Excerpts

Note: These excerpts are taken randomly from the book, and are only
intended to give you a hint of the content. There is so much more. I could
only pick out one or two paragraphs from each chapter, and they do not
necessarily represent sequential paragraphs, i.e. they may be taken from
different sections within a chapter.

Introduction

Spiritual development is a journey in consciousness, and this book is a map
and guidebook for the spiritual explorer. It draws on two authentic spiritual
traditions, one Eastern and one Western, that provide, each in its own unique
way, a map and description of the wild and unexplored territory that we who
desire to undertake this journey must traverse. These are the chakra system
as embedded in the kundalini yoga tradition, and the well-known text,
Interior Castle, written by sixteenth-century Spanish Christian mystic,
Teresa of Avila. Both of these paint a picture of seven realms within the
interior depths of our being, and seven corresponding stages of spiritual
development. They are different maps of the same territory.

Kundalini yoga is presented to us as a symbolic system that is difficult to
understand, even for those with some background in the yoga tradition.
Interior Castle is somewhat more accessible, but also utilizes images,
analogies, and religious language that require careful interpretation. In
taking a close look at these two 'maps' of human consciousness and
unfolding their vision of spiritual development, we will be using a language
and framework provided by the modern Western discipline of depth
psychology, particularly the work of famous Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung.

Chapter 1
The Psychology of Spiritual Development

A PATH TO 'COMPLETE CONSCIOUSNESS'
The seven-stage approach that kundalini yoga and Interior Castle share
provides a simple internal structure and organization to what might
otherwise seem like a complex web of transformational processes that are
difficult to envision in their overall pattern and totality. The seven chakras
and the seven 'dwelling places' of the 'interior castle' that is our being,
present a system of development that characterizes the dynamic
transformation of individual consciousness through every major phase in
the awakening of our full spiritual potential. They present a picture of the
progressive integration of our being at deeper and deeper levels until, finally,
our whole being, from the surface of our awareness to the deepest core of the
unconscious, is completely unified and illumined. All unconsciousness
disappears, and we dwell in complete clarity and peace.

Chapter 2
The Symbolism of Kundalini Yoga

THE 'TRANS-DIMENSIONALITY' OF CHAKRAS
Chakras seem to mysteriously connect all levels of human reality, being at
once physiological, psychical, and spiritual or transcendental in their totality.
Their symbolic trans-dimensional nature defies intellectual analysis and
discourages the tendency to interpret them in simplistic terms. For example,
to view chakras only as 'energy' centers within the human body, as some
popular treatments of kundalini yoga have been inclined to do, is to divest
them of their supra-rational symbolic nature. Physiology by itself knows
nothing about chakras because they are not material entities. We will never
find them by dissecting the human body, no matter how refined our
instruments are.

The chakra system is grounded in an understanding of reality that is not
divided into the separate categories of physiological, psychological, and
spiritual. It does not entertain any notion of separate levels of reality. The
view of chakras within the human body is, not only a picture of the human
psyche as well, but also a picture of the whole universe, the cosmos in its
entirety. All these are one indivisible reality, which appears, when viewed
through our conditioned human mind, as the separate realms of body,
psyche, and universe. The idea that the universe in potentia is contained or
reflected in the human body is an ancient esoteric doctrine in both the East
and West. The chakra system is a map of reality that sees the whole and
represents it as a series of stages in the unfolding of consciousness.

Chapter 3
Many Dwelling Places in the Castle of the Psyche

THE PSYCHE AS CRYSTALLINE CASTLE
It is a symbolism that depth psychology finds natural and irresistible, the
psyche as a crystalline castle with almost endless, hidden inner chambers, a
radiant light emanating from its deepest secret center. I am immediately
reminded of the description of the 'New Jerusalem' in the Book of
Revelations in the New Testament. Here the liberated soul is pictured as a
walled city that "glittered like some precious jewel of crystal clear diamond.
The city did not need the sun or the moon for light, since it was lit by the
radiant glory of God."

The crystalline castle is a powerful symbol of psychic wholeness and unity.
Jung might have said that it represents the 'archetype' of wholeness that is
found in a variety of forms in the myths, symbols, and images of all cultures.
This image clearly arises out of a deep collective strata in the human psyche.
The symbol of the crystalline castle with its inner source of illumination
reflects the structure of the psyche and the potential for its unification.
Teresa outlines for us how we may travel from the surface of our mind, the
outer courtyard, to our deeply hidden self-luminous core, the seventh and
most interior dwelling place, where the true 'Dweller' within us resides in
complete secrecy. When we complete this journey, we are whole, we are one
with the Mystery of all existence.

