour. One time a day is fine; if you’d like to do an evening session, that’s fine too.

I do RM while lying on my back instead of the lotus position. I have never done yoga and, because of arthritis in my spine, I would not be able to sustain the lotus position anyway. Because I lie on my back when practicing I find that I tend to go to sleep. Should I do anything about that? Falling asleep is not necessarily bad. However, before falling asleep, I suggest you make good use of the time, practicing diaphragmatic breathing to the best of your ability. This will strengthen your diaphragm and, over time, should allow you to overcome the tendency to fall asleep.

On page 151 of your book you refer to a plumb-line that is mentioned on page 34-35 of The Secret of the Golden Flower. I have not read that book nor do I have it. However, I would like to know whether the plumb-line is relevant to me, in view of the fact that I lie on my back when practicing? Yes, the plumb-line is used as a centering device. By fixing the your gaze on the tip of the nose (both eyes looking at the tip) you work on establishing a “center.” It’s like dropping a plumb-line. Try to lower the eyelids halfway, so you’re neither looking at the tip with your eyes wide open or squinting. This establishes a guide or plumb-line Practice the breathing while doing this. Break down the practice like this: Hold your index finger four-inches away from the tip of your nose. Practice changing the focus from your finger to the tip of the nose. After you’ve done this a while and feel comfortable with it, hold your gaze steady on the tip of the nose and withdraw your finger. Then while focusing on the nose, lower your eyelids halfway. Make sure you don’t lose focus on the tip. Become aware of how you are breathing. If you’re not breathing regularly, start the regular diaphragmatic breathing. If you do this every morning, both the time spent in practice and your ability to concentrate (not be distracted) should increase. Soon you should be automatically slipping into the breathing without taking a lot of time to establish the plumb-line. That is, every time you lie down to meditate, you will start with your gaze on the tip of the nose, eyelids lowered halfway.

On page 152 of your book you recommend that the practitioner follow a "strict raw food diet". Do you eat raw meat and eggs or are you a vegetarian? On page 136 you said that "Become a vegetarian? Not likely." Were those comments made before you became a raw food eater? Do you consider dried fruits as raw? For example, do you eat commercially dried figs, apricots, prunes, sultanas etc? I presume you regard nuts and seeds as raw. What about milk? Does it have to be unpasteurized, unhomogenised and organic milk? Do you consider commercially produced cheese as raw? You don’t have to jump in 100%. It’s a recommendation; not a proscription. Raw foods are mostly fruits and vegetables. It may be difficult to prepare without buying a book. I don’t recommend eating raw meat or unpasteurized milk. You’ll have to find your own level of comfort. There are many good books on raw foods.  

I have a slight overweight problem (addiction?). Is that an impediment to raising my Kundalini? I don’t smoke, drink alcohol or take drugs, prescribed or otherwise. Practicing RM should actually help this problem; I know a raw foods diet will.

Finally, when the time comes (Hopefully, it will actually come!) and I reverse my breath I am not sure what that means. At the moment, I am breathing in and out and doing the 4 x 4 count. Does reversing my breathing mean that when I am due to make an inhalation I actually make an exhalation? If so, that would mean that I would be making a double exhalation! I do not understand. Will I intuitively understand what to do when the right time comes? You won’t understand it until you get right up to it! What does that mean? It means that if you practice RM correctly, one day—about 100 days in—you will detect the property of movement—air moving in your lower belly. A few days later, you will realize that the air is circulating, that is, it has also has the property of direction. Then, you will change the direction of your breath. How do you do this? At this point, your breath will have slowed down so much and be so regular that you will be able to recognize the conditions I’m talking about. You’ll use your newfound abilities of observation to detect this condition and then by concentrating on what is happening inside, you will change the direction of the breath. Whether you call it concentration or visualization, it doesn’t matter. Once you recognize the condition I have described, you will be able to change its direction.

One of my future projects is to prepare an illustrated DVD description of RM. Also, try to find a copy of THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER.

Thanks, JJ Semple

I get a lot of questions on Restorative Meditation, especially on the “backward-flowing” method. In fact, I just received a reprint of an article in the 1992 issue of Ascent Magazine in the mail. The article was a review of Michael Murphy's 1992 book, THE FUTURE OF THE BODY. It contained an extensive discussion of the “backward-flowing” method and THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. Obviously, the sender knew I had worked with the method and that it was part of Restorative Meditation. I don't know who sent the article, but I appreciate the gesture.

