consciousness – Demystifying Kundalini

Sun, Quantum Interactions, Living Organisms and Kundalini: A Cyclic View of Karmayoga, Samadhi and Nature

The Sun as a Realm of Extreme Interaction

I began with a simple thought: the Sun is not merely the gravitational hub of the solar system but a tremendous center of physical interaction. Compared with the relatively cool planets, asteroids and other bodies moving around it, the Sun is an extraordinarily energetic environment in which an immense variety of processes are taking place continuously. Nuclear fusion occurs in its core, charged particles interact in its plasma, photons are absorbed, emitted and scattered, atoms and ions are excited and ionized, and electromagnetic and magnetic processes constantly reshape its plasma. In that sense, the Sun can be thought of as a gigantic natural laboratory of nuclear, quantum, atomic, electromagnetic and plasma interactions. This does not mean that every quantum interaction in the universe is centered on the Sun, but it does suggest that the Sun is one of the most intensely active natural environments in our immediate cosmic neighbourhood.

This led me to a more unusual question: why should we not compare the Sun with a living organism? At the ordinary level they seem completely different. One is inorganic and enormously hot, while the other is organic and living. But when we look deeper, both are made of matter governed by the same underlying physical laws. At atomic and quantum levels, both involve particles interacting, exchanging energy, changing states and participating in larger systems. Their mechanisms are not identical, but the basic fact of continuous interaction is common to both. In the Sun, extreme heat, pressure and energy make countless interactions possible; in a living body, enzymes, molecular structures, energy gradients and cellular regulation facilitate and control an enormously complex network of interactions. Heat is not literally the equivalent of an enzyme, because heat mainly increases molecular and particle energies whereas an enzyme is a selective catalyst that lowers an activation barrier and regulates a particular biochemical reaction. Yet the comparison remains meaningful at the level of a system in which energy enables and sustains interaction.

From Chaotic Karmayoga to Stabilization

From here I began to see the quantum particles of the Sun metaphorically as Karmayogis. They are continuously active, continually interacting, moving and transforming in an extremely energetic environment. When matter leaves such extreme conditions and becomes part of a cooler and more stable planet, the same activity is no longer expressed in the same chaotic intensity. Matter becomes comparatively stabilized. I began to see this as somewhat similar to a Karmayogi gradually turning toward sitting Kundalini Yoga. First there is intense activity, then stabilization, then deeper observation and stillness.

In this view, the history of matter can be imagined as a cycle rather than a straight line. In the Sun there is intense interaction, something like a highly active worldly condition. In cooler environments there is increasing stability. On a developed planet, highly organized matter eventually gives rise to living organisms. Life brings back intense activity, but now the activity is far more ordered. This difference between earlier chaotic activity and later organized activity became important to my thought. The earlier activity can be compared symbolically with Karmayoga before the deeper regulating principle has been consciously observed. The later activity, in living organisms, resembles a more orderly worldliness, in which countless processes are coordinated through an extraordinary degree of regulation.

Pure Awareness and the Return to Ordered Action

I then connected this with the yogic cycle that I have experienced and contemplated. A yogi may begin in active worldly life, gradually cultivate observation and regulation, move into Kundalini Yoga and deeper meditation, and eventually enter states of profound stillness such as Samadhi. But Samadhi does not necessarily mean permanent abandonment of activity. Activity can return. What changes is the quality of that activity. After the regulating principle has been seen directly, worldly action can become more orderly, less chaotic and less dominated by unconscious reaction.

This is why I found a parallel between cosmic activity and yogic development. In my interpretation, the particles are not being said to feel or think like human beings. I am not proposing that an electron experiences pure awareness, performs Karmayoga or enters Samadhi. The comparison is based on observable or structural behaviour rather than on claiming identical inner experience. A particle undergoes interactions, energy exchange, transitions and stabilization; a human being experiences action, mental movement, regulation, stillness and renewed action. The inner reality may be completely different, while the pattern of movement can still appear similar. The important distinction is therefore between similarity of pattern and similarity of consciousness.

The Universe as a Cycle or Chakra

This made the idea of the chakra especially meaningful to me. Reality appears less like a straight road and more like a wheel: interaction leads toward stabilization, stabilization allows deeper organization, deeper organization gives rise to more sophisticated activity, and activity can again move toward stillness and observation. The yogi experiences such movement inwardly, while nature displays comparable cycles outwardly. In the yogic case, however, the cycle becomes consciously observed.

This is also why I related the idea to the Dharma Chakra of Buddhism. A wheel suggests continuous movement rather than a final linear endpoint. Stillness and activity are not necessarily enemies. One may move from action to stillness and then return to action at another level. The return is not simply a repetition of the beginning; it can be a return informed by what was discovered in stillness.

Sun Worship, Karmayoga and the Living Body

From this perspective, even ordinary spiritual practices began to acquire a new meaning for me. Giving water to the rising Sun in morning worship can be understood symbolically as aligning oneself with an active, energetic principle. The ritual involves standing, movement, intention and conscious orientation toward light and energy. It can therefore encourage alertness, vitality, gratitude and readiness for action, making it resemble the mental quality of an active Karmayogi. The comparison is not that energy from the Sun’s quantum particles is literally transferred into the worshipper’s mind. Rather, the Sun becomes an object through which a particular quality of consciousness may be cultivated.

By contrast, meditation on simpler and apparently more peaceful objects, such as a stone or a quietly flowing river, may encourage a calmer and more observant state. A stone appears stable even though microscopic interactions continue within it, while a river is continuously moving without displaying the restless complexity of human thought. Contemplating such forms of nature can therefore become a way of cultivating peaceful Yogic awareness. Again, the point is not that the stone’s particles are literally peaceful or that the river transmits a quantum state into the meditator. The object of contemplation acts more like a mirror for the quality of consciousness being cultivated.

Sharirvigyan Darshan provides an especially interesting bridge between the two modes. When the body itself becomes the object of contemplation, one can observe that it is simultaneously intensely active and capable of being observed in stillness. Countless organs, cells, molecules and biochemical reactions are continuously functioning, while the meditative observer can remain quiet. Thus the living body brings together the two poles of the idea: ceaseless activity and silent awareness.

One Pattern Appearing at Different Levels

My larger intuition, therefore, is not that the Sun, a stone, a living body, a quantum particle and a yogi are literally the same thing. They clearly are not. The Sun is a plasma-filled star, a stone is stable matter, a living body is an extraordinarily organized biological system, and a yogi is a conscious human being. What interests me is that similar patterns may appear at very different levels: interaction, transformation, stabilization, organization, renewed activity and, in the human case, conscious observation of the whole process.

The Sun may represent intense activity; the cool planet, stabilization; life, highly ordered activity; meditation, observation and stillness; Samadhi, profound stabilization; and the return to life, Karmayoga informed by awareness. Seen this way, the universe, the living organism and the yogic journey can all be contemplated as different expressions of a recurring cycle. Nature provides the outer pattern, while Yoga provides the possibility of experiencing such a cycle consciously from within.

Quantum Darshan: From Atmavat Sarvabhuteshu to the Unity of Consciousness

There is a Sanskrit teaching that has suddenly appeared to me in a new light: “Atmavat sarvabhuteshu yah pashyati sa panditah” — one who sees all beings as oneself is truly wise. I have often approached spiritual ideas through direct observation rather than through belief, and this verse now appears to me as one of the deepest philosophical foundations of what I spontaneously call my “Quantum Darshan.” What interests me is not merely its familiar ethical meaning, as though it simply advises us to treat others as we would like to be treated. Its deeper possibility is ontological. It suggests that beneath the apparent multiplicity of individual beings there may be a fundamental commonality of consciousness. In that sense, the verse becomes much more than a moral instruction. It becomes an observation about reality itself: many beings may appear separate at the level of body, mind and personality, while the underlying principle by which experience is known may not be as divided as the external world suggests.

Atmavat Sarvabhuteshu and the Mystery of One Consciousness in Many Beings

This understanding fits closely with the direction of my wider writings on Kundalini, meditation, awareness, non-duality and spiritual psychology. Again and again, my own experience has led me toward a distinction between the changing individual structure and the awareness in which that structure is experienced. Normally, the world encounters consciousness only through its association with a particular body. We therefore naturally think of consciousness as belonging to separate individuals: this person has consciousness, that person has consciousness, and every being appears to have its own isolated center. But when attention turns inward through meditation, this assumption can become less obvious. The body remains, sensations remain, thoughts may remain, but awareness itself can be experienced in a way that seems less restricted by ordinary personal identification. This is also connected with my earlier experiences of deep dhyana, breathlessness, Keval Kumbhak, Savikalpa and the movement toward states I have described in relation to Nirvikalpa. The essential question becomes whether consciousness is truly fragmented or whether fragmentation is largely a feature of embodiment and identification.

It is not limited to living beings but extends to non-living beings as well. All matter, whatever its nature or external appearance, also holds a deeper existence that remains unaffected by its outward form. In casual living, we generally consider outer forms as real, but their inner, deeper and pure existence is their true nature. This is why we speak of Paramatman as Atman present in everything.

Even in Sharirvigyan Darshan, the body’s cells, tissues and structures are contemplated as non-distinct from the meditator’s own sense of being. Quantum Darshan simply extends this inquiry further, to every fundamental particle, and ultimately even to the underlying space in which everything exists. A brick, for example, is not ultimately separate from the soil and material from which it is formed. In the same way, no material form can be considered completely separate from the deeper existence underlying it.

Therefore, there is a reason to regard Sharirvigyan Darshan and Quantum Darshan as practical modern extensions of the ancient insight expressed in the verse, “Atmavat sarvabhuteshu yah pashyati sa panditah.” This does not mean that only when the meditator reaches a purified state of the Self can he meditate on his similarity with the world. The sense of selfhood associated with every thought, emotion, bodily structure and interaction also needs to be included in this inquiry. Every cell and every fundamental particle participates in the innumerable interactions that collectively constitute what we call a human being, just as they participate in the interactions of the wider material world. Thus, the same principle can be followed progressively from the human level to the cellular level, from the cellular level to the quantum level, and ultimately to the very ground of space itself up to fundamental pure existence, extending the contemplative insight from the individual body to everything that exists.

Moreover, atmvat literally means “like oneself,” not “fully oneself.” Different beings and things express consciousness to different degrees, so they are not entirely equal in their expression of consciousness. However, their basic structure and fundamental functions are similar, just as a bus and a car are not equal in size or capacity but share the same basic structural principles and serve similar functions.

From Kundalini Experience to a Quantum-Like Vision

My use of the word “Quantum” is therefore philosophical rather than a claim that ancient scripture has scientifically proved modern quantum mechanics. I am not presenting Kundalini or this Sanskrit verse as experimental evidence from physics. Rather, I find that some modern scientific ideas provide a useful language for expressing an intuition that arose independently through contemplation and experience. In my spontaneous formulation, the sequence is simple: one underlying consciousness, apparently expressed through many observers, each associated with a separate body and mind. The multiplicity is real at the empirical level, but perhaps not final at the deepest level of awareness. This is where the phrase “Atmavat sarvabhuteshu” becomes especially powerful. To see all beings as oneself can mean not merely developing sympathy toward them, but recognizing a deeper continuity of being. The individual remains individual in practical life, yet the ultimate subjectivity behind experience may be understood as less divided than the personalities through which it appears.

