The Three Channels and How to Work with Them

[Armando]

3 hours ago, Pilgrim said:

 Will you discuss with us more about Tummo, I am certain there are many who would like to learn. I would, and I know a good friend of mine who would as well.

 

Well, I was going to stick with the Nine Step Purification Breathing technique some more, but since I do sense a particular interest in Tummo among the participants of this thread, we might just as well look into that topic now.

 

I will consider how to approach that subject best in a thread like this and get back to you soon, my friends.

[Aetherous]

I once read a Rinpoche saying that tummo causes all of the channels to collapse. Anyone know more of that idea?

[Armando]

Hello my friends

 

And my apologies for letting you wait. I did have to meditate first on how to best proceed with our current topic of Tummo.

 

Tummo practice is generally reserved for the somewhat advanced practitioner, which some of you are, of course. However, this is a public thread, and I feel there are things not suitable for being shared in this format. However, I will do my best to answer any questions you may have, and there is always the option to resort to PM if it seems more adequate.

 

Let's start this discussion with a particular form of Tummo practice called "Four Joys". We will be using part of the description in Geshe Kelsang Gyatso's wonderful book Clear Light of Bliss as our reference and work from there.

 

Quote

By meditating for a sustained period of time on the
short-AH within the centre of the navel channel wheel, and
by mixing our mind thoroughly with this object of
meditation, we will be able to cause the winds to enter,
abide, and dissolve within the central channel as
previously described. As a result of these winds entering
the door of the navel channel wheel, the downwardvoiding
wind, which is located just below this channel
wheel, will move upwards. This in turn will ignite the
inner fire, visualized as the letter short-AH, and cause it to
blaze. The heat generated by the blazing of the inner fire
will melt the white drop in the crown channel wheel,
which is visualized as an upside-down letter HAM, and it
will begin to flow downwards through the central channel.
It is this movement of the white drop flowing gently down
the central channel that gives rise to the experience of joy,
or bliss.
   As the drop flows down to the centre of the throat channel
wheel we experience the first joy, called simply 'joy'.
By stabilizing our meditative concentration on the OM
visualized in the throat centre we will be able to experience
this first joy for a prolonged period of time. The first stage
of joy will be experienced for as long as the white drop
does not flow past the throat channel wheel.
   After remaining for a time in this channel wheel the
white drop should be allowed to continue down the central
channel. As it flows down to the centre of the heart
channel wheel we will experience the second of the four
joys. This is known as 'supreme joy' because the bliss
experienced at this time is greater than that of the first joy.
Again, we will be able to maintain this blissful experience
by concentrating on the letter HUM in the heart centre.
After remaining in supreme joy for a while we should
allow the white drop to flow down to the centre of the
navel channel wheel. When this happens we will experience
the third and even greater joy, known as 'extraordinary
joy'. If our meditation on inner fire has been
successful we will be able to maintain this experience of
extraordinary joy for as long as we wish.
   When the white drop leaves the navel channel wheel it
flows down the central channel until it reaches the tip of
the sex organ. This gives rise to the fourth of the four joys,
known as 'spontaneous great joy', which is a stage of
spontaneous great bliss. This blissful experience is superior
to the three preceding joys and can be maintained for
a long time. In ordinary beings, when the white drop
reaches the tip of the sex organ it is soon released and the
strength of the blissful experience quickly diminishes. For
an accomplished Secret Mantra meditator, however, this
does not happen. Because the Yogi has caused the winds
to enter, abide, and dissolve within the central channel and
has gained control over the downward-voiding wind, the
white drop will flow only within the central channel and
thus can be held at the tip of the sex organ without being
released.
   When we have attained this blissful experience we
should use the mind of spontaneous great joy to meditate
on emptiness, the lack of inherent existence. After remaining
with this experience for a time we should reverse the
flow of the white drop and cause it to move upwards
through the central channel. Until we become accustomed
to this meditation, we will need a great deal of concentration
to accomplish this reversal. With practice, however, we
will be able to reverse the flow of the white drop quite
naturally and with little effort.
   As the white drop flows upwards we will experience
four increasingly powerful states of joy. Because the white
drop is now flowing upwards, these are called the 'four
joys of reverse order'. Each of these is a stage of spontaneous
great bliss and should be conjoined with meditation
on emptiness.
   The first joy of reverse order arises as the white drop
flows up to the navel channel wheel. As it flows up to the
heart we experience the supreme joy of reverse order, and
as it flows up to the throat we experience the extraordinary
joy of reverse order. Finally, as the white drop flows up to
the centre of the crown channel wheel we experience the
spontaneous great joy of reverse order. This is the highest
of all the experiences of joy. When it occurs we are pervaded
by tremendous bliss and we are able to remain
within this experience for a very long time. In fact, we will
continue to experience this bliss unceasingly, even when we
are no longer engaged in meditation. The practice of
experiencing these stages of spontaneous great bliss and
using these minds to meditate on emptiness is the very
essence of completion stage, and we can beneficially spend
our entire life engaged in it.