And while I say there was a discussion, nowhere was there an explanation of how to practice, employ, or use the “backward-flowing” method. That’s fairly standard and stems from the fact that most people who write about it have never attempted a first-hand empirical practice of the method. They understand how Kundalini can restore the body, but they have no practical, empirical knowledge.

The author of the article seemed to know a lot about Kundalini, but most of his information was second-hand. He quoted extensively from The Secret of Yoga: “If we accept as true even a tithe of what the ancient masters claim for Kundalini—super consciousness, psychic powers, longevity, radiant health, genius, and a host of other gifts and talents—this points to a hidden source of energy and strength in the body, so marvelous, so potent, and so precious for the peace and happiness of mankind that no price paid for it and no sacrifice made to acquire the secret would be too great.”

He went on to describe how the method produces an “upward flow of the nerve energy.” Okay fine, but how do you do it? On this most sources are mute. It can be done, it has been done, they say, but don’t ask us how.

Well, here’s how it works: It’s based on an ancient breath control technique that entails reversing the direction of the breath at a certain time during the meditation process—about one hundred days in. The “backward-flowing” method brings an element of standardization to the process, ensuring a reliable outcome.

That’s because, once you start the “backward-flowing” method—reversing the direction of the breath—you switch to autopilot. What do I mean by autopilot? Remember the Ram Dass saying: “First, you do it, then it does you?” It's an apt description. When you start RM, you focus on breathing in and out. Then, at a certain point in time—one I clearly describe how to recognize—you reverse the direction of your breath. From that point forward, you no longer have to focus on breathing. An inner mechanism—part of the Kundalini process—takes over. Instead of you doing it, it does you. You don’t have to worry about making choices; your body makes them for you—like an unseen ground controller that guides an aircraft to a safe landing.

Why is the “backward-flowing” method safe? Many methods suggest “thinking” or “visualizing” the seminal fluid up the spinal column. This is not reliable because the seminal fluid may be drawn up the wrong channel, as in the case of Gopi Krishna. The “backward-flowing” method works like pump priming. First you reverse your breath, start it moving in the opposite direction, then, without further intervention on your part, the “pump priming” procedure begins automatically drawing the seminal fluid up the correct channel along the spine.

After reading my description on how to practice and implement the process, many readers tell me, “I still don’t understand the “backward-flowing” method.” I’m forced to reply, “You won’t, not until you get RIGHT UP TO IT!”

“And when will that be?” they ask.

“When you detect the property of breath movement in the lower belly,” I reply.

Of course, if you have not learned diaphragmatic breathing to control heart rate, you will probably not get to the point where your breath slows down enough. You need to implement the first two steps of the method:

1.    Diaphragmatic breathing,
2.    Use of Diaphragmatic breathing to control the heart rate.

Keep practicing until you detect an air current in the lower belly. Then, and only then, will you be able to change the direction of the breath.

For more on diaphragmatic breathing, listen to THE GET LIFE RIGHT PODCAST 02.

I won’t bore you with a rant on empirical science and how it got lumped together with mysticism and the occult. There’s a blurb on my website if you’re interested. I would, nevertheless, like to draw attention to the following citation from the Dalai Lama’s THE UNIVERSE IN A SINGLE ATOM book: “Because I am an internationalist at heart, one of the qualities that moved me most about scientists is their amazing willingness to share knowledge with each other without regard to national boundaries. Even during the Cold War, when the political world was polarized to a dangerous degree, I found scientists from the Eastern and Western blocs willing to communicate in ways the politicians could not even imagine.”

I’ve never heard anyone offer comments like these about the so-called spiritual community, not the Dalai Lama or anyone else. Would this be a silent condemnation of that community’s reticence to share information, its cult of personalities, its compartmentalization by sect, by teacher, by faction, by religion. Its fear of being held up to rational investigation. “Well, we’re a religion,” they’d say, “You can’t expect a religion to submit to the same rules as science.”

In the same book, the Dalai Lama talks about the rigor with which scientists apply their methodology. All scientific investigations employ the following methodological hierarchy: experience, inference, and reliable authority. Primary emphasis and value is given to information gathered from experience, that is, from empiricism and observation. Next in the chain of trustworthy data comes inference, the idea that if one sees a fire, smoke is sure to be present. Finally in last place, there’s reliable authority, the notion that because someone’s done it before, we must accept his future pronouncements even though they may never have been empirically tested.

In the spiritual domain, it seems this order has been reversed: first comes reliable authority while inference and empiricism are relegated downward in descending order. Is that good enough going forward into the 21st Century? Following a methodology that relegates reason and experience to last place? After all, it was reliable authority that got us into the Iraq War. Yeah, the same reliable authority that’s so often unreliable.

