THE Luminous Kundalini as the Expanding Luminous Field of Awareness Bringing Forth Sublimination
By Rudolph Bauer, Phd Mon, Nov 29, 2010
Rudolph Bauer,Ph.D. Author, Carol Marcy, Ph.D. Editor
Sublimation is the process of bringing forth the body of light. It is the process of transforming energy or the transmutation of the subtle energy body into the luminous embodiment of the body of light .The praxis of Sublimation is little understood in both western and eastern philosophy’s and psychology’s. The framing of sublimation is often experienced as a form of repression and foreclosure.
The Process
1. Kundalini and sublimation can be understood as a mutually inclusive process by understanding the essential nature of the awareness field as radiance. Radiance becomes embodied in the flesh as the body of light. Radiance arising as kundalini becoming the vajra vase body, which ultimately is the embodiment and expansion of gnosis-direct perception. Manifesting upward through the lower sexual energy centers, and through the doorway of the navel center the body as light becomes explicitly manifested as the luminous energy pierces the cave of the heart essence and infuses the body with heart essence radiance. This luminous infusion expands through the face and crown centers and into the centers beyond the head. This unfolding embodiment of luminous awareness, slowly but surely, brings forth the experience of embodied light, luminous flesh, and brings forth the experience of the nirmanakaya and sambhogakaya dimensions of human awareness. The unfolding and expansion and complete embodiment of the luminous awareness energy is the sublimation process.
Bringing forth luminosity
2. In order to bring forth luminosity, the power of awareness is used to amplify, intensify, minimize or pacify, magnetize and resonate as well as dissolve or metabolize energetic experience. In this manner, the functions of sun and moon, which are the innate functions of luminosity, are brought forth. Within the inner heart essence, the brightness of the light cuts through phenomena and the beneficence of the light soothes and comforts. This light is the glow of compassion, the radiance of compassion.
Metabolizing of energy
3. The unfolding of embodied awareness brings forth embodied consciousness, which is radiant light. There is an unfolding, expanding, amplifying and intensifying of the radiant energetic functions, and a dissolving and metabolizing by the very same luminous energetic functions. In this way, the body of light is constructed and brought forth. In this way the body of light is incarnated. Without practice and the skillful means of maintaining and sustaining the intensity of the unfolding praxis of awareness of awareness the unfolding process can cease and disappear. The action of unconcealment falls back into concealment. The door has opened and now the door has closed.
From energy to light
4. The use of the body metaphor is powerful in that this unfolding takes place within the interior of embodied psyche or psyche/soma continuum. The different locations of the luminous drama are both metaphorical and truly embodied. The embodying of consciousness is within the body of light. The body of light is in fact the human body as the field. The body of the human being is multidimensional, just as the awareness field is multidimensional. The body is the manifestation of the field. The body of light is the body of luminous openness, luminous flesh.
The column of light
5. The expanding awareness will of necessity intensify the primitive sexual energies of the lower sexual center. The kundalini, which is a metaphor for the expanding field, infuses the sexual centers and the sexual centers infuse the kundalini. Charisma is increased. The intensified energy facilitates the upward movement and expansion of luminous energy, which is a source of the embodied column of light. The very intensification of the expanding awareness field within the pelvic bowl and with the corresponding infusion and intensification of sexual energy unifies the bliss of the shakti (luminous energy of awareness field) and the bliss of sexual energy. This further opens up the subtle body system, which penetrates the doorway of the navel. This tan tien (dan tien) point is central both to the upward movement of the expanding awareness field, as well as to the deeply felt grounding of the column of light within the earth element. This column is actually a point of balance and sustaining stability.
The opening of the foundational doorway at the perineum facilitates the grounding of the column of light into the earth element. This opening both grounds the column of light and intensifies the use of the earth element of light for creating the luminous boundary of infused flesh, which is the gnostic body of light. This body is the container of awareness, which becomes luminous flesh or the light containing the light.
Object and instinct and light
6. Psychoanalytically, there is also the necessary and well known fusion of the sexual energy with the various narcissistic objects of desire that are psychologically present in instinctual development and unfoldment. Thus the luminous intensification can greatly intensify the fusion of the experience of desire of the object and sexualization of the object. In the awakening of awareness field there can be the amplification of the erotic fusion of instinct and the objects connected to or within the sexual instinct. There is the drivenness to possess and to be possessed by the object in highly exaggerated ways. Moreover, this exaggeration can fixate the sexualized object of desire as the compulsive object narcissistically organized within the personality. The often drawn existential distinctions between the sexual object of choice, the narcissistic object of choice, and the relational object of choice is of relevance in the sublimation process. The easy fusion (of the sexual energy and the various primitive narcissistic objects) means the relational object of choice and the sexual object of choice may be on two different registers of psyche. In this way sex and love do not meet in the same person. The narcissistic sexualized object and relational object are not necessarily one. Love and sex are easily split, and this split can be fixated by the intensification of the kundalini sexual conjunction. At this level of development love is not yet in the picture. To limit or have limited the unfolding process of awareness at this level can result in a fixated personality where in love and sexuality do not enter oneness. This kind of splitting easily takes place in and through many primitive tantric traditions.