Edited March 2, 2019 by Armando

[Armando]

Let me ask you, my friends...

 

Are any of you familiar with the practice of the "Four Joys"?

 

If so, I would like to hear your experiences and questions.

[Pilgrim]

2 hours ago, Armando said:

 

Let me ask you, my friends...

 

Are any of you familiar with the practice of the "Four Joys"?

 

I believe you are referring to the practice of Tummo and what is experienced as the inner fire grows ever hotter and rises causing the bindu drops to melt in the crown, throat, heart chakras as well as the Juction 4 inches below the navel and as each melt a specifi experience of Joy or bliss ais felt and as the topmost drips it contacts the throat bindu then the heart then the flame itself causing it to surge and burn ever brighter and this takes the place of needing to breath for prolonged periods of time yet one must also maintain focus to contain the flame within the central channel.

 

[Armando]

10 minutes ago, Pilgrim said:

I believe you are referring to the practice of Tummo and what is experienced as the inner fire grows ever hotter and rises causing the bindu drops to melt in the crown, throat, heart chakras as well as the Juction 4 inches below the navel and as each melt a specifi experience of Joy or bliss ais felt and as the topmost drips it contacts the throat bindu then the heart then the flame itself causing it to surge and burn ever brighter and this takes the place of needing to breath for prolonged periods of time yet one must also maintain focus to contain the flame within the central channel.

 

 

Yes, as presented more at length a few posts above... This is one of several methods that employ Tummo breathing.

 

Do you have any personal experience with this method?

[Pilgrim]

Just now, Armando said:

 

Yes, as presented more at length a few posts above... This is one of several methods that employ Tummo breathing.

 

Do you have any personal experience with this method?

Yes I do. I can elaborate here or in private your choice. I do not hold back much but would not like to potentially step on lineage toes.

[Pilgrim]

Oh btw I did not read the long post as it looked like a quote will go back and read now.

[Creation]

5 hours ago, Armando said:

Let me ask you, my friends...

 

Are any of you familiar with the practice of the "Four Joys"?

 

If so, I would like to hear your experiences and questions.

I would be curious to know if this is combined in you practice with generation stage/illusory body yoga for you, or is practiced strictly as a manipulation of the drops.  I get the impression that different tantras do things differently, but I don't know any details.

[InnerOuterBalance]

 

^ This is the correct 3 channels path. Ida goes down to the perineum, Pingala to the belly button area. No need to worry about these though, just keep peeling layers. I don't believe in visualizations because it is us creating an illusion. If we experience the channel it is different but creating illusions and imagining these channels is us digging a hole for ourselves in my view.

[rex]

13 hours ago, InnerOuterBalance said:

I don't believe in visualizations because it is us creating an illusion.

 

Just some thoughts on this:

 

• Lineage practices based on experience may use specific visualisations. Here efficacy over the centuries may trump intellectual doubt.
• The subtle body may be ideoplastic and adapt to the goal of practices, though I'm not saying one can make up any old nonsense.
• Visualisations may lead to spontaneity, the process and subtle body end up runnning things themselves without mental manipulation.

 

 

 

[InnerOuterBalance]

3 hours ago, rex said:

 

Just some thoughts on this:

 

• Lineage practices based on experience may use specific visualisations. Here efficacy over the centuries may trump intellectual doubt.

 

Thanks for the knowledge 🙏

[Armando]

On 3.3.2019 at 8:15 PM, Pilgrim said:

Yes I do. I can elaborate here or in private your choice. I do not hold back much but would not like to potentially step on lineage toes.

 

I don't see any problem with you sharing your personal experience in this regard. Rest assured, I wouldn't have suggested it in the first place, otherwise.

[Armando]

On 3.3.2019 at 11:14 PM, Creation said:

I would be curious to know if this is combined in you practice with generation stage/illusory body yoga for you, or is practiced strictly as a manipulation of the drops.  I get the impression that different tantras do things differently, but I don't know any details.

 

So it may seem at first, but if you look on to completion stage, you may find that your earlier practice prepared you for what is to follow later.