Seemingly, it’s not what the Dalai Lama wants either, since he declares in the same book: “By the same token, spirituality must be tempered by the insights and discoveries of science. If as spiritual practitioners, we ignore the discoveries of science, our practice is also impoverished, as this mindset can lead to fundamentalism.”

Perhaps it’s the times; perhaps we deserve it. Governments that value blind loyalty over competence; religions that feature dollars-for-politics fundamentalism and second-hand, hand-me-down fables over serious metaphysical investigation; societies that prefer elitism and celebrity to modesty and reason.

Consider the following anecdote: To advertise in a respected religious magazine, I was asked to submit my book for prior review, spelled prior censorship. This was the answer I received: “Om, JJ. Thanks for the book. It is most interesting. But our editors have not approved it for advertising, feeling it conflicts with the idea of Kundalini awakening except as it comes naturally to one who has been thoroughly prepared.” Meaning, prepared by reliable authority. Meaning also, if it happens accidentally or during a life-changing experience, it’s not meaningful or valid.

The first thing I did was Google unintended discoveries. You know what I found? Penicillin, X-Rays, Vulcanized Rubber, Cellophane, Safety Glass, and ScotchGuard. You know what else I discovered? Viagra, LSD, Brandy, Vaccinations, Quinine, and Pap Smears. You know what else was inscribed on this website?

"Keep the mind open"
“For all you would-be Nobel Prize-winners, remember the one trait that tied all these lucky strikers together: openmindedness. As the American physicist Joseph Henry once noted, ‘The seeds of great discoveries are constantly floating around us, but they only take root in minds well-prepared to receive them.’”

The Dalai Lama’s proposal that Buddhists revise their cosmology, if it proves to be scientifically wrong, should have ended the discussion. But it hasn't. In the current climate of irrational fundamentalism, those that speak in the name of reliable authority, have only gotten stronger. So the question remains: why are religions afraid to undertake a scientific investigation of all their claims?

I just posted another episode of The Get Life Right Podcast — Episode 03, available from iTunes. It's actually a reedit and rerecording of Episode 01, which had some major flaws. I've left Episode 01 up for the moment, but will delete it when I post Episode 04 in two weeks or so.

I'm excited about Episode 04. In it, I'm going to tackle SUBLIMATION from a number of different perspectives. The question I'm most often asked about this little known technique for diverting the seminal fluid to the brain is: Why would you do it? I like to turn the question around and ask: Why wouldn't you do it? Especially in an overcrowded world with so many seniors desperately trying to hang on to their sexual potency. In order to understand sublimation, each person should consider if it's reasonable to retreat from sexual activity at a certain age. To do so they need more information about sublimation. What can it do for me? Can it improve my life?

Quite simply the answer is yes! If your over sixty, why not use your remaining vigor for a creative purpose? By diverting the seminal fluid upward, you can strengthen your overall health and improve your physical well-being. What's more, you can cure yourself of any lingering sexual obsessions, like the idea that people must perceive you as virile and potent. When you're in your late sixties and seventies, it borders on parody. You may perceive yourself as potent and virile while others only see you as a dirty old man. So why not let go of this obsession? Activating Kundalini not only allows you to walk away from childish obsessions, it allows you to improve the lives of those around you. How?

Stay tuned for Episode 04 of The Get Life Right Podcast…

Last week, the New York Times ran an article by ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG entitled, Darwin’s God. More back and forth polemics between the academic pundits who say there is no God or religion and the ones who say there is. Big guns—all of them: Scott Attran, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Stephen Jay Gould, David Sloan Wilson.

The usual group of over-ambitious academics using rhetoric and reason to prove or disprove the existence of God—and bolster their reputations. For what? Some of the arguments are really weak like, in moments of extreme stress, people invoke God’s help, therefore he must exist. That’s tantamount to: we need Him, therefore he should be there. He is, isn’t he? Tell me he is, please!

Why do we have to argue the extremes: God or no God? Why can’t we explore the in-betweens? What, for instance?

First, let’s admit that trying to prove or disprove God is reaching across a void, a void we cannot cross with the intellect. That is the academic’s greatest folly, using the mind to apprehend the invisible.

So, how do we proceed then? Let’s try lowering the threshold and see if there’s any evidence that resides outside our accepted physical world, and possibly intersects with it. Something that doesn’t strain our logic or our beliefs because we can “walk” from one experience to the other. What kind of phenomenon am I talking about? Well, near death experience, for one. Never having had an experience of this sort, I have no observations to add. But I do accept the reports of hundreds of people who entered a kind of spirit world for a short period before “coming back” to talk about it. Their reports often cite common factors between these experiences.

