S3E5 Chakra & Kundalini

The last episode on Siddha based practice looks deeper into two famous aspects of the subtle body: the chakras and the Kundalini. We discover a dizzying array of teachings concerning these matters, not all in agreement with one another. We also find that our modern notions of the chakras and the kundalini as endowments with which we are born is only half of the story, for each must also be created, or “installed” via dedicated practice. This is a paradox necessitated by the nature of the enlightenment endeavor, or what we have already called qualitative transformation in previous episodes, and which is also the central subject of many future episodes.

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Episode Transcript

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Welcome everyone. Let's give a summary of last time, the main focus of the last episode was the subtle body, and how it figured into this process of reversal, the process that the Siddhas understood themselves to be intervening in in order to produce liberation, freedom, and certain things of this nature. So we talked specifically about how, generally there are three bodies associated with this confluence of being, a spiritual being that is also incarnated, the gross body, the subtle body and the causal body. We call it the gross body, the body of the five elements, the food body. We probably also called it the body of enjoyment. The Boga sharira Sita practice works strongly with the gross and subtle bodies, and so the body of five elements, the body of enjoyment, is said to be overlaid onto the subtle body. Or sometimes it's said that the subtle body is clothed in the body of the five elements, or the body of enjoyment. When this happens, when this confluence happens, the dynamic of the subtle body takes on a lunar character, like the moon or the cycle of the moon. That means it becomes a dynamic of ebb and flow, of filling up and emptying out, and of circulating in a certain way, like the rhythmic alternation of the sun and the Moon, for instance, the flows in the subtle body are mainly composed of juice or Soma or rasa or Amrita and of breath. And we noted that the practices of Hatha in particular are designed to arrest the flow of juice and the rest the common flow of breath and redirect them in a way so that the goals of the Endeavor can be realized. This arresting or binding or immobilizing the flows so that they don't evaporate too quickly, is then followed by reversal, which is generally characterized to be an upward movement through the central channel of the flow of breath and the flow of juice and also of the mind. Ultimately, this upward movement was characterized as a piercing of the first six chakras, turning those each of those chakras into a super white, hot cremation ground that transformed the element associated with the chakra so that it could be absorbed into the next highest level. And this process of reabsorption of the manifestation that happens with the upward movement is called Laya. Our focus in this intensive is to flesh out a little bit more detail about chakra, and also to begin to speak specifically about the Kundalini. Because when you speak of Siddha, practice, of Tantra, of Hatha, of alchemy, there will be a point at which this image, this meaning, should be spoken of. So we're going to do history in the way that we have been doing history, and the historical mode of inquiry reveals a pretty dizzying array of ideas concerning the chakras and the Kundalini. So really, our goal here is not to present a definitive kind of presentation or a doctrine of any kind. We're just going to focus on the diversity of this history. We're going to get it from current recognized scholarship, and then after we note that we're going to speak more freely as if we belong to an established tradition and we're involved in a process of interpretation and practice, because it's important that that aspect of these traditions be recognized also. We're not limiting what we're saying here to the historical mode of inquiry only. So really, we help to fertilize everyone's imagination and inspire further study in an academic sense, but also to encourage a kind of enlightened participation in traditions, so that not only archeology and sociology and history and so on. And tell us something about this thing called Yoga, modern yoga, that we're moving toward, but also so that we have to engage these faculties in us, like the imagination in the higher mind, that help us to make sense of this dizzying array of images that we're going to come across and maybe glean a significance out of all of that material. Let's start with some dates. So the earliest mention of a system of six points called chakra, which a meditating practitioner is said to focus on and concentrate on, such that something will happen, is probably 800 to 850 of the Common Era, and that's coming from James mallinson's roots of yoga. So the text we're talking about is called the Netta Tantra, and in this this text describes that the the meditating practitioner is to focus on each of these six points individually, such that they are to be quote pierced with the sphere of knowledge, the system we see today, most likely originated, according to malinson, from something called the kubjika matantra, centered around the goddess kubjika, generally, but not always. The