Kilonova - two stars colliding, releasing a mammoth energy burst that is still being detected 130 million years after the fact. Somehow this was portentous to me, a metaphorical catalyst, one that came to me in a chance meeting with a friend. Certainly a synchronicity by definition, whatever you might think of the notion of synchronicity. But what did it portend?
Whatever was to come, it was clear to me that this particular astronomical event/metaphor resonated with something inside me. As I've suggested before, this kind of resonance coming to someone involved in a creative practice is not to be ignored, which is why I went through a flurry of activity fleshing out the contours of this hint from the far reaches of space. When I did step back from the frenzied exploration and took the time to wonder what it was that I had been doing, a very clear answer came to me - it was the omen of a coming personal Kilonova that I was pursuing . When I say the answer was clear, I mean CLEAR, almost as if there was another voice stepping into my interior dialogue. And this voice was not only clear, it was authoritative, compelling, trustworthy; in other words, true. This was not the usual voice of little jeffy richards, prattling away in his head about this or that bit of nonsense. This was... who... what... from where?
I'm sure many of you have heard fiction authors talk of setting out to write a novel by outlining the story, laying out the characters with each one's personal history in the background, and then proceeding with confidence - only to have the characters start to write their own dialogue, tell their own very different histories, take the author's carefully planned outline of a story and throw it in the trash. This sort of thing happens to me and most artists I know all of the time, and I've often wondered about the mystery of this aspect of the creative process, when you step back from a finished piece and ask yourself where the hell that came from. The very clear voice I heard seemed to come from that same zone of mystery, as did the other very clear voice years ago, the one that commanded "Don't be a coward!" as I was about to give in to fear and instead gave in to the sensation at the base of my spine, allowing a stream of astonishing energy to burst up my spine and into my head - the initiation of a Kundalini activation that continues to this day almost 10 years later.
Gopi Krishna, the 20th Century Pandit from India who wrote extensively on his own Kundalini experiences, had a related moment come over him at one point in his transformative process. He was a family man and a low level bureaucrat in British occupied India, someone with no creative interests whatsoever. One day much to his astonishment he began reciting poetry to a friend who was chatting with him as they strolled down the street together. The words simply came to him with no forethought, and in the months and years that followed whole poems of several pages would appear in his mind, some of these poems in languages he had no knowledge of (OK, as a poet friend who is familiar with his work pointed out to me one day, they weren't very good poems...but what the hell!!). Here's what Krishna had to say about this phenomenon:
" During the creative periods, I distinctly perceive that the ideas that flash across my mind and the words I use to express them come from the surrounding emptiness. In the formulation of ideas the ego is never absent. I know that the idea is mine and that I am the author of it. But both the "I" and the "idea" are not now confined within the periphery of my individual mind, but seem to be parts of a vast reservoir of thought encircling me. The ideas and the language for their expression emerge from this reservoir and, soon after, disappear to sink back into it again."
We tend to feel that our thoughts are generated in our brain, right there inside our head; that certainly is how it feels But what Krishna seems to be implying is that, at least to some extent beyond self-generation, our brain is actually a receiver of thoughts, much like a radio is a receiver of radio waves. We already know the brain is a receiver of our experience in the material world - our senses pick up energy information from our surroundings, send that information to the brain which then translates it into a kind of gestalt which allows us to make sense of and act in the material world. The thought world certainly is invisible to our 5 senses, but it's hard to deny that it is there, it exists - and that it is energy. Who knows what the extent of that world is? If it's invisible, with no apparent boundaries, why should it be bottled up inside the parameters of our brains? If the brain is a receiver of sense impressions, why should it not also be a receiver of invisible thought impressions, impressions in that "vast reservoir" surrounding our individual mind?
This begs the question, is our brain able to receive elements from the thought world that arrive from beyond its physical location? Or is our brain able to reach out somehow, to expand itself non-physically into the realms of the 'vast reservoir? Did that clear, authoritative, trustworthy voice reach out to me? Or did I reach out to it?
In either case, there is a relationship, one built over long hard years...a little like two orbiting stars slowly spiraling toward each other over the millennia, until...
To be continued...
Postscript: I originally titled this posting "Voices". Since then I've been reading "Interior Castle" by the 16th Century Spanish Nun/Mystic Theresa of Avila, and ran into a discussion touching on what I had been exploring. Theresa uses the term 'locution', who's dictionary definition is 'a particular form of expression, or a peculiar phrasing'. In her writings she speaks of several types of locutions, breaking them down roughly into voice of God, voice of imagination, voice of the devil, and explains how one would distinguish them from each other. Which category embraces my kilonova voice is still a bit unclear, but in deference to that great saint I've altered my title.