Does this prove that there’s a God? No, but it does prove that there is something beyond our accepted physical experience. Some people will say it amounts to nothing. They accept nothing less than a hoary Bloke with lighting bolts and a beard, who talks to them from a burning bush. If it isn’t this monolithic icon, then it isn’t worth talking about. After all, near death experience isn’t responsible for creation.

Well, I have a seamless example that flows from the physical world into the metaphysical. Yes, it’s a Kundalini story. After activating my Kundalini, I became aware that, due to a childhood accident, my body had been deformed. Because I was very young, I blotted out all memory of the accident. As soon as I activated my Kundalini, it began to restore my body to its previous—before my accident—state. How do I know this? While meditating, I was able to see the form of my “original”—what I chose to call my “perfect”—body. It fit like a template over my actual body. Each time I lay down, I watched the Kundalini stretch my actual body to the limits of its template overlay. It was as if my body was being inflated under enormous air pressure, causing it to gradually swell outward. Kundalini was sending vital growth energy throughout my nervous system. This activity was responsible for the gradual physical restoration of my body to its intended state.

So my question is: where had this template resided during all this time? Almost thirty years had elapsed between my accident and the activation of my Kundalini. It must have been hiding—or hidden—somewhere. But where? Does it really matter where? The point is, it existed, waiting patiently for the activation of my Kundalini, so that it might once again be useful.

To me, this proved there are designs for our bodies that, once created, never cease to exist. Ultimately, my body was reconstructed—perhaps, retrofitted is a better word—according to the blueprint in the template. Does this prove the existence of God? No, but it does prove that some entity has a “hand” in our design.

This experience enabled me to see that we are all perfect at that split-second moment before conception. Of course, like a building before the foundation is laid, at that moment our beings are only blueprints. These blueprints—the numinous plans laid out for our substantiation—are perfect. At the moment of conception—the moment the egg is fertilized by the sperm—the body begins to take shape. It’s the moment when, were we able to stand over our perfectly designed blueprints, we would wonder if they could be executed as designed. That’s the job of Kundalini. Until the moment of birth, it controls our substantiation. The moment we are born we become conscious and Kundalini—our natural life force—becomes inactive. Of course, after we’re born, something always does interfere. We get sick, accidents occur, we become addicted, we grow older, our bodies break down. It’s not that things can’t happen while we are in the womb, they can. By and large, however, our time in the womb is peaceful. After we are born, the frequency of interference increases because that’s when we start doing things to ourselves. That’s when we bring our will, or lack of it, to bear. That’s when the serious damage to our bodies is done.

Most of the time we just go on living. What else is there to do? That’s the irony of Kundalini: just when we need it most, it becomes dormant. If only the blueprint could have been realized without interference—the operative expression being realized without interference. By that I mean without some stimulus altering the growth process.

So—and this requires a leap in logic—if I could see the original design for my body and it was perfect in every way, there must be some sentient agency that created this design. And even though my growth took a detour on account of my deformity, the blueprint continued to exist in some ethereal computer-memory-like storage, waiting for the day that I might learn of its existence and find a way back to it.

Happily, Restorative Meditation (RM), the method of meditation I developed, allowed me to find my way back to my perfect body. It restored my deformed body, and, in so doing, proved both the existence of the blueprint and the restorative power of Kundalini.

Don’t take my word for anything I say; I don’t want you to. I want you to find out for yourself. For Kundalini is not something that can be observed in a Petri dish or isolated by medical experiments or psychological testing. The power I discovered is systemic. It works with the rest of the body functioning around it. And if it worked for me, it will work for you. That is, if you approach it correctly. What is the correct approach? My book, DIARY OF A CONNECTICUT YOGI, explains my approach in detail.

Nevertheless, academics persist in relying on the intellectual ability, the one instrument incapable of proving or disproving the existence of God. Why? What makes them persist? Don’t they realize that if everyone from Aristotle onward failed, they are no more likely to succeed? In fact, their persistence tells us more about them than it does about the existence of God. What does it tell us? It tells us that they are merely following the dictates of their conditioning. Remember, these are people who have trained their minds in pursuits like philosophy, rhetoric, anthropology, and logic. So they use the tools that made their reputations—in this case, the human mind—to “further” their theoretical investigation on the “existence” of God.