Chapter 4
Meditation and the Integration of the Psyche

THE DYNAMIC TENSION WITHIN OUR PSYCHE CAN BE GRADUALLY RESOLVED
As Chaudhuri and others have pointed out, this myth symbolizes the deep
integration and harmonization of the human psyche through long, sustained
spiritual practice. The gods and demons are symbolic representations of the
fundamental but opposing forces active in the deeper strata of every human
consciousness. Gods are the evolutionary energies propelling us toward
spiritual development, and demons are the forces of conditioning that retard
that development and keep us imprisoned in unconsciousness. The milky
ocean is, of course, the psyche and its unknown depths. The gods alone
cannot undertake this great task for they have hold of only one end of the
psyche's deep energy (Ananta, the Endless). The demons have the other end,
and the 'churning', which is the practice of meditation, cannot begin in
earnest until they cooperate.

This churning, the long devoted practice of meditation, is a labor of
integrating our vital energies, our desire and will, and eventually
transcending the inherent conscious-unconscious polarity of our psyche. To
churn our psyche deeply and thoroughly requires immense persistence, a
thousand years, the myth says, before any sign emerges that the amrita is
forthcoming. But perseverance pays a rich dividend in the end. As our mind
becomes homogenized, singular in consistency, undivided, harmonized, and
unified, and as the 'poison' of egocentric tendencies is neutralized, our
consciousness eventually transcends its narrow personal identity and opens
to the unconditioned 'mystery' that is the deeper reality of our being.

In the end, our unified psyche yields up its greatest treasure, the nectar of
immortality, the non-dual awareness beyond all opposites, beyond even the
boundaries of time and space, of birth and death.

Chapter 5
First Realm: The Call to Awakening

'PSYCHIC SLEEP'
Although we can never be separated from the universal, spiritual foundations
of our being, we have virtually no awareness of our psyche beyond our
conscious mind. We may think of our selves as the 'masters' of this world,
but from the standpoint of depth psychology, we are really slaves to our
conditioning. We may be able to manipulate matter in rather dazzling
fashion, but we are infants in exploring the nature of our own consciousness.
.
Jung says bluntly, and accu rately: "Muladhara is a condition of psychic
sleep." The 'gods' are asleep, he claimed. We are conscious at the body and
mind level, but the non-egoic, spiritual potentials that represent our true
destiny as conscious beings, are present within us only as unsprouted seeds
still buried in the unconscious. There is no awareness of the spiritual core of
our being and no movement toward its realization. The unknown depths of
consciousness may be projected into a God-idea or other ideas or symbols
that we conceive of as external to our selves, but they remain completely
unrealized as our very truth and reality.

THE OUTER COURTYARD IS A STATE OF EXILE
Various metaphors of sleep, darkness, imprisonment, drunkenness, slavery,
sin, a 'fallen' state, and so forth, are universally used to represent the
condition of normal egocentric consciousness from a spiritual perspective.
Teresa describes it as 'this exile'. She means, of course, the state of
separation from God, a state in which our being is polarized into a conscious
mind that is exiled from, or completely unaware of, its true source and
substance, the 'Inner Ruler' of the castle who remains hidden within many
levels of interiority. This deep interior presence, the source of all light, all
consciousness, cannot be known because it transcends our mind's cognitive
capacities. Our mind is limited to seeing material and mental objects and
cannot comprehend the greater unity of the whole psyche in which the
duality of subject and object, knower and known, is dissolved.

Chapter 6
Second Realm: The Battlefield of the Personal Unconscious

PSYCHIC FRICTION, ESPECIALLY IN RELATION TO SEXUAL ENERGY
The spiritual urge from deep within our being grows more intense and
insistent as we make our way through this stage of development. The more
energy we give to spiritual practice, the more we long to go deep in
meditation, and, as Teresa says, the more fiercely does the inner battle rage.
Tremendous psychic friction can develop between our fierce craving for the
wholeness of spiritual realization and the equally ferocious energy of
compulsive tendencies. I experienced this friction, and the psychic 'heat' it
generated, most acutely in relationship to sexual desire.

SEXUAL ENERGY AND SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT
Svadhisthana is the seat of instinct and sexuality. The vital life force that
animates our body and mind finds its most concentrated expression in the
sexual and reproductive functions. The power of the sex drive can never be
underestimated. It contains a lot of 'coiled up' energy. In svadhisthana we
come face-to-face with sexual energy, and realize that in order to use that
energy for spiritual development, all unconsciousness must be purged from
it. This is a difficult task. It is not the repression of sexual desire that is
required, but conscious mastery of its compulsive power, in thought as well
as in deed. Mental attachment to thoughts of sexual pleasure is evidence of a
strong, unconscious bond.

