They have been spoken of down through time, a dual force in awareness that has emerged with many names and have all been tied to awakening, to the manifold process that is enlightenment.
These twins, as I call them, were written about in early Christian documents. Recent discoveries have unearthed their known and truer nature as part of the trinity (I know the trinity is not two, but the “two” birth the “third” which is Christ Consciousness—more on that later…).
In the Eastern traditions of the Taoists, the Yin and Yang were expressions, understandings, of the vital role these forces played (and not merely as an observation of how our world just has bright and dark, or opposites only). The Shakti and Shiva were expressions of this understanding, and the kundalini, as expressed as a serpent twining about a central axis, was an expression of the two-in-one force that gave rise to a third awareness that moved along the central axis (the spine where the shushumna channel lies energetically and is the center for cosmic awareness). This awareness has been in many cultures such as the Polynesians who knew that out of the One life force came two complimentary forces that when joined formed the One again, which is a truly transcendent awareness and state of being.
The experience of this union is so powerful, so incredibly blissful, that it has been likened to sexual union for the fact that the experience created an intense bliss that felt orgasmic. This was not itself physical orgasm, but is instead the result of the chemical soup in the body which has been instantly changed by the presence of the energy now within awareness. The body is an amazing servant, a mirror to the soul, and what the soul feels that can be brought into full conscious awareness, the body will share in and will respond to through chemical production of endorphins, dopamine, oxytocin and also even adrenaline. These compounds, some which are used as neurotransmitters in the brain (yes, can you even imagine?) have a profound effect on how we feel, how we recognize that we feel. And so it is that when one feels this bliss, it is like being bathed by a quiet pulse of orgasmic energy all throughout every part of your being. it is the presence of this energy and this bliss that begins to purify and cleanse you of a world of hurt, wrongdoing and wrong thinking and feeling in your life, past and present. It is HERE in THIS that we experience the true power of what enlightenment is.
Within each of us, these forces exist all the way down to the atoms that compose our bodies. One can see and interact with this vital force in this way when your awareness is honed and focused. The Hindu Vedas describe just such a sensory experience of seeing down into the microscopic level to feel and commune with this energy that is expressed in everything. Some say, rightly so, I think, that these Twins exist as creators of reality, or supporters of it. Through them come the birth of all phenomena. All of it. They are entirely ubiquitous, and awareness of their presence can be seen throughout all writings, especially in the east.
These two forces are likened to a feminine and masculine force. Complimentary, they merge one into the other upon awakening in such a way that vast sums of energy are created in the body and awareness. This production of energy brings healing, however difficult for some at first (due to shame surrounding anything that might feel…..gasp….sexual), in a way that is likened to a lightening bolt experience at first (kundalini) and then as a deep stirring effect that stirs out of the subconscious those things which have made us each sick, neurotic, or holding to old traumas. We enter into a new life through these and the early Christians describe these people who have encountered the flash of white light as being androgenous people of a sort. They were called this by the so-called Gnostics as Syzgy. This term was used to describe people who had an encounter with the brilliant white light that marked the beginning of awakening (aka kundalini and divine union experiences).
The result of this encounter was that the two currents of energy which are akin to the two energies surrounding stars and planets ( a torus of negative and positive particles creating a spheroid or torus shaped field of energy–the same torus that surrounds physical bodies as well). The awareness of this energy, now heightened in awakening, reveals to each of those so awakened to two forces alive in the body. This brought awareness of both energies, and this leads to the “androgynous” sense of both forces alive in the body of awareness and matter.
This Syzgy was not itself something that changes ones own native sexual orientation, no, but shows every sign of broadening ones awareness of both while it also erases any compunction with feeling so intimately the energy that represents the opposite from your own sexual orientation.
So yes, the early Christians were describing this incredibly blissful experience which they likened to a sexual experience of being in a Bridal Chamber, a union of the soul with its two parts. It is the beginning of all forms of union in life, top to bottom. It is the very genesis of what divine union is and without it, the idea would not exist, for it rests within this foundation and is fed and nurtured by it. Simply put, it is an erasure of all elements within the self that serve to limit and to divide you against others….be they people, or experiences.