chakras are conceived as being situated along a vertical axis in the center line of the subtle body. Sometimes that's called the sushumna nadi, which I believe means she who is most gracious. But sometimes the chakras are not said to be in that particular place. And this is an interesting finding that comes from trying to broadly go to the sources of these things through current scholarship. The Shiva Samhita, for instance, says that the chakras are located, quote, outside the body. Also is not the case that there are seven chakras, the further back you go, the seventh chakra looks to be an addition, a later addition, therefore, onto ideas that perhaps originated in the neta Tantra or the Kuji kama Tantra, in sources like the Shiva Samhita and the Tiru mandiram, a seventh chakra seems to have been added. The name of the chakra generally is the Sahasrara, which I learned meant 1000 petaled, like 1000 flower petals. But evidently, the more literal meaning is 1000s spoked. So the idea of a wheel here seems to be pretty important. This seventh chakra, generally, is located at the the fontanelle, that soft spot where we're which is still still soft when we're born and hardens up over time. That's called the brahmarandra, or the aperture of Brahman. And in this ancient context, that was believed to be the place through which the soul or the vital principle, exits at the moment of death, like a doorway to another place. So that seventh chakra is extremely important, symbolically in that sense, situated right at the place where transmutation to another level of existence would take place. According to James mallison, quote several Shava texts mention a location for the chakras called the devadasanta, which means, literally at the end of 12 finger widths, which is a focus for meditation, 12 finger widths beyond the tip of The nose or above the brahmaran. So if you just flatten your palm and you look at the the palm side of your hand, fold your thumb down into your palm so that you only have four fingers sticking out, and together, you can see for the four finger width distance of this place where the seventh chakra is said to be located. So sometimes it's at the fontanelle right there, but sometimes it's 12 finger widths above that place, or evidently 12 finger widths in front of the nose, as you come forward in. History more toward our modern time. You see something happening to the chakras. It's very interesting. Some of the teachers that I have known have called this the psychology, psychologization of the chakras. I learned from teachers like Robert spaboda and David Frawley, vamadeva Shastri. I think we've mentioned him before, that the the early sources identify the chakras with the elements, earth, air, fire, water and space. I think we've seen that in the city practice where these elements are said to be resorbed back up into the source, somewhere in the moon, in the head, at the moment of awakening or at release. So older sources tend to identify them with the elements and more modern things, they become sophisticated in a certain way by being correlated with psychology, maybe being correlated with things like instinct, also higher cognitive abilities and even emotions. I think you also in the modern context, you see them used, for instance, as a map of development about, say, for instance, what the process of being transmuted over time might look like, what its stages are. In this episode, we're going to stay within the context of sit at practice and talk mainly about them as the elements, with the root chakra being Earth and the neck chakra being water, and the solar plexus being fire and the heart being air, and so on as you go on up. So the word Kundalini generally means she who is coiled, or something like that. So you get the shape of a coil, a serpent shape that's coiled, and also that this is feminine in general. Sometimes the word Kundalini is not used to refer to the same coiled structure or creature. Sometimes it's kundali. So Dali in earlier sources, kubjika matantra, I think would be one of those here. The Kundalini is said to be in the chakras of the heart or the navel, or in something called the conda, which is a bulb somewhere below the navel. That's from James Mallinson. Oh, I learned that the Kundalini was coiled at quote, unquote, the base of the spine, or sometimes the base. It was said to be the base of the astral spine, not the skeletal spine, because that's not in the center of the body, confluence between the subtle body and the gross body, spines in the back of the body. And so this central channel was up, sometimes called a spine, but it was called an astral spine, and that the Kundalini is, is coiled there. Note here, earlier sources say chakras of the heart, the navel, or the conda, this bulb somewhere below the navel. It's the later sources that identify her as being at the base of the central channel. Some of those sources, her head is said to be the blockage into the central channel. This is the mouth of the Kundalini. And in some of the other sources, her she is coiled at the base of the central channel, and there's a lingam there, which is a sacred phallus associated with the Shava traditions. And she is wrapped around this Lingam, and her mouth is over the top of that. And that image is the image given of the blockage that she performs when she's in her potential form, right there, not