Note: For the complete lessons, with additions, see the AYP Easy Lessons for Ecstatic Living Books.

Lesson 169 - Q&A – Is this ecstatic conductivity?

From: Yogani
Date: Mon Apr 19, 2004 3:22pm

New Members: It is recommended you read from the beginning of the web archive, as previous lessons are prerequisite to this one. The first lesson is, "Why This Discussion?"

Q: I started Yoni Mudra Kumbhaka two weeks ago and since then I have been feeling a strange new connection between my head and my perineum. I do Sambhavi and I feel it down there. I put my tongue on the roof of my mouth and I feel it down there. It's pretty nice and sexual, but also pretty strange. Is this the Ecstatic Conductivity you often mention? It seems to be so. Why is it happening, and where is it leading? Where did the term Ecstatic Conductivity come from? I have never seen it in a yoga book.

A: What a beautiful experience. Yes, it is the beginning of ecstatic conductivity, and once it has begun, it will be with you to stay. A level of purification has been reached in your nervous system where your previously learned practices, combined with the addition of yoni mudra kumbhaka, have given rise to that telltale inner sensuality between the brain and the root. It is an awakening of your spinal nerve, which has led to conscious sensations between the upper and lower extremities of it. This is an excellent way to begin a gentle and loving kundalini awakening, with balance of ecstatic energies between head and root right from the start. It means you have good inner silence available to blend in a progressive and healthy way with the rise of ecstatic energies in your nervous system.

How you conduct your practices from now on will determine the rate at which the awakening will continue. If you were to stop practices today, it would likely stay at about the current level of connectedness, or "ecstatic conductivity." As you continue with practices, which I'm sure you will, the ecstatic conductivity will increase over time. It should be a comfortable and smooth unfoldment as you continue to be attentive to self-pacing in practices according to your experiences. We can thank the purifying and stabilizing influences of deep meditation and spinal breathing for our continuing growth and stability.

I confess that the term "ecstatic conductivity" is something I came up with many years ago to describe my own experiences with it, which were similar to the experiences you are beginning now. It is the awakening of kundalini, and we also use kundalini terminology to describe it. Every tradition has its own language for the experience. In these modern times, where we are able to understand such changes as an awakening of the latent capabilities in our nervous system, we can describe it as the rise of increased conductivity in the electrical circuits (nerves) in our body. That is what it is. And it is pleasurable, as you point out. The pleasure keeps increasing as the conductivity increases, eventually beyond all human comprehension, I might add. So it can be called "ecstatic" conductivity, which it certainly is.

Why is it happening to you now, and where is it leading? Well, it is your time, you know. You are doing powerful practices every day, and the time has come for your nervous system to open. It is like a second puberty that is happening in so many of us as we begin our journey into the internal divine lovemaking that leads to the unity enlightenment stage. When kundalini begins to awaken, the inner union, the marriage of our divine polarities, is in the offing. It could take only a few years, or many years, for the process to complete itself, depending on the remaining obstructions in our nervous system, and the degree of dedication we have in our daily practices. And where will it lead? Union is freedom in unending ecstatic bliss and divine love, of course. It is our destiny – it is the birthright of each and every one of us. We have explored this in discussions in the lessons on the milestones and stages we experience on the journey to enlightenment.

The fruition of the journey was also discussed recently in the AdvancedYogaPractices Tantra group, from a slightly different perspective – the point of view of "Sri Vidya" and its "Sri Yantra" sacred diagram. You may wish to review that lesson. If you are not a member of the Tantra group yet, you can review a copy of the lesson that I've pasted below.

I wish you all success as you continue on your journey to ecstatic
bliss and unending divine love.

The guru is in you.

******************************************


Copy of a lesson posted in AdancedYogaPractices Tantra Group,
4/18/04, at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AdvancedYogaPractices_Tantra


Subject: Sri Vidya – The fruition of tantra

New Members: It is recommended you read from the beginning of this tantra yoga archive, as previous lessons are prerequisite to this one. The first lesson is, "What is tantra yoga?"


As was mentioned in the first lesson here, tantra has often been condemned as degenerate in the East and misunderstood (with great enthusiasm) as a sexual cult in the West. What we find as we travel our serious path of yoga is that tantra includes everything we are doing, and probably a lot we are not doing. Tantra is the most all-encompassing approach to yoga, leaving no stones unturned.

