Anakosha

 Integrating sex and spirituality

​Mystical Movements
The Star Fire called Kundalini

by Diana

(a book in progress) 

​Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1 - The Awakening
Chapter 2 - Caught in a Magical Spell
Chapter 3 - Sex and Kundalini
Chapter 4 - My First Rapture
Chapter 5 - The Little Red Book

Introduction
Buried in rich dark soil, a seed lies passive. Its shell, a hard crust of a thing, looks dead. Watered by spring rains, dried by the spring sun, the seed remains still, enveloped in silence. Day and night there is no sound, no movement coming from the little round casing, now showing signs of age. Days pass into weeks and still there is no change. Weeks become a month and more weeks pass, and the tissue starts to dissolve. The seed is dying. its vitality withdrawing to the core.

Suddenly a crackling sizzle leaps into life. Across the inner spaces of electrons and central suns, something moves which did not move before. It cuts a path of exquisite alertness across the decaying tissue, and in its wake there follows peace. An expanding, wonderful peace. From outside, in the dark heavy soil, the seed appears totally still. The barely perceptible trembling goes unnoticed. There is no evidence of the movement going on inside. No one sees the subtle electricity that jumps from nerve to nerve like lightening through the body of the seed, now in the throes of germination. No one hears the cries of pain and confusion as a mighty power pours itself into the little body through an opening in the heart. There is no one to witness the imbuing of an invisible fire, no one to feel the agony, and then the ecstasy as cell walls are ruptured by a powerful sensitivity that knows no time or space. And there is no one to share in the overwhelming joy that washes through the soul of the seed as, wave after wave, something overflows the little heart ‘til it threatens to burst its boundaries. No one knows. No one CAN know because the process is secret and private. Hidden.

For Days, the waves continue, ebbing and flowing like a living breath, rending the old structure from stem to stern with a deep and profound tenderness, over which flows something new, something pure. On and on it comes, fresh and clean and ebullient, rising, swirling and expanding, amid rays of light and sparkles, bright and happy. Happier than any happiness ever known and finally the joy can be contained no longer and a tiny, hair-line crack appears in the outer casing. Tomorrow a sprout will show and soon it will pierce the topsoil into the light of day. Yet the trauma that the seed went through will never be known. It will pass away, down through the hallways of time to become lost in the majesty of eternity as all things do because - well - because it’s only a seed.

A seed has no capacity to tell us what is happening to it. It is only a seed, a tiny little thing lost in the soil. But what if the same thing were to happen to you? Would you tell someone about it? How would you explain it? Would they believe you? How would they know you were not suffering from illusions? 

You might say, “Ridiculous! Human beings don’t germinate!” And you would be wrong, for human beings DO germinate. This is the story of one such human germination. It is a true story and it is written from the perspectives of two different people: one subjective (the human author) and the other objective (that which channels through the author), both of whom were involved. They weave together, as one, in order to tell this story. The topic is a force, a concentrated force that lives in embryo form in the heart of every living thing, slumbering in the human being, awaiting the nutritious soil of a finer garden in which to be born. It works its wonders quietly and gently in the average human being, as though gathering strength for its remarkable day of awakening, at which time definite biological and mental disturbances take place.

An extraordinarily few people are aware of this force but, little by little knowledge is spreading. It is known as “kundalini” in the Far East, perhaps by other names in other societies, and information is coming to us from Eastern spokesmen moving west. Knowledgeable men carrying with them tales from out of ancient scriptures wherein the story is contained, veiled in flowery poetic language, intending, it would seem merely to spin a lengthy fairy tale rather than preserve and hide the deep and sacred truth which it does indeed. 

There is an aura of mystery surrounding this force and even today, in this enlightened age, it is considered taboo to speak or write about one’s experiences concerning it. The reason for this heavy lid of secrecy which has been handed down by tradition, if not by knowledge, through the centuries to modern times, is elusive as one investigates the strange accounts that are whispered concerning it. Even I, myself, am pressed not to reveal this story and yet, upon recall of the strange happenings that daily filter down into my life and actions, I am urged to throw all warnings to the wind.

So strange and aloof are these experiences from all normal aspects of human life that, if I did not believe such an exposure would be of some small benefit to others in a similar predicament, I would not risk exposure to those reactions with which I am now so familiar and accustomed. But I am one of the more fortunate ones, for I have been buffered and insulated from the storms that rage in the outer world, by my husband who encourages me. And there remains no doubt in my mind that there are other individuals out there somewhere, and not just a few, who are either now today being touched by this extraordinary force or who will soon be touched by it in the near uture and they will need all the support they can find. For such experiences as are kindled by contact with this mystical wind are deeply personal and sacred only to the one experiencing it, and they are in constant dange of being denied, ignored, ridiculed and cut off from the pure, life-saving intentions that accompany it.

Germination does not stop, once begun, and it will not go away. If a man or a woman, upon feeling such warning movements, does not give priority to these instinctive urges, a built-in time bomb begins to click its countdown. Even the smallest shred of evidence, a fleeting shadow of confirmation at such a time is like an intense beacon light sweeping its great rays across a darkened horizon to guide the smallest ship safely home. Not only is evidence needed, but encouragement, love and an uplifting atmosphere, for what is coming through is delicate beyond belief, and our present-day society provides a less than favorable environment.

In the particular case which follows, though there were tons of encouragement and love, there was no evidence, no confirmation, no writings, no one who knew anything about what was going on. Only blank, dead stares reflected back to me from the confused faces of friends and associates. Left to fend for myself, I followed these energy movements all alone, as they ebbed and flowed in rhythmic pattern through my body and mind, alternating from peaceful to violent, from a form of ecstasy to a maddening hysteria, cleansing and manipulating my body and reshaping my mind beyond my conscious control. I was forced, with no alternative, to rely upon intuitive judgment - that ultimate training ground of the soul, concerning how to handle this oddity that literally erupted into my daily life and smashed all normalcy to smithereens.

And then, as if compunding the strangeness, when intuitive judgment was not enough, as I walked the brink of earthly sanity, there occurred at those critical times the most remarkable interventions which saved me from going over that mental edge from which I know I would not have returned. How these interventions came about, I do not know, for no one, outside of my husband, knew about my predicament. And even he could not know but from observation. As the little book said which presented itself to me one day, “Kundalini is a mystery, and a mystery it shall remain for ever and ever.”

People speak freely today of universal energy and the vast powers of the cosmos. I would venture to say here that kundalini must be a condensation of those forces, compressed and compacted to almost a solidification of those powers, as much as powers can be solidified, for they really do press and bend the physical body structure. And once that remarkable mental contact occurs, when the door swings inward upon this hibernating potency, one is not as prone to speak about it so lightly, as once he may have been.

The ecstacies of high inspirational moments, those comfortable stretchings of feeling and awareness which occur periodically in individuals, would appear to be a gently flowing kundalini. These experiences would seem to be, and I speak only as an observer of certain actions in myself, the kundalini still in embryo form moving about, much like a human embryo kicks and shifts within the womb. But when the kundalni decides to become born into the physical body and thus into the world, the body and mind which bore it are never the same again.

These powers are no longer impersonal but deeply personal, as the objective succumbs, beyond reason, to the subjective experiences now unleashed. Influences and coercions come to bear on that body which seem not to be physical, and yet seem not to be mental in origin. They seem to come from a deeper level. These are forces uncontrollable, welling upwards as from a vast sea of something intangible and unknown. It is heightening and frightening at the same time. Forces, lights, visions, strange ideas, weird contortions, perversions and heart-felt sympathies and sensitivities and much, much more, all happen at once, magnified out of all normal proportion with no control over them to shut them off. One feels somewhat like a computer with an overload, helpless but to experience it. Without the tender sympathies of close associates, one could easily go mad, unable to accept the contradictions now thrust into the consciousness.

What am I? Who is this grand and noble one who is coming through, smiling at my wonderment? What lies hidden beyond the periphery of my consciousness? Perhaps it is too vast to measure, but while I am taking myself so exceedingly for granted, I - my very self - am being infused with a larger mind, a broader perspective, a knowledge of future. And with all due respect to the prevailing fears surrounding the subject matter, and these are heavy considerations, I fear more for the prevailing ignorance of my race concerning it.

A new age is evidently dawning in the collective consciousness of mankind. The world has reached a certain pinnacle in mental development and it would appear that, in order to go any further without falling back, it must relax into that new dimension, that of the heart, of feeling and awareness, and relax its grip on the hard edges of analytical mind. The preparation so badly needed, it would seem, is not discipline, contrary to popular belief, nor analysis, nor concentration, but rather a certain letting go, a giving in, a bending, a surrendering, to allow forth the inner nature, so that this force may seek and find its true level, uninhibited and free. For one’s own deeper nature is pure and alive beyond comprehension, glistening with the purity of unadulterated passion for the higher life and the grandeur of nobleness. But more I dare no say, for as I stop and look out across this beautiful valley stretched out before me into a far, far blue sky and consider these things, I lend myself too much to it.

Something far greater than I is absorbing me, and I am again lifted beyond what is practical. I cease to care whether I write this story or not. I cease to care about explanations, obligations, time or other people, for I see that all is well and pulsing. Nothing more need be done! It is finished and I am drawn irresistibly into a high, high state. It is another realm, superimposed shimmering, sparkling in light brighter than light we know with our physical eyes, upon this physical world in which we live. Would that I could but stay here. But my husband comes and wants dinner.

Reluctantly I shift my focus to physical things around me as he has taught me to do and lock in on them, for the other world is a world not of physical matter nor of physical consideration, but of forces and influences, of light and radiations and essences, of clarities and presences and feelings beyond description. And so I must stop my ethereal wanderings, else I will speak of things untimely. Instead, I will force myself to concentrate on telling my story as best I can, with one hand leaning heavily upon Bob and his worldly practicality for he has come a long way to help me, and the other hand leaning heavily on my determination to tell it exactly like it is.