Vortextual spiral
7. It is necessary to understand that this unfolding of the kundalini light is not simply linear as in the climbing up a seven step ladder, but is the manifestation of the vortexual spiral that is at times both ascending and descending as well as expanding and contracting. In a way, the expansion and extension of the field can be both sporadic and quantum, like in the sense of making leaps and bounds or contracting and becoming asleep and unfelt.
Awakening of awareness
8. The phrase, awakened awareness, reflects the action or praxis of becoming aware of awareness. In this meeting of the light meeting the light both from within and without through resonance and empowerment or initiation, the field becomes activated and empowered to expand. The kundalini is awakened into intense resonance both within and without. Functionally resonance is alive both within the body and beyond the body boundaries at the level of the field. The field is being felt, sensed and deepened both within and through otherness. Relational resonance is skillful means for invoking, sustaining and maintaining the unfolding and embodiment of kundalini field of light and energy.
Sixth center
9. Within the lower center of a human being there is a fusion of sexual instinctive energy, desire, and the object of desire. This formulation is well developed in psychoanalytic thinking and the unfolding of instinct and object relations is well articulated. Some say there are three fields of development: Instinctive, object relational, and the narcissistic dimension. Much of intensive psychotherapy and depth psychology focuses on these relational interactions and developmental unfoldments.
The field
10. When awareness is awakened there is a fourth dimension that is activated within human beings. This is the awareness field, which is beginning to expand and infuse the psyche-soma continuum. The kundalini expands. The understanding of the kundalini only as physical energy is misleading and limiting. It is the field unfolding and self- manifesting. Kundalini is a metaphor for consciousness in the embodying process, which involves sublimation and bringing forth the light. In the beginning of the awakening process the expression of the kundalini or the field’s expansion may be felt as energy. As transmutation unfolds, the energetic dimension reveals its innermost luminosity and radiance.
Sexual energy and kundalini co-joined
11. This dramatically emphasized energy is in the pelvic bowl or second chakra. There is a great intensification of energy because of the conjuntio of the sexual energy and the kundalini or the awareness fields expanding and connecting with the sexual center. There is mutual contact and mutual infusion. This intensification can greatly organize the personality and even create fixation where, in the field, the sexual energy and the desire for the object are compelling and compulsive. The kundalini is not essentially sexual energy, but it is the awareness field manifesting in various locations within the human body.
Ascending and descending
12. The very intensity of the energy field facilitates the movement of the field both in the extension into the earth element, which creates the grounding of the column, and the extension of the field both as an ascending column of energy becoming light and a horizontal resonance and extension into the immediacy of the world.
Tan tien doorway
13. The dilemma is that the conjunction must move through the tan tien (dan tien) and through the navel area into the solar plexus. This expansion can be sporadic and intense. This expansion can be blocked both by repression and dissociation as well an unbound impulsiveness that highly accentuates the sexual narcissistic narrative. Both containment and contraction are too much and too overwhelming. This can create difficulties for the opening of the doorway and entering through the doorway of the navel. Energy cannot easily come through the central channel and may become reoriented and reorganized through preoccupation with fantasy and fantasy narratives. And so the energy moves through side pathways that take the person into phantasmagoria which ultimately infuse fantasy elaboration and weaken the praxis of the embodiment of luminosity. So the person begins to live in the erotic dream. Dissociated and disembodied.
The freedom of choice
14. When sexual energy and desire of the object move through the navel area into the solar plexus, there is a dramatic shift in the person. The field and sexual energy may be in conjuntio but the function of desire for the object, the possession of the object and being possessed by the object is differentiated from the field energy mix. This co-joining (field and sexual energies) facilitates a sense of an alive erotic self that is not a function of desire. In this way a resonance is sustained and maintained intrinsically. There is support that is not a function of desire or of being desired. This support frees the narcissistic component of personality and expands the range of choice. In a word, chemistry, or earlier object, and narcissistic object formation have less influence. One actually begins to feel the freedom from the sexualized object of desire both in character and body form. This movement especially frees one from earlier sexualized infantile and preconceptual organization as well as classical oedipal configurations of premature sexualization of and by parental and narcissistic objects of desire. This frees one from the history of being sexually desired too soon and sexually fixated in early instinctual configurations.