 

For convenience, I will quote from Geshe Kelsang Gyatso: Essence of Vajrayana, p. 92 f.:

 

Quote

Completion stage meditation on tummo, or inner fire, causes the downward-voiding wind below our navel to reverse and flow up through the central channel, which in turn causes all our inner winds to gather into the central channel and dissolve into the life-supporting wind at our heart. This causes the white bodhichitta in our crown chakra to melt and descend through our central channel, giving rise to the four joys of serial and reverse order. The final joy, the mind of spontaneous great bliss, then mixes inseparably with emptiness and gradually abandons the two obstructions. When our mind is completely purified in this way we attain the three resultant bodies of a Buddha - the Truth Body, Enjoyment Body, and Emanation Body. Thus, these aspects of the charnel grounds teach us how to attain full enlightenment by training in the yogas of completion stage.

 

Doesn't this description remind you of something?

 

Even though Vajrayana comes with an immense variety of seemingly disparate methods, every so often, you will find that kind of interwovenness underlying it all - making it a comprehensive system.

Edited March 6, 2019 by Armando

[Armando]

On 3.3.2019 at 11:44 PM, InnerOuterBalance said:

 

^ This is the correct 3 channels path. Ida goes down to the perineum, Pingala to the belly button area. No need to worry about these though, just keep peeling layers. I don't believe in visualizations because it is us creating an illusion. If we experience the channel it is different but creating illusions and imagining these channels is us digging a hole for ourselves in my view.

 

On 4.3.2019 at 1:30 PM, rex said:

 

Just some thoughts on this:

 

• Lineage practices based on experience may use specific visualisations. Here efficacy over the centuries may trump intellectual doubt.
• The subtle body may be ideoplastic and adapt to the goal of practices, though I'm not saying one can make up any old nonsense.
• Visualisations may lead to spontaneity, the process and subtle body end up runnning things themselves without mental manipulation.

 

 

 

 

I agree with the latter view, overall. Visualisation can be an effective tool for us to communicate with and operate on the levels subtle energy, at least for the time being.

[Pilgrim]

The first experience I ever had was after the performance of first Kriya Yoga. This culminates in the state of Paravastha. 

 

Paravastha can be described a bit like this.  Let me see if I can use words to convey.  it is a process.

 

In Kriya there are the triple divine qualities.

 

1. Divine Vibration / Pulsation / Electrical sensation

 

2. Divine Sound the sound of Anahata the heart Chakra the unstuck ceaseless sound.

 

3. Divine light. Seen as a glow from a butter lamp and becoming milk white light.

 

From these 3 things which can all be going on at once or in combination or singularly the mind is drawn into single pointed absorption.

 

When the triple divine qualities are in the throat chakra a curious thing called Kechari Mudra occurs where the tongue enters the cave of Brahman up in the skull by sliding up and behind the soft pallet. When this occurs there is a connection made where energy streams down from the crown and energizes the entire central channel & chakra system even to the Jewel tip chakra at the tip of the penis.

 

After this occurs the entire body is full of a higher vibration and then a deep calm overcomes everything the mind is silent and absorbed in bliss and the awareness is withdrawn into the crown.

 

Here one resides detached from body awareness and sensory awareness.  While here in the stillness the spaciousness and the silence.

 

Here one resides until it becomes time not to and one completes their practice.

 

One day something different, something else happened.

 

Complete absorption in the crown became absorption without form as it usually does.

 

Then when the session was over I pulled the tongue down into my mouth again and swallowed. As I sat there as is often the case the desire to get up was absent the desire to remain was strong and the tongue again shot up into the cave of Brahaman and the energetic flow started all over again.

 

It grew and it grew and with every breath grew ever stronger, the body was fairly vibrating and hopping in the cross legged position and the male anatomy was extremely erect.

 

I then felt a female presence and in my minds eye beheld her form that of a mature yet still young woman standing in front of me naked. She placed her right hand and on my left shoulder then looked into my face with understood expression saying are you ready without words, meaning well understood. I assented and she with both hands on my shoulders slowly lowered herself onto and over my erectness.

 

Her legs were then wrapped behind me holding me and I felt her warmth and touch as real as any flesh and blood woman. She held me tight and guided the energies between us moving them up and down our respective spines in ecstatic blissful union. She then without words instructed me how to move these energies myself and in doing so I lost the tactile and visual experience of her as she joined me within revealing herself in my understanding to be the divine Shakti herself.

 

From her I learned True Pranayam is in the breathless state where the energy moves without breath acting as a pump nor is it guided by will but by polarity and affinity going and doing what it must as it must as an intelligent living thing that is not just electricity.