The author
Escazu, Costa Rica, Central America
June 1979

Chapter 1

The Awakening

The gymnasium in which we were sitting was part of a modern, international country club. It had a vaulted ceiling with windows high along both sides, through which the sun sent long beams in the late afternoon hours, downward to splash upon the olive green carpeting. Now there were no beams, only a sense of morning light enhanced by mirrors running along one wall opposite the ballerina bar below the windows. The air was still and lazy. The machines and weight equipment stood each one, quietly in their allotted spaces.

It was a clear, warm April morning in 1976 in Costa Rica, a tiny little country in Central America, where the waters of the Caribbean and the waters of the Pacific bend in to try to touch each other. From the mountains on a clear day, one can stand in certain places and see both bodies of water, east and west. The dry season was at its peak and the sun at its most brilliant on this particular day, burning the already brown hills surrounding the high Central Valley to an even paler brown. There was a sense of anticipation in the air for the first rains were due.

My sister and I sat alone on the floor of the gym, posed for a yoga meditation. For fifteen minutes we waited for Maria who had promised to join us. Silently we waited in expectancy of the meditation, moving languidly, listening to the heat bugs shrilling outside. Finally Shirley murmured something to indicate we would not wait any longer and she began to speak in a slow, soft monotone.

“Close your eyes and take a deep, deep breath. All the way in and hold it. Let it out slowly, counting 1-2-3-4-5-6 as you exhale and hold your breath again. Do this rhythmically. Count to yourself. Breathe in to a count of 6, hold to a count of 8, breathe out to a count of 6 and hold to a count of 8. Practice with this for a while and if you find it uncomfortable, change the ratio so it is comfortable to you. This is called prana yoga. We are breathing in prana along with the air, using the breath to increase the energy in the body. Prana is the life force which exists everywhere, but particularly it is enhanced by the sun.”  My sister stopped talking for a moment and then continued. “It is important not to push yourself beyond what is  comfortable. Let your body be your guide. Let it tell you how much or how little to give it.”

Shirley closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, confidently. I closed mine and did the same. Her six years of teaching yoga to others plus her own intensive training for three years prior to that, enabled her to cut to the heart of this indoctrination easily. It was the first time I had ever submitted to such a discipline, and a gay mood permeated my awareness for I was back in touch with my sister, the oldest of four of us, after many years of separation. But then, I was on a high consistantly it seemed these days in Costa Rica. Bob and I were on a new adventure and we were in love. Our spirits soared every morning when we woke to the song of birds and insects singing in the uncanny peace of a virgin and luxuriant countryside. We would lie in each others arms and snuggle to the sounds of nature’s symphony outside our open window.

Shirley had arrived from New England several weeks ago after two brief exchanges by mail. “Hi: What are doing these days? Am interested in coming down to visit and take stock of myself.” It was signed “Shirley, age 40.”  My answer had been: “Come on down. We’re waiting for you” with a P.S. from Bob which read, “We’ll find you some wealthy Spaniards who love American women!” So, leaving her family behind at the ashram in New Jersey, she had arrived with one suitcase and a load of questions which she had immediately started to spill as we drove home to Escazu. It was the usual procedure after we had been absent from each other for awhile.

Shirley lived on a compound with others who followed the teachings of an Indian enlightened man, Acharya Sushil Kumarji Maharaj., whom they all called Muniji. Shirley is a powerful motivator and self-starter, being the oldest in a line of four girls. Having studied yoga and spiritual principles with various teachers over the years, she had finally left her husband when her two children were old enough to make their own way in the world. She then turned her attention to bringing Muniji to America, and was instrumental in helping him establish an ashram in the hills of New Jersey. It was there she spent her days with like-minded disciples of the Muni.

Her breathing was audible now, slow, deep and consistent. I opened my eyes momentarily to watch her. She was sitting cross-legged in the lotus position, or rather the semi-lotus position. She had explained earlier that no matter how much she practiced she could not manage the full lotus where both feet are tucked snugly into the groin of the opposite leg. With her eyes closed, arms outstretched, resting on her knees, palms upward, her breath flowed in and out of a motionless body.  Blue close-fitting leotards revealed a solid body, reflecting the German heritage from which we had come and the farm life which had nurtured us throughout our younger years. She was the oldest of four girls, I was the second and two years younger than her.  Outwardly she was the leader, I the follower, but inwardly we traveled abreast. She had a straight Roman nose and short brown hair framing a face which seemed always to me to express power and intensity, assertiveness and determination. Her personality was assured and confident and into her character was built a mysterious unknown factor which guaranteed achievement in whatever she applied herself.

As I watched her, I was aware of the power of the concentration. Her muscles remained as still as an oriental statue. As I gazed out at her I was struck by her solemnity of this ritual and suddenly I realized a remarkable difference between us. We were moving on different roadways, actually going in opposite directions. While she had been cultivating mental discipline these many years, I had been cultivating spontaneity. I found it difficult to do what she asked. My mind would not obey me, for I was accustomed to following my inner urges rather than those imposed by mental control. I had always thrown off the yoke of intellectual concentration as heavy and bothersome, and lived as much as I could by feelings alone, believing that somewhere deep inside, buried under layers of accumulations, there existed the real me, the real power of me. Not just the little me, but that profound something which would have capacities much grander than I knew about myself, capacities which would, when found, come bubbling out to take care of all things. As I pondered these thoughts in Shirley’s presence I began to realize how foolish they were. Foolish and naive to think that I did not have to work at it to uncover it. My innocent philosophy suddenly seem illiterate, unlearned. It directly opposed the discipline which Shirley was now trying to teach me.

Power exuded from every pore of her body and enhanced the stillness of the room. Suddenly, I was an outsider peering through a window into a sacred temple and I felt the awesomeness of things unknown. I was out of place and I thought to myself that perhaps I, too, should begin to cultivate some mental discipline into my life.

I closed my eyes once more to try to harness my rambling thoughts and breathed in slowly, counting, and held my breath. By the time I reached “four” my smoke-damaged lungs revolted. Out came a gush of warm air. I tried again. The room was silent. No one had entered the gym though I could hear the towel girl outside the door in her little booth, preparing for the day’s activities. Between Shirley’s quiet rhythmic breaths, my gulping breaths were sharp and noticeable, like a bumbling baby next to Buddha himself.

Did she notice me and hear my gulping breaths? Did it bother her? The sense of stillness was sharp, my inabilities magnified. Could she hear my thoughts? What was she aware of? A sense of acute paranoia began to build in me but I continued with the attempt at regulated breathing while my mind wandered down different paths.

After a while, I succeeded in establishing a sort of rhythm to the breathing and soon, very soon, a faint alertness took hold of me. My focus shifted inward and my rambling thoughts came tumbling to a halt. But then Shirley began speaking once more - had she stopped? - in a soft soothing monotone as if from far away. It broke sharply in on my awareness. My eyes flipped open automatically only to see that she had not moved. Her eyes were still closed, her arms and hands still posed upon her knees. Nothing had changed. Her voice droned on and I closed my eyes to recapture the sensations that had just begun.

“Feel the lungs expanding with the inflow of air. Picture the lungs as balloons slowly being inflated with air, growing bigger and bigger. Allow the further end of the balloon to expand downward, into the stomach. Let the stomach expand as the air pushes in. Let the sides of the lungs expand outward as the air flows in. Imagine yourself inside this balloon as it inflates, getting bigger and bigger. Hold your breath. When you exhale, let the balloon go flat, from the bottom up, until all the air is pushed out of the lungs. The balloon is collapsing as the air is expelled from the bottom. Then hold your breath. Inhale again and imagine yourself as the air itself. You are the air. You are now the air entering the lungs. You are being absorbed by the walls of the lungs...”

Her voice trailed away, leaving me entering my lungs easily. Even though my mind flitted from thought to thought and thing to thing, I was still being absorbed by the walls of the lungs. It was almost as though there were two parts to me. My itchy mind which would not hold still under the circumstances and another part, perhaps more alert, which didn’t seem to be dependent upon my mind holding still for I was feeling now a sensation of dampness and warmth. Of peace and body tissue. My imagination was extremely vivid and, conscious of being happy, there was a feeling of sunshine and light inside. So peaceful did I feel in fact, that I stopped the rhythmic breathing and resumed my normal shallow intake of air in order to enjoy these new sensations.

Inside, I was becoming acutely aware of the physicality of my lungs and the presence of muscle, tissue and blood. I was absorbed with this feeling and intrigued with it. But soon I had a desire to go deeper into my body, but where? I searched my knowledge for what lay below the lungs. What organ? I had never studied physiology with any seriousness and so I could not easily remember. But I continued to grope and finally the stomach came to mind, its shape and size, the soft lining of the interior walls and as I played with it, it seemed as if I were the stomach. The sensation was a wholesome one, absorbing. But then, again, I wondered what lay deeper.

The small intestines came easily to mind and no sooner was the thought performed than there I was, in soft damp folds of tissue in my quite vivid imagination. But something was pulling me even deeper and I allowed myself to sink downward into a deep, dark and roomy cavern - the large intestines? - and suddenly something clicked. My body started to sway effortlessly from side to side, without muscle control. Soon I was swaying like a leaf on a tree in the soft summer breezes with sunlight all around. It was pleasant and I did not resist. However I was surprised and mentally I took an alert sideward step to watch.

Rather rapidly the swaying increased and soon I was rocking left to right and right to left, faster and faster. Now I was indeed surprised for I was in no way controlling the movement. Back in my head I pondered the phenomenon while my body ran on its own power. I knew I could stop it if I wanted to, for it was such a gentle thing, but I didn’t want to. It was different, exciting, and there was a new feeling, a wonderful softness, enveloping me in a cloud. I was kneeling on my knees, my arms outstretched, palms upward like Shirley. Shirley! Suddenly I thought of my sister and panic rose. What must she think of me? Was she aware of what I was doing? As intimidating thoughts moved in, something else in me did not care and my attention returned to the sensations going on in my body.