Practices and praxis
15. When the sexual component in the solar plexus is becoming contained and assimilated into the field of embodied awareness, the sense of drivenness is less apparent and preoccupying. There are many practices that include experiencing the full impact of the combined energies without going into a fantasy, or imaginative, narrative. The very intensity opens and expands the bodily container.
Doorway of heart
16. As the next doorway begins to open and be opened, the ascending and expanding field of the kundalini awareness begins to enter into and through the doorway of the heart. In this phase, the gross energy of the field becomes more refined, sublimated and illuminated. The heart essence is the opening of the heart. The ascending energy moves through the heart, bringing forth the vase body, luminous flesh. The light radiates out and within the body. Luminosity begins to be felt, sensed, and known. The gatri channels are opened as the energy moves from the heart through the eyes and through the brahmarandhra channel to the top of the head. Thus the column of light now begins to take its true form both vertically and horizontally. Thus, the column of light now begins to take its spherical from of ascendance and relationalness.
17. In truth the sublimation, or the bringing forth the body of light, is now in full form and unfolding.
Love as purity of the beingness of being
18. As the energy of the field becomes the heart essence, the sexual energy and energy of the field are no longer felt in conjuntio. The luminous heart essence assimilates and metabolizes the sexual energy, thus bringing forth a refined luminosity without desire or sexual gravitas. The word kadag (primordial purity) appears as the essential purity of the felt and perceived field. This purity reflects the luminosity, spaciousness and unfixatedness of the experiential field. The innermost state of love arises and expands. True love awakens within this center, and the resonance of love brings forth love.
Healing dimension
19. The healing dimension also arises in full manifestation. As the field deepens in intensity and breadth, the field begins not only to arise in ones self, but also is more easily brought forth in others. One begins to experience the field both in one’s self and in others. As the field is held in intensity and in relaxation without effort or drivenness, the field begins to be sensed and the manifestation of the great perfection of love becomes more unbound in the physical world. The divinity of appearance becomes more manifest.
The vase and the container of light
20. During this phase of the opening of the vase body, the body of light forms and is a container of light for the light. This creates both a protection of luminous flesh and bliss as well as a support for a more effortless sustaining of the field.
Earth and sky
21. The column of light becomes embodied both vertically and horizontally. The depth of the extension through the perineum not only grounds the field in the earth element, but also the earth element facilitates the creation of the vase body. The ascending light becomes both stronger and higher into the sky. Sky and earth meet within the human heart. The experience of direct perception becomes more apparent and refined. Direct perception does not mean mind reading, but rather the sense of the light being experienced directly within one’s self and others.
Luminous flesh
22. This embodiment of light brings forth a sense of blissfulness both within and surrounding the body. There is an enhanced sense of the sensuousness of luminous flesh. The world is of course not as sexualized and yet the world is completely sensuous, luminously sensuous in that all bodies seem aesthetically pleasing and resonating. The more embodied the light is, the sense of the beautiful and sensual increases to a more expanding and unbounded manner.
The kayas self manifestation
23. As the body of light is embodied, the nature of the kayas begins to reveal itself not only as nirmanakaya, but also as sambhogakaya. The sense of divinity and areas of divinization of the luminous power cosmologically manifest as the human being in the most natural sense. This capacity to enter the sambhogakaya dimension greatly activates the deeper healing dimensions of the awareness field, so that the bringing forth of the field in another is more easily experienced. The archetypical powers and qualities become more accessible, more manifest and more embodied.
24. The capacity of falling into dharmakaya as the unbound, formless spaciousness of oneness is greatly enhanced. Potential is known without thought or image in this non- dual oneness of vast potential primordial space. Healing from within this dimension is beyond form and is within this sphere of potential manifestation.
Mastery
As the body of light is informed and formed, sexual mastery becomes possible in that within the body of light, the object of desire and the activation of desire becomes a function of choice and intentionality. The drivenness of the earlier phases dissolve and one has choice both in regards to the activation of sexuality in the context of the body of light as well as object choice. Thus there is an easy oneness of sexuality and love in conjoinment.
25. All of this self manifestation takes place without being in trance or trance-like states. The experience of absorption is natural and completing embodied and non dissociative. The state of embodied awareness is participatory and not the limited and limiting witness consciousness. Witness consciousness is dissociative and a subtle form of splitting.