Link that describes this term in more detail: http://www.gnosis.org/library/valentinus/Syzygy_Valentinian.htm
To help to explain this state of inner union, the Gospel of Thomas says it very clearly by letting Jesus speak for himself to a woman named Salome (not the princess Salome who demanded the head of John the Baptist, but was rather much more like a disciple).
In the Gospel of Thomas ( Saying 61b) Salome says to Jesus that he had come up on her couch (presumably referring to reclining at meals) and eaten from her table. “Who are you, man,” she asks. Jesus replies, “I am he who exists from the undivided.” He goes on to say that someone who is divided will be filled with darkness, but someone [presumably “undivided”: translators point out that there is a gap in the text] will be filled with light. This is one of the notable sayings on the theme of Oneness.
Source: www.gnosis.org/thomasbook/ch24
In numerous places throughout these gnostic gospels, you have Jesus saying over and over how when one removes the division, within that the kingdom comes, that one is “resurrected” that the flesh “rises” or awakens into what seems to be like the difference of being dead and then coming into life. I observed early in my awakening that what had sparked my awakening was the removal or healing of a long-standing issue that I had which had kept me divided. When I removed that, awakening began. it is an account that I describe in the book I am working on that involved a discussion with an Oglala Lakota medicine man named Sydney Has No Horses.
It is important to remember that these things are themselves mysteries that cannot be fully explained in a literal linear mode, and are instead expressed or conveyed through more poetic and less “exact” language. To know what they are saying, it helps to already be awakened…..which does not help those who seek, but merely points in the general direction. This is not a factual conceptual framework being created, but is instead a description of a state of being. And how can we really explain such a thing? Most often, poetry does it better than more materialistic means. That means not being literal. Sadly, the early Christian church was gripped by a wave of literalism that was called orthodoxy, and a whole host of teachings within the church were cast aside, deemed heretical, or were simply not understood for what they were. If you read the Nag Hammadi texts such as Thomas and Philip and Mary, you see that the language used is…..more like poetry and is inexact. It is this way for a purpose. It is less that this was a different church, but that it was a different depth of understanding that had taken place.
My experience in this nonduality, of these twin energies, is that they open your awareness to the entirety, potentially at least, of the universe and everything within it. A boast? In nearly every reference to this experience there is much talk about “secret knowledge” when one awakens. This is what is being pointed to, which is a new or renewed ability or awareness within consciousness to join to everything. This, not coincidentally, is the very essence of what nonduality is all about. It means “no other” and it means, literally, that one may feel what another feels, to know it so intimately that there is no distinction at a deeper level of the experience between the observer and the observed. It is why I can feel what another feels over vast distances. We are not divided by space or even time.
This also opens one up to an understanding of all others, including the opposite within you, which for many, is not just the dark or the light, but the feminine and the masculine. Whether these twins are literal male and female counterparts is not the point, but their complimentary forces can open the doorway to understanding all others. It means that as a male you can feel deeply the experience of the feminine, and as a woman you can commune with and feel deeply the experience of the masculine both within yourself and through the beloved, be they male or female. For anyone thinking that this becomes a non-homosexual experience, think again. There is nothing about these two that in any way limits or biases against same sex experience. The joining of these two twins is simply the result of incredible vastness, a “waking the infinite” within each of us. One enters into the mysteries of this type of awareness and knowing, and part of it also is that one can relate to others in ways you have never been able to do.
It is not surprising to me that the kundalini is called “shakti” in the Hindu tradition. The reason for this is because up until awakening is sparked, there is only one primary current in awareness, which for us is the yang energy. I know you wont always agree with me, but the whole of humankind has for many thousands of years been focused primarily in the left-brained mind which is also considered to be the yang energy. I write a lot about this and how it ties into brain function and cognition, so if you want more on this simply search using left or right brain in the search function on the site and you should find a good deal of writing on this topic as it relates to current brain science. I also say this as a very right-brained artist, and I can tell you that in a relative way, we do not know just how we have limited our right brained functions and the function of the “feminine” or yin sides of our energy and our consciousness. As a result, the discovery one find, whether you are male OR female, awaits you as a great discovery about the greater depth available to your sexual and spiritual self! A man is greatly informed by what it is like to be a woman and a woman is greatly informed about a level of feminine experience that she may have never known (the same is true for men in the reverse, of course) as a result of these energies now fully awakened and interacting in this “new” way within consciousness and in the body.
