Dancing In The Light

by Shirley Maclaine

  Maybe this was the realized state of being in the achievements of Jesus Christ, and Buddha, and the Indian avatars and yogis of today. The avatars claim to have raised their electromagnetic frequencies in order to resonate to a higher level of awareness. That was why they could see “reality” beyond the accepted linear dimensions. The Indian masters claim that when they reach that state of being, they cease to feel the need to manipulate others or even to recognize negativity. There is no conflict in them, interior or exterior. They are one with themselves and the perfection of the universal God energy and hence can control individual energies.

  I remembered the lama-priests I had seen in Bhutan. In icy, subzero weather they came to a frozen lake, submerged themselves in a hole cut into the ice, and meditated until the ice around them melted and steam rose from their bodies. They explained that they had simply raised their vibrational frequencies. Were they accelerating the electromagnetic energy of subatomic particles in their bodies?

  They claimed the faster they accelerated their frequencies, the closer they approached the Divine God-force which they described as a white light so bright we couldn’t see it. They said that an individual’s electromagnetic frequency can alter the state of physical reality and that the human mind could alter the “fixed” reality of fire burning and ice freezing by changing its attitude toward that fixed reality. The important point, they said, was that there were no fixed laws where consciousness was concerned. That we could use our power of consciousness energy to manifest positive or negative reality for ourselves. It was all up to each individual. We were responsible for our reality.

  Carl Jung spoke about “primordial images” and “archaic remnants which were without known origin.”

  He said that one day we would understand where they come from instead of being astonished and bewildered when they present themselves to our consciousness. “When we do understand,” he said, “we might be able to control and use this information coming from the past, at will, since it is all part of our memory pattern.”

  J. Robert Oppenheimer said that the general notions about human understanding which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics were not wholly unfamiliar. They had a history not only in Buddhist and Hindu thought, but also in our own culture. “What we are finding,” he said, “is a refinement of old wisdom.” I had always wondered why Oppenheimer quoted a Hindu Sanskrit text at the moment he witnessed the first atomic blast at White Sands.

  When I first encountered the concept of what mystics called the Akashic Records, I had no idea what it meant. I read, and was told by my guides, that all experience and thought was “stored” in this etheric energy. I had understood intuitively, but not intellectually. I knew Akasha meant ether, but how could ether store anything?

  Then I read Sir John Woodroffe’s Mahamaya: The World as Power, Power as Consciousness. In it he defines Akasha as the ultimate substance having vibratory movement that acts as the medium for the transmission of light. Akasha was one of the gross forces into which the primordial power (Prakrti-Sakti) differentiated itself. Matter was vibrations within the Akasha. Matter was electrical charges of light trapped in the fabric of space-time.

  Jack Sarfatti, the physicist director of the Physics-Consciousness Research Group at Esalen Institute in Northern California states also that matter is nothing but gravitationally trapped light.

  The new physics says that electrical charges of light are what cause thought pictures. Could it be that what I was seeing under the needles were remnants of electrical charges left over from ages long ago? Was this what Jung meant by archaic remnants and primordial images out of an unknown past?

  I knew I was probably being simplistic in my assumptions, particularly where physics was concerned. But I hadn’t been the only one “feeling” the connection of physics and mysticism.

  Of one thing I was certain, both mentally and intuitively. The path to understanding the reality of the world without was to understand the “reality” of the world within.

  Chapter 16

  I had a dense headache when I woke up in the morning. I knew I had “dreamt” “archaic remnants and primordial images,” but I couldn’t remember any of them. I took a warm shower, did my mantras, and went to the sunlit patio to do my yoga. The blood flushing through the yoga postures would clear the headache.

  I was now relating even to yoga differently. I had always done it because it simply made me feel wonderful—a kind of steady vibrating well-being was the effect. It gave me energy and a sense of peace, emanating, it seemed, from the blood along my spinal column.

  The yogic tantra tradition maintained that there was urúimited energy locked in the central nervous system located along the spinal column of the human body. If it is released, it flows up and down the spine. Along the way it passes through the seven centers of energy (chakkras) that govern various functions of the body. The chakkras, they say, are the knots of centered energy by which the soul is connected to the body.

  With yoga and proper meditational techniques, the energy at the base of the spine (kundalini energy) can be aroused until it moves up through each chakkra dissolving the knots binding the soul until it reaches the brain and a feeling of the liberation of the soul is achieved.

  In the average person, those seven chakkra energy centers are closed or “unawakened,” allowing only the barest amount of vibrational current necessary for functioning. The person is walled into himself and sees the outside world from a closed and limited perspective. When the chakkra centers are opened, he sees with a more unlimited vision.

  When the seven chakkras are open, you feel an extraordinary sense of elation. You feel that you radiate from within and are capable of manifesting anything you desire in your life.