I even feel that this verse is the core of every secret of spiritual development. Without this understanding, there can be no real spiritual development, while with it, spiritual development can continue in every condition of life. It gives a direction in which every experience and every condition can become part of spiritual development. However, one still has to do good karmas, because the fruits of karmas are inevitable and have to be tolerated when they come. Spiritual understanding does not make one free from the fruits of one’s actions; therefore, good karmas remain necessary while progressing on the spiritual path.

I feel that my first awakening came through this verse, which entered my life naturally through a Sanatana family environment. My second awakening came through the same verse again, but this time in a completely different and unexpected form, disguised as Sharirvigyan Darshan and later as Quantum Darshan. The outer forms were different, but I now feel that the underlying insight was the same. This is what makes the mahima of this verse indescribable and apparently infinite to me.
Because of this personal experience, I find it difficult to compare this verse with other mantras or spiritual teachings, even with Gayatri Mantra. To me, it stands at the top of everything that existed, exists, or will exist. This is not a claim that others must accept, nor do I intend to diminish the importance of other mantras or paths. It is simply how the verse has revealed itself through my own life and spiritual development. Others may experience another mantra or teaching as supreme, and I have no doubt about that. For me, however, the same simple insight has appeared again and again in different forms, first through my family environment and later through my own contemplative discoveries, making me feel that its depth is far beyond what I had understood when I first encountered it.

The amazing thing is that it does not say that the Atma, or pure Self, is similar to everything, as many religions and sects do. Such an idea can become impractical because one cannot live ordinary worldly life while constantly remaining established in the pure Self. Instead, it says atmavat—whatever self-status you actually have is similar to everything. This makes the teaching practical, workable, and effective in ordinary worldly life. Interestingly, the same core message is carried by both of my nondual philosophies as their very foundation—not deliberately or intellectually, but through experiential understanding alone.

The beauty is that ātmavat does not necessarily point to an abstract, pure Ātma that no one can ordinarily observe; with paśyati, it can point to the self as actually experienced—whatever self-status one inhabits. Thus, instead of merely saying “the Ātma is in all,” it offers a practical principle: see others as you see yourself, making nonduality workable in ordinary life.

Had the intended meaning been the pure Ātma itself, the expression could have used ātmanam in an appropriate grammatical construction; the use of ātmavat instead emphasizes “like oneself” or “as oneself.”

On final analysis, the single reason for the principle’s practical ineffectiveness appears to be that people first try to experience the pure Self and then meditate on making that Self similar to everything. But the principle seems to work in the opposite direction: the pure Self cannot be approached experientially without first meditating on the similarity between oneself and everything outside. That “oneself” is not the yet-unexperienced pure Self, but the experiential self-status—the gross self containing all the thoughts, actions, emotions, sensory feelings, and other experiences present at a particular time. If one has already attained the pure Self, why would one need to meditate on making it similar to everything, when nothing other than the pure Self is then experienced? Thus, ātmavat points more naturally to this experiential self-status rather than the pure Self, making the principle practical and workable in ordinary life.

The Core of Quantum Darshan

Seen in this way, the Sanskrit verse becomes a remarkably concise starting point for the whole inquiry. “Atmavat sarvabhuteshu” begins with the perception that the self seen within oneself is not fundamentally absent from other beings. From there, the question naturally expands: if consciousness is experienced as the subject here, what exactly makes it fundamentally different there? Individual bodies, memories, personalities, nervous systems and life histories clearly differ, yet the bare fact of awareness presents a deeper philosophical puzzle. My Quantum Darshan or earlier sharirvigyan darshan grows spontaneously from this tension between apparent multiplicity and possible underlying unity. It does not claim to have converted spirituality into physics. It attempts something more modest and, to me, more meaningful: to place direct meditation experience, ancient symbolic wisdom, non-duality and contemporary scientific thinking into one field of inquiry without forcing any of them to become something they are not. The Sanskrit sages expressed the insight in the language of the self and all beings; my own experiences have led me to approach the same mystery through looking at similarity between scince and spirituality.

Why Puranic Stories Have Endless Layers of Spiritual Meaning

The Many Layers of a Puranic Story

Puranic stories are amazing psychology because they can benefit almost every kind of reader, even when different readers understand completely different things from the same story. I have been thinking particularly about the stories of Ganga and how they seem to work at many levels at once. A child may simply enjoy them as wonderful fictional stories filled with extraordinary events, characters, imagination and adventure. There is no need for the child to understand philosophy or yoga for the story to give joy. As the same person grows older, however, the story can begin to provide moral, social, cultural, devotional and spiritual meaning. The remarkable thing is that discovering a deeper meaning does not make the earlier meaning useless. The story can continue to operate at several levels simultaneously. Thus in a way these stories are wonderful spiritual sanskar builders since the childhood so that yoga doesn’t look strange in later life but well known since quite earlier. Ganga story is just one example among plethora of such awe inspiring stories.

Ganga as Nature Worship and Spiritual Practice

The first important layer I see is the nature-worshipping layer. A person who does not understand yoga or symbolism may simply regard the physical Ganga as sacred. He worships the river, respects it, visits it and develops reverence toward nature. In this sense, he may unknowingly participate in something close to a nondual spiritual attitude: nature is not treated merely as an object outside oneself but as something worthy of sacred recognition. He does not need to intellectually understand nonduality or quantum philosophy for this attitude to influence him. By regarding the natural world as sacred, he is indirectly prepared for a more spiritual relationship with existence.

This is especially interesting because the Puranic tradition repeatedly gives sacred significance to rivers, mountains, forests, animals and other aspects of nature. The ordinary person therefore receives a spiritual orientation through something immediately accessible. Spirituality does not have to begin with an abstract philosophical concept. It can begin with a river.

The Same Ganga as a Yogic Symbol

At another level, the same Ganga story can be approached by a yogi. The river can be understood symbolically as an inner current, and its descent, flow and relationship with Shiva can be contemplated as representations of an inner spiritual process. In my own way of looking at Kundalini and yoga, such imagery can be related to the movement of consciousness and the Sushumna. The physical river remains a real river, but it can simultaneously become an inner map. Although inside is same as outside like microcosm inside macrocosm. So Ganga as sushumna also give similar nonduality effect when revered. Additionally it gives direct yoga benefit too. Together, Nonduality and yoga lives together in cause and effect relationship.

This makes me wonder whether nature worship and yogic symbolism are not accidental additions but two especially important layers of Puranic storytelling. Both belong to major spiritual domains, and the Puranas are known primarily for dealing with religious and spiritual subjects, although they also cover cosmology, mythology, ethics, ritual, sacred geography, devotion and social life. The possibility therefore arises that the stories were designed to communicate spirituality through forms that could be understood at very different levels. I would not claim that every particular yogic correspondence was consciously encoded by an original storyteller without textual evidence, but the structure certainly allows such a reading.

The Social and Behavioral Education Hidden in the Story

The same narrative can also work at a social and behavioral level. A woman reading a revered female figure may find respect for womanhood and may receive an example of qualities considered admirable, such as courage, dignity, devotion, responsibility, compassion or strength. A man may receive another kind of lesson. Seeing a feminine figure treated with reverence can encourage him to understand that externally visible physical strength does not determine human worth. A woman’s lesser average physical strength cannot become a justification for domination, humiliation or mistreatment.

The story therefore does not have to be understood as a yogic text to influence conduct. Someone interested only in ordinary human behavior can still receive ethical education from it. The important point is not that every person must literally imitate every action of a mythological character, but that the narrative can provide models from which people draw principles appropriate to their lives.

From Childhood Imagination to Yoga

This suggests a gradual ladder of reception. A child enters through imagination and fictional joy. An ordinary adult may receive moral and cultural instruction. A person concerned with social behavior may learn respect, duty and appropriate conduct. A devotee may develop reverence for the sacred. A nature-oriented person may learn to see the natural world as worthy of respect. A spiritual seeker may discover symbolic and psychological meanings. A yogi may recognize an inner map involving consciousness, prana, chakras or Sushumna. A deeper contemplative may eventually use the same imagery in nondual contemplation. Although all these steps of ladder complement each other beautifully.

One possible limitation, especially in the modern context, is that a person may become too fascinated by the miracles, supernatural events and extraordinary fictional world of Puranic stories. Instead of using the stories as symbolic, devotional or ethical pathways, some readers may begin to take every extraordinary element literally. In a modern life that depends heavily on practical reasoning, scientific understanding and evidence-based thinking, this could sometimes create tension with a person’s ordinary intellectual and practical outlook. This does not mean that Puranic stories necessarily produce such an effect, nor that everyone is affected by them. For many people, the imaginative and miraculous elements may remain simply part of the storytelling tradition while the deeper values are retained. The concern is that, for some readers, excessive attachment to the supernatural surface may overshadow the symbolic and practical dimensions of the stories, at least to some degree. In earlier traditional societies, where religious, mythological and everyday life were much more closely integrated, the same tension may not have appeared in the same form. Modern readers, however, live simultaneously in a scientific, technological and highly practical world, so maintaining a distinction between symbolic mythology and empirical fact can sometimes be important. The challenge, therefore, is not necessarily to reject the miraculous dimension of Puranic storytelling, but to allow imagination and spirituality to coexist with scientific reasoning and practical life.

These layers need not replace one another. A child who once enjoyed the story can later discover its moral meaning, then its devotional meaning, and perhaps much later its yogic significance. The story grows with the reader.

Why the Layers May Be Practically Endless

I think the layers can go almost endlessly. This does not necessarily mean that every possible interpretation was deliberately placed inside the story by its original composer. Rather, a rich symbolic narrative can interact with different ages, personalities, life situations and levels of understanding, producing new meaningful readings. Its depth is therefore not exhausted when one hidden meaning is discovered.

Perhaps this is one of the great strengths of Puranic storytelling. The story does not demand that everyone understand spirituality in the same language. The child receives wonder; the ordinary person receives values; the devotee receives sacredness; the nature-lover receives reverence for the world; the socially oriented person receives behavioral lessons; and the yogi can discover an inner spiritual map. The same narrative can entertain, educate, shape behavior, cultivate devotion and prepare consciousness for yoga.

The Outer River and the Inner River

The Ganga example brings the whole idea together for me. The outer Ganga can remain an actual physical river and at the same time become sacred nature, an object of devotion, a cultural symbol and an inner yogic metaphor. The ordinary worshipper does not need to know the yogic interpretation for the practice to have value. The yogi does not need to reject the physical river after discovering the inner meaning.

Perhaps this is the deeper genius of Puranic storytelling: it gives spirituality an outer form that almost anyone can approach while leaving room for an inner meaning that can unfold progressively. Nature can be sacred outside, while the same sacred geography can become yoga within. What begins for one person as a child’s wonderful story can become for another a moral education, for another a way of relating to nature, for another a devotional practice, and finally for a yogi a doorway into the mystery of consciousness.