The body was whipping back and forth and the tempo still increasing when suddenly my hands fell, lifeless, to the floor. Disconnected from my body I noted the change from an impartial place. The dropping of the hands to the floor threw the rhythm off and at that split second my legs jerked sideways and out from under me. I landed hard on the carpet between them and began jumping up and down. The body was like a robot. The head was jerking from left to right violently. I could hear scrunching sounds of ligament stretching and rubbing in the neck and the brain itself seemed to rattle inside the skull. And yet it was not uncomfortable. I felt somehow outside all of this, as if I were bigger. The feelings it was provoking were good, blissful, as though I had drunk something intoxicating and the essence was coursing through my veins and arteries. My body was trying to shake something loose and get rid of it. Or was it trying to shake something free?

Meanwhile, I was in a state of wonder and awe. For the first time in my life there were two distinct parts to me: this new part on one hand which seemed to be a foreign element moving in and taking over my body, and me on the other - the me to which I have always identified - and I was confused. I didn’t know which part to identify with, my chatterbox mind or this wonderful, new, ebullient feeling that was rising and expanding like a holy mist throughout my whole being, causing a kind of ecstasy to envelope me in a total feeling of surrender, for that is what I wanted to do. As I watched, it seemed that the normal me, the me of daily life, began to shrink and remove to a corner of my being to watch, giving ground to this new element. And from this vantage point I did indeed watch, fascinated with the act going on before me.

Super alert, my mind wouldn’t stay still. It was busy with many thoughts while my body jumped up and down like something gone wild and out of control. I did not feel for a moment out of control, however, which I proved to myself by opening and closing my eyes quickly to see whether Shirley were watching me. She had stopped her meditations and was now standing on her shoulders, her feet high in the air, seemingly unconcerned. How could she be so indifferent with me jumping around like a jackrabbit? What would she think of this? How would I explain it? What would I think if I were her?  What if someone came into the gym?

As I considered these things, detached as I was from the frantic exploitation of this strange new force, into my consciousness flowed a vivid sense of Maria approaching the gymnasium building. As she passed by the Olympic-sized swimming pool, weaving around people setting up lounging chairs, she seemed to be in a state of turmoil as if she were rushing. I saw her coming closer, breathing hard, and I decided that I had better stop all of this before she opened the door and found me in obvious convulsions.

But now I discovered that this other part did not want to stop. My body was so thoroughly enjoying its new found rapture that it - I - did not want to stop the movements and I was torn between wanting to stop and not wanting to stop. The rising feelings were those of a great, unearthly peace and I was beginning to identify with them, even more so than with my thoughts which now seemed superficial and unimportant. My mind became as an intruder upon my expansiveness and freedom. Nonetheless the battle between these two curious abstract wills did eventually give way to one. And soon my head began to slow its violent shaking, my legs to relax their rapid contractions, my torso to wind down its jack-hammer pounding and, as if in slow motion, my whole body began to gear down. I felt like a high-powered machine reacting in delayed timing to instructions that had been fed into the controls. I had nothing to do with it. I simply watched.

The sense of urgency now being forced on me was irritating and unwanted. I had been building up to greater and greater feelings of euphoria, but Maria was closing in and the urgency was warranted. I saw her outside the gymnasium door reaching for the doorknob. Slowly I was slowing down, rushing to slow down. I opened my eyes as she thrust her head into the gym and I raised my arm to wave a greeting to her.

“Oh!” she exclaimed breathlessly from the doorway. “I am so sorry to be late. Did you start without me?” Her voice floated to me like a dreamy echo from the other side of the world as I found myself still struggling to lift my arm off the floor to wave. What was the matter? It seemed to be disconnected. It was heavy and sluggish but finally I managed to raise it and wave, long after the moment had passed but Maria didn’t appear to notice. As I formed the word of greeting, “Hola!” I realized further that my body was not responding to my mental commands as normal. My vocal cords and tongue could barely drawl out a guttural sound. It sounded like an animal somewhere outside of me.

The swaying motion was dying down to a gentle swing but the ecstasy was lingering. I tried to be concerned about what Maria would think of my strange movements, but the larger part of me did not care so I did nothing. As I drifted in the waning euphoria and the dying wind, Shirley responded more cordially to our friend who appeared not to have noticed anything out of the ordinary except that we had started without her.

Maria went to change into her leotards and shortly reappeared to join us on the gymnasium carpet. I did not speak but smiled lazily and followed Shirley’s instructions as she led Maria and I into one yoga position after another. I saw three women in leotards doing exercises in the mirror before me but I paid them no mind. Exquisite sensations moved me still, lingered and hovered within me, lifting, enveloping, embracing me in a seduction of feelings and I was entranced.

After an hour, Shirley folded into the embryo position and Maria and I followed suit while I thought to myself, “Where can I go on the club premises to be alone?” I wanted to connect with this - whatever it was - again. The sauna, I thought. There’s a good chance no one will be in the sauna at this early hour of the morning. As Shirley and Maria went into the dressing room to change into bathing suits to go to the pool, I excused myself, explaining that I wanted a sauna.  

I felt as if I was gliding on air as I floated down the broad stairway to the lower women’s facilities. I reached the bottom and glanced around the sparkling tiled room of the whirlpool. Not a soul was there. At the further end of the room the little oriental garden stood serene in the morning light. A golf cart rattled somewhere nearby and it seemed that I could see right through the cement wall behind the tropical plants out onto the rolling golf course of the Cariari Country Club. The brook was gurgling through the tall stands of bamboo, weaving under bridges and around lush greens spiked with brightly colored flags. But I had more important things to do and turned and walked into the shower section. No one was there.

With caution I laid my bag and towel down onto a bench and stripped out of my leotards. Naked, I swung open the tightly fitted wooden door of the sauna. It swung open with a loud squeak. My heart seemed to stop. I looked inside. It was empty. I breathed a little easier and stepped as lightly as I could across the creaking boards which caused me to wince. I didn’t want anyone to hear me. I climbed to the uppermost level. Now my heart was pounding. Spreading the towel across the bench I sat down slowly, carefully, speculating on what I was about to do. I listened. No sound came from the outer rooms and I breathed easier still. I looked around the little room. One bulb glowed warm and yellow on the red, heated wood. The hot dry air seared the hairs in my nostrils. I tried to detect sound but none could be heard other than the crackling of the hot volcanic stones in the heater. I hesitated before looking inside of myself, much as one would hesitate before opening a box of precious jewels. What grand mystery lay inside of me? Where did it come from? Where would it take me? Why as it there? Is it still there? Still no sounds met my ears and finally there was no reason to wait any longer.

Without moving I closed my eyes and focused on the spot inside, blow the naval where I had felt the “click” an hour earlier in the gym. At the same moment my arms raised upward, as if a wind blew through them. My torso from the waist upward started to sway and I let it. My hands started to shake, as if they were shaking water from the fingertips. My head started to roll back and forth slowly and a sensation that contradicted gravity rose upward. The tempo was just beginning to pick up when I stopped it quickly, a sense of mystery pervading me. What was this thing? I had no idea what to think about it and so I did not think but left the sauna as carefully as I came. 


Chapter 2

Caught in a Magical Spell

Shirley’s face glowed in upon me as I sat at the dinner table. How did I get here? Her face was full of expectancy in the candlelight as she passed a plateful of roast beef, mashed potatoes and green beans over to Bob. Red liquid glistened transparently in the wine glass before me, reflecting the yellow flames from the cluster of candles behind it in their wooden holders. I was still entranced. The darkness beyond the windows sparkled with the millions of tiny lights of San Jose which sprawled across the floor of the Central Valley of Costa Rica into the distant cradle of the Eastern range. The stars above us were bright, close and clear in the infinite blackness of the sky.

A baby cried and I rode its wail as it hung, slowly dying in the still night air. A dog howled in the distance, and then another, and still a third, somewhere nearby, in a chorus of eerie messages. All across the valley, human life was turning inward and intimacy caressed me. A night bird called and feathers brushed by. Trees whispered in voices that do not belong to human ears and I heard. I was caught in the spell of unseen movements.

I watched as Bob took the  plate which my sister offered and he grinned up at her. Shirley sat down and picked up her fork and began to eat. There was a dull ache at the top of my head. Bob drank from his wine glass. I looked down at my food and then up at my sister and my husband. There was a gulf as wide as eternity separating us. How was I going to bridge the gap? The swirling lights continued to flash on and off in my mind as they had done all day ever since this morning and the incident in the gym, each flash making a tiny explosion in my brain. What was happening to me? Memories glittered with a sharpness I had never known before, each one enveloped in an aura of revelation which haunted me because they were, somehow, not new. Yet their ancient familiarity had no basis in fact. How did I know these things? At what primal level was I experiencing them?

All day, individuals and circumstance had crackled with importnace as they had paraded through my consciousness over and over, round and round, taunting me with reminiscences I did not know I had, and an inexplicable joy filled me so that I could hardly contain myself. I was being lifted, elevated, inspired, moved by something going on within me. My life was suddenly no longer a series of meaningless adventures. There was a depth to it that came from spaces that had no walls, no barriers, no beginning. Significant spaces that pulsed with a single soul. There was a largeness to it that went far beyond me, that called to me and to which I identified with a great happiness. And yet, I could not understand and confusion walked hand in hand with joy. It must surely be like this, I thought to myself, to have had amnesia and suddenly have your memory returned. I was full of awe and I marveled at what was taking place before my very eyes, yet no one else could see.

It seemed that the metabolism of my body was running at a super-normal speed, but that didn’t matter. What really captured and held my attention was the explosion of tiny sparkling atoms into supernovas of recognition. I glanced around me, trying to focus on the here and now, trying to shut out the lights and cool the feverish activity in which I floated, for I knew I must at least make an attempt to rejoin my family, else the separation would grow wider.

