Gopi Krishna Kundalini. The Evolutionary Energy in Man

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went on the visit out of curiosity, sceptically, critically, expecting a mountebank, ready to argue, disprove, and
later perhaps laugh.
I recall the heat, the flies, and my shirt stuck with sweat to the back of an old leather arm-chair. He sat on a cot,
reposed, round-bodied, in white, smiling. The look of his skin seemed different from others I had met during the
past year in Kashmir; then I thought he looked healthy, now I might say he glowed. I remember the simplicity in
which our conversation took place. Above all, I remember the eyes of the man: friendly, luminous, huge, softly
focussed. They attracted and held my attention and somehow convinced me that what was happening in this
room and with this man was genuine. I visited him several times for talks before we left on a pony-trek to
Shishnag and then the return to Europe. Because one or two unusual events occurred to me in the high
mountains after meeting with Gopi Krishna, I tend to regard him as an initiator and a signal person in my life.
Our meeting went deeper than I then realized. His eyes first led me to trust my own sight, my own convictions,
beyond my trained sceptical Western mind. This was itself an initiation into actual psychological work which I
only later took up.
So it is with reverence to him and to the culture from which he has risen that I add these short comments as an
act of gratitude. It is my intention neither to explain nor defend what Gopi Krishna has written, but only to relate
where I am able some of his experiences to Western depth psychology, especially to the process of individuation
as described in the Analytical Psychology of C. G. Jung.)
Our text opens with a classic example of the meditative technique. Whether for Eastern or
Western psychology, the prerequisite of any human accomplishment is attention. The ability
to concentrate consciousness is what we call in Western psychology a sign of ego-strength.
Disturbances of attention can be measured by the association experiment which Jung
developed to show how the ability of the ego to focus upon a relatively simple task (the
association of words) can be impaired by unconscious complexes.
The assiduous, prolonged discipline of attention to a single image (the full-blooming, light-
radiating lotus) is as difficult as any concentration upon a learning task in an extraverted
manner. Whether introverted or extraverted, whether Eastern or Western, we may note at the
beginning the significance of the ego, that which focusses, concentrates, attends.
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The many-petalled lotus at the crown of the head is a traditional symbol of the Kundalini
yoga. In the language of analytical psychology, the attention of the ego is fixed upon a self-
image in mandala form. The ego has chosen its image according to the spiritual discipline,
just as in Christian meditation there is the Sacred Heart, the Cross, the images of Christ,
Mary, the Saints, etc. Rather than discuss the objects of concentration (comparative
symbolism), let us note briefly in passing the difference of technique between active
imagination and yoga discipline. In spiritual disciplines, as a rule, the attention is focussed
upon already given or known images (in Zen Buddhism, there may be no images but a koan, a
task, or a thing). In each case the focus of attention is prescribed, and one knows when one is
wavering or 'off'. In active imagination as described by C. G. Jung, attention is given to
whatever images or emotions, or body parts, etc., that 'pop into the mind'. Rather than
suppressing the distractions, they are followed attentively. The method is half-way between
the free-association of the Freudians, where one leaps freely from one image, word, thought to
the next with no idea of the goal, and the traditional spiritual discipline of rigid fixity upon a
given image. Active imagination develops a more personal psychological fantasy. (The lotus
is after all a highly impersonal image which any adept anywhere could focus upon unrelated
to his own personal psychological make-up. It is not 'his' lotus, but 'the' lotus.) Active
imagination is concerned with the ego's relation with and personal reactions to the mental
images. The emotional involvement with these images and their spontaneous reactions back
are as important as the nature of the images themselves. If the quality of a free-association can
be judged by its uninhibited-ness (lack of suppression) and the quality of a disciplined
meditation can be judged by its unwavering fixity and undistractedness, the quality of active
imagination can be judged by its emotional intensity, which intensity is given by the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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