Chapter 2 — “My Experience Was…I Didn’t Have An Experience”

Trumpets and violins I can-uh, hear in the distance
I think they’re callin our name
Maybe now you can’t hear them,
But you will, ha-ha, if you just
Take hold of my hand
Ohhh, but are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced?
Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful

~ Jimi Hendrix

I am sitting on the floor of a private home in New Jersey, chanting and singing Sanskrit mantras and verses. I’m taking part in an advanced training with a Kundalini Yoga group which I was initiated into one year previously. There are approximately 40 students, and two teachers — a husband and wife team from Northern India, who are sitting on a divan in front of us. As our singing and music making crescendos, some of my fellow students begin to go into altered states of consciousness, in which they do any one or more of the following: Laugh, cry, yell, dance or sing ecstatically, adopt special hand or facial gestures, spontaneously go into yoga postures, and more. Although I personally am feeling quite uplifted and even blissful, there is a part of me that feels an outsider, observing all that is happening, and wondering why I have yet to have these kinds of expansive experiences.

At a climactic point in the midst of this whole melee, our primary teacher, who is the better half of the husband and wife team, begins to dance ecstatically. She, too, is another state of consciousness, and her dance seems completely spontaneous and effortless. Before our eyes (those of us who are still “there”), she takes on aspects of the all-embracing Divine Mother, and then Shiva, her consort, doing his Cosmic Dance, and next Krishna, with his flute, and…just one divine archetype after another after another. Although others in the room are having similar movements of Kundalini energy, none are having it to this degree, or in such fullness of expression and beauty. Our teacher stands apart, unapproachable, and seemingly, from my perspective, unattainable.

As the guru dances, a woman in our group begins to make the most horrifyingly inhuman, wounded animal sounds — bellowing, throaty yells, grunts, and groans that seem to emanate from the deepest recesses of her being. It is actually frightening to listen to, and some of us are feeling the need to assist her in some way. Some women gather around her, and I feel relieved. Meanwhile, the teacher is now flat on her back on the floor, motionless, in a very deep state of Samadhi, mystic absorption. Those who are not assisting the other woman are now up close to our teacher, ready to receive the blessing of the Divine.

Later, the woman who had seemed to be in such terrible torment earlier, remarks to several of us, “Did anyone have as much fun as me?”

Apparently, not I.

Part One: Passage to India
(or, “Kundalini Trumps LSD”)

Over the course of several years during which I was involved with this particular group, I witnessed similar proceedings on various auspicious occasions. Each time I was left feeling amazed, energized, and transformed by the experience, but also with the sense of missing something, and with the question of why I seemed to be blocked from going deeper. Where was that same deep, unconditional, blissful love that I had experienced years before? There was an urgency to this question for me that was driving my search.

I had originally become involved with this group because a friend and colleague in graduate school, specializing in East Asian Studies, specifically Indology, had recognized that I was sincerely searching for answers, not to mention authentic mystical experiences. She befriended me and began to introduce me to some of the contemporary masters from India, most of them women, who were either touring or based in the States. My new friend assured me that if I wanted full-blown mystical experiences, these were the teachers I should get to know. This was in the Winter-Spring of ‘95-’96.

At the very same time, interestingly enough, I had been approached by a young man, my age (mid-twenties), to get involved with his group in Philadelphia, based around a woman Kundalini Yoga teacher from India.

In December, I had co-organized an interfaith dialogue on ecology at Penn in which we had invited a priest, rabbi, and an imam to speak on ecology in the context of their religious traditions, and how there might be greater working together on these issues. It so happened that the room we were using for the occasion was being used by the Kundalini Yoga group right after our program. As we were concluding, this young man, whom we’ll call Brad, approached me and excitedly began to telling me all about this amazing Kundalini Yoga path he had found, as well as singing the praises of its teacher.

So what ended up happening was that I got involved with not one, but two Kundalini Yoga groups at the very same time. With the one, led by the woman teacher in the story above, I received a traditional Shaktipat initiation. With the second, I was given sessions that were to raise my Kundalini, but not by the actual teacher herself. Only a few very close friends knew that I was involved with both groups (the double entendre of “involved” is fitting here); I mainly played dumb and kept mum.

All that Spring and Summer and into the Fall, I interacted with both groups intimately, learning a great deal not only about their organizations, but also receiving an initiatory education into all things Indian. Of course, my grad school colleague and mentor also helped immensely. We would speak for hours in person and on the phone about all that I was going through and experiencing. I asked my friend many questions, and because she was both a scholar and veteran Yoga practitioner, she was able to give me a lot of helpful guidance.

Why was I spending nearly all of my waking hours doing this? Again, I was seeking — desperately seeking, behind all my academic and social veils — and what I was discovering was that many of my lifelong doubts and questions were being answered via this “I-Thou” encounter with India and Yoga. For the first time, I was meeting genuine master teachers who actually could enter at will into these deep states of consciousness, and from there guide souls who, like myself, were just beginning to awaken and flower. Like many when they find their life’s path, I had the strong sense of “This is It!” I had at last found what I had been searching for, unconsciously and consciously, all of my life. I had come home.

One issue that was being healed through this encounter was in regard to my sexuality. I had a lot of confusion and anxiety about it, and no one that I felt I could really talk to about things. I had never been in a relationship with a woman before, and was very ambivalent about it, to say the least. Among other things, even though I had what appeared to be a very strong libido, I felt that a relationship would be too restrictive, and that I hadn’t met just the right person in any case. I had been torn for years over the issue of masturbation, and now I was finally learning and deeply understanding the wisdom behind conserving and transmuting one’s vital essence. No one had ever explained it to me before, and now it was hitting me like this amazing revelation — it was gnosis, or salvational Knowledge (capital “K”). [Some part of me had always known there was such deeper wisdom out there, but the truth is, it was already inside of me. As the saying goes, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears."]