Our house was a small casita on the western slopes of the mountains that ringed the Central Valley. The road leading up to our perch on Los Altos de las Palomas - the heights of the doves - was steep and rough. We had moved to Costa Rica just last year and bought all our furniture in San Jose. Bob’s big heavy Spanish-style desk was a gray bulk against the white wall of the living room in which we sat. The deep red tiles on the floor glowed here and there as the candlelight reflected off the highly polished surface. The couch, the two chairs which we had bought downtown at “1492”, the lamps, the book cases which Maynard had made for us, were almost lost in the darkness of the room which was illuminated only by the soft glow of the fires burning in the center of the dinner table. 

My gaze drifted to the open window and the stars twinkling in the black velvet but I forced my thoughts back to the table before me. If I didn’t speak soon I would burst, but I didn’t know how to begin. I looked at the orange knit place mat under my plate, the weavings magnified in a brilliant display of color. Bob’s colors. Earthy colors. Mine were white, marble, gold, classic Grecian, crystal. We were opposites. It had been our custom, Bob’s and mine, to eat by candlelight every night. We had done it for all of the five years we had been together and tonight was no different.

I looked across the table and watched my husband chew on a piece of roast beef while I grappled with words, silent words swirling in the atomic spaces within me. But I could not capture even a one. They were too fast, too expansive and I was star-struck, frozen to my chair. The swelling clarity of my mind contrasted sharply against the dumb immobility of my physical surroundings. The gulf that existed between me and my companions widened. What should I say?  I was glad it was dark so they couldn’t see the color of acute embarrassment rising in my face.

Again, I stole a glance at Shirley. The silence in the room was awkward. I had not spoken to her at all about the incident in the gym and now she was waiting. As I glanced around the table, I finally felt myself refocusing, as if coming out of a dream world where all things are possible, only to find myself in the square solidarity of a box. With astonishment I realized that I had passed the whole day without partaking of it. Where had it gone? More importantly, how had I acted? What must they think of me? Shirley must be dying of curiosity, I thought, as my focus shrank to absorb the domestic objects before me. She was waiting, allowing me the privilege of speaking first. I was grateful and a hint suggested itself that perhaps Shirley knew more than I realized. It would be to my advantage to find out exactly what it was that she knew.

I picked up my fork to begin eating when it came blurting out: “Something very strange happened to me today in the gym...”

“Where did you learn to do that?” Shirley cut in without letting me finish. In the twinkling of an eye, she turned in her chair to stare at me in the warm glow. I stared back, bewildered. We locked gazes.

“Learn? I didn’t learn! It just happened!” I said..

My sister looked as though she were deflating. She put a hand to her forehead and stared off into unseen spaces. Long moments passed and now it was I who was waiting. Waiting for her to put it together, for I was convinced that she knew something about this strange thing that happened to me today. Bob continued eating, seemingly unperturbed by the drama unfolding in front of him. I dared not breathe in the taut, suspense-filled moment.

“The Kundalini,” she whispered more to herself than to me.

“The Kundalini? What’s that?” I asked. The word pierced my consciousness and descended into subconscious levels where it struck a chord and pinged back and forth. 

“That’s the psychic force that lives in the base of the spine,” said Shirley, glancing at me but looking right through me. “There’s a special form of yoga, called Kundalini yoga that some people do to try to awaken it. They’ll sit in meditation and then jump up and down just like you did today, sometimes for an hour, trying to dislodge it from its sleeping state and wake it up.”

Again, the veil that shielded the subconscious was pierced and the words struck the same chord again and again, reverberating richly across inner spaces never touched before. How on earth could I possibly know this? But I did and my sister was merely confirming it for me. I knew, but I needed to know more, and I pressed.

“What’s the purpose?” I asked. “What does it do?”

“Well, it awakens psychic powers in a person when it’s awake, but in most people it remains asleep.”

“What causes it to awaken?”

Shirley looked tired and somewhat confused. “I really don’t know. I don’t think anybody really knows. I’ve only heard about it from Muniji and a few individuals. It’s not a common occurence.”

Feeling more normal now, I scooped a load of mashed potatoes onto my fork and slid it into my mouth. The conversation had taken place in less than three minutes, yet I had my answer. Or did I? “But what do I do with it now?” I asked.

“I just don’t know what to tell you,” she replied. “Except that it can be dangerous. You should try to find yourself a teacher.”

“Why dangerous? In what way?” Questions were looming, lining up and backing up in my mind, waiting to be asked. She knew!  She knew what had happened to me! I was thrilled and excited. Something deep within had been set free and now I was being given the answers. But Shirley remained solemn and introspective. She was bothered. 

“Kundalini is a powerful force. It has been known down through the ages that it can lead to insanity,” she replied. “But, of course, I don’t know first hand about this. This is only what I’ve heard. I don’t have direct knowledge. You should try to find a teacher who knows.”

Visions of my mother’s books came back to me as I recalled browsing through her spiritual library while growing up. I had read some of those books in my teen years, and took for granted that they would always be there. Now I wished I had that library at my disposal. There must have been something in those books about Kundalini. I wondered if my mother knew about this strange force? I had a natural leaning toward the spiritual life. Still, I had taken it all with an attitude of “Yes, I know!”  I accepted metaphysics as easily as I accepted school, church and marriage. In fact, more easily, for in the day-to-day application of spirituality I needed grounding constantly.

I looked meaningfully at Bob, my second husband and fourteen years older than me, but he showed no hint that he had been following the conversation. He had completed his meal and was now smoking a cigarette and sipping wine. If there was anything Bob disliked more than religious dogma, it was occult mystery teachings, especially one of a secret doctrine. We had had many lively discussions about it and, although I knew that Bob’s passionate feelings stemmed not so much from a disbelief in God as from what he called the “insidious” influence that spiritual teachers held over the minds and hearts of their followers, still even a personal need would not disarm his vehemence. He would not allow such an influence to enter his life. Nor mine. I would have to leave him and go my separate way if I wanted to wander the Earth in search of a teacher to guide me through this powerful, dangerous energy.

Bob was a mentor to me in many ways. We had met at an auspicious moment when I had just come down off a mountain in Mexico where I had lived with a handful of UFO followers, and he was a business man on the mend after a major heart attack. A sense of “old friend, where have you been?“ locked us together in strong relationship. We talked and talked. I learned about him and he learned about me. I came from Spirit, and he came from Earth. To him, spiritual doctrines were no different than religious doctrines, and all religions could go to hell for that was where they had come from in their control over humankind. Religions were instruments of punishment to inflict fear, pain and guilt upon the human race and to hold the masses in bondage. He would have none of it. He saw no good in them in the least and especially the Indian religion of Hinduism, which had kept the oppressed people groveling in the dust, stricken by poverty and sickness, by their elitist caste system. If they could help their own kind and raise India into a decent place to live for their own kind, then maybe he would listen to what they had to say. But Hinduism had proven itself to be a cold, judgmental, highly discriminating religion with no human qualities to it at all, and it had nothing to offer him. I had heard his reasonings a hundred times or more.

Yet, deep in the dungeon of my being where instinct is master and not reason, I felt the assurance that a teacher would not be necessary, at least not of the kind that Shirley was speaking. A knowing wideness loomed around me, penetrating the walls and laughing at the small minds of dogmatic thinkers who are afraid of their own shadows. I rode the crest of a wave which sparkled with youth, vigor and life, and I was invulnerable. I had touched God. Silently I looked to Bob as I have always done, and he answered me as I knew he would.

“If whatever this thing is came to you naturally without any assistance, you will know how to handle it,” he replied. “You do not need a teacher.” His words settled down over me like a magnetic net, pulling me down, bringing rationality to my inflated consciousness and restoring stability. His word was law and I accepted it as fact and was glad.

Later, after Shirley retired to her bedroom, I sat cross-legged on our broad king-sized bed waiting for Bob to join me to bed down for the night. Secure in my knowledge that all was well, I felt an uncanny peace lying on me. Beside me the windows were open and I could see the lights of the valley below and feel the breezes and smell the moistness of the rich growth of the mountainside. It was close to midnight. The dull ache at the crown of my head was a physical reminder of the extraordinary thing that had happened this morning. Otherwise I would have guessed that it had all been an illusion. My curiosity began to mount as I sat thinking about the strange force, my consciousness now returned to normal. Bob was finishing up with his evening papers at his desk and Shirley’s door was closed at the end of the hall.

I looked into the mirror before me and fought with myself, for I wanted desperately to go back inside once more, to see if the wind were still there, but I was afraid that Bob would come in. I waited and languished in my good feelings. The house was silent. Human life in the valley had given way to the wilder, more natural life for it was past midnight. I waited. Curiosity and apprehension continued to mount. Finally, naturally, almost automatically, I surrendered to the urge and closed my eyes, focusing deep inside below the naval.

Immediately, just as they had done in the sauna, my arms raised of their own accord, floating in the still air. They began to pick up rhythm and soon gave indication that they would start shaking again, just as they had done earlier. The electrons of my body seemed to mold themselves around another intelligence, certainly not mine, which gave them direction and purpose. I felt like a feather being blown by the wind. Again there was a stepping up of my consciousness. My head was just beginning to rotate in the indistinct current when suddenly I had an urge.

The image of a friend came into my consciousness. It was the wife of the man who made our bookcases, close acquaintances with whom we socialized frequently. A desire sprang up simultaneously for her to feel better, happier, for she had been deeply depressed. Immediately, without a second to lose, my hands floated in the air towards one another and there, right before my eyes, they formed a cup at eye level and lo! right in the midst of the cup the most brilliant glow of the purest light I had ever seen!  It was radiant like a diamond, like a blue and white crystal but liquid with life, burning with an astonishing clarity.

It’s radiance flashed and sparkled like a flare from a solderer’s gun but ethereal like the touch of an angel. Indeed, the awareness of a higher intelligence swirled through me, fine and beautiful, and an exquisite alertness seemed to buzz down my arms to the focal point in the palms of my hands. Chills ran over the surface of my skin as I made a mental connection with its reality, as if it were important that I accept it as real. And I knew that my friend had been touched.