But where does it all lead? What is the end of tantra? What is its fruition? In the main lessons, and here in the tantra group also, we have discussed the union of our inner polarities as being the end of all our yoga practice. There are many ways to describe this process – as many ways as there are spiritual traditions in the world. No matter how described, it is the same process of human spiritual transformation.

On the level of our personal experience in the body it is the union of our blissful inner silence, cultivated mainly in deep meditation, with our whole body ecstasy, cultivated in spinal breathing and other pranayamas, mudras, bandhas and tantric sexual methods.

On the level of tantric mythological metaphors it is the union of Shiva and Shakti, which correspond to the direct experiences of silence and ecstasy just mentioned.

The rise of Shiva, Shakti and their final union everywhere within us make up the three stages of enlightenment – First, 24/7 inner silence. Second, 24/7 whole body ecstasy. And third, 24/7 ecstatic bliss, the joining of the divine polarities of silence and ecstasy, yielding an endless outpouring of divine love, which is unity.

If you imagine the rise of a conscious ecstatic resonance vibrating in every atom of your body, occurring between every nucleus and its surrounding electrons, you will have an idea of the depth of the transformation. It is an unending cosmic orgasm within every cell and atom in us.

This fruition of divine transformation is recognized in a scriptural and experiential branch of tantra known as, "Sri Vidya," which means "glorious knowledge." It is the knowledge of ecstatic bliss, expressed with mathematical precision. If this seems like a paradox then it is surely divine, for divine truth is a paradox. If it seems to be wildly ecstatic, it will be heading toward spiritual precision. If it seems to be mathematically exact, then it will soon to be undoing us in an ecstatic reverie. Nowhere is this better expressed than in Sri Vidya's sacred diagram called "Sri Yantra," sometimes called "Sri Chakra." You can view it at the following links, which can also be found in the links section of this group:

http://www.aypsite.com/sriyantra.html

http://www.isibrno.cz/~gott/mandalas.htm

If you do a web search on "Sri Yantra" you can find many versions of Sri Yantra, and endless discussions about it. Perhaps you are familiar with it already.

A version of interest for this discussion is the blue Sri Yantra in the link showing a white dot in every blue triangle in the yantra. This depicts the ongoing sexual union of Shiva (masculine white lingam bindu dots) and Shakti (feminine blue yoni triangles) in every atom of the cosmos. Sri Yantra in its entirety also represents the sushumna/spinal nerve/tunnel, the nervous system, and the divine union occurring everywhere up and down inside us.

Mathematically, Sri Yantra recreates the wave pattern formed by the vibration of "OM," the sacred sound that is found humming naturally within the human nervous system as purification and opening occurs. OM emanates up through the medulla oblongata, the brain stem, forward through the center of the head, and out the third eye. OM is no small, quaint thing that happens inside us. It is "roaring devastating ecstasy" breaking loose inside us, and is synonymous with the highest stages of tantric sexual cultivation. OM is kundalini is full ecstatic swing. So here you have the sexual connection between Sri Vidya, Sri Yantra and tantric sexual practices.

How is one to use the Sri Yantra, if at all? Some traditions use it as an object of meditation. In these lessons we will not. When OM comes, Sri Yantra will be there in us. We become Sri Yantra when we manifest the ecstatic vibration of OM, which is the sound of kundalini/Shakti ravishing her Shiva within us. As this occurs throughout our whole body, we become the Sri Yantra itself. The Sri Yantra is a representation of our nervous system in its highest mode of spiritual reverie.

When you look at the Sri Yantra from time to time, just be aware that this is a representation of your rising inner spiritual dynamic, as well as the ecstatic nature of the cosmos. It is both the microcosm and the macrocosm, and so are we. It is a confirmation and a reminder of what we are consciously becoming through our advanced yoga practices, including those we talk about here in the tantra group. Whole body union of ecstatic bliss is what we are cultivating ourselves toward, and this is what Sri Yantra is.

Let there be no condemnation or misunderstanding about it. No apology is necessary for cultivating human spiritual transformation to its highest level. So cultivate away!

The guru is in you.

|Note: For detailed instructions on building a balanced practice routine with self-pacing, see the AYP Eight Limbs of Yoga book.

<  Previous  |  Next  >