Hi Scott,
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We should be clear about which kind of self enquiry we're talking about. From now on, lets only call my method: awareness watching awareness....and not self enquiry. As seen previously in this very thread, there are different kinds of methods that fall under the banner of self enquiry, and they need to be distinguished.
I agree, there are different kinds of self- enquiry. At the gentle end would be asking ourselves things like "do I really need to feel like this? Could I just make my attitude a bit more positive and lighten up a bit, and feel... well... pretty good?". That's one form, and I think it's very useful. It's probably not going to cause anyone any energy imbalances and is definately a lot better than walking around feeling grumpy
![[:)]](http://www.aypsite.com/plus-forum/Smileys/akyhne/icon_smile.gif "Smile")
. But it's probably not going to lead to realization of our Divine nature either. At least, not very fast anyway.
As I see it, at the other end of the scale are the more direct (or very direct) methods of self enquiry which Eddy is talking about and which you are practicing. If I continuously ask myself "who am I?" every time I blink, as I see it, it is pretty clear that I am not the body, I am not my emotions (feelings), I am not my thoughts, and I am not the thinker of my thoughts. If I disengage from the thinking process, thoughts keep arising for some time of their own volition. So it brings me directly to awareness that I am awareness (or the witness). Simply being aware of awareness brings us to that state even faster as we are cutting out the process of negating what we are not. But how much faster must depend on the consciousness of the practitioner. So for me, these direct practices of self-enquiry amount to much the same thing, either through negation (I am not this, I am not that...) or directly (I am the witness of all this).
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I can agree with this regarding awareness watching awareness. Everything we do must be self paced...but that doesn't necessarily mean we should approach the practice with fear, assuming it will be devastating.
Yes and no. I don't think we should aproach anything with fear. But fear is very different than caution, and fear is different from being aware that there could be difficulties ahead. When I cross a road, I am not terrified, but I always look both ways.
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If something is causing no problems: full speed ahead.
I think this could be a misconception. This theory is not based on human experience of spiritual practices as they unfold over time. Gopi Krishna is the classic example. Somehow he had learned how to meditate, I assume someone taught him. He was practicing a meditation where he imagined a beautiful white lotus flower in full bloom on top of his head. The lotus flower was shining and beautiful, and his meditation was to imagine it as vividly as possible and to merge his consciousness into it as fully as he could. Now I don't know why anyone taught him this meditation, presumably they thought it was a good idea. He did it every morning before sunrise and then went off to his office job. As far as I can tell this was his only spiritual practice. He had no idea what kundalini was at this time, so presumably his kundalini was dormant. I don't know how many months or years he was doing this for, but he was getting pretty good at it. He seemed to be able to enter samadhi and fully merge with the (imagined) lotus flower. Then his kundalini awoke and went straight through the top of his head. The rest is a pretty grim tale lasting many years and involving the deterioration of his body and mind, until he finally managed to avoid death, and stabalize the energies.
So, in this case, it was not true that just because things seemed to be going well for a time, it should have been "full steam ahead". In Gopi Krishna's case it should have been "drop the crown practice, begin with deep meditation and add spinal breathing in due course"... or something like that
. Or if I was not so AYP biased, I could have said "drop the crown practices and add in any system of spiritual practices which brought about inner silence whilst purifying the subtle nervous system in a balanced way".
Now the meditation that Gopi Krishna was doing (white lotus etc..), was cultivating inner silence. It was
also purifying the subtle nervous system. Inner silence automatically purifies the subtle nervous system, but it does so slowly. The crown beginning to open would also have some purifying effect on the subtle nervous system. The reason everything went wrong, was because the practice did not purify the subtle nervous system fast enough to keep pace with the rising inner silence and the opening crown chakra. So when the kundalini awoke, the nadis were not able to take the force, and he was burned alive from the inside.
So when we look at spiritual practices, it is important to look at what they are achieving, but also, what is the balance? What is being cultivated at what speed? Will it be safe and stable in the long term? For everyone? These are the questions we need to ask.
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I cannot see how it can work as a stand-alone practice.
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My method does. After the kundalini awakened, I could tell different effects of everything. Of course it's all based on my own nervous system, and not an objective measurement, but hey this is all I've got.
Anyway, with awareness watching awareness, the energies rise but they do so in a way that's not so intense. It's a very pleasurable energetic/consciousness shifting experience. The samadhi is just like in mantra meditation.
I am sure you would agree that we cannot base anything on one person's experience, yours or Gopi Krishna's. We need to look at how things work for many people, over the long term, to see how effective they are. In your case, you are already Kundalini awakened, and you already have enough inner silence to be able to enter samadhi. So plenty enough inner silence to effectively take up direct self-enquiry practice and use it to great effect. You can feel the energies moving in your body, gague the effect that different practices have on the energies, and self-pace accordingly. In other words, you are already working in partership with the kundalini energies from a position of inner silence. You are a classic example of someone who could (should) be practicing awareness of awareness. Whether you should be doing so every time you blink is another question. I guess that is a question of whether you are ready or not.
But, getting back to the point, many people (most people?) are not at the stage you are at. If someone does not have inner silence well established, does not have an already awakened kundalini, does not have a sufficiently purified subtle nervous sytstem to handle the load, then are direct self-enquiry methods suitable, or even safe?
To answer that effectively, (dare I mention the word "scientifically"), would involve a study of large numbers of people. Thousands would be needed to get a large enough sample size to proove anything statistically. Then we would need to monitor them over a long time (many years), and record what happens to their mind/ energy body/ kundalini shakti/ consciousness etc, and see how many fell into minor or severe energy imbalances during the experiment. Unfortunately we are way off being able to do anything like that. We do not even posess the equipment necessary to measure the variables involved, we haven't invented them yet, so everything would have to depend on subjective reports.
So at the moment, all we have to go on really, is the testament of individuals. One person says "this is all you need to do... it works for everyone", another says "are you crazy? That's an advanced practice... if you're not ready for it yet, it could blow you right out of the water..". So how are we going to decide how to proceed in the interim? Well I would say that the first theory, that it works as an effective stand alone practice for everyone, is easy to disprove. After all, all you need is to find one person who has practiced direct self-enquiry (mindfullness of mindfullness) as a stand alone practice from the start, and has come a cropper energy wise, and the theory has to go back to the drawing board. I think we are already seeing enough casualty cases who have come up against this stuff too early, to be able to say that it doesn't work from the start as a stand alone practice. But it certainly could (and, I would say, does) still work as a stand alone practice once a certain level of purification has been reached. The reason I say that is because many enlightened teachers seem to have adopted it as their last and only practice before their enlightenment. They dropped all other practices and took up direct self-enquiry in a big way. This is true, I believe, for Nisargadatta, Ramana Maharshi, Papaji (Punjaji), Krishnamurti and others.
So I see it as a set of very important practices, but I feel direct self-enquiry practices, especially when done outside of controlled practice times, must come with a caution stamped on the box.
Christi