Bob entered the room then and I quickly let my arms fall to my lap, embarrassed, externalizing my focus. How would I explain what I was doing? But he started to talk and there was no need for an explanation. We crawled under the covers and shut off the lamp. Soon we were curled together and I was face to face with my first problem with the Kundalini. 

Chapter 3

Sex and Kundalini 

I couldn’t come down. I’ve always been able to come down to Bob when it was time to make love. Even if I had to force it. But now I couldn’t. On my back between the cool sheets, my body withholding, eyes clamped shut against this intrusion, I was locked frozen within the enigma. His arm moved heavily across me where once it had been loving and light. A pull stronger than Bob, sucked me upward and held me in the heavens of my being. It tried to pull me from his grasp into more uninhibited expanses. It was a more powerful reality that called to me, reminding me that I did not belong to flesh and blood, but to another species. Olympic heights of unbounded reason and unrestrained order dawned in my mind and beckoned to me with a love so big, so huge, that human love and human relationship shrunk to insignificance. An infinite, unending compassion rolled out before me like a royal carpet inviting me to walk the way of the gods.    

“What’s the matter?” asked Bob in my ear. “Where are you?” Silence. “You know you can’t stay there forever.”

“I know,” I answered. “It’s just that...” My voice trialed away dumbly while dense fog crept in. “It’s all right,” I mumbled, thinking it was the end of the world for me. Darkness was closing in. Again. Torn between my physical commitment to Bob and the swirling lightness above, I searched for answers in the encroaching twilight of my mind. Why couldn’t I simply fly away into the loveliness? What held me? Should I leave Bob and go out in search of a teacher as Shirley suggested?

There had never been a doubt in my mind concerning my relationship with Bob, after my initial decision to join him. It had been one continuous, expanding, exciting journey from the first moment we had met. From the beginning we had intertwined ourselves around and into each other  as if we were two halves of one whole. It was not all sweetness and love, but rather a journey of adventure and discovery. At every turn it seemed we encountered something new, which caused us to run and tell the other about it. We were so excited with our Costa Rican adventure that we had begun recording every evening before going to bed, into a microphone onto tape. Sitting on the couch we told “Mr. Tape” all of the wonders we had seen that day,  who we had met,  what we had learned in our ongoing saga. And now Shirley had brought something new into my life alone, not Bob’s, and it threatened to divide us. Would our strong bond be able to withstand it?

In the beginning of our relationship, I had aborted all spiritual thinking to learn from him the practical way of life on Earth. I felt like his student. He had given up his marriage, his family and children, his affairs both sexual and civic, to dedicate his time to me. I had given up friends whom he considered space cases, and he had given up his business affiliations, his golf, his poker buddies. We were virtually bonded together as in a single body, channeling all of our thoughts, knowledge, problems, caring and love into a common pool which nourished us. He had awakened me sexually, opening my body to pleasures I had never known at the age of 33, even after giving birth to two children. We had been riding the crest of a wave for five years, gliding smoothly over the rough stones beneath, with the sun at a permanent zenith pulling us forward. We had spent endless hours in discussion, and often hot and heavy argument, over what was superfluous and what was meaningful in our lives, so that we could discard the one and move forward with the other without regret.

Now in the course of one day a separation had happened greater than any I could have imagined. There was nothing tangible to discuss with him. He would not hear of spiritual talk of heaven or angels, or light-filled super novas or subjective mind wanderings. We were on a “here-now” reality path. And even if he would have been open to such things, this was beyond words, It was sacred. How could I begin to explain? It went too far. Too deep. Too personal. Beyond my reach. I felt guilty that I now had a secret life that didn’t include him. Part of me tried to come down and communicate with him, but the greater part of me soared skyward in a sweet updraft of dazzling, powerfully promising life to join with - what? Yearning with all of the power of my being I reached for the fading glow while at the same time I could see Bob struggling in the distance to reach me, wallowing in a sea of murk, or so it seemed to me. The separation that was taking place was painful and intense, as if part of my insides were being ripped out of me by the handful. It seemed that I could see the line of demarkation between two forces at war, one from below, heavy, sluggish and thick; the other a sunrise promising unlimited expansion. I was caught between them with no power of my own, the object of their battle.

Then something strange occurred. From out of the depths of the murkiness descending on me came words that I had heard before, as a re-run in my mind. Bob’s words from out of the past, spoken on the Arizona desert five years before on our first overnight trip together. The words rang clear and sharp now in my mind. 

“What good is spirituality if you can’t live it in this world? Those people you think you love so much are filled with words and no substance. They run at the first sign of responsibility. None of them have ever found happiness. They’re still looking for it out there, running away from everything that is real. Don’t be like one of them. Be better than them. Bring your ethereal qualities down to earth and prove them. Live them here. Show me! Then you’ll be doing something worthwhile. If you run away to the mountain top, you’re no better than all the rest of them. There’s a responsibility to living. Nothing comes free. You have to earn it.”

Through the shifting turmoil dim rays began to appear in the murk below, twisting in the turbulence. Warped as they were and tormented by the agony of my mind, the truth of the words continued to filter through. “The need to run away is a cop-out. Freedom is meaningless if you have to go some place else to find it. If you can’t be happy here, you can’t be happy anywhere. This world is for the living, the other is for the dead.” The words shook me and the hell into which I was locked, bound and chained. Bob had grounded me many times in the past when dream theories threatened the very core of our existence together. And each time I had had to face a choice: to go my own way alone or fall back and regroup with him. I slammed the door shut on the realization, not wanting to fall back. But it was too late. Understanding seeped past my guard, oozed into my heart through the cracks in that substance, and found its way into unknown depths where other machinery worked. The process was set into motion against my will.

Clawing and gripping with every ounce of my will I tried to hold on to the remnants of the glory and felt it slipping out of my grasp. Downward I tumbled into the darkness. Downward through galaxies of light I plunged, faster than the speed of thought, resisting, hating the stickiness of human life, down through jagged rips of discord, catching glimpses of cities in which gods walked and yearning with all of my heart to stay. Downward I sank into the swirling mire which threatened to suck me into obliteration, the light about to go out.

But understanding is not a fickle thing, the light that dawns in the intellect of the heart. And in that endless journey from one end of the universe to the other, understanding DID take root in the netherlands of my soul where only two extremes had existed before: freedom or bondage. Imprisonment or escape. Flesh or spirit. Black or white. These two mighty forces had always played one against the other like two giant wheels turning in upon each other, crushing me between them. I did not know that night as I struggled in psychic battle with forces I did not understand, that it was only the beginning. I had opened a door I could never close again. In the years to come these same two monster wheels would continue to churn, mercilessly, to hone and sharpen me to the truth that it is I and I alone who must make the homogenous blend between these two ancient enemies. I and I alone who must insist that they walk hand in hand on the same path, in the same body, as friends. And until I learned that, I would continue to be tossed about in the storms of ignorance, victim instead of master of my own will.

The windows above the bed were open and through the screen night sounds mingled with the musky smell of animal life. Into the magnetism of earth bodies I fell, surrendering to this giant force of nature. Later, after we had made love and our skins were moist with sweat, I looked out through the fine mesh of the screen and was surprised. The light hadn’t gone out. I wasn’t washed with murk. I didn’t feel degraded. In fact, a new kind of loveliness was flowing through my veins. It was a mixture of the other world and this. The high and the low. The light and the dark. It moved through me like a physical perfume on a spring night after the rains. And the hint of promise was no longer somewhere above me but inherent within me and stretching downward into the vast subterranean dimensions of the earth globe itself. I went to sleep snuggled next to Bob, spooned together, feeling the peace undulating softly through me and I knew that the link had been made. I had brought it down to earth and shared it with him.

Over the next ten days I did not pursue the strange inner wind that had so dramatically stolen into my life. Neither did the wind pursue me. We were at a stalemate, as if by some silent unspoken agreement. Shirley’s presence was time-consuming and, in some ways, intimidating. I decided to wait until she had gone before I re-opened that door. I wanted plenty of time to go slow, to learn and study this mystical wind and how it operated. I kept it at bay for now in order to learn as much as I could from Shirley. She knew things. Her years living with Muniji and other spiritual practitioners, her trips to India, her deep meditations at the ashram, had given her so much knowledge of the spiritual life. I wanted to know what she knew. I picked her brain. The wind was ever present for I tested it now and again, but each time I opened the door only a crack just to make sure it was still there, and it was. Each time. So I would shut it again quickly, not ready to go there just now. Shirley would be leaving shortly and I wanted to be completely alone when I began investigating the thing now that I knew the potency of its force.

Her vacation rolled to an end ten days later, without my having learned much more about Kundalini than I had that first evening at dinner. Although I had pumped her at length in the long hours when we sat in the sun and talked, I finally realized, sadly, that her knowledge was limited to hearsay. The sacred scriptures of Indian culture, written down three and four thousand years ago, was no different than the scriptures of all religions. It is all hearsay, written by someone else long ago.

The morning of her departure found Bob, Shirley and I sitting in the airport cafeteria an hour before boarding time. The waiter, an elderly man recently transferred from the Union Club, gave us a friendly greeting and asked our preference. I smiled. It was strange to see this aristocratic gentleman serving tables in the San Juan de Maria Airport amid the hub-bub of activity. We were used to seeing him in the sedate surroundings of the elite downtown club. Moving professionally around our small talk, he set out napkins and silverware, and shortly followed with orange juice, scrambled eggs, toast, bacon and coffee. As Bob poured the steaming black liquid into my cup, the aroma of the rich Costa Rican beans wafted through the air to my nose.

"Well, it’s been a lot of fun,” Shirley yelled through the clatter around us. “I’ve really enjoyed being here with both of you. I’ve had a lot of insight into my own life while I was here.” 

Shirley's mind drifted back to her family and work and what lay ahead for her. She hesitated and I knew what she was going to say. “I really think you ought to find a teacher. I’ll ask Muniji what he would recommend when I get back.” 