When kundalini comes, it isn’t that a yin presence comes as the substance of the energy, but that in your awareness you become aware that you are now both. It is in this awareness that the two forces are joined or unified in your consciousness and this is where the electric lightening bolt realization takes place that is so often a common experience in awakening (you do not need to have a lightening bolt experience, and it is better that you do not do so if you can help it since it makes for a more peaceful progression with the energy). Less that shakti comes AS the kundalini, but more that she has simply been missing in our awareness. As a result, when most awaken, you can begin to feel a fluidity and sensuality that is conferred as a result of the two now in union and it is this added compliment, the feminine force of yin, that now makes for an incredible chemical reaction in the body…which is not just chemical, but energetic from top to bottom. You can see how this is through simple observation in how your thoughts change and how more feminine you can become. The feminine force of yin gives a great deal of receptivity, fluidity, and less of a literal approach to understanding and cognition (and this is not limited to men or women only!)
The advantages of this new arrangement are incredibly unifying and healing for the self. These twins birth a third energy as a result of their union, something that I described in the first few months of my awakening as the union of the man and woman who birth the cosmic child. At the time that I was writing this, I had no idea what had happened to me. I didn’t know yet that this experience had a name. I knew about kundalini years before this, but when it happened to me it was such a novel and different experience that any description of it went entirely over my head….at least at first. But the description that I made based on my early meditations and communion within the energy, was no different from what I would find scattered throughout all cultures of the two who birth the third.
If you are of the Christian persuasion, you might find yourself upset over the idea of the trinity being treated in such a way, but I caution you that it is quite clear that the trinity and its deeper reality was hidden or obscured by the rising tide of orthodoxy that gripped the early church and it cuased, I observe, a kind of dumbing down of what the trinity was originally to Jesus and his followers. When we look at the documents that had lain in the desert for so long and which had not been subject to the biasing effects of the orthodoxy church, you can find the trinity as a resounding bulwark of the masculine and feminine in one deity and that the Christ was born from them both. This was why Philip said in his gospel, “Those who say that Mary begat with the Holy Ghost are in error. They do not know what they say. For when has a woman begotten with a woman?”
This quote reveals quite clearly that the Holy Ghost was the feminine aspect of the deity, and that it made no sense for the story of Jesus’s conception to have been described in this way. For Philip, who was described as heir to the deeper teachings of Jesus (even within the orthodox church), he would have understood the subtle differences involved. It is in his and other books that he describes the union of these two forces as a Bridal Chamber. It was out of this chamber that Christ emerged. Many scholars are trying to make this Bridal Chamber experience into a ritual that the early Christians engaged in, but this is not so (they are in error). Instead, it is an experience that one has that is initiatory, but instantaneous when one removes what divides you. Less a rite, it is mystic experience that we each have. As a result, this also meant that everyone one of us can experience this, that this was what Jesus had also taught to his students, his disciples. Not all of them got it, or understood what was being said, however. It may be possible that gospels were favored over others that did not include these sayings, so that the orthodox church only had those which it favored (lacking the feminine aspect of the deeper mysteries of spiritual attainment).
This is one reason why I have long felt that Christianity was missing something terribly important, and that the early church had hidden something. At age nine, when I felt this sense for the first time, I had no way of knowing what this thing was, I merely knew deep in my bones that this was so. It was, I would later find, something that my soul knew without question, but that my inexperienced 9 year old mind had no way of knowing why it knew. It is by joining this missing part that you can know the kingdom. Right now. Right here. And while the dried and limited orthodox minds will reject it, it is rather that orthodoxy is showing itself to be the real heresy and the heresies of the past, so much more closer to the truth.
There is nothing as life-changing as this awareness of the twin within.
नमस्ते
P.
Waking The Infinite 