How Ancient Yogis and Celestial Vehicles Flew: The Mystery of Breathless Dhyana

Deep Dhyana as an Experience of Flight

Deep dhyana can sometimes feel surprisingly similar to flying high into the open sky. The experience is not simply one of sitting quietly with closed eyes. As meditation deepens, awareness can seem to move away from its ordinary ground of bodily sensation, familiar thoughts, and the gross world, creating a feeling of rising upward into an entirely different space. The comparison with an aeroplane came naturally to me because both experiences seem to involve a struggle between a downward pull and an upward movement. In an aeroplane, gravity continuously pulls the aircraft toward the earth, while lift generated by the wings counteracts that downward force and allows the plane to rise. In deep meditation, breathing can be experienced in a somewhat similar symbolic way: ordinary breathing seems to keep consciousness closely connected with the body, thoughts, sensations, and the surrounding physical world, almost like gravity keeping the aircraft grounded.

Breathlessness as Inner Lift

As dhyana becomes deeper and the breath becomes extremely subtle or appears to halt, that ordinary anchoring seems to weaken. Breathlessness then feels less like a mere absence of breathing and more like the generation of an inner lift. Just as lift allows an aeroplane to overcome gravity and rise, the cessation or profound stilling of breath can feel as though consciousness is no longer being held down by its usual connection with bodily and worldly awareness. The experience can become like entering deep space, where the familiar gross world is no longer prominent and even the ordinary stream of thoughts related to that world can disappear. This should be understood as an experiential analogy rather than a claim that breath literally produces a physical force that lifts consciousness. What matters is the striking similarity in how the transition is actually felt.

The Tug of War Between Downward and Upward Pulls

At certain stages, a distinct tug of war can be sensed between these two tendencies. One pull seems to draw awareness downward toward the body, breathing, thoughts, and ordinary identity, while another seems to draw it upward toward stillness, expansion, and deeper absorption. This gives the meditation a dynamic quality even when the body itself is almost motionless. The contrast can be especially clear when the mind has become quiet but some subtle bodily anchoring remains. The deeper movement then seems to involve gradually loosening that anchoring until awareness can remain in a state that feels much less connected with ordinary physical and mental experience.

The Hum of the Engine and the Sound of Prana

Another part of the analogy comes from sound. An aeroplane has a continuous engine sound during flight, together with a subtle vibration running through the aircraft. During deep dhyana, an internal hum or continuous subtle sound may similarly be noticed. In yogic language, such inner sound may be described in terms of prana-nada or anahata nada. Along with the sound, a fine internal vibration can sometimes be felt. The comparison is not that the two sounds are physically identical, but that both experiences can provide a continuous background sensation accompanying movement or sustained stability. The aircraft seems to fly within its engine’s hum and vibration; meditation can seem to deepen within a comparable field of inner sound and subtle vibration.

Emerging from Dhyana Feels Like Landing

The analogy becomes even more meaningful when meditation ends. A plane descending from great altitude does not usually return to the ground in a single instant. Its descent is gradual, followed by approach and landing. Deep dhyana can feel similar. Coming out of profound absorption may happen slowly, with awareness returning first to a subtle sense of individuality or bodily presence, then to more recognizable sensations and thoughts, and finally to the ordinary environment. The gradual character of this return is one reason the experience can feel like a real journey rather than simply a temporary closing of the eyes. One seems to descend from a subtler inner space back into the familiar ground of everyday consciousness.

Why Ancient Yogic Imagery of Flight Is Interesting

This experience also gives a new way of looking at ancient yogic imagery. Yogis are sometimes depicted as flying, rising, or moving through the sky, while traditional scriptures contain descriptions of aerial vehicles and extraordinary forms of movement through space. Such imagery can be approached in more than one way. It may have been intended literally, symbolically, or through a mixture of historical belief and spiritual metaphor. There is no need to decide that question merely from the meditation experience. Yet the experiential parallel is interesting: when consciousness seems to rise beyond its normal bodily and mental ground, the language of flight becomes a natural image for describing it. What was once expressed through the image of ascending into the sky may also be understood as an attempt to describe a profound inward movement that ordinary language finds difficult to capture.

It is difficult for ordinary people to imagine consciousness existing independently of the body, let alone consciousness itself flying freely through space. This may be one reason why celestial vehicles were described in the form of flying rathas or chariots. In the scriptures, the ratha is often used symbolically to represent the body: the horses represent the senses that draw it, the charioteer represents the intellect that guides it, and the traveller seated in the ratha represents the soul or consciousness inhabiting the body. Since consciousness is normally perceived by the world only through its association with the body, the idea of consciousness flying beyond the body could naturally be represented as a flying ratha, with consciousness imagined as a celestial being travelling upon it. In this sense, the celestial vehicle may be understood as a symbolic image of the journey of consciousness beyond its ordinary bodily ground.

From Grounded Awareness to Inner Space

The central insight of this whole experience is therefore not simply that breathlessness feels unusual. It is that breathing, stillness, bodily anchoring, thought, inner sound, vibration, ascent, and return can appear as parts of one continuous process. Ordinary breathing seems to belong to grounded embodied awareness; deepening stillness feels like the generation of lift; the silent or nearly breathless state resembles entering inner space; the conflict between grounding and ascent is felt as a tug of war; the inner hum and vibration accompany the journey; and emergence from dhyana resembles a gradual landing. Whether one interprets this entirely psychologically, physiologically, spiritually, or through a combination of these perspectives, the analogy provides a simple way to describe something difficult to explain directly: deep meditation can feel not like remaining in one place, but like leaving the ordinary ground of consciousness and gradually returning from a vast inner sky.

Kundalini Yoga, Muladhara and the Natural Path from Sexual Energy to Spiritual Awakening

Muladhara, Reproductive Energy and the Purpose of Nature

I have been looking at Kundalini not simply as a mystical idea, but as a natural process of consciousness, and this has led me to a different understanding of why Kundalini Shakti is traditionally associated with Muladhara and described in the form of a powerful Goddess. It is not that every function of the body becomes enhanced when energy rises from Muladhara. Rather, brain is energised to produce a type of addictive bliss and awareness that propels one to raise the muladhara energy up through the spine. And the easiest and most effective way to do it practically is the reproduction itself. Thus the nature has already placed an exceptionally powerful mechanism at the foundation of embodied life: the reproductive impulse. Attraction, sexual desire, pleasure, bonding and reproduction are powerful enough to draw attention almost completely toward another person and toward the continuation of life. In biological terms, this serves procreation and the continuation of the species. But perhaps the same intensity can also become relevant to spiritual awakening when it is consciously witnessed rather than merely followed.

Sexual Attraction as a Powerful Activation of Muladhara

This makes the traditional image of the Goddess in Muladhara interesting to me. It’s called muladhara-vasini means one residing at muladhara. “residing” and “activating” are not two separate ideas in this interpretation. If the Goddess is said to reside in Muladhara, her presence itself signifies that Muladhara is alive, activated, and functioning through her Shakti. It is directly stated in the scriptures that the Goddess resides in Muladhara. I think this can also be understood to mean that the Goddess activates Muladhara. In this sense, the two ideas are essentially the same: when someone truly resides in a house, the house becomes inhabited, active, polished , washed and groomed through their presence. Likewise, the Goddess residing in Muladhara can signify the activation of the power lying dormant there. The Goddess is represented in feminine form, and there is an obvious experiential dimension to the way the feminine can activate the reproductive centre of the male. I do not see this as two completely different mechanisms, one sexual and another yogic. The underlying principle is the same. The direct attraction between man and woman can activate a deeply rooted life-force, while Kundalini Yoga may approach that same force through meditation, visualization, pranayama, mantra, devotion and other more conceptual or religious means. Tantra, in comparison, can approach the same principle more directly and in a comparatively raw form. The difference, therefore, may be in the method of activation and direction rather than in the fundamental energy itself.

However, in female it may be god residing in muladhara. So it’s not like the shakti is male or female look. It can have any look but mainly it’s given female look as mostly males used to do kundalini yoga like babas,yogis etc. Second reason is attraction. As female produce more attraction through her clean appearance and voice and many other qualities so kundalini have been given feminine form.

Nature’s Bait and the Moment of Thoughtless Bliss

This also gives a different meaning to the idea that nature has provided sexual pleasure as a kind of bait. The immediate purpose of the mechanism is reproduction, but the intensity accompanying it can produce an unusual alteration of attention. Particularly around sexual release, there can be a brief interval in which ordinary thought becomes extremely quiet or disappears for a moment. It can feel deeply relaxing and blissful, with awareness seemingly coming closer to the Self. I would describe this more cautiously as a momentary thoughtless state or a fleeting glimpse of inner stillness rather than automatically calling it Nirvikalpa Samadhi. Nevertheless, the resemblance is philosophically interesting: an ordinary biological process can provide a very brief experience of a mind temporarily free from its usual stream of thoughts and mental activity. The same force can also give rise to Savikalpa Samadhi and sudden awakening.

From Thoughtlessness to Witnessing and Purification

The important point is not that sexual release itself is liberation. Rather, the experience may reveal something about the possibility of stillness. If that brief thoughtless state is consciously recognized, it can become a basis for witnessing. But without knowing oneself, even momentarily, as the pure awareness devoid of thought-forms, how can witnessing truly begin? When a person has become completely identified with thoughts, he does not recognize himself as the witness; he has, in a sense, become the thoughts themselves. The witness can appear only when there is a glimpse of that silent Self which is other than the changing thought-forms. The moment of stillness accompanying sexual release can therefore become significant: in that brief silence, the ordinarily hidden Self may reveal itself as that “other,” the silent awareness from which thoughts can subsequently be witnessed rather than merely lived as oneself. One begins to notice desire, attraction, bodily sensation, thought, pleasure, and release rather than being completely absorbed in them. This witnessing can produce greater mental purification, and with greater purification there can be greater clarity and bliss. Thus, the same powerful impulse that initially pulls consciousness outward can become a doorway through which consciousness learns to turn inward. What nature uses to encourage reproduction may, under conscious observation, become material for spiritual transformation.

The energy stirred up from Muladhara through sexual attraction can also act as powerful fuel for bringing more and more hidden thoughts out of the caves of the subconscious. In this way, it can serve two purposes together: it can provide a glimpse of the silent Self while simultaneously bringing hidden mental patterns to the surface for witnessing and purification. Both functions can be further enhanced through yogic practices, since one cannot depend continually on the energy-draining sexual act for spiritual growth. It can instead be understood as an occasional boost, while yogic practices provide a more sustainable way to cultivate and direct the same force toward spiritual development. However, the individual preference may vary and may depend on one’s stamina, capability, health, work load and time available to him.

Why the Goddess Is Called Powerful

From this perspective, the traditional power attributed to the Goddess becomes easier to understand without reducing the Goddess to merely a religious symbol. The Goddess can represent the fundamental Shakti of embodied life itself, rooted in Muladhara and expressed through survival, reproduction, attraction and the continuity of life. Saying that the Goddess is in Muladhara can therefore be understood as saying that this powerful latent life-force is rooted at the foundation of embodied existence. When that force becomes activated and harmonized, spiritual progress may become possible because the practitioner is working with one of the deepest and strongest movements of human nature rather than with a weak or artificial stimulus.

The expression that the Goddess becomes “happy” can also be understood symbolically. It need not mean merely pleasing a supernatural figure. It can mean that the fundamental Shakti is awakened, activated and brought into conscious alignment instead of remaining confined to unconscious instinctive expression. In that sense, “the Goddess activates Muladhara” becomes a meaningful interpretation of the traditional imagery: the latent power at the root of embodied life becomes active and available for transformation.

