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often find in analysis), but in the organic experience within himself of these changes. He lived through the archetypal experiences, naively, in the best sense of the word simply, naturally, unaffectedly. As our author says, in the standard works of Kundalini Yoga and Hatha Yoga, and Chinese Yoga as well, there are chakras, distinct centres of experience located in the body, each with an elaborate symbolism of colour, number, animal, God, element, and body organ or system. Gopi Krishna did not have these experiences, although he explains how it might be possible for one to have viewed the circles of light as petaled chakras. For him there were no lotuses. We are reminded of his suffering. However, the organic experiences he sensed do correspond with the emphasis in these yogic systems upon physiological reality and upon the changes in vital centres and organs expected once the Kundalini is aroused and the light or breath is in circulation. The question arises: did these events actually take place in his body, in his cells, nerves, organs? Or did they take place in the yogic body? Bharati says (op. cit., p. 291): 'The physical and the yogic body belong to two different logical levels.' The chakra system of the yogic body is not supposed to have any objective existence in physical space. Yet the psyche insists 92 on this body language and body experience so that what is logically impossible is indeed psychologically not only possible but felt to be true. Thus for Gopi Krishna this question does not arise. His experiences were definitely physical and in his body, his flesh afire, his organs affected, his appetites altered. Prana connects the two levels, which are really but one identity which our minds divide into two logics. Physiologists and there have been some may examine the physical body during samadhi for traces of its alteration and thus may demonstrate the effect upon the physical body of changes in the yogic body. But the psychologist starts with the psychic data which follows Gopi Krishna's report: his physical body was for him the material place of projection of immaterial events and there in the 'body' they were experienced by the senses and felt to be 'real'. Evidently, there must be some material place for psychic changes: the object of art, the alchemical materials, the physical body. In our Western tradition we have come far in knowledge of the reality of the physical body, and are comparatively ignorant of the reality of the body of the imagination. We do not understand enough about the effects of the imaginal body upon our physiology, not only in psychosomatic symptoms, but in all illness and its treatment. Our author's account shows how intimately the two 'logical levels' merge in actual experience. Because his report does not follow the standard examples of an ascent throught distinct chakras, it is just that more valuable. The alchemists too complained that the literature was obscure and useless: no one could learn how to make the Stone from anyone else. Each had to do the work alone. So, too, in analysis, no two processes move in the same way, produce the same patterning of symbols and motifs, yield the same emotional experiences. Each case is individual and each relationship between analyst and analysand is different. In this sense it is always a creative endeavour. One must make and follow one's own way. The archetype of in- dividuation may be said to be single, its manifestations multitudinous. Chapter Fourteen IT was my good fortune to have relatives and friends whose affection, loyalty, and help contributed to make the risky path I was traversing safe and smooth for me. My two sisters, their husbands, the father and brothers of my wife, and also my friends, few but sincere, surrounded me with affection and loyalty. My mother had died more than one and a half years before the occurrence and yet it was no less to her excellent upbringing than to the great devotion of my wife that I owed my survival. Among all my benefactors they stand out like two ministering angels, and the debt of gratitude for the unbounded love they bore me and the invaluable service they rendered I can never hope to repay in this world. It was my great good luck to have a mother whose kindness of heart, nobility of character, sense of duty, and purity were exemplary, and whose boundless love moulded my childhood and youth, exercising the greatest influence for good on my whole life. Looking back now at the years which followed the awakening, I can affirm unhesitatingly that but for the robust constitution bequeathed to me by my parents and certain good traits of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |