A Name To The Nameless: A Tantric Journey Through The 50 Mental Vortexes

Preface

  I was initiated into Tantra Yoga in 1993. I was taught in the very pure and secretive Rajadhiraja Tantra Yoga tradition by a very adept Indian yogi, Shambushivananda, a disciple of Anandamurti.  Within a few months the kundalini began with what would be a very long and intense awakening. As a student of psychology and world literature, I had heard of kundalini and other mystical energies but I had never thought they were real, live forces.  I thought it was just interesting archaic symbolism, and not an actual force within the human body that rises up through the spinal column to awaken higher states of awareness.  The universal symbol for this force is the serpent. It is said to be a covert, spiritual force beneath the surface of conscious awareness, like a coiled snake. Kundalini is the fundamental intelligence behind life and evolution. As this divine “serpent power” rises through the spinal column, one experiences states of deep spiritual realization.  For the yogi, kundalini is the force that unites the human with the divine.

   One day after classes and a short meditation, at which I was merely a beginner, I laid down on my back due to exhaustion. I felt a soothing force begin to rise up my spine. As this point of white, soft energy rose up into the thoracic region of the spine, I began to hear the sacred Om sound.  It became frightening because there was only Om and nothing else. I opened my eyes but could not see anything. My faculties of sight and hearing were unified and there only existed Om. I knew I was being dissolved in a force that was vibrating within every particle of the universe. It was ecstatic and exhilarating but terrifying. I felt my whole identity would disappear and never return. The kundalini was entering the medulla. I began to repeat my mantra for meditation but it only made the experience more intense. Instead, I began to repeat my name, William Ernest Enckhausen III over and over and trying to remember that I was a student in Austin, Texas on the physical plane of reality. The kundalini began to go back down as Om diminished. I couldn’t take any more.

  After that experience I became very confident but experienced a lot of mental turmoil.  It was very productive turmoil in that all negative memories from my past were being quickly purged and purified. I began to feel completely whole and that I had already lived a very complete life. The second time the kundalini rose was a few months later. I saw the same light in my spine although this time it was an infinitesimally small point. Physical reality disappeared and I began to “see” from the crown of my head a turquoise bird flying closer and closer as the point rose higher and higher. The bird landed on the crown of my head at the same time the point rose to the same place. Heaven and earth had met and I was lost in an infinite web of sound vibration where I could no longer see even this beautiful vision. My last thought before losing awareness of not just the outer world, but also the inner world of vision, was that the forms looked Meso-American. Only years later would I learn of the Mayan concept of kundalini, what they call Kulkukan, the Plumed Serpent.*  And it was even many more years later that I learned forms of Mayan meditations very similar to Indian Tantra from a recluse indigenous teacher from Chiapas who recently died at the age of 110.

* This same image was named Quetzalcoatl by the Toltecs. A version of the image of Quetzalcoatl is on the Mexican national flag to this day. The turquoise bird that I saw was actually a quetzal, a beautiful colorful bird in Mexico and Central America.

  After this I became a freak. I lost all interest in a career and marriage and a “normal” life. I barely graduated the university and went to India seeking more understanding. There I met Chidghananda, a solitary old monk well-venerated in his order. He was regarded as a saint and I felt so honored that he took me into his close friendship and care. Sometimes I would accompany him with his evening meditations.  He always heard the holy Om sound and it increased in his meditation. It was obvious that he regularly experienced ananda, divine bliss. He was truly one of the most loving human beings that I have ever met. My experiences had intensified near him at Ananda Nagar and it was clearly divine will that I had met such a teacher to guide me through these powerful processes.

  At the time I wanted to become a monk but Chidghananda himself told me that I was a bit of an oddity and would not fit in well with the monastic organization.  He said that my spiritual work was coming to an end, and that I didn't really need to do anything else with my life rather than meditate, live simply, and help others as much as I could.  Although sharply criticized for his influence over me, he followed his conscience and spoke only the truth to me.   Although very confused as to what to do with my life once the ideal of being a monk was fading, I was aided by a dream in which Anandmurti commanded me not to worry about becoming a monk, but just to “see the world as a frame-less photo and wander through the night.” Anandamurti has always spoken to me through dreams in such an elevated, poetic fashion.  Later, as a confirmation he told me in another vivid dream that “all that matters is to do dhyana dasha.”  He used those Sanskrit words, one of which I knew of not until a friend looked it up in a Sanskrit dictionary. What Anandamurti said was “all that matters is to do service through meditation.” I was often unsure if in these dreams I communicated with the spirit of Anandamurti, or if Anandamurti had become a mere symbol in my consciousness that had penetrated my dreams.  Either way, these dreams always made perfect sense to me and enlightened difficult situations.  If they were my own projections, then they came from the deepest, most intuitive parts of me that have never let me down.

  It was soon after that I met Chandranath and his wife, Ram Parith Devii. They were some of the first initiates and spiritual teachers, or acharyas, personally taught by Anandamurti in the 1950's. They were undoubtedly the most spiritually elevated beings that I have ever met. The whole environment around them was bliss. Even their lifelong employees, like the cook and the gardener, had become highly developed yogis. Speaking with Chandranath removed any doubts I had about my meditation and he told me that the intensity would calm down with time. He gave me invaluable tips about the mystical subtleties of spiritual practice and left me with the deepest sensation of divine peace that I still feel each time I recall being in his presence. Both he and his wife were established in the practice of samadhi (experiential union with the Supreme Consciousness) and could enter into it at will. They were free, realized souls whose only reason to still be physically incarnated was to help others along the path. After meeting them I realized that more important than being a monk or householder was to simply try to be at one with the Supreme Consciousness at all times, as they were. There are still some great disciples of Anandamurti and teachers of Rajadhiraja Yoga in Acharyas IIshvarakrsnananda, Japananda, Shantatmananda, Krpananda, Anandadhotana, and Anandamitra, to mention a few.

  A Name to the Nameless is a work in which I explain my personal experiences in the format of philosophy and psychology. Instead of continuing to write about very subjective mystical experiences, I decided to explain my experiences by going more deeply into Tantric spiritual science. Experience proves theory and I have discovered that Tantra is a universal spiritual science that sprouts up about all over the world, not just in India, Tibet and China, but in Meso-america as well. Who knows where else in the world exist traces of this secretive spiritual science.? Most of my early inspiration was due to the spiritual influence of Anandamurti and a few of his disciples, like Chidghananda and Chandranath. White Feather or Quetzal Manik was my wife’s teacher whose Tantra Maya practices only deepened my understanding of the Indian Tantra I had been practicing for years.