Spirituality Studies 9-1 Spring 2023 7 Monique Rebelle When Martin Dojčár discusses the nature of transcendence of individual consciousness (self-transcendence) in his Self-Transcendence and Prosociality, he makes a reference to the following description of Ramana Maharshi’s own awakening (2017, 74): “So ‘I’ am a spirit, a thing transcending the body. The material body dies, but the spirit transcending it cannot be touched by death. I am therefore the deathless spirit.” Later, when contemplating the occurrence, I realized that there were seven dimensions of perception I could clearly distinguish. The notion of stages leading to a full awakening is known in from many sources. Slavomír Gálik explores them in his comparative study on Saint Teresa of Ávila and Rōshi Jiyu-Kennett (2021, 2–17) when comparing the seven stages of prayer to the seven chakras. According to the tradition of Tibetan Tantra, my experience of Kundalinī rising represents a case of direct Citrini nādī rising, which allows for exploration of each chakra on the way up beginning with the first chakra and ending at the seventh. Citrini (also chitra) is described as an “energy channel” (Sa. nādī) that “starts at Bindu chakra and ends in the Svayambhy Lingam in Mūlādhāra chakra. Its color is silvery white and relates to the guna sattva. Citrini nādī is the channel for the movement of Kundalinī. It is not a separate nādī in the usual sense, but only a vivara, a hollow passage.” (Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia 2023). 4.1 Some Observations on Kundalinī Rising The experience of full Kundalinī rising leaves no need for any external information. If there is any knowledge needed, it can be retrieved with the powers of the fifth and sixth chakra, in the psychic, intuitive and visionary way. It is a different form of investigation than the linear inquiry used by the third chakra mind. In my understanding, Kundalinī is an individual unit of consciousness. My whole being was involved in the experience and there was nothing left outside of my being and the experience itself. Therefore, Kundalinī energy is not just physical energy that awakens when Kundalinī rises, but our Kundalinī is all that we know, all that we are aware of – the total sum of it. Ultimate consciousness has no form or any other attributes, no motion, but by inhabiting the self-created subtle body, it coils up at the bottom of the spine as a single, slumbering Kundalinī – energy resting in a form of a coil as the Sanskrit etymology of the word suggests – “coiled one”. In the wake of my experience, I realized that Kundalinī in the subtle body (including the physical organism) becomes survival, sexual and creative. When comparing the nature of the process I went through with what is known about the subtle body and chakras, I agreed that the chakras indeed can be called energy centers or energy vortexes. However, it is not chakras that I first noticed when my consciousness kept on discovering new stages of the process. It became clear to me that our human consciousness functions on several unique levels (planes, spheres, or dimensions) and each of those levels is different and operates on distinct principles. Each is a separate world. Our daily life experience is a fusion of those worlds. I call them dimensions of perception. The focus I was able to attain during my experience allowed for understanding that Kundalinī is an individual unit of consciousness and chakras are the gates to the ever-present dimensions of perception. By continuing this direction of investigation, each chakra in an individual can be to various degrees open, closed, developed, congested, and also vary from someone else’s chakras in color and brightness. The dimensions, however, exist regardless, beyond the cycle of individual life and death. An individual can have a very limited access to one or more of the dimensions, but the dimensions, nevertheless, contain all of their data at all times. Taking under consideration the nature of each dimension as I experienced it and drawing a parallel between the respective chakras, it becomes clear that the structure of the subtle body with Kundalinī and chakras exists within the totality of ultimate consciousness and expresses individual life by engaging in energy exchange with the dimensions.
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