This approach is doomed to failure. Of course, failure only spurs them to try harder. Sharpening their attacks, the debate devolves into personal attacks on each other’s respective intellectual capacities. The back-and-forth polemics have begun. It’s no longer about God; it’s about how-much-smarter-I-am-than-the-other–guy.

Academics are extremely bright; they are also extremely limited, especially when it comes to exploring this question. Not only are they limited, they are ill-prepared. They refuse to explore other resources in the arsenal of human investigative tools. They end up trading opinions with colleagues across the front pages of scholarly journals, in a selfish attempt to gain recognition for their erudition and bolster their reputations. But when you get right down to it, what they are writing about is only their opinions, supported, as it were, by intellectual pyrotechnics. There writings contain no empirical research, no personal observation.

Recently, I had a number of inquiries about my Podcast, to wit this most recent example: "Hi, Mr Semple, I was just wondering if you are going to start up the Podcast again or is this on the backburner? I was wondering whether or not to stay subscribed on iTunes to it. Brian, Houston, TX"

Not only should you stay subscribed, I'm about to add three episodes. One's an update of the current Podcast; the others are fresh new topics. The one I'm most excited about is: Sublimation. It's a topic I'm frequently asked to explore and expand on in lectures and discussions.

In a recent conversation with Gene Keiffer, he told me that only the process of directing the seminal fluid upward into the brain was capable of permanently awakening Kundalini. Since that process was part of the method I used, I didn't feel it was necessary to debate the point with him. Nevertheless, he went on to seriously question the whole idea of Shaktiput…as if I was promoting it. I'm not; in fact, I once wrote some dialogue about it for my book, DIARY OF A CONNECTICUT YOGI, which I eventually omitted from the published version. The narrative picks up in a French bistro where I recognize a woman from a Muktananda farewell gathering we'd both attended:

“A Frenchy. I thought you guys didn’t go in for the spiritual stuff like us Americans—we’re suckers for it.”

“Actually, I’m doing a kind of research.”

“Newspapers or university?” I asked.

“A reporter.”

“So what’s your half-baked theory on enlightenment?” I asked.

“I wanted to meet you. I felt you had a lot more to say and he just shut you up.”

Two hours later, she was sitting back enjoying her third café express and I was winding down.

“Do you believe it’s possible to instruct a mass number of students in this kind of thing?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I don't believe in Gurus. Nothing beats doing it on your own. But you never know, perhaps Muktananda can look at a person’s astral body and…you know that Shaktiput business, maybe it works.”

“Well, he certainly wasn’t able to see yours.”

“That presumes there's some interesting activity in my astral body in the first place.”

“Well, I believe you. In fact, I’ve met people who described an intensely physical, permanent Kundalini experience.”

“For me, experience is the only reality. And the reality of my experience is that somehow, by trial and error, I found a way to direct the seminal fluid up the spine to the brain. And that's what did it—that musty old “backward-flowing” technique hidden away in the pages of THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER.”

Think of it this way. There are supposed to be two reasons for sex, two alternative purposes for a human life:

•     To perpetuate the human race
•     To awaken Kundalini through sublimation

Let's examine the second reason from an evolutionary perspective. At the age of twenty, we do the things twenty-year olds do: study, procreate, carouse, fight wars, pursue our ambitions. Suppose at the age of thirty-five we decided that we'd had enough of these pursuits. Suppose we decided to sublimate out sexual activity, to divert the seminal fluid to more creative purposes.

What effect would this decision have? On our lives? On our neighbors? On the world population? On the evolution of the species? Think about so many people on this planet not only being sexually active after their most reproductive years, but wanting to prolong their sexual powers by taking stimulants. Imagine they decide to channel their sexual impulses into Kundalini, and, as a consequence, better health, prolonged fitness, and heightened awareness—to say nothing of enlightenment.

Think about aberrant sexual behavior on a mass scale, and how sublimating the sexual drive might remove thousands of would be sexual predators from circulation. Imagine great numbers of people realizing that they bore a responsibility, not only to control runaway reproduction on a planetary scale, but also to control individual aberrance. A huge reduction in sex crimes could take place because men were channeling their sex drives to higher purposes.

I’m not talking about mass sterilization; I’m talking about an evolutionary turn, one guided not by chance or by the survival of the fittest, but by a collective recognition that we must adjust our sexual behavior to evolve, indeed, to survive. In fact, were we to attempt this experiment, this radical change in our sexual habits, it would prove we were, in fact, the fittest on the planet—able to shape our own destinies by guiding our lives to more productive purposes.