moving. Sometimes, as you come further into Shava traditions, like those of the mystical shave ism of Kashmir, the Kundalini is described as having three levels, prana, Kundalini, Shakti, Kundalini and pra Kundalini. This is from the great sage abhinavagupta. The prana Kundalini would then be the life force. The Shakti Kundalini, then would be the power that this life for had life force, has to do work in the creation. And the PRA Kundalini. Pra Kundalini would be this aspect of the Kundalini that is the supreme goddess the beyond, when she is divided into three, very often she is given levels. Each of these three are given levels in the yogic body, lower, middle and upper Kundalini. For instance, though, as we saw in the last episode, by means. Of of yogic practices, the alchemy of the Siddhas and the Hatha yogis and the Tantrics. Prana, as it moves in the nostrils, is said to swoon when the Kundalini awakens. And when it swoons, it falls out of the outer channels. As she's awakening and falls down to the base where she is, and she, quote, unquote, wakes up. Sometimes it says she, quote, stands up straight. And when that happens, she begins to rise through the central channel, piercing the chakras, or what are sometimes called the grantees, the knots, as she moves upward, so she becomes this sphere of knowledge that is said to penetrate, or need to penetrate, the chakras in the earlier sources, this process of her moving upward and piercing creates that heat that transforms the elements. That process gives rise to power to the cities, and ultimately it gives rise to liberation and immortality. But there are subtly different versions of this arising of power and being liberated into immortality. Sometimes when she reaches the seat of the Deity in the head, or 12 fingers beyond the head or the nose, she's liberated, and she is absorbed back into the source, and everything kind of comes to a halt and disappears. And it's described as if that's what's going to be the case. Sometimes immortality is generated when she's absorbed into the source, because at that moment, she accesses the Amrita, or the nectar in the lake in the cranial vault. And when she accesses that nectar, she is said to then descend back down through the body, and she brings it with her. She floods the body with the nectar that was in the cranial vault. This is what transmutes the mortal body itself into the alchemical body, or the vajra deha, the diamond body that then becomes immortal. And this body or container, which can then contain these cities or powers that have been generated. So you see a rhythm in her movement, sleeping at the base, waking and moving up to the top, and everything is taken back into the source. But then there's also the emission, again, the release of the liquid and the manifestation with which he is also associated. I wanted to point out also, in addition to these different ideas about these subjects that we thought were so set in the way that they should be understood, the diversity involved in this event of rising through the channel. So it's very it's very important to know that as the traditions come toward the cities and develop in that regard, no one gives up the idea that there is a rising that that something ascends to another level and some profound change happens, but it's But what is also interesting to note is that the substance or the x that rises through the central channel is not always The same. We've mentioned already, that it's going to be breath, that it's going to be seed, that it's going to be mind, and that it's going to be Kundalini. You could take all of those things from the last couple of episodes about sit at practice and see that sometimes that stuff is going to rise. So sometimes it's said to be the Jiva, the soul. And here's a new one for you in general, sometimes it's said to be the Hamsa, H, A, M, S, A, and that word means the goose or Gander that is said to fly in space in the Akasha when there is release. Sometimes it's prana, as mentioned before. Sometimes it's seminal essence or reproductive tissue. Sometimes also it's mantric resonance. It's said to be vibration right that rises through the central channel with the kundalini's Awakening. And to make matters even more interesting, in the 10th century, Padma Samhita, the Kundalini is not actually a piercing force. Rather, she is the obstruction at the mouth of the central channel. Only she needs to be straightened out via the application of heat or that tapas that the yoga Alchemist creates. But this straightening out is simply her getting out of the way so that prana can rise through the center. Channel. I mentioned this, this particular version of what rises through the channel, and the function of the Kundalini in the Padma Samhita, because this evidently is how Krishna Acharya, the father of modern practice, understood her role in the yogic practice. So we see a lot when it comes to the Kundalini and the chakras, many variations and many developments over time. Well, this helps us situate the story that we got within this broader development, and that, of course, generates new feelings and new ideas about what it is that we thought we were involved with, and what we're actually involved with, and what this means for us as we go forward. Most of the information that I got about the Kundalini that really was interesting and changed things for me came from David Gordon white. You've heard his name mentioned many, many times throughout all of the episodes in his book The alchemical body is a magisterial, difficult read that really opens your eyes to the nature of Siddha practice and how that connects to Tantra, and how that connects to alchemy, and how that connects to Hatha, and how that therefore connects to the modern world and ideas like the Kundalini. David Gordon white points out that there's a very interesting thing that seems to emerge from the image of the Kundalini coil that she's circular, coiled around herself over over and over again that suggests paradox in in a primary way, and this paradox about the Kundalini, he calls the two kundalinis. And so all the meanings that and images that constellate around this idea of the Kundalini, they they seem to take two primary forms. One is the Kundalini is seen as the divine feminine energy, which is called the Shakti, and that when she is coiled, therefore she is potential energy, lots and lots and lots of energy. Think of all the heat that's going to happen when the chakras are pierced, so there's a bunch there, and that energy is going to be released. But also she is conceived of as feminine materiality. I think both David Gordon white and Dr Wendy Doniger have pointed out in different places that I have seen that throughout the emergence of the Hindu civilization, the stuff that everything is made of tends to be gendered, feminine. And so we have, on one hand, potential energy that will transform and change everything. That's like the fire that's her, her as Shakti. But then we have also the stuff that she the fire, will work on. And even further than that, as the principle of materiality, the Kundalini gets associated with ignorance as in a strange way. So there's a complex network of non dual images around this idea that she is both power and matter, and that because she is matter, she is asleep, or somehow there's an aspect in which she appears that is dumb, like lead. In this vein, one of the names of the Kundalini is interesting. That name is Boga vatti. The root Boga is from Bucha, which means to partake or to enjoy. And we've seen it already in the last episode when we talked about the gross body, or the body of the five elements, being called the Boga sharira. And so that being the dense body that clothes the subtle body, and we need to be liberated, in some sense, from that body. That idea connects directly now to the Kundalini through her name bogoti, this idea that it's about enjoyment becomes very important. The name shows her coiled form and also her femininity. Here's what David Gordon White says about her dual nature. Quote at ground zero of the self emission of the absolute into phenomenal being is the Kundalini, who takes pleasure as she allows the microcosmic life force to drain away into her sleeping. Mouth. Her sleep is the sleep of dumb matter, sometimes called the sleep of lead, in which case she is known as Naga, and her head or mouth is the sole obstruction to the opening of the upward path to her own return from existence to essence. So she is going to return home, and she's also the energy that's going to return home. Her sleep is the sleep of lead, in which, when that is happening, our awareness of is of a certain kind. We'll get to that in a second. And when she awakens, or what keeps her from Awakening is her own sleep. And so this paradox begins to emerge around the nature of the Kundalini being both the power and the substance, or the the means and the material, or the structure and the function. If you want to go that way, as bogoti, she's as a feminist. Feminine principle, this paradoxical feminine principle in the subtle body that is said to number one give pleasure, and number two take pleasure. More about the paradox when she sleeps, we are also asleep, but we mistake ourselves for being awake. So our sleep is actually sham wakefulness. Interesting inversion there when she wakes up, we wake up, and what happens to that Sham awakefulness. Sham wakefulness is that it's destroyed. It's very interesting also, that when that energy is said to awaken, that the practitioner is said to go into samadhi, or trance. I'm thinking of Ramakrishna here, the great tantric teacher. So from the outside, we look like we're asleep when she awakens and we swoon, and that's when we're actually awake, when she's asleep and we're walking around, talking and doing all the stuff we're doing, we're actually asleep like her. And so our quote, unquote, wakefulness is that robotic kind of quote awareness that even as far back as the Veda, the practitioners and the seers and the mystics fought hard against. David Gordon White says, These two poles of the Kundalini mode of being, sleeping and waking, taking and giving pleasure, allowing the body to be consumed by the fire of time and consuming the fire of time, these mundane and transcendental poles are identified as her poison and her nectar. This gives us this fascinating image that somehow we might be in a place where the nectar, or, quote, unquote, the medicine that will fight against this robotic sham wakefulness that keeps us ensnared in ignorance, this medicine that will help us with that is a poison. When the medicine is the poison, things are becoming interesting now, one of the ways that you can think of the Kundalini is as something called a Nexus, a confluence of many things, or a bind or a tie. In this case, her coiled form is an image of that this, this nexus that is a confluence of many things, possibly in motion, turning or tied, tying one realm to another, one function to another, one level to another, if she is this nexus or tie, she's the nexus between emanation and participation, or emission and resorption. So the Kundalini is a little bit like a valve, an in between creature that is both medicine and poison, that is both straight and coiled, that is both potential and actual. We find that another of the great serpents, SHA the cosmic serpent, serves this. Same function of being a Nexus. David Gordon White says the cosmic serpent shaisha was the end point of a prior creation and a starting point of a future creation, who is located as well at the base of a self enclosed system. So all of these paradoxes, that she is the medicine and the poison, that she is the obstacle and the way, that she is potential and actual, that she is salvation and dangerous, I believe that all of these things emerge in this context that we have been speaking about briefly as self creation. That means that these images of the Enlightened Siddha and the divine body and so on are images that emerge in a context where qualitative transformation is taking place, and that transformation is emerging out of itself, out of its own body. This means that we we begin the work that we do, having what we need or being what we need in order to recognize and understand the work, but it also means that we're not what we need to be yet, because the transformation is taking place, and so we are also projecting and moving toward a goal that is not quite realized yet. We've seen this same relationship between having what we need and yet still having to create what we become. We've seen that already in relation to the subtle body. Remember James Mallinson said it this way certain elements of yogic physiology, in particular, the chakras and the ad horas are not the result of the yogi's empirical observation, but rather parts of a visualized installation on the body of tradition specific metaphysics and ritual schemata. So like the Kundalini, the soul or the yogic body, is an endowment that you come in with, but it's also an achievement, something that is created, installed. That's what it means to deal with the paradoxes of self creation. I think that's what alchemy and the city traditions give us, or what I think what they give us are a set of images to understand what it might be like to emerge from myself in a way like a snake eating its tail, and how that emergence is guided by a higher force, or in some cases of the traditions, it's not guided by a higher force. It's a sort of repetitive process. In this case, I'm coming from the place where that is involved with a higher force, if it's qualitative transformation that these paradoxical images like the Kundalini and the yogic body demonstrate, then it means that value becoming more valuable, appreciating changing qualitatively so that we don't have the same desires. It means that that's what yoga is about, in a certain way. And this puts us in this paradox. We can't exercise a value until we have it, and so if we aspire toward a particular value that we don't have, it doesn't really make sense, unless it's a paradox of self emergence. So what does it mean to to live in a universe where the medicine could be the poison, where I must become what I am not yet to fulfill a certain set of needs, but I must already be that in order to recognize it and move toward it through work, the work of becoming. What does it mean to live and work in a universe like that? You all know we like to leave you with stories and we like to leave you with images, but we've seen quite a bit of the historical diversity now, and why not take a look at one story that is so deep and rich that has to do with all of these images we've been talking about. But in particular, I. How do I act in that universe where the medicine is the poison, where I'm endowed with the soul, but I have to create it at the same time. So I'm going to read you a famous story now that is very deep and profound, that relates to Ayurveda and relates to Tantra, and relates to this idea of the medicine as the poison, and relates to the Kundalini, and relates to the alchemical process, and so on and so on. And we're going to interpret it just a little bit to to leave you with an imaginative task in relation to the paradox of the Kundalini and the paradox of having, quote, unquote, a soul when you were born, but also having to install one through practice. Here's the story. The gods had become weakened by a curse placed on them by durvas. They asked the demons to help them obtain the elixir of immortality hidden in the depths of the great cosmic ocean like cream and milk. Mount Mandara was torn from the earth as a rod, and Vasuki, the great Serpent King was used as a churning rope. The demons held the serpent's head and the gods his tail whipping him round and round. They churned the great ocean, producing the Amrita. However, the motion made the serpent vomit up his venom, which is called Holly holla. The venom threatened to dissolve the whole universe if it was churned out of the ocean. However, the supreme Yogi Shiva took it into his mouth, and neither spitting it out nor swallowing