Brad from the Kundalini Yoga group explained that any physical orgasm is but a paltry imitation of the Cosmic O, and that once you have the latter, or glimpses of it, sex takes on much less importance. He also told me that before having his own awakening experience from his teacher, he had been heavily into partying, drugs, and alcohol. The Kundalini Yoga teachings and practices had helped him to wean himself away from his addictive behavior.

It’s worth mentioning here that a few times when we were together, Brad related a story about how, not long after he had gotten in with his teacher, a friend convinced him to go to a rock concert where they took LSD together. As usual, he began hallucinating almost immediately, he told me. But then, out of curiosity, he decided to meditate on his Kundalini energy to see what would happen. Immediately, the hallucinations vanished and did not return, even though LSD usually takes 8-10 hours to wear off. Though I found this to be somewhat interesting, if far-fetched, Brad’s stories about drugs did not completely hit home for me as I had always been such a purist when it came to taking anything foreign into my body. Also, I had no context to fully appreciate the enormity of what Brad was getting at. And like I said, I was skeptical…

Here I have to say that almost from the start, I had a strong feeling that Brad’s Kundalini group was a cult, or at least cultish, and that I should play a participant-observer role, but not get overly involved with it. Because I was so new to all of this, though, I was somewhat challenged by their insistence that their path was the only true one, that their teacher was God, that all of the other Yoga teachers who had come to the West were all false gurus, especially some of the other women teachers (a few of whom I was meeting at that time.)

Even though I mainly thought this was all preposterous, it did make me wonder: “Well, what if they’re right? Could they be right?” This wasn’t an academic exercise for me, you understand, this felt like a divine test I was being given to learn how to be discriminative in spiritual matters, and to follow my heart and intuition. Of course, I was being led to doubt and question even my own heart and conscience…

And here’s what my heart and conscience were telling me:

The other Kundalini group felt like a breath of fresh air in comparison. It was all about the heart, and really quite understated and pure. It didn’t feel cultish at all, but more like a self-selected coming together of experienced souls who were seeking a true path to liberation. I felt a lot of love and joy amongst them, and even had some simple mystical experiences (note — of Kundalini, precognitive dreams, clairvoyance, telepathy, synchronicity) . At the same time, as I said, I was inwardly singing, “…But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…” Because it didn’t seem like an exact fit. I desired more depth of experience, and for my Western mindset, and Jewish education, it was a bit of a stretch. Could I really follow this Hindu path? Wouldn’t I feel forever like a stranger in a strange land, both in this new community, and my own home culture and society? How long did I want to, or would I be able to keep up this intense discipline without going much deeper?

Meanwhile, Brad was telling me that the difference between his path and all the other false ones is that with his path, his Teacher gives each student a real Kundalini awakening from the very beginning. So his challenge to me was: Have you ever had a real, powerful experience of Kundalini from any other teacher? And the answer, of course, was “no,” but neither had I felt much from his path, either. He asserted that the reason was because I had never actually met his Guru, and that when I did, I would get it. There was going to be a big gathering in New York presided over by the Teacher soon…

So we road-tripped up there with some of the group from Philadelphia. To put it simply, the trip only served to intensify my distaste for this group, and for the Teacher. Not only was the group feeling more and more cultish — devotee after devotee seemed both spiritual neophyte and budding missionary — but the Teacher herself did not seem to demonstrate very enlightened behavior.

This was a big, annual event in celebration of the Teacher that attracted many devotees from around the world, including contingents from each major city in the U.S. So there was a very heightened sense of expectancy in the air, the feeling that something earthshaking would be revealed at that night’s program. For many, this sense of expectancy was all the more palpable when the Teacher arrived to the hall hours late for some obscure reason. From my perspective, this was just inconsiderate, at best. The Teacher had kept hundreds of us waiting and guessing as to what was going on. To make matters worse, the ceremony began with gift giving, and the Teacher actually began to grumpily criticize some of her devotees for their gifts! The amazing thing was that no one seemed to think there was anything amiss. The Empress had no clothes, and no one was willing to call her on it.

Up until this point, I had kept most of my deeper reservations to myself, giving nary an indication of the raging war in my own mind and heart. But at the end of the program that weekend, I finally had it out with Brad.

We argued back and forth all the way back to Philadelphia. There were moments when he actually became ugly, and also moments when I thought I glimpsed in his face and words almost a glimmer of understanding. At one point, after I had gone a bit further in stating my innermost feelings and criticisms — things which he had no real inkling that I had been weighing in my mind and heart — he blurted out, “You’re a great seeker!” and I couldn’t seem to detect any irony or sarcasm in his face or tone. Still, we kept arguing…and arguing. This went on for some time, even after we had returned. It wasn’t long after this incident that I parted ways with the group, even though for awhile after I was getting “talked to” about my leaving. Needless to say, it wasn’t easy leaving the group.

That first year of my “passage to India” I would sometimes joke with my grad school mentor who would ask me what my experience of these different groups and programs were. “My experience,” I unfailingly noted, “was that I didn’t have an Experience.” To that, she would ask rhetorically something like, “Well, aren’t you so glad you got into all of this anyway?” to which I unhesitatingly agreed. Then she was off to India again for a year of study, and I was left alone without my trusted friend and guide.