Observations placeholder

In my case, I received shaktipat from Muktananda in a lucid dream (without ever meeting him) along with the kundalini rush and getting slightly out of body when I was about 40 (I'll be 80 next year) but was able to handle it by just relaxing lying in bed.

In my 50s I went to live and teach math in the Muktananda Ashram in the NY Catskill Mtns, and recognized Muktananda, by then dead, from his pictures. In my lucid dream I thought he was one of the Cambodian refugees I had sponsored and who lived with my family for a while in the 1970s.

At the ashram I learned of a technique for finding your chakras using your fingertips as probes and mantraing. Blood flow in your fingertips pulsate when over a chakra. Being by then a convert to Judaism from atheism (an Anglican priest I befriended in college told me I was really an atheist and I had to agree) I went looking for the 10 Jewish kabbalistic chakras.

I found 18 levels of chakras and at least 3 vertical columns, a total of 50 chakras. Over the years after leaving the ashram I evolved a mantra for each chakra based on Buddhist chakra mantras and a bit of trial and error.

The base chakra mantra in Buddhism is OM I M NA MA HA. When I finally found the 18th level just below my heart, I decided based on Ramana to use OM M I NA MA HA. And the first time I meditated by weaving the mantras (2 forward and 1 back- Kabir was a weaver) over the chakras associated with my heart in the early morning hours was when I passed out later that morning after walking my dog.

When I first incorporated it into my meditation routine, the next morning I passed out due to the rush of kundalini, and it started while I was driving. I managed to park in a S&S lot and waited for it to pass. When it seemed safe I grabbed a cart for a walker and proceeded into S&S store. But even before I got there, some 100 feet, I no longer recognized the store. But I got inside a few feet before passing out. Witnesses said I shook like a chicken. I did notice that I had chicken vision while driving, my first clue as to what was coming.

Anyway the EMTs came and wanted to take me to the hospital, but being a doctor I refused. You see, in Massachusetts if you pass out and are brought to a hospital, your license will be suspended. Even this first incident was very inconvenient. I was not allowed to drive any more that day and my dog was in the car. My wife had to drive an hour from work to rescue us.

Needless to say I do not use that technique any more.