Chapter 7
Third Realm: The Fire Sacrifice

THE FIRE CHAKRA
After passing through the water realm, having fought 'tooth and nail' to gain
some conscious control over the forces and energies that lay just below the
surface of our awareness, we reach manipura, the third chak ra. Here
kundalini enters the fire tattva or realm, located anatomically 'at the root of
the navel', in the region of the solar plexus where the digestive fire converts
food-matter into the vital energy that sustains our body and mind. A great
energization of consciousness takes place in the third chakra. The arousal of
kundalini takes the form of an inner fire that converts all that our senses and
mind 'consume' into a powerfully focused and integrated energy. The
slower and more concentrated our thought-process becomes, the more prana
or vital energy becomes available to be directed and utilized by our will.

As the fire energy of the third chakra gains momentum, the integrative
power of our consciousness grows stronger, and we develop a deeper
intuition of what unity, wholeness, and peace really mean. Our mind is
growing less dispersed, more stable, more homogenous, and more singular.
As in the long labor of the second realm, our progress here comes gradually
with much effort and dedication.

But now our spiritual momentum is gaining strength. Our de sire for
awakening is slowly starting to consume all other personal desires,
attachments, and fears. We begin to burn with a fierce inner resolve to do
whatever it takes to move forward on the difficult path to wholeness and
realization of truth. That single desire gradually gathers behind it all the
creative energy and inner resources that we have access to. In this chakra we
are still caught in the personal karmic cycle of our mind-process. We can not
yet escape the compulsive nature of our stream of consciousness, but we are
focusing our mind's energy with more and more power as we work our way
through this fiery realm.

Chapter 8
Fourth Realm: Birth of the Spiritual Self

THE GREAT LEAP TO DEEPER CONSCIOUSNESS
We now meet a critical juncture in the upward path of the kundalini. In the
yoga tradition, the unfolding of consciousness from the manipura state to the
anahata state, the heart chakra, is considered the most important step, and
perhaps the most difficult, in the whole developmental process. For here we
take our first flight beyond our mind, beyond our own private world of
thoughts/sensations/perceptions. We pass beyond the personal unconscious
and begin to awaken, or become conscious, in the universal substratum of
our being.

THE BEGINNING OF 'SPIRITUAL DELIGHTS'
Teresa speaks of this realm as the place in our being where the 'natural' and
the 'supernatural' are joined. We have reached the point in our journey, she
says, when supernatural experiences begin. By supernatural she means that
which transcends our mind-process, that which is quite beyond the scope of
all our natural channels of awareness and knowledge.

She calls the awakening that occurs here a 'little spark' that in time will
ignite a great inner fire with the power to consume and transfigure our entire
being: "This little spark is the sign or pledge God gives to this soul that He
now chooses it for great things if it will prepare it self to receive them. This
spark is a great gift, much more so than I can express."

Chapter 9
Fifth Realm: Deconstructing the Mind-process

GAINING MASTERY OVER OUR 'WORLD-CREATING' MIND-PROCESS
As long as we remain conscious within the boundaries of our subjective
world-generating mind-process, we can never make the leap to real self-
mastery. We have to get outside our mind in order to gain real control over
it. True, we can in the lower chakras, with much effort, learn to dis-identify
with our mind, but only to a degree. We are still subject to many
unconscious forces that color our whole experience of life.

To become true masters of our own mind, it is necessary that we bring to an
end what Jung called 'the interweaving of consciousness with world'. When
the unconscious is no longer projected onto the experiences, objects, and
people that our senses perceive, then we begin to see life as it really is, no
longer 'colored' by our deep conditioning. Jung considered some movement
in this direction the key therapeutic objective and an essential aspect of
development in the individuation process.

In the kundalini seminars, Jung stated that an internal experience of anger or
excitement, for example, is not caused by any external stimulus, but is 'a
phenomenon all by itself'. When we know that and gain control over our
inner world, we break the identification of our consciousness with external
events. As Jung said, we pass beyond the pairs of opposites.

OUR FIRST 'MEETINGS' WITH OUR TRUE 'SPOUSE'
Teresa begins using the analogy of the 'spiritual marriage' in this dwelling
place to describe the nature of the interior depth that is reached. Here we
have our first 'meetings' with our soul's 'Spouse', whose abode is the
deepest secret center of our being. These 'meetings' represent a short period
of resting in our true nature. Teresa notes that all our cognitive faculties are
"asleep in this stateóand truly asleepóto the things of the world and to our
selves. As a matter of fact, during the time that the union lasts the soul is left
as though without its senses for it has no power to think even if it wants to."

Chapter 10
The Sixth Realm: The Empyreal Heaven Within Ourselves

UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS
In the yoga tradition, this state or strata of consciousness is mythologically
represented as the divine realm, the heavenly abode of the gods and
goddesses. Here the human being becomes god-like by virtue of the
universalization of our individual consciousness. Our 'vision' becomes
universal. We gain the capacity to see through 'divine' eyes, so that the
whole universe becomes an open book. We experience our consciousness as
universal in nature, as the consciousness of the whole universe. Teresa
states, "In this vision it is revealed how all things are seen in God and how
He has them all in Himself." She calls this dwelling place in our journey to
wholeness the 'room of the empyreal heaven that we must have interiorly'.

Psychologically speaking, ajna chakra represents an incredible, hardly
believable integration and harmonization of all psychical processes. The real
power that is buried within the interior depth of our consciousness is quite
dormant in our normal state of being. But as kundalini is aroused and begins
to awaken, we are unifying our psyche at deeper and deeper levels. In ajna,
our long labor of 'churning' bears rich fruit. In the myth discussed in
Chapter 4, 'The Churning of the Milky Ocean', this is the time when the
Goddess co mes forth from the primordial sea that has been churned for so
very long, granting the spiritual qualities of beauty, harmony, and
abundance. Our whole psyche becomes one homogenous, completely
universal 'seeing' instrument.

Chapter 11
The Seventh Realm: The 'Peace that Passeth All Understanding'

We have reached the ultimate harmony. The full moon in sahasrara
symbolizes the perfect integration, harmonization, and illumination of our
whole being. The nectar of supreme peace flows uninterruptedly. In the yoga
tradition, this is liberation. We are jivan mukta, 'free while living'.

BURSTING THE BONDS OF CONDITIONING AND REALIZING OUR PURE, INFINITE NATURE
In moving from ajna to sahasrara kundalini at last bursts the bonds of all
conditioning, breaking through the final 'veil' of 'universal mind'.
Unconditioned consciousness is free of all fluctuations, free of all mind-
process. Our mind just disappears when we realize total stillness. We are
completely conscious. Mind-conditioning implies partial unconsciousness, a
limita tion of consciousness in which a split be tween subject and object
appears, the endless whirring of our mind-process is activated, and the world
of 'name and form' is projected outward. Unconditioned or complete consciousness
is pure Spirit.

Kundalini is the power and potential deep within us to undo all our conditioning
as 'created' beings, to transcend the world of matter and mind, and to realize
our true identity as Spirit, as Infinite Life. The awakening of kundalini is a
reversal of the 'world-creating' process of our mind. As the deep unconscious
forces in our psyche that generate this process are resolved and eventually
destroyed, we be come conscious as that which we truly are and the world truly is,
God, or 'Uncreated Spirit', the very Life and Light of all be ings. Our
evolutionary destiny is fulfilled. The conscious-unconscious polarity of our being
is resolved, and we are whole, unified, as Easwaran says, 'from surface to seabed'.


Chapter 12
Conclusion: Walking on Our Path

'SATURATING' OUR MIND WITH SPIRITUAL IDEAS AND FEELINGS
The laws of spiritual development must be discovered and proven over and over
again, each of us in our own experience. We have no choice but to become journeyers
and explorers in the realms of consciousness if we want to understand what
spirituality really is. In digging for the treasures of insight, wisdom, and
inspiration that are concealed in Teresa's discussion of the seven dwelling
places of the interior castle, and in attempting to understand the symbolism of
kundalini yoga, each of us must depend, finally, upon our own willingness to walk
the path that they map out for us.

When our desire to realize the promise of true peace, wholeness, freedom, and
compassion becomes a powerful force active in the very depths of our being, we
will begin making significant progress. In the yoga tradition, the energy within
us that wakes us up, starts us moving, and propels us past countless obstacles
and impediments is called kundalini. A dormant spark, hidden away deep in
our being, sleeping far from sight, sooner or later it must be ignited, for it
is the evolutionary energy of all consciousness, which seeks, as Jung said, to
grow out of its limited, unconscious condition and discover its natural wholeness,
purity, and indivisibility.
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