  I concentrated more than usual on the yoga today because I sensed something extraordinary was going to happen under the influence of the needle stimulation and I wanted to be as balanced as possible if that were true.

  I had some fruit and toast while I sat in the yard. The sun burned warmly on my skin, the southwestern breeze cooling the perspiration. I heard the telephone ring inside. I didn’t answer it. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I wanted to just be, not aware of time or schedules or obligations. Soon I got in the car and drove back to Chris’s place. The scenery of mountains and mesas was a painting.

  When I arrived, Chris asked it I had had any dreams. I nodded, but confessed I couldn’t remember them.

  “Try to write them down,” she said, “as soon as you are consciously aware that you’ve had one. They are extremely important. You are continually learning in the sleep state. Your higher self is teaching and guiding you. That is why sleep is important. You are in touch with the spiritual plane when you sleep. And the spiritual plane contact is essential to all life. The soul needs the contact.”

  I remembered reading about an experiment conducted over a period of time on several people, who volunteered to be prevented from dreaming by being woken up every time dreaming started, for as long as two weeks, in order that doctors and psychiatrists could study the effects of dream deprivation. There was no damage to the physical body, but the subjects, in varying degrees, became extremely agitated, hostile, and heavily hallucinated. The doctors concluded from the experiment that the subconscious mind needed to express itself during the sleep state. If not, the mind went into a state of confused hysteria. Perhaps what was actually happening was the result of the soul’s alienation from its natural habitat, the spiritual plane, the connection which could only occur while sleeping unless the individual was using meditational techniques to achieve the same result. Perhaps the spiritual plane, which we tuned into while sleeping, was as common a plane of reality to each of us as the earth plane.

  Only the brain-wave activities were measurable during the sleep state. There was, as yet, no way to measure the activity of the soul, simply because it was energy that functioned on an invisible and undetectable dimension, something like the subatomic particles I was learning abou
t.

  Chris and I walked across the yard to her clinic. I wondered what was in store for me today. I wondered if in fact my consciousness would be creating another “reality” I would see. Not in the sense of making it up, but more because, as physics and mysticism claimed, consciousness was the forerunner of everything. At least I was learning to let my mind go. Learning not to obstruct the flow. I knew what I had seen was real to me. What I was beginning to sense was that I was seeing what my consciousness had created in the past. I wasn’t “seeing” what I was creating now. I was, perhaps, seeing what I had in fact created then.

  I lay on the table while Chris went into her meditation, tuning in to her guides. The cool wafts of air passed over and around my body again. Soon she brought the needles to the table and proceeded to insert them.

  “They say we’re going to use some new points today,” she said, “as well as the points from yesterday.”

  She inserted the needles into the Third Eye (again the resistance), the shoulder points, the ear points, and the chest points. Along with that, she inserted a needle in my stomach, just below the navel.

  “This meridian point is the center that helps separate the pure from the impure,” said Chris. “The Chinese say that it is directly related to the colon on the physical plane because it connects with the elimination of impure body waste. But on a psychic level, it connects to the separation of pure energy from impure energy. It looks as though we’re going to do some really important work today.”

  She twirled the needle. There was no pain. She stopped a moment and meditated.

  “Yes,” she said, “they’re also telling me to insert one under the chin just above the throat. That is the communication center, the place where you express yourself. It is what the ancient Chinese called ‘the point that controls crowds.’ ”

  When she inserted the throat needle, there was resistance again. The needle wouldn’t go in.

  “That’s interesting,” she said. “You need to clear a lot here.”

  Again she tried.

  “It’s not going in very far,” she said, “but it will do.”

  She twirled it lightly. There was a dull ache. “Now,” she said, “breathe light into this needle. It’s apparently very important that we use this point today.”

  I breathed in white light. I visualized it pouring in through the needle.

  Suddenly there was a dense ringing in my right ear. Chris turned on the tape recorder above my head. She twirled the needle in the colon area again A dull ache happened there too. My ears stopped up. I couldn’t hear anything in the room. Then there was a dense ringing in my left ear accompanied by a tingling in the feet like a sting of electricity.

  A stricture tightened up my throat. What was going on? I told Chris what was happening.

  “Yes,” she said, “I see your aura changing color. Your auric field is lighting up even brighter than it was.”

  I lay back and breathed very deeply. I inhaled for about fifteen seconds and exhaled for fifteen seconds. I continued the deep breathing for about three minutes. Then I heard (inside my head): “Breathe in the color pink.”

  I visualized a deep, bright pink and drew it into my breath. I continued to breathe.

  “Your auric field is vibrating the color pink,” said Chris.

  “Yes,” I said, “I know. Something told me to breathe in pink.”

  “Okay,” said Chris. “Keep going. This might be very exciting.”

  I hardly heard what she said because I felt myself make contact with what I can only describe as some other energy. It felt very familiar but new. Then I saw the energy. It was an exquisite coppery color.