Kundalini Yoga as Redirection Rather Than Rejection

This leads to what may be one of the most interesting ways of understanding Kundalini Yoga. It can be seen as a clever natural strategy in which the powerful mechanism associated with procreation is not simply suppressed but redirected toward faster awakening and ultimately liberation. Nature ordinarily directs reproductive energy toward attraction, pleasure and procreation so that life can continue and the world can grow. Yoga investigates whether the same powerful life-force can instead be consciously redirected toward witnessing, purification, stillness and expanded awareness.

Kundalini Yoga may therefore use conceptual, symbolic and religious methods to approach a process that Tantra sometimes approaches more directly through the raw force of sexuality and relationship. There is no need to divide the two into completely unrelated phenomena. They may represent different ways of activating and directing the same underlying life principle. One begins with the natural force itself; the other deliberately trains consciousness to recognize, contain, transform and redirect it.

From Reproductive Impulse to Spiritual Awareness

Seen this way, the movement can be expressed very simply: natural attraction activates a powerful life impulse; the intensity of that impulse gathers attention; intense attention can temporarily quiet ordinary thought; that moment of thoughtlessness can reveal relaxing bliss and a sense of closeness to the Self; conscious witnessing can then transform an instinctive experience into an opportunity for mental purification; and continued purification can support deeper meditation and spiritual awakening. The biological and spiritual dimensions are therefore not necessarily enemies. They can be understood as different expressions or directions of one fundamental life-force.

This does not establish scientifically that Kundalini is a literal energy rising from Muladhara, nor does every sexual experience constitute Samadhi. These are experiential and philosophical interpretations. But they provide a way of looking at the ancient language of Shakti, Goddess, Muladhara, Tantra and Kundalini without separating them artificially from ordinary human life. The central insight is that the very force nature uses to pull consciousness toward procreation may also, when consciously witnessed and transformed, become a doorway through which consciousness discovers stillness, bliss, the witnessing state and eventually the possibility of liberation.

Lastly, the Goddess depicted with many hands, carrying weapons and killing demons, need not be understood as a literal fierce human-like figure. It can be understood as Shakti purifying hidden impurities and ultimately merging them into the Self. This is also how I understand the scriptural imagery in which demons are not necessarily “killed” in the ordinary sense suggested by the stories, but are absorbed or merged by the gods or goddesses into themselves. The apparent destruction of the demons can therefore represent the dissolution and transformation of the inner impurities they symbolize.

Upward Movement, Infinite Sky, Sushumna and Kundalini Awakening

This is an experiential inquiry into a striking observation from my own practice: the same signs that arise through yoga, pranayama and shirshasana—head pressure, an upward movement, freer sushumna flow, subtler breathing and deeper dhyana—can also arise through contemplation alone, by experiencing the Self as Ekarnava, the infinite sky-ocean. What makes this observation particularly interesting is that one route works through the body and breath, while the other works through consciousness and identification. The possibility that both may lead to the same underlying movement of energy is the central discovery explored in this post.

Upward Movement and Spiritual Awakening

Flying, rising, ascending, or moving upward is commonly associated with awakening, Samadhi, Self-realisation, enlightenment, and transcendence. Across spiritual traditions, upward movement often represents a movement beyond ordinary, earth-bound consciousness toward something higher, freer, wider, or divine. This does not mean that every experience of flying or rising proves enlightenment or Samadhi, but the symbolism is remarkably consistent. The direction itself seems to carry a deep spiritual meaning: from limitation toward expansion, from contraction toward freedom, and from ordinary identification toward transcendence.

The same pattern can be noticed in very different traditions. In the caduceus, the ascending serpents culminate in wings, which naturally invites an esoteric interpretation of rising consciousness, although historically the caduceus is associated with Hermes and cannot simply be declared to be a Kundalini symbol. The Emerald Tablet also speaks of ascending from earth to heaven and descending again, with the transforming movement associated with the wind. From a yogic perspective, this can be compared symbolically with prana, although that identification is a comparative interpretation rather than the original historical meaning of the text. Yogic traditions themselves contain much more direct imagery of Kundalini rising, prana moving upward, passage through the chakras and sushumna, and yogis flying or becoming capable of moving through the sky. These different images need not have a single historical origin to reveal a common symbolic pattern of vertical ascent and transcendence.

Why the Divine Is Called the One Above

This also makes expressions such as “Upar Wala,” the One Above, understandable as spiritual symbolism. If upwardness is repeatedly associated with heaven, higher consciousness, transcendence, awakening, and liberation, then “the One Above” can be seen as a simple expression of that ancient metaphor. “Above” need not mean a literal physical location. It can mean beyond ordinary consciousness, beyond ego, beyond limitation, or transcendent to the usual sense of self. At the same time, many mystical traditions ultimately say that the Divine is not merely above but also within. Thus the movement toward what seems higher may finally become a recognition of something that was never truly separate from the deepest Self.

My Experience of the Infinite Sky

My own experience has made this symbolism much more meaningful. I have noticed that when I contemplate the Self as infinite sky often with gaze at Agya chakra, instead of imagining myself as a small individual confined to a particular body and local identity, something changes in meditation. The mind seems less bound to this local identification. There is a feeling of becoming open, vast, and unbounded, as though the sense of self is no longer limited to one point in space. After this contemplation, the sushumna seems to flow more freely upward, accompanied by greater bliss, deeper dhyana, and a more effortless and subtle breath, sometimes approaching a naturally breathless condition. I also experience genuine pressure in the head, but it is not uncomfortable.

What interests me is that the upward movement does not feel like something I am forcing. It seems to become easier when the contraction of local identification is reduced. This suggests to me that the real obstruction may not simply be an energetic obstruction but the mind’s identification with a limited body-mind structure. When the mind is tightly identified with the local self, the flow through the sushumna seems less free. When identification becomes more spacious and unobstructed, the chakras also seem to become less obstructed and the energy flow becomes more natural.

Mind, Chakras, Prana and Sushumna

Within the yogic and tantric model, mind, attention, prana, chakras, and sushumna are closely connected rather than completely separate. My experience leads me to consider whether the state of the mind directly influences how the subtle system is experienced. Local identification seems to contract attention; that contraction may be experienced as restriction in subtle flow; when identification relaxes into an unbounded sense of being, the flow through the central channel seems to become clearer. In this sense, the mind may be directly connected with the chakras, not necessarily because the physical brain is mechanically opening or closing them, but because consciousness, attention, pranic movement, and subtle experience appear to interact within the yogic framework.

This is an interpretation of experience rather than a claim that a physically measurable tube inside the body is literally blocked. “Obstruction” may refer to psychological identification, habitual tendencies, energetic contraction, or a combination of these. What matters to me is the repeatable experiential relationship: greater inner openness seems to coincide with freer upward flow, greater bliss, subtler breathing, and deeper meditation.

Flying, Samadhi and Self-realisation

This also gives a more careful meaning to experiences of flying or upward movement in relation to Savikalpa Samadhi, Nirvikalpa Samadhi, Self-realisation, and enlightenment. Experiences of ascent, expansion, lightness, bliss, inner movement, or flying may accompany deep states of meditation and may be interpreted within a yogic framework as signs of transcendence. But the experience itself does not prove enlightenment, Self-realisation, or even Samadhi. In Savikalpa Samadhi, some subtle distinction between experiencer and experience may remain. In Nirvikalpa Samadhi, ordinary subject-object distinctions are described as falling away, making the language of “I am flying upward” less applicable.

Therefore, there is an important distinction between the experience and its interpretation. “I am flying upward” is an experience within consciousness. The deeper possibility is that even the separate experiencer becomes less distinct. That is much closer to the language traditionally associated with nondual realisation. The upward movement can therefore be understood as a recurring symbol or phenomenological motif of transcendence without making the simplistic equation that flying itself means enlightenment.

From Ascent to Boundlessness

The most interesting part of my experience is that the process does not finally feel like a small self travelling upward into a distant heaven. When I imagine the Self as infinite sky, the local sense of being confined to the body becomes weaker, and the upward movement seems to happen within that very boundlessness. In this way, the old images of wings, rising serpents, flying yogis, Kundalini ascending through the sushumna, heaven above, and the One Above can be understood as different expressions of a broad spiritual language of moving beyond limitation.

My experience does not establish that all these symbols historically mean the same thing, nor that every upward sensation represents enlightenment. But it does suggest a meaningful relationship between expansion of consciousness and the experience of upward flow. When local identification relaxes, the sushumna seems less obstructed, the chakras feel more open, bliss increases, breathing becomes naturally subtler, and dhyana deepens. For me, the important discovery is therefore not simply that “upward” is spiritual, but that when the mind becomes less locally identified and more like infinite sky, the whole inner movement seems to become freer.

A final practical distinction is important: naturally subtle or temporarily imperceptible breathing should not be deliberately forced or held. Likewise, painless head pressure should not automatically be taken as spiritual progress; if it becomes intense, persistent, or accompanied by significant physical or neurological symptoms, it should be treated as a bodily symptom rather than automatically given a spiritual explanation.

The Same Effect from Two Directions: Yoga and the Infinite Sky

A Puzzle About Sushumna, Head Pressure and Deep Dhyana

I think I have finally solved a puzzle that I had been observing in my practice for a long time. Practices such as yoga, pranayama, and even shirshasana can produce a certain pressure in the head, together with a sense of upward movement, freer sushumna flow, subtler breathing, and deeper, sometimes almost breathless, dhyana. What has become especially interesting to me is that a similar effect can arise without these physical practices. When I contemplate Ekarnava, the infinite sky-ocean, and experience the Self as vast and unbounded rather than locally confined to the body, a similar type of head pressure can arise, along with a feeling of upward movement, greater freedom in the sushumna, and deeper dhyana.
This makes me think that whether one holds the ear from one side or the other, the effect may ultimately be the same. In other words, the physical route and the contemplative route may be different means of producing a similar internal result. Yogic body manipulations, pranayama, and inverted postures may influence the system from the bodily side, while deep contemplation may influence it directly through consciousness and attention.

Rajyoga and the Direct Route

This also gives me a possible explanation for why Rajyogis can say that elaborate yogasanas and pranayama are not absolutely necessary for entering deep dhyana. If the essential process is not the physical manipulation itself but the gathering and upward movement of subtle energy, then it may be possible to reach the same state through contemplation alone. The Rajyogi may not need to manipulate the body extensively if the mind can itself become sufficiently concentrated, expanded, and detached from local identification to allow the upward movement through the sushumna.
This direct route may, however, be more difficult. The body can provide a kind of support or preparation, whereas contemplation requires the mind itself to become capable of producing the necessary inward concentration and expansion. Therefore, it seems to me that the two approaches need not be opposed. The physical practices can prepare and organize the system, while contemplation can take the process further without depending entirely on physical manipulation.

Energy Rather Than Pressure Is the Main Thing

This also changes how I understand the head pressure itself. The pressure may not be the actual goal or the essential phenomenon. It may simply be a symptom or indication accompanying the gathering or upward movement of energy. Yogic practices may bring this experience about through physical and respiratory means, while contemplation of the infinite sky-ocean may produce it through a direct change in consciousness and identification.

