The music of Kundalini

The Music of Kundalini
From the book Kundalini an Occult Experience, by G.S. Arundale

Can we describe the great serpent-fire of kundalini in its fundamental glories, it its colors, in its shapes, in its music notes? Can we describe its song? Can we describe its rainbow?

Kundalini is music as it is color. It is a rainbow as it is a perfect song. The student senses this as he enters into its nature. It comes from afar trailing clouds of color and sound. It is a perfect fruition of life. It is a consummation of life. It vibrates with consummated experience. Who’s experience? The experience of one who has been one, but who has resolved into glory upon glory the unfoldments of his evolutionary way – unfoldements in darkness and in light, in peace and in storm, in joy and in sorrow. He has sown experiences, and he has reaped flowers, a garden of flowers, flowers that sing, flowers that breathe forth colors.

Could the student but hear the song of kundalini, could he but ‘see’ the colors of the fire, he would know what life is, for he would be penetrating into the very heart of Being. But his senses are dull, even those with the aid of which he experiments and experiences. He can know that which to him is knowable, and he can see as through a mist and as yet unknowable, and through the mist comes the glory of a throbbing majesty of sound – a single world – encircling, world – reverberant throb of sound, yet containing within itself a veritable world of music. Through the mist, too, comes the glory of a mighty rainbow of color, no less world – be witching and world – drenching. All is alive with color – sound, color singing, song colorful.

The student feels he may not suggest either a color or note as expressive of kundalini, for each of us hears himself differently, sees himself differently, in this magic crystal of blended color – sound. Let each listen. Let each see. It were almost a blasphemy to dim the crystal from its all – embracing purity.

Yet our kundalini, the cosmic kundalini from our lord the Sun and the individual kundalini from our mother the Earth, has its note dominant, different from the notes dominant of other modes of evolution, and is a blend of the song of the Sun and the song of the Earth. Our lord the Sun sings his song for all his universe. Our Mother the Earth shines, in all her color, radiance in answering homage.

How near sometimes the student seems to come to the song of kundalini from the sun, to color of it, and to the song of kundalini from the earth, to the color of it. He sees at once the earth is but an image of the sun her father. The song of the earth, the color of the earth, are but immature shadows of that coming substance perfectly resplendent in the sun. he sees that all the singing from the earth, and the color messages, are but praise to the lord of all, and from the heights of man in all his trappings of bodies right down to the humblest atom in the lowest of nature’s kingdoms the student hears a song of praise and color throbbings of aspirations. Our lord the Sun has set them all afire. He has set all a-singing. He has set them all-shining in a myriad hues. In their joy, in their deep consciousness that as he is so shall they be through the mystery of his being in color and in sound, they give to him that which they have received from him. Our songs, our colors, our life, our light, our glory, are from him, and we lift up our gifts that he may see we cherish them.

Kundalini sings to the student with the voice of all that lives. The student thus begins to know all life, not by a forthgoing, but by an indrawing. In the hidden recesses of his own kundalini – pardon the possessive – he finds the secret of the unity of life, as he has known life’s solidarities without.

There is a unity, and sings one song, composed through the song be of an infinitude of notes. There is a unity and it sends forth one color, composed though it be an infinitude of hues. There is but one song, but one color, for all live on this kundalini-globe we call the earth. In the kundalini we hear the song, we see the color. And we are able to externalize that which for so long must remain internal, remote, and inaccessible, only now and then revealing itself, when at last we are the unity, then do we pass beyond the human kingdom, as we have passed beyond the kingdoms below and the kingship of the matter-world is ours.

Kundalini is indeed vocal. She can be heard by those who have the ears to hear. She is substantial, even though yet more spatial, and can be seen by those who have the eyes to see. Kundalini is no mere fanciful abstraction. She is no mere theory, no mere externalization of an imaginative outpouring. She lives. She sings. She arrays herself in scintillating colors.

When we seek her within ourselves, and perchance catch a glimpse, be it in her sleep or in her stirrings, of her compassionate elusiveness, then if our eyes and ears be but faintly open, we shall see her raiment and hear her voice. And these shall be our raiment and our voice, not as these are now, but as these shall be some day. Is it not worse while to seek her, not by striving to awaken her before her rightful sleep is over, not by distributing her if on occasion she sallies forth within the domain which is hers to illumine, but just by watching, as the student has watched, respectfully, without a ripple of desire for response?

The way to seek her is to detach oneself from ones anchorages, to break the bars of all imprisonments of physical body, feelings and emotions, and mind, and to loose oneself in the formless spaces of life’s infinitudes. It is needful to ‘feel’ the infinitudes in their limitless natures, not going forth infinitely far, but being infinitely still. There is no far nor near when perfect, stillness is achieved. Yet the stillness is vocal. It is supremely still because it is throbbing – I wish there were a word to express throbbing to the supreme degree of imperceptibility – with the song, the voice, of the stillness. When that still, small voice, infinitely potent by very reason of its small stillness, is heard, then are we hearing kundalini --afar off, yes; inevitable so. But in the distant future to be our voice, our very selves singing for joy.

So, too, in the perfect clarity of silence, we shall see a warmth because of his warmth of color. Then shall we be seeing kundalini -- afar off, yes; inevitably so. But in the distant future to be our color, our very selves shining for joy.