it, held it in his throat where it was transmuted into nectar. The accomplishment of this alchemical feet left Shiva with the blue mark on his throat. And this is why he is known as Nila Canta, the blue throated one. So where I come from, we would say that in relation to history, this, right here is the real dope. This is where the this is where the gold is in these imaginative images. So I want to take this in sections and see what we can derive from it. Well, the first section, we're told that the gods have become weakened. This means a process of degradation has taken place. It is generally assumed in this context that Gods have mighty power and possibly immortality and so on. But notice also that they can become weakened, and that this weakness or this degradation is the result of a curse placed on them by someone else. Whenever you see, a curse in these myths. It's very important to think of karma, something that has happened that is written in stone in a way that's going to have to take place. So this is a big karma being talked about here. The God's becoming weak, and they're desperate. How do we know? They ask the demons, they ask the assurance to help them obtain the elixir of immortality, which will rejuvenate them and bring them back. So making a deal with the devil seems to go a long way back. This is a dangerous bargain to make, because the demons also will want the elixir of immortality, and they will want it for their own purposes. This elixir is hidden in the depths of the great cosmic ocean, like cream and milk, and so the image of the ocean being cosmic and massive is very important here, and that there are things in the depths of this that are like the essence of the ocean itself. Mount mondata was torn from the earth as a rod, and the Serpent King was used as a churning rope. So we're trapped in ignorance. We're trapped in the ignorance of karma in a certain way, this is a deep alchemical image of the idea that the spirit, or the Kundalini, coiled in her potential form, trapped spirit, is trapped somehow in materiality and needs to be. Set free. This goes with the idea of ensnarement that developed throughout former episodes in relation to action and ignorance. We see something very similar happening here. We make a deal with the devil. What does it mean that the gods and the demons make a deal with one another. I think you could be creative and look at the god demon binary as something like consciousness and unconsciousness, with the gods being normally what's understood to be the light and the demons being the darkness. The deal that is made here is that the darkness will be involved in finding the nectar of immortality, or what we've been talking about is possibly the medicine that we need to help us get well from the robotic sham awakeness or awareness that we live in. The serpent is the homolog of the Kundalini here. Notice also that the serpent will be straightened or uncoiled before the operation can take place. The gods are going to take one side and the demons are going to take one side and they're going to stretch out Vasuki. This is the same as the Kundalini straightening up and awakening or uncoiling. And notice that when that happens, what's connected the darkness and the light, the consciousness and the unconsciousness. Whenever those two things are created, we get action and we get heat. The mountain here is the apparatus of churning like the blade in the blender that starts whipping up the ocean, but it's also the spine. In the next section, you see that the demons hold the serpent's head and the gods the tail, the whipping the serpent round and round and round the mountain is stirred through the ocean, and this produces Amrita. However, the motion makes the serpent vomit up the venom, the holly holla. And this venom is so strong, so powerful and devastating, that if it's one of the things that are turned out of the ocean, then everything will be destroyed. So we've seen that the Kundalini, or the Suki stands up or straightens out and connects the light in the dark, or the consciousness and the unconsciousness here. When that happens, heat begins to be produced, and work is possible for and the churning motion is something that we've also seen throughout the episodes, or the talking about alchemy and mercury. Remember, we've seen not only ideas like churning, but we've also seen ideas like rubbing, which was one of the functions or operations performed in alchemy on Mercury. We've seen that things are sweated. We've seen Gods sweat and create things. We've seen Prajapati, for instance, ring his hands together nervously when Agnes staring at him hungrily so that something can be created. We've seen metaphors of of binding, creating or or or generating heat also. So the work that's happening here is very much a continuation of everything that's come before this work also notice it produces a coagulation that means that out of this ocean of indistinctness, which would be the deep unconscious, solidities, begin to emerge. Things begin to emerge, things that are distinct from that conscious unconsciousness or that liquid like milk, where cream comes out of it, the essence of it comes out. So this process, the all these solidities that are coagulated from this work, produces not only Elixir, but also something dangerous, something poisonous. This poison would be the the dark face of the