Therefore, I would not say that head pressure itself is the evidence of progress. The important thing is the underlying process that the pressure may accompany. If there is pressure without the corresponding sense of vitality, clarity, inwardness, or energetic movement, it may simply be a physical ailment and should not automatically be interpreted as spiritual activity. The pressure is secondary; what I call energy is primary in the yogic interpretation.

Energy Everywhere

From this perspective, the idea that energy is present everywhere also becomes important. If the same underlying life-energy can support the functioning of the digestive organs in the gut, it is reasonable within the yogic model to consider that it can also support the functioning of the brain and the processes involved in contemplation. Each organ has its own natural work, and the same underlying energy is involved in sustaining those functions. The difference is in the particular work being performed, not necessarily in the existence of completely separate energies.

This gives a broader meaning to the experience. The energy that supports digestion does not have to be considered fundamentally different from the energy involved in breathing, movement, concentration, or contemplation. It may be understood as one life-energy expressing itself through different organs and functions according to their natural or destined work.

Two Routes, One Inner Movement

My present understanding, therefore, is that yoga, pranayama, shirshasana, and other bodily practices can help gather or redirect the system toward the head and central axis, sometimes producing head pressure and supporting deeper dhyana. But contemplation of Ekarnava, the infinite sky-ocean, can apparently produce a similar movement without the same physical manipulation. By expanding the sense of Self beyond local identification, contemplation itself seems capable of drawing the attention and subtle energy upward, with the same accompanying pressure and deepening of meditation.

This may explain why different yogic paths can arrive at similar states through very different methods. One begins more from the body and breath and moves toward consciousness; another begins directly with consciousness and allows the body and energy to follow. The first may make the process easier for some practitioners, while the second may be more direct but more difficult. For me, the most natural conclusion is not to choose one and reject the other, but to combine them: use yogic practices to prepare and balance the system, and use contemplation to directly expand consciousness and deepen dhyana.

The real discovery for me is that the same inner phenomenon can apparently be approached from two directions. The body can influence the movement of energy toward the head, and consciousness can influence the same movement through contemplation. The head pressure may appear in both cases, but the pressure itself is only a symptom. What matters is the deeper movement of energy, the freeing of the sushumna, the loosening of local identification, and the resulting deepening of dhyana.

Within the yogic framework, this makes the distinction between Hathyoga physical practice and Rajyoga less absolute than it first appears. They may simply be different ways of working with the same underlying relationship between body, breath, mind, prana, energy, and consciousness.

Spiritual Awakening and Self-Realisation: Mental Chaos, Nondual Meditation and Worldly Life

When Inner Calm Suddenly Meets Mental Rush

I have often wondered whether spiritual awakening and self-realisation can ever be accompanied by suicidal thoughts or deep depression. My own understanding became clearer when I looked back at something I experienced during my university days. I had become extremely calm and contained, and I was able to dissolve mental chaos quite easily. The inward movement was becoming natural to me. I was accustomed to silence, observation and the gradual disappearance of disturbing mental movements. Yet, near the end of that period, something unexpected happened. A sudden rush of recognition arose. Profession and family, which appeared to be ordinary parts of life, suddenly seemed to be creating chaos and opposing one another at the same time. It was not simply one particular problem; the whole structure of ordinary life seemed to reveal its contradictions together.
There were actually no clear-cut self-inflicting at that time. Rather, I had become somewhat reluctant about worldly growth. Perhaps this was partly an effect of my nondual philosophy and the way I was working with it. Desires were still there, but they were no longer experienced as cravings. Yet, as I could see in practical life, ordinary desires can be difficult to fulfil unless they become strong cravings in today’s materialistic world. People driven by intense cravings can easily move ahead of those whose desires remain moderate and intellectually restrained. From the outside, therefore, my condition could sometimes look like depression or a lack of ambition. From within, however, it did not necessarily feel like depression. I could feel that, in my own understanding, all was well.
There were also occasions when I realised how easily such a state could be misunderstood by others. Even a casual or playful remark about self-infliction, made perhaps as a kind of warning or expression of frustration, could backfire because people might understand it in a completely different sense from what was intended. That taught me an important practical lesson: never speak casually in such language, because others may attach a meaning to it that is entirely different from one’s own inner meaning. It is also possible that such a condition might have helped me in another way, by bringing more care or attention from people around me. Much depends on the society and the people one lives among. Some societies or individuals may treat a person who appears withdrawn, unsuccessful or vulnerable even more harshly, while others may recognise the difficulty and extend a helping hand. The same outward condition can therefore produce very different consequences depending on how people respond to it.
The experience nevertheless showed me something important. Even a person who has developed considerable inner calm, and perhaps has reached a profound state of awakening or self-realisation, can become temporarily destabilised when an unusually large movement of recognition and mental activity suddenly arises. Inner calm does not automatically mean that one has already learned how to integrate every possible contradiction of ordinary life. That integration may require another kind of training: learning to carry inner freedom into the full complexity of family, profession, desire, responsibility and the material world. Once a person has genuinely experienced and learned to navigate such complexity, it may leave a lasting resilience—perhaps even lifelong—so that the person can remain much less vulnerable to similar disturbances later, even if he eventually steps away from a demanding or struggle-filled life.

In a nutshell, self-inflictive, depressed, frustrated or hopeless moods may arise from unresolved emotions. Awakening and spirituality can help greatly in recognising, processing and resolving these emotions, but they also have their limits. When unresolved emotions accumulate faster than one’s capacity to clear them, the mind can become increasingly burdened and depression may arise. These unresolved emotions leave imprints, or what may be experienced as a kind of darkness over the self, creating a feeling of inner heaviness and even suffocation. In this sense, spiritual practice can help clear the darkness, but when the emotional load becomes greater than the person’s present capacity to process it, even a spiritually inclined person may become temporarily overwhelmed.

I have also observed another tendency in worldly life: a person who carries less mental or emotional baggage may sometimes appear more capable of carrying additional burdens. Others may therefore unconsciously shift some of their own burden onto him, seeking relief for themselves and creating an apparent balance of burdens. But in this process of taking and giving, the extra burden may sometimes become concentrated on the person who was already relatively free. What appears to distribute the burden equally can therefore have the opposite effect, leaving the awakened or inwardly developed person with a load that becomes unexpectedly difficult to lift.

Awakening Does Not Mean That Mental Turbulence Will Never Return

This also changed the way I look at what is sometimes called spiritual purification. Daily cleaning of the mind does not necessarily mean that the mind will become progressively quiet without interruption. Sometimes suppressed thoughts, emotions, memories and contradictions may come into awareness together, often triggered by external conditions. After several calm days, a person may suddenly experience a great rush of thoughts and wonder why everything has become chaotic again. The contrast itself can produce exhaustion, hopelessness, anxiety or even depression-like feelings. But such a phase does not automatically mean that spiritual practice has failed. It can mean that the person has encountered more psychological material than he is presently able to process comfortably.

There is also an important difference between seeing thoughts and being overwhelmed by them. In a stable contemplative process, thoughts may arise without having the same authority over the person. During an overwhelming phase, however, thoughts can become repetitive, emotionally charged and convincing. In such a situation, trying to meditate harder or forcing the mind to become empty may not always help. A Sometimes the better direction is to reduce the intensity of inward practice, return to ordinary activity, maintain sleep and food, walk, remain connected with other people and allow the nervous system to settle. Spiritual practice should not becoms another form of struggle against the mind. For me, a nondual practice such as Sharirvigyan Darshan or Quantum Darshan, applied in practical life, may be one of the easiest and least stressful forms of meditation during such periods. Instead of demanding prolonged inward concentration or withdrawal from ordinary activity, it allows awareness to continue while one is living, working, dealing with family, fulfilling responsibilities and facing the ordinary chaos of life. In this way, meditation becomes less a separate exercise and more a natural way of living.

The Difference Between Spiritual Crisis and Self-Realisation

I do not think suicidal thinking should be regarded as a necessary stage of awakening. A profound spiritual experience can coincide with suicidal thoughts, but that does not make those thoughts a higher spiritual attainment. A person may be undergoing what is sometimes described as a spiritual emergency, where identity, meaning and perception change so rapidly that the psychological system becomes overwhelmed. At the same time, similar experiences can occur with depression, dissociation, mania, psychosis, sleep deprivation or other psychological conditions. Therefore, an extraordinary inner experience should not automatically be interpreted as purely spiritual.

For me, an important point is that realising that the ego is not the ultimate reality does not mean that the body or life should be neglected. Self-realisation is not about destroying ordinary life; it is about changing the way we identify with it. In fact, spirituality can make life more meaningful and stable by giving a person hope, connection and a deeper reason to live. But if spiritual struggle makes a person feel that life has lost all meaning, or that he cannot reconcile his inner experience with ordinary life, it can have the opposite effect. It is also practically clear that spiritual life cannot easily advance without some worldly support. The body needs food, shelter, health, rest and social security, while the mind also needs a reasonably stable environment. Spiritual practice therefore does not exist completely apart from worldly life. Some basic worldly support gives a person the foundation from which deeper spiritual work can continue.

Why an Inward Life Can Become Vulnerable to Sudden Chaos

Looking back, I think there is another important reason why such destabilisation can happen. A person who has become habitual of a very inward and calm life may become highly trained in dealing with mental movements that arise within that controlled environment, but may not be equally trained in living amid external chaos. He may know how to sit quietly, observe thoughts and dissolve inner disturbances, yet have comparatively little experience of simultaneously handling family demands, professional responsibility, friendly chaos, interpersonal conflict, uncertainty and other pressures of ordinary life.

Then, when an extraordinary amount of chaos suddenly arises, the person may be disturbed not because his inner practice was false, but because he had not yet developed enough experience of carrying that inner stability into difficult circumstances. Calmness in the absence of disturbance and stability in the presence of disturbance are related, but they are not exactly the same accomplishment.

Sharirvigyan Darshan as a Bridge Between Inner Life and Ordinary Life

This is where my experience with Sharirvigyan Darshan became important. Instead of trying to escape profession, family, body and ordinary responsibilities, I began living and working according to the principles of Sharirvigyan Darshan. For me, this worked wonderfully. It stabilised me and, surprisingly, did not slow spiritual progress. I felt that the pace of spiritual development became even faster than before, but I also realised that this way of living has its limits. As long as the body has enough energy, one can deploy that energy in both the worldly and spiritual realms together. With advancing age, however, a person naturally has to move more in one direction or the other. Therefore, the spiritual way may gradually become more suitable, although some worldly engagement is still necessary for life. Even then, whatever worldly activity remains can be combined with nondual contemplation, so that the two do not become completely separate.

I think the reason was that ordinary life itself became part of the training. Family, profession, relationships, bodily experiences, desires, responsibilities and social situations were no longer separate from spiritual work. They became the actual environment in which awareness had to function. Instead of learning only how to dissolve mental chaos in a quiet inward state, I was repeatedly exposed to the chaos of life and could use the same understanding to process it.

