Halos
So i'm just revisiting Gopi Krishna's book How to Verify Enlightenment and he describes Christ and the paintings of Saints as having halos which demonstrate a visual identifier of someone with the cosmic consciousness provided by Kundalini.
I feel I must dissagree with his whole view of Kundalini as a visual manifestation. He starts by contradicting himself anyway by saying that cosmic consciousness is light but that it cannot be seen, so we're not off to a good start. Then when he talks about Christ and the Saints he misses a vital aspect of the medium of painting.
Gopi says that the halos shown in religious paintings are proof that the Kundalini experience is one of light. However I would challenge this based upon my own understanding and experience of Kundalini. I suggest instead that the halos shown in paintings are a representation of cosmic conciousness in the medium of paint, and are only a metaphor.
How else could one show cosmic consciousness in a painting? I do not believe that halos are meant to be visible, but that the circular shape is actually a representation of the feeling of cosmic consciousness, and I would add from my own experience that this feeling is all encompasing around the head, hence its depiction in artworks is accurate.
The kundalini experience is an expansion of conscioussness, so the feelings that we all have inside our heads escape from the confines of the skull with Kundalini and eminate out into the world. I would add that the expansion is actually a sphere and not a two dimensional circle, but we can surely forgive the painters back in the day for not understanding how to paint the 3rd dimension. Gopi does give himself an out by saying that this mantle of light is not perceived in normal human consciousness, and is an inner perception of lustre, but this appears to be a patch over a broken concept rather than an additional facet of the idea.
However despite this as for the other aspects of his description of cosmic consciousness provided by Kundalini I cannot disagree with him and they seem spot on to me.
Am I wrong? Well clearly I am not a saint, or Christ, but it is just possible that I have sage like potential and all I can say is watch this space.
As an addendum to this, I went back to Gopi's book What is Cosmic Consciousness as I remember him covering this subject there as well and he seems to have a different view there:
"The genuine mystical vision has nothing to do with sourcery, magic, miraculous happenings, weird adventures in the world of the paranormal, bizarre visionary experiences, or fantasies of any kind. In the genuine illimunative state, there is no clouding of he intellect, no riot of colours, no encounters with strange creatures, no weird or bizzare scenes, but only an indescribable state of glory happiness and love, coupled with an all pervading extended consciousness or an almighty omnipresent cosmic being."
and
"This is mystical experience, it is nothing like people are writing about; visions and colours and lights and something of the sort. It is the most intense experience of love, of wonder, of beauty, of music, that you can ever have."