The thought of her guru brought a serious look to her eyes. Shirley would soon be leaving her family and moving to the ashram in New Jersey that she was helping to set up for this Indian monk of the Jain religion. She had listened politely to Bob‘s discourses about religion over the past two weeks. She had been pulled into serious discussion from time to time, and moved to tears on more than one occasion by Bob’s unrelenting position on the subject. She looked at Bob now, and then at me. She was worried about me but when I didn’t respond, she dropped the subject, detecting Bob‘s antagonism.

“I’m glad you could come,“ replied Bob. “You had a chance to see another life style and another culture. People aren’t the same everywhere you go in the world. You’ve expanded your horizons.”

My gaze drifted through the thick wall of glass of the terminal to the sky beyond. The mystical wind wavered within me. Expectancy moved closer to the surface. Soon it would be time. Soon I would begin my exploration of the unknown. The sky was a rich transparent blue and the mountains a more solid blue, blazing boldly in the morning light, the slopes covered with blue green forests and tiny houses. A broad open field of tall grass waved in the breeze beyond the runway, sparkling in the golden light. As my awareness lingered in the open meadow, the harsh grating noises of the people fell away and a soft whispering peace rose up around me. Softly, time and motion tiptoed away, leaving me suspended.

Suddenly a jetliner roared in for a touchdown in a screaming fury of metal and whining turbines, setting the floor of the old cafeteria to vibrating wildly and the windows to rattling in their moldings. The machine cut into my transcendence like a knife, severing my world cleanly into two distinct planes of existence. One moment all was normal. The next, I was looking at a primitive piece of technology shadowed against a brilliant display of future glory. Soft, spacious rose-colored light opened around the plane, revealing another dimension and displaying the airliner like a dead thing in a museum. Lovely beings walked about the plane studying it, blessing it. Sparkles of pink and gold intelligence jumped and darted around the body of the jet like a benediction from a higher mind, revealing before my very eyes the presence of an enlightened world which seemed to be made up of living molecules of conscious awareness.

As the sparkling atmosphere quivered and flashed with breathtaking knowledge, knowledge that a future existed and what it was composed of, my mind - no, my entire being - joined the oneness. It was exquisite, jam-packed full of dazzling expansion that took me into the magic of a new dawn. It blew my mind wide open and then it was gone, leaving me once again in the middle of cafeteria clatter and Bob and Shirley talking as if nothing had happened.

What I had perceived in that momentary flash could have filled volumes, had I the capacity and the time to sort out the words. I sat still long moments after it passed, contemplating the revelation that came on the wings of the jetliner. Although this solid physical world had appeared, in that brief instant, locked frozen into the dimension of matter against the other lighter field of existence, still, there was nothing degrading about it. Quite the contrary. It had appeared as if a sea of intelligent beings were cradling this physical dimension with a great, wise and compassionate understanding, an infinite love that did not understand failure. Only promise existed. Promise of a golden age and the jetliner was a baby seed awaiting its fulfillment. The technology of the ’70’s did not have yet the secret of instilling awareness into matter which would open the doorways to a power vast and unifying. But it would come, and the light energy of the future vibrated with fulfillment, an unending reservoir to call upon. For one brief moment, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that life was ongoing; that there was no such thing as “death”. It was but a prelude of things to come. Little by little, the door was opening, with no inkling as to what lay ahead. 


Chapter 4

My First Rapture

Shirley was two hours into the air, winging her way home to Boston, and I was alone, finally alone. Curiosity over the strange inner wind had been building up in me through the last few weeks, increasing each day that I did not give in to it.  The need to find out more about the force was developing into a desire not unlike a passion that grows between two people newly in love yet kept apart, unable to fulfill their destinies with each other. Excitement grew. Anticipation was wreaking havoc with my nerves. Two weeks had passed since I had shut it off, not willing to open strange new doors until I was free to follow where it would lead. I was not concerned about Bob’s presence. He was my protector in every way and gave me freedom. He did not look over my shoulders to see what I was doing. Besides, he had plenty to keep himself busy.

Now I was alone. Finally alone. Bob went to his desk and I went out onto the back patio and felt no pressure. I was free. I could do it. Standing in the hot noon day sun on the red tiles behind the house, I looked out over the landscape. The sturdy ten-foot walls that enclosed the terrace sloped downward here at the Northeast corner to reveal the panoramic view of the gentle Central Valley. The shimmering pastoral scene was framed by a filigree of shadowy leaves from over my head. The hills undulated into vast pasturelands which rolled into the distant humble dwellings of San Jose and beyond, merging with the mountains in the East. An unnatural stillness whispered across the landscape, magnifying my sense of ease from all pressure. I was free.

I languished in the peace and allowed my gaze to drift in the melting sunlight. Far, far away, a mist of blue hung over the doll-like city. There had been showers over the past few weeks, but not enough rain had fallen to wash away the soot and grime accumulated over the hot dry months of summer. A noon-time whistle blew somewhere and wavered across the misty miles to meet my passive senses. Accompanying the sound came scenes of swirling dust, fumes, noise and the teeming, sweating bodies of mankind. But here in Las Altos de Las Palomas, the heights of the doves, time stood still, I at its center.

Inside, Bob was settled at his desk, his mind turned once more to the state of the world's economy, entertaining ideas I was not privy to at the time. He was writing, perhaps, his weekly column for the Tico Times, an English paper dedicated to the American community in Costa Rica, or perhaps he was answering a letter from a subscriber back in the States or Canada or Germany. Whatever it was that he was doing, I did not know, nor did I care. All that mattered was that I was alone. Alone but not alone, for something or someone was near, seductive and intimate. It was also impersonal and stern. And even as I stood by the wall, soaking up the warmth of the sun-drenched tiles through the soles of my bare feet, whoever or whatever it was, moved closer. As free as I had felt before, still more anticipation fell away, allowing as it did so, the merging of two dimensions as though no door had ever existed between them.

The song of the birds and the whirring of the insects lingered in the hot, dry air as if they had no other place to go. The leaves in the trees over my head fell gently into silence as a hush covered the land. Even the gurgling of the newly-installed whirlpool behind me dropped its voice to a murmur, calm and low, as if it, too, were waiting. A lizard looked at me from the corner of his eye with awareness. As the hush came full circle and fell upon me, the immaculate order in which I stood became starkly apparent and I became conscious of - no, I would have to say simply that I became conscious.

One who is new at faith, speaks the word with uncertainty, perhaps hope, not knowing at that point in the evolution that faith or trust, is merely the beginning. One does not realize so early in the process that there is a building up of faith that increases in momentum, not unlike a wave if continued, carrying one onward and upward, higher and higher, until ultimately there is a powerful surge forward up and over the crest into a new zone that has never been seen before. There is little control after a certain point and no turning back once these forces have been put into motion and so, wrapped in the heightened embrace of mystery, I surrendered willingly and did not look back.

There was a melting, upward swing which blossomed in that lovely arc into the full bloom of awe and then eased into a gentle, other-worldly peace. Simultaneously, in all parts of my body at once, my physical nervous system sprang to life. My arms rose of their own accord and began to rotate from the wrist sockets. My hips began to gyrate in the fashion of a belly dancer and my head to roll from side to side with no conscious control on my part. I fell into the movement naturally, easily, flowing with the will of this Other as if it were my own. Once again, my mind grew sharp and lucid, zooming in on the critical action now taking place in my muscles. The undulations seemed to be controlled, but not by me, and rather quickly the vibration caused my body to resemble that of an epileptic. Soon I was bent double and my arms began to swing round and round in their shoulder sockets, like the hands of a giant clock, brushing each other as they came forward and down and back and up and forward and dawn and back and up. My fingernails scratched the tile on the first few swings and I bent the fingers inward a little, adjusting them so that they would swing free of the ground. Otherwise I allowed the action to have its way, uninhibited by my own thought.

Round and round swept the arms while my head, upside down, rotated madly between them, left to right and right to left. My feet were planted firmly on the ground, solidly connected to the earth and extending down into the soil beneath. The power of the earth was significant and seemed to be my counter-balance as a great force raged from the sun through my body, tearing it up and down and into shreds that no longer resembled its former image. This, I could merely feel. There was no pain. It was sheer force and movement through muscles. An inner wind. My attention moved slowly, objectively around my body as my limbs thrashed about in a frenzied blur. From the soles of my feet to the ligaments in my neck to the arm sockets, wrist, waist and head, I watched the violent action from an untouchable place, a place of great peace. My body was merely a ragged piece of cloth being washed, aired and shaken in the sun to dry, while I waited, unharmed for the process to be done. I was well and happy, and conscious of my body in a way I never was before. I became aware that it was growing tired, for the motion continued for a long time, and I wondered how long it would keep up. It was merely an intellectual curiosity, however, for I was determined not to interfere with this Other will. I knew it would finish when it was done, as I also knew it would not cause me harm. Yet, aches began to creep and spread insistently into the thighs and into the calves of my legs as they tensed themselves against the wild momentum of my torso and arms.

Still the movements continued and, in spite of the deeper assurance, I began to wonder if my neck was being damaged for I could feel the sharp grating of ligament upon ligament. The tiredness moved steadily onward into every crack and pore and crevice until I grew weary and drained. Still there was no sign that the force would let up. I thought to myself, perhaps I should stop it of my own accord, but I did not. No matter how tired, no matter how drained I felt, somehow it was not as important as the shaking of the body. It was crucial that I continue. And so I shook and vibrated and whirled crazily in the sunshine of Escazu - the city known as the city of the witches - and self-consciousness began to creep into my thinking. What if Bob should come out onto the patio to see what I was doing, as he was prone to do. But thought of self quickly passed away under the influence of the thing. I really didn't care if he saw me or not.