This creates a kind of training through repeated experience. A person first learns calmness in a quiet environment. Then he learns to retain that calmness while ordinary disturbances occur. With continued experience, he develops confidence that even when something extraordinary happens, mental chaos can arise without necessarily controlling or destroying him. The disturbance becomes familiar rather than frightening.

From Escaping Chaos to Learning How to Dissolve It

This, to me, is perhaps the deeper lesson. The goal is not to create a life in which chaos never appears. Such a life may provide calmness, but it does not necessarily prepare one for the unpredictable intensity of existence. The stronger stability comes when one can remain inwardly centred while life continues to move around him.

Sharirvigyan Darshan, as I experienced it, provided precisely this integration. Instead of separating spiritual life from worldly life, it allowed the two to operate together. I have seen many people leave the material realm in order to become more spiritual, but my approach was almost the opposite: I continued to engage with the material realm while carrying the spiritual realm along with it. I did not see family, profession and worldly responsibilities as obstacles that had to be abandoned. Rather, I tried to bring spiritual understanding into them.

I have seen, for example, a doctor leave his job to become a writer, filmmaker and director around a spiritual figure. My own path was different. I continued with my job while becoming a writer and even got awakening like a spiritual figure. I did not have to leave my professional life for spirituality instead it further grew with this unique nondual philosophy. To me, these things did not appear contradictory. I am not presenting this as an exaggeration or as an achievement to be compared with others; it is simply how I experienced what happened in my own life through this practical philosophy. It may also be that my profession did not carry the same level of responsibility as that of a doctor, whose decisions can sometimes directly affect whether a person lives or dies. Human life is more precious than animal life, and the emotional and moral weight of such responsibility can therefore be much greater. However, I feel that spirituality properly integrated into a physician’s profession should not itself do any harm. If anything, it can strengthen the value placed on human life and make the work more meaningful than when it is approached through purely worldly considerations. If difficulties still arise, they may be due to other factors working together rather than spirituality itself.

Of course, no philosophy or spiritual discipline can make a person completely incapable of being disturbed. Even a highly experienced practitioner can become overwhelmed by sufficiently extreme circumstances. The real achievement is different: disturbance becomes less frightening, less sticky and less capable of reorganising the whole personality around itself.

Thus my earlier experience and my later understanding fit together. I once learned to dissolve mental chaos mainly through inward calmness. Later, by living fully in ordinary life through Sharirvigyan Darshan, I learned something broader: one does not become truly stable by escaping chaos; one becomes stable by becoming experienced in remaining oneself while chaos moves through oneself. Later on, I again shifted from the struggle of active worldly life toward calmer meditation, but now with much better understanding and control. I had already experienced worldly life and its chaos closely, so the inward movement was no longer the same as before. It became a more informed and balanced return to calmness. This may be an important part of the two-way movement between mental purification and worldly engagement, where each strengthens the other and gradually leads toward genuine integration and self-realisation.

Black Hole and the Human Self: Imprints, Detachment, Yoga and Liberation

The idea began with a simple question about black holes: is there any evidence that a black hole disappears more quickly than expected? The answer is that there is still no direct observational proof that an ordinary astrophysical black hole is actually evaporating and dying through Hawking radiation. Hawking evaporation is a theoretical prediction, not yet a practically demonstrated fact for real astronomical black holes. Small black holes are theoretically expected to evaporate much faster as they become smaller and hotter, while large black holes should lose mass so slowly that their lifetimes are enormously longer than the present age of the universe. This distinction between theoretical prediction and practical proof became important for my own intuition. I feel that a black hole should also ultimately die rather than remain forever. Yet I do not mean only the physical black hole. I began to see the black hole as a possible metaphor for something much closer to human existence: the self.

The Human Self as a Structure of Imprints

My intuition is that the human self is not necessarily an independent physical substance. It can be understood as a structure formed from worldly experience, memory, identification, conditioning and repeated psychological impressions. In this sense, the self is built from what it has experienced and retained. It imitates the experienced world through accumulated imprints. The more deeply these experiences are identified with and stored, the more stable and substantial the self appears to become. When the self is strongly imprinted by the gross physical world, the black hole becomes an interesting symbolic comparison: both can be imagined as structures that accumulate and concentrate what enters them. I do not mean that a physical black hole is literally a human self or that modern physics has established a connection between black holes and consciousness. The comparison is philosophical rather than scientific. What interests me is the similarity between accumulation and dissolution.

Imprint Formation and Imprint Dissolution

The self can then be viewed through two opposing processes: the formation of new imprints and the dissolution of previous ones. If imprint formation is greater than imprint dissolution, the accumulated structure of self remains stable or becomes stronger. If both processes are roughly equal, the self remains comparatively stable without major transformation. But when imprint dissolution exceeds imprint formation, the accumulated structure gradually becomes lighter and weaker. This gives a simple way of understanding the movement toward liberation. Liberation, in this framework, is not merely having fewer experiences. It is the reduction of the total accumulation of psychological impressions.

This distinction is important because preventing new impressions and dissolving old impressions are not the same thing. A person may isolate themselves from the world and thereby reduce new imprint formation. Fewer worldly contacts mean fewer opportunities for fresh conditioning. But if previously accumulated impressions are not being dissolved, those old impressions simply remain. Isolation may produce quietness, but quietness by itself is not necessarily liberation. When the person returns to ordinary life, old conditioning may still reactivate. The storehouse has not disappeared merely because nothing new has been added to it.

Detachment as Prevention of New Imprints

There is another way to prevent new imprint formation: remaining in the world while becoming detached from identification. Instead of withdrawing from experience, one continues to live, work, relate and encounter pleasure and pain, but does not allow every experience to become another layer of psychological identity. Pleasure need not become an insistence that it must be repeated. Insult need not become a permanent story of “I was insulted.” Success need not become a definition of “who I am.” Experience can arise and pass without being appropriated. In this sense, isolation reduces the input, whereas detachment reduces the imprinting mechanism itself. The world continues to provide experience, but experience increasingly fails to become new conditioning.

This seems more radical because the world itself becomes the field of practice. One does not need to escape life in order to prevent new imprints; one learns to experience without accumulating identity. Eventually, even deliberate detachment may become unnecessary if witnessing becomes sufficiently established. Experience can simply arise, be known and pass without leaving a strong psychological residue.

Yoga, Samadhi and the Dissolution of Old Imprints

Yet even perfect detachment would not by itself complete the process. If no new impressions are formed while old ones remain untouched, the old structure persists. Therefore something more is required: the dissolution of previously accumulated imprints. This is where practices such as yoga, deep meditation, witnessing and samadhi become important within this model. Existing conditioning is brought into awareness without identification, and through repeated non-attachment its psychological force can gradually diminish. Thus there are really two complementary movements: detachment prevents the creation of new conditioning, while deep yogic practice dissolves conditioning that has already accumulated.

The relationship can be expressed very simply. If imprint formation is greater than dissolution, the self becomes more conditioned. If formation and dissolution balance each other, the self remains relatively stable. If dissolution becomes greater than formation, the total conditioning steadily decreases. The ideal direction is therefore not merely to stop adding new impressions but to allow the old ones to disappear as well. Liberation requires both processes working together: less new imprinting and greater dissolution of existing imprints.

The Self as a Black-Hole Analogy

This is where the black-hole analogy becomes meaningful for me. A black hole can gain mass when matter and energy enter it. It can theoretically lose mass through Hawking radiation. If the inflow is greater than the outflow, the black hole grows. If the outflow eventually becomes greater than the inflow, its mass decreases and it moves toward evaporation. The same pattern can be used metaphorically for the self. New experience identified with becomes new psychological imprint, just as incoming matter adds to a black hole. Witnessing, detachment and deep yogic dissolution act like the opposite movement. If new imprint formation is greater than dissolution, the self grows in psychological density. If dissolution exceeds new imprint formation, the accumulated self becomes progressively lighter.

This also clarifies why simply avoiding the world is insufficient. If matter stops entering a black hole but nothing causes its existing mass to leave, the black hole does not disappear merely because inflow has stopped. Likewise, if new impressions are prevented but old impressions are never dissolved, the self remains. Existing conditioning has to be released. Therefore preventing imprint formation and dissolving previous imprints are not competing methods but complementary necessities within this model.

From Conditioned Self to Unimprinted Awareness

The final possibility is what I would call the unimprinted self. As new imprint formation approaches zero and the existing accumulation continues to dissolve, the self becomes progressively less conditioned. The world may still be experienced, but experiences no longer become deeply embedded as identity. The process can therefore be understood as a gradual movement from a heavily conditioned self toward an increasingly pure and unimprinted state.

There is, however, a deeper question at the end of this process. If all accumulated identification finally dissolves, is what remains really a purified self, or is it awareness without the separate structure that previously called itself “me”? Perhaps the stages are better understood as conditioned self, purified self, and finally the disappearance of the separate self-structure. In that sense, the death of the self is not necessarily the destruction of consciousness. It may mean the dissolution of the structure that had identified consciousness with a personal accumulation of experience.

This gives a simple definition of liberation: not freedom from the world itself, but freedom from the world continually becoming psychological imprint and from those imprints continually becoming self. Experience can continue, but it no longer has to become identity. New accumulation declines while old accumulation dissolves. The self becomes less dense, less reactive and less dependent on what it has stored. Like the black hole in the metaphor, what matters is not merely that something stops entering, but that what has already accumulated is progressively released. In this sense, liberation is the point at which dissolution consistently exceeds accumulation, until the constructed, imprinted self approaches its own disappearance.

Smaller Imprints, Faster Liberation: Why Meditation in Childhood May Matter

There is an interesting parallel between black-hole evaporation and the gradual dissolution of psychological imprints through meditation. A smaller black hole is theoretically expected to evaporate faster as its mass decreases, because its temperature rises and its rate of mass loss increases. In a similar way, it may be possible to think of a meditator as progressing faster toward liberation once the accumulated structure of worldly imprint has already become smaller. This is a philosophical analogy, not an established scientific equivalence, but the parallel is striking.
It may also help explain why meditation is traditionally encouraged from childhood. A child has had less time to accumulate deep worldly conditioning and identification. If meditation, spiritual companionship and a supportive environment begin early, the formation of new impressions may be reduced while existing impressions are comparatively few. In that sense, the inner “mass” that has to be dissolved is smaller from the beginning.
My own experience gives me a personal example of this possibility. Meditation began in my childhood through close association with a spiritual guru and through the environment at home. This early foundation continued to influence me and was followed by an awakening experience during adolescence. Yet complete dissolution did not occur at that stage. The needs and attractions of worldly life continued to create new impressions and prevented the process from reaching its full conclusion.
Traditional accounts sometimes describe exceptionally early liberation. Shukadeva, for example, is portrayed in Indian spiritual tradition as being liberated while still very young. Whether such accounts are taken historically, spiritually or symbolically, they fit naturally into the idea that a person who begins with fewer accumulated worldly impressions may reach deep realization more quickly.
There may also be another important similarity. In black-hole physics, the evaporation rate becomes greater as the black hole becomes smaller. In meditation, once a practitioner has become sufficiently familiar with meditation and a significant portion of accumulated conditioning has already dissolved, progress may also become easier and faster. Earlier experiences of inner clarity can strengthen confidence, reduce fear of the unknown and make deeper meditation more natural. The meditator no longer approaches the process as something completely unfamiliar; familiarity itself becomes a support for further dissolution.
Thus the process may have an accelerating character: less accumulated imprint → easier meditation → greater dissolution → greater confidence → deeper meditation → still less imprint. In this sense, childhood meditation may provide an especially favorable beginning because the psychological structure that has to be dissolved is still comparatively small. The analogy with an evaporating black hole therefore suggests an interesting possibility: as the accumulated imprint becomes smaller, the movement toward complete freedom may itself become progressively faster.