Kundalini here, her destructive face, her in her aspect of the Cologne, or the fire of time that drinks the nectar from the human and kills it. So she's at one on one hand, that which saves, and on one hand, the dark face of of entropy and death, which is the poison. Psychologically, I think this is very, very, very interesting. So when the consciousness and the unconsciousness are connected, some. How this would be an absorption or Samadhi. Heat is on, is felt. We've seen that churning might be felt. We've seen that rubbing, sweating, feeling like we're bound, that might be in there. Those are images of certain emotions, certain reactions. And we want to correlate emotion here with the poison, and that poison being the undifferentiated, an aspect of the undifferentiated state of the unconscious, the deep unconsciousness in the beginning of the work, and that begins to change when the the two are connected, the conscious and the unconscious. You get to you get differentiation. You get solidities emerging. You get coagulation emerging, and those coagulates are our emotions. Why would those emotions be poisonous? How could they that's an interesting question. If you allow the emotions to be undifferentiated, for instance, just instinctual reactions or things that emerge from the general script of living, then we see that a poisonous emotion would be an emotion that is identified with a priori, that would be an emotion that has not been felt. And so poison in this context, this this place where this poison is so nasty that could destroy everything. I think that's a beautiful image for emotions that are simply identified with and unfelt thinking of the havoc that can be wreaked on the environment and and relations when I my emotions are undifferentiated when they are not coagulated into something higher or the cream that they could be. That would mean, by contrast, that when an emotion is unidentified with when it is allowed to be what it is in a certain way, then something else happens. Something else is created. And if that something else is the opposite, then that something else is a felt emotion or a feeling. And so this work, which is a kundalini awakening, which is an alchemical operation of coagulation and so on, which is moving from undifferentiated dissolution into specifics, something emerging and those emerging as being emotional in nature, we see that that's an alchemical process that could produce something higher, which we're calling feeling here section three shows the entrance of the higher or the supreme yogi, which is Shiva. So Shiva sees there's a problem here. The gods and the demons are up to no good, as usual, and there's some good that can come from it, and there's some not so good that can come from it. And he sees the not so good, which, remember, we just talked about the poison, the holly. Holly is ident identified emotion motion that I emotion that I'm identified with automatically, that it that has no space in it, that I can't question. I just simply have to act out as if it were appropriate. This is the poison. Shiva takes this into his mouth, and remember, he doesn't spit it out, and he doesn't swallow it, but he holds it in his throat where it's transmuted into a ritta, or nectar. So the accomplishment of this is an alchemical feet, and we know this because this transformation left Shiva with a blue mark on his throat. This is why he's known as nilakanta, the blue throated. So the action of the higher here is yoga. In this case, the yoga that is done has a particular characteristic that's very important for us to look into, because if this myth is to come with us into our daily lives, for instance, as a an example of how we might behave in a place or a reality where we need to seek our medicine inside what appears to be poison, we need to act like Shiva. In other words, if we're going to do this kind of yoga, be engaged in the city of alchemy. So neither spinning it out or swallowing it. We're moving to the middle here. What possibilities are left when you have a substance in your mouth and. And you can't spit it out, which would mean getting rid of it totally, and you can't swallow it, which would mean turning it over to the deep processes inside the gut, becoming one with it. Can you see that swallowing might be identification here with the emotion, and that spitting out might be identification here with emotion, just a positive and a negative reaction to the same basic substance. When Shiva holds this Holly Holly in his mouth, he tastes it, that's the space between simply eating, which would be identifying with or simply rejecting or spitting out and being disgusted, which would be another form of identification. But because Shiva holds the poison in his throat, not spitting it out and not swallowing it, he tastes it really deeply, but goes directly into the tongue, and the poison is very strong. It was understood that Shiva swooned during this ordeal, that he entered into a state that was partly sick and partly in ecstasy, and that he stayed in that state, in the heat of that state, without moving, because he is the transcendent yogi, and inside this stillness of coagulating this poison, he transmutes it into nectar. Notice, it's important here that the poison is suspended at the level of one of the primary bandas in Hatha Yoga, jalandhara, Bandha, the net that is at the level of the neck. And