  “Your auric field is changing color again,” said Chris. “It’s a rusty copper color. Quite beautiful. What do you see?”

  It was an effort for me to talk now because what I was experiencing took all of my concentration.

  “Remember to try to relate to both levels of consciousness,” she said. “Express what you’re feeling so you can straddle the two levels of awareness. Just relax and allow whatever will happen to happen.”

  I breathed deeply into the center of myself as though I were getting my psychic balance. Then a picture swam into my mind, at first diffused, but then very clear. It was absolutely astonishing. I saw the form of a very tall, overpoweringly confident, almost androgynous human being. A graceful, folded, cream-colored garment flowed over a figure seven feet tall, with long arms resting calmly at its side. Even longer fingers extended from the arms. The energy or the form seemed more masculine than feminine to me. The skin of the being was ruddy and its hair was long to the shoulders and auburn colored. The face had high cheekbones and a straight, chiseled nose. The eyes were deep, deep blue and the expression was supremely kind, yet strong. It raised its arms in outstretched welcome. I got an Oriental feeling from it, more Oriental than Western. And I had the intuitive feeling that it was extremely protective, full of patience, yet capable of great wrath. It was simple, but so powerful that it seemed to “know” all there was to know. I was flabbergasted at what I saw, and what I felt about it.

  “Who are you?” I asked, hardly daring to hear what it would say, nor what to make of this kind of dimensional experience. The being smiled at me and embraced me!

  “I am your higher unlimited self,” it said.

  “Chris,” I said loudly, “is this crazy? I think I’m seeing my higher self. Could this really be happening?”

  “Of course,” she said. “This is not crazy. This is what it’s all about. This is what you’ve been looking for. Your auric field is spinning every color of the rainbow. It’s a celebration.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” I heard myself say stupidly to it. “Are you really there?”

  It smiled again.

  “Yes,” it said, “I have always been here. I’ve been here with you since the beginning of time. I am never away from you. I am you. I am your unlimited soul. I am the unlimited you that guides and teaches you through each incarnation.”

  “Listen,” I said, “why do you have a form and why does it look like this?”

  It smiled again.

  “Because,” it said, “you need to see me in the form of an earth-plane dimension. The form of the soul is the form of the human body, in any case. The only difference is that the soul is a form without mass. But if you could see the light form of a soul, you would see a head, two arms, a body, and two legs. The soul is high-frequency light without mass. That is the only difference.”

  How could I be making up such language, I thought to myself. I had never consciously even had such a concept.

  “Well, why do you seem so masculine to me?” I asked.

  “I only seem more masculine than feminine because I am powerful. The energy of the soul is powerful, but it is androgynous. That is to say there is a perfect balance between the positive energy which is male and the negative energy which is female, or yin (feminine) and yang (masculine). The masculine positive energy is thrusting and active. The feminine negative energy is receiving and acceptive. Both are equally necessary to achieve life. One cannot operate without the other.”

  I heard the words inside my mind. The visualization I was seeing was above me. I seemed more interested in the information I was receiving than I was in questioning the phenomenon itself. Fascinated by the concept of two energies in the same body, I asked, “Is it a fact that the masculine, positive side of the brain is on the left?”

  “That is correct,” it said. “And the negative, feminine side is the right side of the brain. You already realize that the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I remember which is which by reminding myself that the male power structure rules the world and that is why most people are right-handed!”

  “Very good,” said the being, whom I will refer to from here on as higher self or H.S. “And masculine priorities, such as assertiveness, intellect
ual pursuit, science, organization, mathematics, and the like are in vogue and have been for some thousands of years. But that will be balanced by the feminine, right-brained priorities of receptivity, intuition, feelings, artistic pursuit, and the like, very soon. As you know, we are now in the Aquarian age, which is a time of feminine energy. It will be necessary to balance the energies of yin and yang, positive and negative, before the end of this millennium. The human race has been operating with predominantly only one side of the brain for too long. But the change is coming.”

  The image of H.S. stood calm and centered. I had the impression that it wouldn’t assert itself unless I motivated it to do so. I looked out the window at a tree outside. It was swaying in the breeze.

  “Listen,” I said, “if I asked you to help me stop the movement of a tree, could we do it?”

  “Try me,” said H.S.

  “Okay,” I said. “That tree outside. Let’s stop it from swaying.”

  “Very well,” said H.S. “Feel my power become your power. Know that together we can accomplish anything.”

  I tuned in to this energy of my image of higher self and melded with it.

  “Now,” it said, “ask the tree for permission to control its movement.”

  “Ask the tree for permission?” I asked, suddenly understanding the more refined subtleties of karmic interreaction.

  “Why, certainly,” said H.S. “All life must work in harmony, balance, and respect for all other life. There can be no abuse of power without reaping consequences. You will hear the tree respond to you. You will know how it feels about it.”

  “Trees can feel?” I asked.