Deep Dhyana, Self-Realization and Nondual Awakening: How Witnessing Dissolves Inner Imprints

Deep Dhyana as a Window into the Actual Self

It seems to me that during deep dhyana we are able to live, even if only temporarily, in the experience of our full structure of self, together with its actual state of development. This is not merely an idea about ourselves or a mental image of who we think we are. It is experienced in a subtler and more essential form. At other times, worldly distractions occupy our attention so completely that this deeper structure is forgotten. We continue to live, act and think, but we remain largely outside our actual form. In this sense, I have described the dhyana state as a kind of window into our real being, and ordinary life outside that window can feel almost like a state of existential death. This does not mean physical death or that the self ceases to exist. It means that the deeper dimension of oneself, which becomes directly accessible in deep dhyana, becomes functionally absent from ordinary awareness.

Why the Ancient Teaching About the World and the Soul Becomes Clear in Experience

This makes me think that what the ancient sages said about the world being different from the soul, and about worldly life making us blind to the soul, may be pointing to an experience rather than merely presenting a strange metaphysical theory. In theory, such statements can easily be misunderstood. They may sound as though the physical world is unreal or that the soul is some mysterious supernatural object hidden somewhere inside us. In practical experience, however, the distinction can become much clearer. The world does not necessarily destroy or remove the soul. Rather, our attention becomes absorbed in sensory experiences, thoughts, desires, reactions, identities, memories and external objects, and therefore we forget the deeper structure of our own being. Dhyana reverses the direction of attention. When the outward movement becomes sufficiently quiet, what was previously obscured can become directly apparent. Thus the contrast is not simply between a false world and a true soul, but between world-directed consciousness in which the self is forgotten and inwardly gathered consciousness in which the self becomes perceptible.

The Soul as the Complete Intrinsic State of Being

I do not see the soul as something special or as an additional supernatural substance added to a person. By soul I mean one’s own complete state of being as it exists in itself, without something foreign being newly added to it from outside. Yet this does not mean that the self is completely devoid of external influences. The self bears the imprints of everything it has experienced. These experiences, however, are not necessarily present within the self in the same gross and differentiated form in which they were originally encountered. Experientially, they may exist in a subtle, consolidated and relatively undifferentiated form. Therefore, the self is not an untouched thing standing apart from all experience. It is a being in which experience has been assimilated into a deeper structure. We can say self gets colored according to what it has experienced till date. In deep breathless dhyana, it is same eternal self but it is not pure rather it is individualised by experiential imprints.

From Gross Experience to Subtle Imprint

This gives a different meaning to the distinction between self and non-self. A gross experience that has not yet become assimilated into the subtle structure of the self can appear foreign or non-self. It is something occurring to us from outside in its gross, differentiated form. When experience becomes imprinted and assimilated, however, it becomes part of our own subtle experiential structure. It is not like something physical adheres to self as nothing can stick to void, the true nature of self. Yes, its experience gets somewhat distorted and this distorsion is according to the extent and nature of the external experiences. It is like a illusion. Just as, after revolving round and round for some time, the world around may seem to revolve for a while when we stop, though the world itself has remained stationary as before, similarly, after prolonged experience of the external world, our own self may appear different and foreign, though in reality it remains the same pure own form as before. The movement can therefore be understood as gross experience becoming an imprint, the imprint becoming subtly consolidated, and the consolidated impression becoming part of the self. In this sense, what is non-self is not necessarily everything that originates outside the body or mind. Rather, it is what has not yet been assimilated into one’s own deeper structure of being or pure self form. Everything we experience is, in some sense, our own self, because we can never experience anything other than what becomes present within the self. No physical thing can literally be attached to the self as something separate and then experienced as part of it. For the self to experience something fully, it has to take the form of that experience itself. Yet this self has become partitioned through experience. When an experience exists only as a mental pattern or as a gross external impression, it is experienced as non-self or as something foreign. But when that experience becomes deeply imprinted and assimilated as a change in the feeling and structure of the self, it is no longer experienced as something separate; it has become the self itself.

This may also explain why, after moderate drinking, a person can sometimes experience a temporary sense of joy or relief, as though the outer distractions have been reduced and one comes closer to a feeling of oneself. But what becomes accessible is not necessarily the pure self; it is still the self carrying all its accumulated imprints. Alcohol may temporarily weaken the ordinary mental activity through which worldly distinctions and distractions are maintained, making the underlying feeling of self seem clearer. Yet it does not remove the imprints. In fact, after heavy worldly involvement, experiences that might otherwise have gradually dissolved through witnessing can become more deeply impressed or carried forward as further conditioning. Thus the temporary relief may give the impression that the road has become clearer, while the underlying burden has not actually been removed. It may simply have been carried forward to be released later. Witnessing, in contrast, allows impressions to arise and dissolve without adding the same kind of further burden, so that the self can gradually become lighter, clearer and less partitioned. Actually, the mental noise that arises after worldliness is there to dissolve the imprint of that worldliness through witnessing. The imprint of worldliness has already been registered on the Self. This mental noise arises as a process through which that imprint can be dissolved, particularly when it is witnessed without interference. It is as though the fresh imprint is still loosely fixed and can therefore be released through awareness and witnessing.

If this mental noise is forcefully suppressed by will, continuously drowned out by further indulgence in the world as a means of forgetting it, or suppressed through the consumption of some substance, the opportunity for its dissolution is prevented. Instead of allowing the freshly formed, loosely fixed imprint to be erased through witnessing, such actions may reinforce or preserve it. With time, the imprint can become more deeply fixed and therefore much more difficult to remove. Daily yoga helps to shed fresh imprints from self as soon as they are formed easily. By this self gradually become lighter, clearer and less partitioned because, as the burden of accumulated imprints is shed, the darkness created by those imprints gradually diminishes. The self becomes clearer and begins to correspond more closely with the shimmering, undivided character of the external world as it is directly experienced. What had seemed divided between self and world becomes less sharply separated, not because the self becomes something new, but because the accumulated obscurations that made it appear separate are gradually released. Once this process reaches its full extent, the separation between self and the experienced world becomes completely nil. There is no longer a sense of the self standing apart from what is experienced. In that moment, there may be a glimpse of nondual awakening—a direct self-realisation in which the self is experienced without the partition that ordinarily separates it from the world. This is not the creation of a new self, but the recognition of the same self after the accumulated imprints and obscurations that made it appear separate have fallen away. However, the glimpse of awakening may fade after a few moments. The self then seems to regain its previous imprinted structure, although often in a somewhat lighter form. In my understanding, the sudden glimpse occurs through a strong upward movement of kundalini, which temporarily breaks through the accumulated structure and reveals the nondual state. But a glimpse is not the same as complete purification. If the self has been accumulating impressions through countless experiences over an enormously long period, their complete dissolution may require decades of meditation and witnessing. Awakening therefore need not be regarded as the end of the journey. It can instead be understood as a road marker: a brief direct glimpse of the destination that confirms what lies beyond the accumulated structure, while the remaining work is the gradual clearing of the imprints that still obscure it.

Witnessing Dhyana and the Release of Worldly Imprints

This also explains what seems to happen during witnessing dhyana. The self contains accumulated impressions, and these impressions can arise into consciousness as thoughts, memories, images, emotions, sensations or impulses. When they arise and are simply witnessed, without identification, fresh attachment or resistance, they can pass away. The self is then no longer continually burdened by them in the same way. Dhyana becomes not merely a method of observing thoughts but a process through which accumulated worldly imprints can gradually be released. With their release comes a sense of becoming clearer, lighter and purer. Purification, in this understanding, does not mean adding something new to the self. It means removing or releasing what has accumulated and obscured the self’s own intrinsic nature.

From Purification to the Pure Self of Liberation

The process can therefore be understood as a gradual movement from worldly experience to subtle imprint, from subtle imprint to witnessed thought or feeling, from witnessing without identification to release, and from release to increasing clarity and lightness. The deeper self does not have to be created through this process. Rather, what obscures it is gradually reduced. This gives liberation a particularly simple meaning: liberation may not be the creation of a new or extraordinary self, but the gradual removal of whatever prevents the already-existing self from being experienced in its own completeness. The final state could therefore be described as the true or pure self of liberation, in which accumulated worldly formations no longer obscure one’s intrinsic being.

The Dhyana Window and the Possibility of Continuous Awareness

Seen this way, the dhyana window may be only the beginning. At first, there may be a strong difference between deep dhyana and ordinary waking life. In dhyana, the deeper structure of being becomes clear, and for some time afterward, as an aftereffect of the practice, accumulated impressions may arise into awareness and be released to dissolve. Outside dhyana, however, worldly impressions and distractions again tend to dominate awareness, covering the deeper structure once more. Repeated witnessing may gradually disburden the self and reduce identification with these formations. The possibility then arises that the clarity experienced inside dhyana can increasingly remain present outside it. This is because shimmering world supports clearer self outside too. Spiritual development would therefore not simply mean repeatedly entering a special meditative state, but gradually carrying the recognition of one’s intrinsic being into ordinary life. The dhyana window could eventually become less of a temporary window and more of a continuous way of being.

This also gives a more precise meaning to the old idea that the world blinds a person to the Self. The problem is not necessarily the existence of the world but our absorption in its gross, differentiated experiences. The self carries the subtle impressions of experience, while ordinary consciousness is continually occupied with the experiences themselves. Deep dhyana allows attention to move beyond this gross level and encounter the subtler structure in which one’s accumulated experience has already been consolidated. Witnessing then allows those formations to arise and pass without renewed identification. Gradually, what remains becomes clearer, lighter and less burdened. Whether this final pure self should be understood metaphysically as an independent spiritual reality is a further philosophical question. The immediate experience, however, is simpler: through deep dhyana, one can experience a dimension of oneself that is normally forgotten, and through sustained witnessing, one may gradually become less obscured by what has accumulated upon it. In this sense, liberation can be understood as not becoming something else, but finally becoming fully present as what one intrinsically is.

What Happens to the Soul After Death? A Dream of Death, Kundalini Yoga, and the Continuity of Spiritual Development

A Dream After the Death of Someone I Knew

A few days ago, a known friend who was also a distant brother took some herbicide and had to be hospitalized for a few days.

I had not met him for years, as I had been living far away from home due to my job and business commitments. When I heard the sad news, I was shocked for a moment. He was such a happy, smiling, and active person. It makes one wonder whether some people manage to hide deep inner depression beneath an outward appearance of happiness and liveliness.

I have now also heard that he had been consuming both cannabis and alcohol, which were reportedly believed to have played a major role in the incident. However being living in spiritual environment and so called high order caste, he also used to go to perform spiritual worships and rituals in people’s homes with other more or less similar team members as part time hobby with little earnings. For one tour of this kind even he was ready but missed due to reluctance of her wife in returning her true home from her maternal home with him where both had gone to celebrate rakshabandhan festival. Was this spiritualism and addiction a lethal combination or was he caught inside dominance of woman related ego. Both appear as the valid psychological possibilities together. He had already warned of consuming something lethal but the family almost ignored it.