Suddenly, without warning, my body slowed down, systematically. The activity relaxed and withdrew simultaneously from all muscles at once, within a matter of seconds. The body carefully eased out of its bent position and stood straight up and down. A huge bubble of lightness swooned upward and I found myself floating suspended, without bodily weight, in a wonderful feeling of lightness, a state impossible to describe. With no will to move, I waited. Long moments passed in suspended bliss, and then the thighs tightened once more, gripping themselves firmly to the earth beneath. The hips began once more to undulate, the force coming from the abdominal region. It shivered up the spine rather quickly and branched out into the shoulders, down the arms and out the finger tips, shaking those appendages like the fragile upper branches of a tree rattling in a storm. My hands and fingers shook with such force that I opened my eyes to watch them, amazed at their speed! Energy was being literally thrown off of the tips of my fingers, lethargic, dead, toxic energy. My head became again like a spinning top and it too seemed to be shaking off dead energy. My brain and ears hummed with sound and my whole body whirred like a living buzz saw.

This second activity did not last as long as the first, but long enough that I once more grew tired, and wondered if it would ever stop. What was I getting myself into? I became acutely aware of the physical deterioration that my body had undergone over the 38 years of my life, and it seemed to be in a horrible condition. Tired and exhausted, I let the action continue without caring any more. Without wanting to know. I was committed in some primal way to the cause of the thing without understanding it. I did not know at the time that the shaking up was a rejuvenation of sorts, a very natural process as old as time itself that signifies the passage into greater life. Sort of like when the caterpiller sheds its heavy earthbound hide to emerge liberated and free as a butterfly, and when the seedling springs loose of the heavy soil into the light of day. And as far as human beings are concerned, I did not know that I was playing with an ancient process that has been known only by a handful of the world's population over the centuries, and which has been kept carefully hidden from the masses for reasons I still don't understand to this day, and so allows me to write about it. I did not know that I was dipping into the very heart of the mystery of the cosmic mystery schools. Had I known beforehand I would have instantly withdrawn (or would I?) but no warning bells clanged, no swords were raised to bar my way, and so I stumbled care-free into the garden of paradise and frolicked happily in the ethereal grasses of another world without a second's hesitation or backward glance.

My body continued to flop and twirl and bend and churn in the currents of the inner wind until once more I grew so tired I did not care. Suddenly, once again, the activity ceased without warning. It withdrew rather quickly when it was finished, and calm replaced the chaos that once had been, but like no calm I had ever felt before. I remained in the eye of peace, still, open and waiting, and while I waited I became conscious of a glow enveloping me around the head and shoulders. Its touch was almost physical, as if the softest, most delicate of silks were moving around my face, brushing against my cheeks, around my neck and shoulders. I was captured inside a crystal bubble within the confines of time and space, and during that moment in time as I waited to see what would happen next, feeling the radiation emanating through the pores of my skin, I knew myself in a way that I had never known myself before. It is the hardest part of all to describe, for words are based on human conditions, and I had been emptied of everything that makes a human being what he or she is.

In the absence of all personal considerations, the toxins of the human condition, I knew myself as quality, not as personality. All of the qualities were present that men call noble and of the higher spectrum of civilized life. These qualities, however, were known, SEEN, in such a dazzling, lucid way that by comparison their earthly counterparts such as we adore in heroes, martyrs and saints, were like shadows, tiny off shooting sparks of a passionate, sizzling, all-encompassing fire whose infinite dimensions defy capture in words.

I did not "see" or "feel" these qualities per se, but rather I was in actuality those qualities - radiations of light, love, beauty, compassion, courage, freedom, happiness, wonder, and openness to the nth degree. The quality of oneness was so complete that this is what caused the light. Nothing was in the way, nothing to distort or hide or conceal. All flowed together openly, naturally, with great ebullience, aligning with the whole of existence, everywhere. There was a singular movement, or cause, behind it all, like a mind, or a heart, a presence so to speak which collectively loved for the pure and simple act of loving. It had such a passion for life that even now as I remember, the tears flow in my eyes. This was no stagnant peace! I cannot describe the fires of love that I felt for all of life, collectively, without discrimination. It was clear that I was not a separate entity.

There was no skin, no brain, no membrane that set me apart. And yet, I was conscious of being "me". I was intimately aware of myself and conscious of spanning and including all of existance, and caring for each and every part. And all I wanted was all of me to rise and to be happy, to throw off the yoke of confusion, to heal without consequence and get on with the business of REAL living, for THIS was what it was all about.

Neither was the moment confined to a mental realization alone. It was a physical thing, for the cells of my body seemed to tingle and float freely in this wonder-essence which was not unlike oil that flowed in and around the parts of my body. A glow permeated the atoms and molecules and saturated them with this love stuff, and spilled out onto the skin into the air, buoying me upward. There was no sense of gravity. Wrapped in this splendid aura of delight, I turned then, knowing that the strange inner wind was finished with its work. And from a great distance, a distance not measureable in yards or inches, I saw Bob standing in the open doorway of the patio, watching me. As I began moving toward him, merely by willing the action, it seemed that the lower half of me did not exist. I moved on air, my head was high in another realm. The glow extended from below my chest to above my head.

I came to within a foot of Bob when the overwhelming rapture in which I was cacooned increased! A torrent of heat and love came tumbling through my body, rushing through and spilling out into the atmosphere, engulfing me and Bob. It poured from me like a fire, washing through and over me like a surging, raging need that did not sear or burn, but rather cared. It loved. It was no human love at all. Sexual love would have been consumed and swallowed up in its searing openness. No human being could have contained it and so it spilled out and washed over the land, and more came so that it never emptied. On and on it came, with no rest, no stopping, nothing to inhibit its flow. Through the rarified atmosphere of the open window only recently created, I saw that the torrent could have gone on forever, and never empty itself but rather actually increase in power. The sea of life was immense! It's yearning so great, the pressure so intense to enter the vacuum of a world unfulfilled, that it gushed through the uncapped opening like blood through an open wound, its life pumping through, never stopping, not wanting to stop. I placed my head on Bob's shoulder and the torrent engulfed him mightly but did not stop with him, but continued on and outward. This love was not meant to be contained, not meant for one person alone, but for a world, for life itself.

I could not contain this extraordinary flow for long, however, and eventually memory of my normal human condition, the needs, the wants, the plans, crept back into my mind to mingle with the bliss of my former wideness. For a long time we stood motionless in the fading glow until, without speaking, we parted and went our way without speaking. The heights to which I soared remained for days afterwards. It seems strange that I have never spoken of this experience to Bob, but it could not be verbalized then. Only now, eight years later as I am writing this, does hind-sight give me the perspective to even attempt to capture the experience in words. Only by way of these written pages will Bob come to know a little of what has been going on all these many years subjectively, within me.

Bob has been intimately connected to what has happened to me but in ways I don't understand. It is as if he is a silent partner whose function is never clear. Certainly he has been the disciplinarian that I have needed when I least wanted one. And certainly he has been the stern militarist who has forced me to face my own errors. And he has been the father who hugs me when I cry over imagined failures, keeping me afloat in those negative washes. And he it is who later insists I eat a hearty meal of meat and potatoes when I would rather eat vegetables, laughing at me over my earlier trauma, making it light, forcing me into the present. And he is my lover, too. It was he who introduced me to all of the hidden facets of my physical self, who taught me not only about my own body, but opened the way to love others, too, showing me how to love lovingly, indiscriminately, elevating sex and sensuality while others all around me put it down. He has been a cold and calculating critic of my writings, slashing, rejecting without mercy, regardless of my deep personal feelings:

"It's too religious,” he would say. “No one wants to read that shit!" forcing me to spell it out in everyday words. But, he has stayed awake through the night when the demons came, warding off the evil with his caring, holding me in his arms. He has been my friend and confidant in every way but this, the most important part of me - the transcendent movements, the golden awareness that dawns on the inside of my mind and body. We never discuss it. He warns me not to play with it. He is an ever present anchor pulling me down and away from the influences I long for, insisting that I pay more attention to the practical world. Yet, it is his advice that allows me to reach higher ground. His hard edges keep me in the center of the upward thrust. Yes, he is an enigma I have yet to understand.


Chapter 5

The Little Red Book

One lovely morning we decided to take a trip into the city. Over the last few weeks the uplifting inner wind has been ever present, ebbing and flowing. When it ebbs, as it was now, it gently laps the shores of my life reminding me it is there. It does not go away. My mind is ever sprinkled with star dust from regions beyond, but it is soft and leaves me alone to do my normal life. Yet there is an opening in me through which another kind of light comes in and spreads around, not just my mind but everywhere in my body. It is as if a light has been turned on inside of me. It is light because there are no walls to obstruct it, but it has movement too. My muscles register an activity. It is spacious, giving me a sense of being immortal or eternal.

When the inner presence recedes like the tide of the ocean falling back, I don’t have the visions in the same way as when it is at full flow, so I can carry on my day as normal. But there is a sense of limitlessness around and in me. It whispers around me like specters haunting me with their presence but not interfering. The sea is ever present to those who live by the shore and one smells it, feels its freshness and its breezes on the skin. This was like a sea, full of aliveness and newness, and in spite of myself I smiled a lot. I had a great, awesome, supernatural, out-of-this-world secret inside of me and I didn’t know what to do with it. It was filling me with hope and love and tempting me to come with it and play. It was like a secret lover who remains hidden out of sight but who waits for the next tryst.

Yet I was brimming with a need to know. It wasn’t all roses as I am painting here, though I remember the beauteous part better than the not-so-pleasant. My mind was often in a frenzy, whirling faster than ever, like a pinwheel in a strong wind, trying to figure it out, trying to make sense, trying to balance the craziness. Neurons sputtering and flying in all directions. It was often like being in the middle of a tornado swirling through the house and throwing everything onto the floor in jumbles. I was often unstable but thankfully I had Bob for balance. He was kind and wise and patient, and I held onto him whenever I needed to, like a railing one grabs for support. What was this thing? What was I to do with it? Why me? Where is it taking me? Is it dangerous as Shirley suggested? Should I find a teacher? So many questions and no answers.

