3.3 Diverse interconnections and Indications of the Perceptible Breath regarding
The Mother’s goals
The experiences and occurrences which I have described in the next four chapters are placed in the same chronological sequence in which they took place rather than in their significance. Two of them were fundamental and had effects which were life-determining not only for Ilse Middendorf but also for me.
3.3.1 Ilse Middendorf’s mission
A perception of Ilse Middendorf which was to stamp her life took place at 12 when she heard an inner voice clearly state: “Du musst atmen“ (“You have to breathe”).
3.3.2 My Experience of the Power of Kundalini
|
In the summer of 1971 during a meditation it happened to me that in the region of my sacrum I noticed a movement. Then I had the sensation as if my spine were bending strongly. This sensation of bending wandered up the spine and I had the impression that it turned like a snake. I experienced as large the bending out of the axis of the spine so that I experienced anxiety and believed in the first moment that it would break. But since this occurrence took place without pain, I was able immediately to leave this pain behind. The wave movement reached the height of my arms. Now all the bones of both arms began to “bend”. In the area of my head I had none of these sensations of movement. About ten centimeters above my head the movement induced a vision of tremendous proportions. I cannot describe what I then experienced in words. For some seconds I was “everything” that means in complete identification “with everything”. A rising feeling of my external Vital and Mind “I want to be that too” ended this experience immediately. |
My knowledge of Kundalini was superficial but extensive enough for me to be sure that I had just experienced that. It was only years later that I read in the Agenda that it did not belong to the normal experiences of Kundalini to go beyond the head. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo had according to their own words experienced that, but stressed that no other corresponding case was known to them. On the 11th of July 1970 The Mother spoke to Satprem about that: “Perhaps I would have died if the experience had gone on for longer. I suppose nevertheless that something has changed since the “teachings” in the old texts which makes it possible for the Chakra above the head to open without being damaged.” After this experience my desire to get to grips with the phenomena of consciousness grew. |
3.3.3 An encounter with Cornelis Veening
|
Cornelis Veening psychologist and breath therapist was for many years a companion on Ilse Middendorf’s path of breathing. He was very reticent concerning his own person. So it only became known from his estate after his death that he had corresponded with The |
Mother. He started out on a journey to Pondicherry but he broke it off in Madras for unknown reasons shortly before reaching his destination. |