The event followed a quarrel between the couple throughout days of journey. After returning home the quarrel continued, and he reportedly beaten his wife and she also attacked back although male is male in strength. Even he hit his mother too in anger while she came to protect her and control him too. So she made them sleep in different rooms separate from each other. At night, God knows from where he got that 500 ml poison bottle and drank entire. In the morning naked due to heating up by poison and blood vomit everywhere. He opposed to be carried to hospital as he was already determined to die but was carried forcefully. Then his partner went back to report to police out of fear. He eventually passed away. When I saw the news on Facebook, I later had a strange dream. I saw a shavayatra moving toward the place of funeral, with people carrying a dead body, but I could not find out who had actually died. The person I had heard about appeared to me as if he were still alive, smiling and happy as he had been earlier. I asked people who had died, but nobody answered me. Instead, everyone seemed to be telling me to remain silent. I could not identify the dead person. At one point I thought that perhaps his younger brother had died because he was not clearly visible and, in the dream, he seemed to be the one showing the greatest grief. Yet this itself became strange, because the person whom I expected to be dead did not appear dead at all.

When the Dream Changed the Meaning of Death

The dream made me think that perhaps death is not as simple as the death of the body. The funeral procession clearly represented physical death, yet I could not locate the person who had supposedly died. The one whom I associated with death appeared alive, smiling, peaceful and recognizable. This contradiction became the central point of the dream for me. I began to feel that perhaps no one dies in the deepest sense merely because the physical body dies. What dies may instead be the bodily form and the world of physical relations connected with that form.

The younger brother’s grief seemed to deepen this interpretation. I had initially guessed that he was the one who had died because he was experiencing the greatest grief. This suggested another possibility: perhaps the person who undergoes a kind of death is not necessarily the one whose body has stopped functioning, but the person who thinks that everything he loved has become zero. When someone believes that the person he loved has completely disappeared, his own inner world can collapse. In that sense, the deepest psychological death may occur in the one who remains behind but becomes overwhelmed by the belief that everything meaningful has been lost.

This does not mean that physical death is unreal. The body certainly dies. The point is different: physical death need not necessarily mean annihilation of the person. The funeral belongs to the body, while the question of what happens to the person or soul belongs to a deeper level of existence.

The Soul May Remain Fully Alive After Bodily Death

I am not thinking only about the way the dead survive in the memories of other people. My meaning is more direct. I am referring to the possibility that the person himself, as a disembodied soul, remains fully alive after bodily death. I have also once experienced what I understood as a dream visitation of a soul, so my understanding of this possibility does not come only from abstract thinking. I experienced something personally that led me to consider the possibility that a person may remain present after the body has died.

My dream after this recent death therefore appeared meaningful to me because the physical body was being carried toward cremation, while the person I associated with that body was nevertheless appearing alive. This created a distinction between the body and the person inhabiting or experiencing through that body. The body may become lifeless, but the soul may not therefore become lifeless.

This gives another meaning to the statement that perhaps no one really dies even after death. It does not have to mean that biological death does not happen. Rather, it can mean that the death of the physical body is not necessarily the death of the person at the level of the soul.

Why the Disembodied Soul Might Feel More Alive

I then began to see another possibility. During embodied life, consciousness is continually surrounded by the distractions of the physical world. The body produces sensations, hunger, thirst, pleasure, pain, fatigue and other needs. The mind is occupied by relationships, social circumstances, memories, desires, fears, reactions and the ordinary stream of thoughts. Much of what we experience as ourselves may therefore be mixed with the activity and limitations of the physical body.

After disembodiment, this entire field of gross physical distraction may no longer dominate consciousness in the same way. If the soul continues after death, it may therefore become more directly aware of its own state of development. Without the same degree of sensory distraction and physical involvement, it could perhaps see and feel its own condition much more clearly.

In that sense, the disembodied soul might be more alive in one respect than the embodied person. This does not mean that it would continue thinking exactly as a living human thinks. Ordinary discursive thoughts, bodily sensations and many emotional reactions may themselves belong to embodied existence. They may be dharmas, or characteristics and activities, of the body-mind condition. The subtler experience of the soul would therefore not necessarily resemble ordinary human thinking.

Instead, the soul may experience reality as a subtle spiritual essence. What is experienced may be less gross, less sensory and less conceptual. It may be closer to direct seeing, feeling or knowing at a spiritual level. What is experienced during embodiment through the body and mind could, after disembodiment, be experienced in a much subtler form.

This is why the smiling and living appearance of the person in my dream seemed significant to me. The dream did not portray him as diminished or extinguished. It portrayed him as alive, even though the funeral procession was taking place. The body seemed to be going toward death, while the person himself did not appear to have become dead.

Physical Death, Psychological Death, and Spiritual Continuity

This way of looking at the dream also suggests three different meanings of death. Physical death is the end of the functioning body. Psychological death can occur in a living person when grief, attachment and the belief in complete loss make the person’s inner world collapse. Spiritual death, however, would be something different altogether. If a soul exists independently of the body and continues after bodily death, then physical death would not automatically mean spiritual death.

This distinction is important because the statement that “no one dies” can otherwise be misunderstood as denying the physical reality of death. I do not mean that. The body dies. What remains open is whether the deepest identity of the person also ends.

My dream cannot prove what happens to a soul after death. It is a personal experience and a source of philosophical reflection rather than scientific evidence. The same applies to my earlier dream visitation. I experienced it as a visitation, but that experience by itself cannot establish the metaphysical fact that souls survive bodily death. Still, an experience can be meaningful without being presented as scientific proof.

Kundalini Yoga and the Continuity of Spiritual Development

This understanding naturally connects with Kundalini Yoga. If consciousness is more than the physical body, then spiritual development may also be more than the temporary development of the body and personality. Ordinary life develops many things that belong to one particular embodiment: physical abilities, possessions, social identities, habits, memories and patterns of thought. These may end or change with the body.

Kundalini Yoga can be understood as working at a deeper level. Its purpose, in this interpretation, is not merely to produce unusual sensations, powers or altered states. It is a process of transforming consciousness and developing subtler levels of awareness. The deeper the transformation, the less it can be understood simply as something belonging to the physical body.

This leads to an important possibility. If the soul continues beyond bodily death, then spiritual development cultivated through Yoga may not necessarily disappear when the body dies. The physical instruments used for the practice belong to one lifetime, but the deeper transformation of consciousness may belong to the soul itself. In a spiritual understanding of rebirth, that development could therefore be carried subtly into the next birth.

The idea is not that every memory or ordinary thought survives in exactly the same form. Rather, what may continue is the deeper spiritual development. A person might lose the particular body, circumstances and personality through which development occurred, while still carrying forward the effect of that development at a subtler level.

In that sense, Yoga can always be seen as helping growth. Even if outward achievements end with the body, genuine inner development may not be lost. What is cultivated at the deepest level may become part of the continuing being.

Why Yoga May Not Require Escape from Society

This also gives another perspective on spiritual practice. One may imagine that leaving society is necessary in order to seek Kundalini or spiritual growth, but that need not follow. Society itself provides the circumstances through which consciousness can be tested and transformed. Relationships, attachment, desire, conflict, responsibility, distraction, loss and ordinary human interaction all reveal the condition of one’s consciousness.

The important question is therefore not simply whether one has escaped society, but what one is developing while living in it. A person may remain in ordinary life while gradually cultivating deeper awareness. The physical and social world can become the field through which spiritual development takes place rather than merely an obstacle to it.

This is also consistent with the central insight of the dream. The ordinary world may contain many distractions, but those same circumstances can become opportunities for growth. Kundalini Yoga does not necessarily require rejecting the world; it may instead involve learning to move through the world without allowing its gross distractions to completely determine consciousness.

What the Dream Means to Me

For me, the deepest meaning of the dream is not simply that a dead person can appear alive in a dream. It is that the dream reversed the ordinary assumption about death. We normally see the body as the person and therefore assume that when the body dies, the person is gone. In the dream, the body was moving toward the funeral, but I could not find the person who had supposedly died. The person was smiling and appeared alive. Nobody would tell me who had died. The one who seemed most visibly affected was the grieving person who believed that someone had been lost.

This makes me wonder whether the tragedy of death belongs primarily to the body and to the attachments surrounding the body, while the deeper person may continue in another condition. Perhaps what appears to us as the end is actually a transition from one mode of experience to another.

The disembodied soul, in this view, does not remain occupied in exactly the same way as the embodied person. Freed from much of the physical world’s distraction, it may experience its own spiritual condition more directly. It may see what it has become more clearly. It may feel reality not through the gross senses and ordinary thought but through a subtler spiritual essence.

And if spiritual development has been cultivated through Kundalini Yoga or another genuine path of inner transformation, perhaps that development does not simply become zero when the body dies. It may continue with the soul and, in a doctrine of rebirth, influence the next embodiment.

This is why I see Yoga as a form of growth that can never be completely wasted. The body is temporary, circumstances are temporary, thoughts are temporary, and personalities are temporary. But if there is something deeper that continues beyond them, then what is developed at that deeper level may have a continuity that ordinary physical achievements do not have.

The funeral procession in my dream therefore came to represent something different from simple annihilation. The body may be carried toward the funeral, but the person may continue. What we call death may be the ending of one form of embodiment rather than the ending of the being itself. And perhaps the greater spiritual task in life is to discover and develop that deeper dimension before the body is finally left behind.

I do not take this dream as proof of a metaphysical fact, nor do I think the death of my friend should be interpreted as something other than the tragedy that it was. His physical death was real, and his suffering before it was real. But the dream led me to ask whether the person who died physically may nevertheless continue in another form of existence, and whether spiritual development can therefore extend beyond a single lifetime.

For me, that possibility gives a deeper meaning to Yoga. It suggests that spiritual practice is not merely an attempt to become more peaceful or powerful within one temporary life. It may be a way of developing what can continue when the temporary body, its distractions and its ordinary mental processes finally fall away. In that sense, perhaps the deepest aim of Kundalini Yoga is not to escape life but to use life to cultivate the part of oneself that may not end with it.

This should not be taken as glorification of death in any way. The point is simply that when worldly activity and its associated mental noise temporarily subside, one may experience a sense of relief and a more direct feeling of the underlying Self. Such relief, however, can be temporary or illusory and should not be confused with genuine spiritual development or realization. The real emphasis is on understanding the nature of worldly impressions and mental noise, and how they can be dissolved through awareness and witnessing.

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Breathlessness as Inner Lift

The Tug of War Between Downward and Upward Pulls

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Why Ancient Yogic Imagery of Flight Is Interesting

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A Dream After the Death of Someone I Knew

When the Dream Changed the Meaning of Death

The Soul May Remain Fully Alive After Bodily Death

Why the Disembodied Soul Might Feel More Alive

Physical Death, Psychological Death, and Spiritual Continuity

Kundalini Yoga and the Continuity of Spiritual Development

Why Yoga May Not Require Escape from Society

What the Dream Means to Me

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