Bob and I walked often in the city of San Jose, exploring things. We would drive to the Tico Times office where he delivered his Money Doctor article for the small English-language paper, or go to a store to look at furnishings, or stop at Maynard and Marg’s to visit with them, or to the Mercado to pick up some meat and vegetables. Life was an adventure. Life is not always happy. It has its ups and downs. But our life seemed always to be an adventure. We were in a honeymoon stage, not just with each other but with this new country and its people. Everything we saw was exciting. “Oh, look at that!” And “Oh, look at this cute little restaurant. Let’s come back here for lunch!” And when we came home, Bob insisted we sit down on the sofa and talk to “Mr. Tape”. We recorded everything we did, the feelings we had, the inspirations, thoughts, impressions, we put it all on tape.  “Hello, Mr. Tape,” we would start out, and then tell the story of our day, which was full of discovery.

I wore long dresses for comfort, even in the city. They allowed me to breathe, and when it rained I took my shoes off and walked barefoot down the broken sidewalks. I would notice sometimes that as I walked my fingers were dancing, like a ballet dancer’s. And they sparkled. The energy that was always there just below the surface threatened to break out at any moment and cause me to twirl or shimmy or dance, but I held it in check. I felt it periodically rise to my chest ready to explode into happiness but I was learning to control it. Even now, trying to capture it in words 35 years later, I can still feel the energy wanting to explode everything that is human and break out of this limiting box and dance with the divine. But I was learning to control it.

On this particular day we were walking down a sidewalk among throngs of people and I saw myself in a window, reflecting back my own image. I had on a long orange sun dress that went to my ankles. My hands were stretched out and fingers dancing. My stature was tall with short blond hair. I was a rather strange sight amongst the darker diminutive Costa Rican people who were so sweet and humble in their gentle ways. I had been told that, yes, I looked different but because I was a foreigner I could get away with dressing the way I did. It was acceptable.

Just then we were passing a book store and spontaneously I turned left and went in without thinking. Bob followed me. Without looking around, as if pulled by a magnetic force, I walked down the left-hand isle to the back of the store to a little red book on a shelf about chest high. It seemed to reach out to me. It was small, with a very thin spine, almost lost in the larger books around it. But it was saying to me, “Look at me! Look at me!” And it nearly jumped out of its place and into my hands. It was red all over and in gold letters on the front cover was “Kundalini, an occult experience” by G.S. Arundale. As if in trance I said to Bob, “This book is for me. We have to buy it.”

As soon as we got into the little orange Honda we had purchased upon arriving in Costa Rica, I opened the book excitedly and started reading out loud. Bob, in his usual stoic way, said nothing. He seldom showed what he was thinking. Picking up on his disinterest, my reading turned inward to myself alone. I continued reading all the way home and into the house and on through the afternoon when the rains came. And I learned something. On page 36 the message popped out at me through the lacey filigree of abstract sentences:  

“I wonder whether I ought not to speak of these more definite stages in the growth of Kundalini as the conscious directing of the Force, rather than as an ‘awakening‘. Wherever there is life, there is Kundalini more or less awake, and awakening. But the conscious direction and handling of its power is another matter altogether.”

Running excitedly to Bob I said to him, “It’s all about directing this energy. I have to direct it. I wonder where I should direct it?” And so began an afternoon of mulling over where to direct this energy. What do I want to do with it? Where should it go? Being so caught up in the moment of living life to its fullest, I didn’t have any ambitions. No unfinished business. Nothing I needed to accomplish. This was a dilemma. I had developed myself to be an open channel to the higher forces even before kundalini arrived. So now I am supposed to “aim” it? How could this be? I don’t want to “aim” my life at anything. But this was indeed serious. I had felt the power of the kundalini and  needed to do something with it or it would blow my mind. Indeed the author said as much.

Here I will throw in a few excerpts which I read that day, for they spoke out loud and clear to me.  This little book validated for me not only that the energy was real but there was a historical record of it. Someone else knew about it too. I wasn’t the only person in the world who had this crazy, outlandish, out-of-body experience. The book was copyrighted in 1938 by the Theosophical Publishing House in India. The year I was reading it was 1976, 38 years later and I was 38 years old.  

”It is the Fire of Life and therefore flows through all. But it may flow either as a gentle stream, simply vitalizing, or it may be directed into special channels and become a raging torrent, let us hope subordinated to great purpose so that the raging is a purposeful, disciplined raging, though a raging none the less.”

“It tends to flow along the lines of least resistance, and sometimes such lines may lead downwards and not upwards, with indescribably disastrous effect."

“Nowadays, in the case of many, Kundalini must be developed in the market-places, where the danger is great and not in the forests, where the danger is minimized."

“Can the brain stand the pressure? This is, perhaps, the principal question with regard to the arousing of Kundalini....”

“Are the inner bodies adequately developed and controlled, and is the physical vehicle recovered from such educative misuse as must inevitably have taken place during the long ages of development?”

“It may in fact be a case of the spirit being willing but the flesh being weak, a case of the Ego being ready but the lower bodies being weak, for the reason that the physical body in its existing condition is unable to stand the strain of Kundalini.”

“Hence, the brain is a great danger point, for disaster will be the result of an overstrained brain. The path of occultism, it is said, is strewn with wrecks. I venture to think that the path of the arousing of Kundalini, even if only in the very first stages, is strewn with even more wrecks.”

While the warnings of danger were everywhere present in the book, the looming vastness pulsated physically through me and around me and blotted out the significance of any danger. I was being assured over and over that all is well and on course. So in the soft and gentle easiness of my state of mind, I decided to direct the energy to Bob. It made perfect sense because he had been worried about money. He had been my benefactor, mentor, soul mate, lover and partner and we were linked together as one person, and he had been recently worried about money. He had left his job in Los Angeles when he had had a major heart attack, and while he had a trust fund left by his mother, it wasn’t going to be enough to sustain us for long, and I had no money of my own. Now that I had been told to make a conscious choice, to make a conscious decision to direct the energy somewhere, into something or someone, I decided to direct it to Bob. Simply Bob.

The invisible wheels went into motion the next day. He received a phone call from someone who had read his Money Doctor column in the Tico Times. They wanted an appointment with him to discuss investments in Costa Rica. Apparently the little English-language paper went to 58 countries around the world because it was a neat little tax haven with no extradition laws. I accompanied Bob to the meeting and sat quietly listening. As the group of men talked I was aware of the significance of what was happening. The familiar quickening began all over my body at once and I directed my thought to Bob. Immediately the quickening localized in my right arm which began to quiver. I gripped the arm of the chair in which I sat harder, to prevent its rising and shaking and continued focusing on Bob from my lower regions where I first felt the “click” take place on that first day.

Bob spoke magnificently. There was power in his speaking. He formed a better, more connected “whole” to his presentation, with a sense of integrity and purpose. The potential clients were impressed. They decided to invest their money in Costa Rica. I cannot remember the specific details for I was not interested. I was there merely to support Bob. But what happened after was an explosion of activity into which I was caught like a fly in a web for the next four years. And here I was, deep inside the market place as the author Arundale had said, but with the uncanny presence of other-world dimensions processing me every step of the way. And me not understanding why.

Shortly after that appointment, Bob had several meetings with significant people and became a seat holder on the newly formed Costa Rican stock exchange, the only foreign owner of a seat. He found a Spanish-speaking partner to go into business with him, he had clients with money to buy stocks with, and we found an office for rent over a restaurant down town. We bought several desks, chairs and filing cabinets and moved in. We filed all the right papers with the government, and soon we were in business under our personal corporation called “Bona” for Bob and Nancy. Our lives  changed virtually overnight from a life of easy-going retirement to a frenzied work life, traveling every morning down the mountain to the city and coming home every night frazzled but on a high. It was all part of the adventure.

Here I must stop and gather my thoughts, for the next four years must be carefully handled. I do not want to get caught up in the minutiae of detail. This is a story about the kundalini, not about the outer world. How did kundalini handle me being in the market place? And how did I manage kundalini in the chaos of it all? This is what I seek to address here, so I will search my memory banks for those lucid moments that are indelibly printed within me. These are the moments that shine with a light that pulled me up and out of the mundane. They are significant. They hold valuable information that I want to mine.  The outer world happenings are just shadows of this fantastic journey.

For instance the time Bob and I were driving to San Jose one morning and, just as we stopped at the blinking yellow light to turn left into town, a huge semi truck honked his excruciatingly loud horn as he roared past us and plunged on through the yellow light without stopping. I had already put cotton my ears to try to mute the sounds of the city, but it didn’t do much good. In a split second I was - how can I say this - I was falling off the edge of the Earth into blackness. That’s exactly how it was. I was rolling down the curvature of the planet, which was black enough in its own right but the outer void was even blacker. I screamed, a blood-curdling sound to my own ears, because I knew it was the end for me. The blackness was terrifying. I cannot put into words the bottomless infinite immenseness of nothingness into which I was about to fall and disappear forever.

Suddenly I was pulled back. Someone or something grabbed me and held me from going over the brink into what seemed to be beyond death. I found myself sitting once more in the front seat of the Honda still at the traffic light. Bob was just beginning to pull out into the main road. I sat frozen in shock. My entire body was shaking in a state of recovery from certain death. I couldn’t speak. Eventually, I looked at Bob who hadn‘t seemed to notice and asked, “Did I scream back there?”  

“No,” he said, and I told him what happened. He didn’t say anything.

This experience tells me that there is Someone watching. Someone invisible to me and my senses is definitely watching, for whoever it was reached out and saved me from falling over the edge of, who knows what or where I would have ended up? The brink of sanity is a scary phrase, but I thought it then. Who is it who can reach out and help in such a fashion when nobody else knows there is an emergency and you can’t help yourself?  Who are they? What are they? Why don’t we have more information on this? Why are we left with such a mystery?

                               This is the first 5 chapters of a book. The rest has not been written yet.