remember that net catches the upward, rising nectar and breath and mind and contracts it at the level of the neck, ultimately capturing it inside the head, not letting it drip down into the fire of time and be destroyed. So Shiva is working some supreme bonda here. I think it's also important to notice that this heat that he creates is a soft heat. It's a unique heat. It's not the heat of red blazing fire, but it's blue. It's the heat of slow. Change the heat of cool. Change the heat of degradation. This would be more like the heat of the compost pile. This would be more like the heat of the dung heap, which we noticed earlier in the myth of the birth of of monsenders disciple. It's a sign of alchemical work when there's a color change and when you see a specific heat used in that color change, holding at the level of the throat also is indicates the importance here of silence, of not speaking. This is an alchemical image, of keeping the lid on the container where the reaction is taking place, so that the heat will not be lost, ie, so that the tapas can get hotter and hotter and hotter, and we have more options right when it comes to heat. But what does this mean psychologically for us, if we put this in the context of emotion and feeling and that the alchemical process here being spoken of, instead of practice, is that of cooking emotions in a certain way, such that feelings are generated. So this immediately means part of this process is to taste this thing that seems poisonous to us, which is an emotion that we're feeling, and to not move and to hold it at the level of the place where normally we would speak, to start talking about it, saying things about what we know, about how We supposedly feel, and so on, but not really letting the heat build up and also not tasting the nature right of this medicine. I think that's a beautiful image of how we work, for instance, with emotional reactions in the context of having a higher purpose for our experience, which is being directed by something like yoga. So we keep these responses at the level of the throat and coagulate them there, and then we enter into the space of tasting, even if it makes us dizzy, even if it makes us feel a little sick, we hold on to it, and we maintain a fire that is gentle in a way, like we're pregnant with something, like we're protecting a fetus. And. And that that will produce feeling higher, feeling, deep sense of intuition and tastes beautiful. Let's make a summary. Well, the historical mode of inquiry that we've been engaged in in the beginning reveals a whole bunch of ideas about the chakras in the Kundalini. Remember that we don't just see a single story about where the chakras are located, or what the Kundalini is and so on. So we just try to fertilize our imagination and and locate ourselves within this system of images surrounding these practices to see what it is we are doing, what we thought, or what we think we're doing, and therefore how we might engage in, you know, creative interpretation, like we just did A moment ago. The chakras are expressions of developing traditions, and it looks like what we got in the modern age starts at the COVID Tantra, but then really is the result of a selection of of text from the writers in the early or late 19th century, like Arthur Avalon, we see the Kundalini being a very complex, multivalent image that encompasses paradox. She's the giver and the taker of life. She's the medicine of liberation, she's the poison of death and ignorance. We also made mention that these paradoxes emerge in the same space where we find the paradoxes around the yogic body as being both an endowment and an achievement. Same kind of flavor with the Kundalini here and now we can begin to think that's what we're going to find whenever we're dealing with information that has to do with self creation or qualitative transformation. We ended the discussion with the myth of churning the great ocean and Shiva, transforming the poison the Hala Holly into nectar, trying to derive a psychological interpretation that gives us images about what it would mean to be involved number one, in a world where those kinds of processes are necessary, and where yoga in particular looks to be the qualitative transformation that is sometimes called enlightenment, we can take that whole myth and its colors and its beauty and its images and place it in this context. When we think about how our emotional reactions might be cooked in a certain way, in a certain alchemy, such that they're translated or transmuted into things called feelings, and how this is a process of us developing a deep sense of taste. You could sum that up by saying, How do I work? Don't repress, which means spit out, and don't express, which means swallow, spit out instead taste and cook when this begins, you might notice that it will feel hot. You might notice that it will be like being churned or rubbed or bound, or in some of those metaphors from the Hatha traditions, it might even feel like being killed or dying. But there's a reason to do it and to do it that way, to incubate it without removing it or identifying with it or so on, allowing it to be what it is and tasting it deeply. We know there's a reason, because the medicine is the poison you thank you so much for listening. We hope this has been interesting in some way. God bless you, and we'll see you next time.