WHAT I KNOW FROM THE THIRD EYE

Here I want to note my experience of the several occasions when I have experienced movement in the chakras. I might add, or some would have me add, “or thought I did,” as it is an open question whether what I experienced was really chakras per se, or perhaps something else. It is questionable, too, though not from my standpoint, whether I even experienced anything at all. Perhaps I was just wishing it to be true. That is a distinct possibility, but one I reject because I have no reason to doubt that I did in fact experience something during the instances I will now relate.

During the first six months of my encounter with yoga, I had a number of experiences of energy movement, more than I can recount here. Ironically, at the time, they seemed too few and far between, but that was perhaps because my expectations were so high. I was waiting on celestial visions and voyages, and all I got were some rather mundane, yet nonetheless powerful and powerfully real sensations of energy. Interestingly, when I received shaktipat, a Sanskrit term that means direct energy transference from a realized master, I felt nothing. I joked afterwards that “my experience was that I didn’t have an experience.” I heard other people in the room experiencing kriyas — laughing, moving around, talking, etc. – and I felt deprived. I wondered whether the teacher had missed me. But no, the teacher had brushed everyone in the room with that peacock feather. What I subsequently learned is that sometimes the energy works very subtly, almost imperceptibly. If one experiences a “gross” manifestation of the energy, it suggests that the individual is at that level, though not necessarily.

I began to have more experiences later when I recited the mantras and did the meditation that it was suggested we do. Sometimes I would feel it most when I lay in shavasana, the corpse pose. At least two times it was almost like a very pleasurable paralysis, something that the lotus eater in me would have loved to have lingered on and indulged in longer than I did. I also felt some things opening up once I began to perform the yoga asanas (postures). It was quite an enlivening feeling, with the exhilarating sensation of what I experienced as warm bursts of liquid energy in various parts of the body, particularly the back and head. If I didn’t already have motivation to continue on with yoga, and I did big time, this was even more incentive to persevere. But like I said, I didn’t need to be prodded, it was so enjoyable, so I went full out. Yoga was everything to me at that time. I essentially gave up on everything else. It was a beautiful, magical time in my life, second only to the months of bliss I experienced when I was 19 and “in love” with what I now believe was the projection of my own inner anima, or Shakti. There’s a book out now called One Day My Soul Just Opened Up, and essentially that was my experience of love creeping up on me, only it was sort of more Whitmanesque, with a sensation of energy moving up to my heart as I lay in bed. Could that have been the awakening of my heart chakra? Possibly, I don’t know. But the effect was that my heart definitely was sky-wide open after that. I was lovin’ life, essentially.

I would definitely feel the energy more during and after retreats with the various Hindu teachers (most of them female) I went to see. A number of times I felt energy pulsating in the third eye area. It was definitely a spinning sensation, as if there was a propeller spinning there. I attribute such movements not only to the energy that was transmitted by the teachers during these retreats, but also to my own stepped-up practice during those times. If it was a weekend retreat, sometimes I would fast part or all of the weekend, and would not miss any of the scheduled practices. Nonetheless, I do not think I would have had such an experience were it not for the great outpouring of Shakti (divine energy) by these women masters.

In conclusion, I can’t deny what I felt, and yet I also cannot prove it to anyone, I realize. If you want to know for yourself, you have to do some kind of practice and have a good teacher or teachers. “If you want the experience, you have to do the experiment.” Happy spinning.