 

This was the start after this she would visit as described above and also just as the familiar presence within guiding.

 

The time came where the guidance too the form of being in the center 4 finger widths below the navel and I was guided to build up compression there and lock the anus in Mulha Bandhi.

 

Here the energy would flow from the inhaled breath and compress and burn and I would then allow this feeling of heat to rise and it would touch the heart chakra then the throat then the crown and each gave a different blissful feeling then from the crown the energy would flow back into the center 4 fingers below the navel excite it and repeat each time growing stronger this cycle would repeat several times and fresh air was needed.

 

On many occasions I had to stop because there was such great heat being generated, enough so an Air Conditioning duct blowing on my non clothed body could not cool it down an I would find myself drenched in sweat with huge drops dripping off of me.

 

Later the body heat sensation tapered off and was kept more inside the channel.

 

In time I learned about letting the heat build in the central channel and read some on what this was and learned it was called Tummo. It was amazing to experience this then find corroborating information that this was something known for a very long time very far away.

 

From that I learned about visualization and possibility for other ways of practice besides just feeling. It was all very interesting because I had experienced and felt so much that reading descriptions seemed less fanciful than if I had merely intellectualized them.

 

So I would sit and finish my practices of Kriya and then transition into Tummo using visualizations to bolster what I could already feel. Sure enough gradually allowing the flame to rise higher and higher like a needle point each Chakra was made to drip bliss and collect in the center 4 fingers beneath the navel.

 

With some experience in feeling some book learning I modified my practice adding visulaizations and the process became like this.

 

I would feel the emptiness of the body which I was familiar with as roaming as something as small as a bacteria in the huge hollow human form, this was something that occurred regularly with me a s a child even. This is where the human body felt like a huge hollow shell with my awareness free to roam withing the spaciousness of it.

 

Sitting I would feel for the 3 channels 

 

1. I would inhale and draw outside Prana or Lung down the two side channels and into the center 4 finger widths below the navel while doing this allowing the lower abdomen to extend out like a vase.

 

2. Getting a good feeling for this would add Mula Bandhi and 

 

3. Lowering the chin to the chest retaining the breath and squeezing the lung compressing it in the central channel while 

 

4. Visualizing a flame and attaching the feeling of heat it get hotter with the flame building and the tip getting hotter and hotter and then. 

 

5. Piercing the center with a white hot needle and then. 

 

6. Seeing /feeling  the flame lengthen and touch the Heart chakra as the intense heat penetrates the Center and rises up the central channel then 

 

7. The flames ultra hot tip licks at the heart chakra and it drips ecstasy. This drop vibrates and when it

 

8. Touches the center with the flame the flame grows more powerful and lengthens and touches the throat If I am not in Kechari at this point it happens and locks into place. This then drips another vibration quality touches the heart and like a gong make s a vibration sets off a resonance and they both join at the flame center where the energies again cause the flame to grow and vibrate with different qualities of ecstasy. This flame then

 

9. Reaches all the way up warming the heart and the throat going right through the center of them with searing heat  and finding it s target in the very top center of the crown chakra causes it to vibrate. I listen to the different vibrations without trying to impose mental mantra. then

 

10. The energy from the crown grows vibrates and drops striking the throat then the heart then the Center 4 finger widths below the navel and it is so energized the energy then take s a downward route and I partly release the lock of the perineum and anus and the energy flows into the the perineum causing it to vibrate with pleasure then the shaft of the penis finding a chakra there that is further vibrated and stimulated and onward to the tip of the Glans penis where it will at times circle the circumference of the glans then at the culmination of pleasure draw it back through the center of the penis up into the center 4 inches below the navel where a new dynamic of vibrations is felt and repeat the cycle. 

 

11. Eventually a breath needs to take place and often this entire cycle can only be performed 3 or 4 times before some normal recover breathing needs to take place. Mostly because I can tend to spend too much time experiencing each center soo deeply that sense of time is lost and the energies dissipate into the body.

 

The whole thing of not breathing is dependent on the body being fed so much raw energy, this is not a passive practice at all and the bliss in my experience is what keeps the mind focused, The visualizations are helpful to further refine the braod strokes of what is felt and at times yes guided. The visualizations also help so I do not remain in one center and chase the vibration to zero point of said center and enter into different samadhi's

 

This has been my experience of Tummo and without formal guidance it occurs to me that the work of Tummo is not being accomplished so I rarely engage in it. 

Edited March 6, 2019 by Pilgrim

[Armando]

On 6.3.2019 at 9:20 PM, Pilgrim said:

This has been my experience of Tummo and without formal guidance it occurs to me that the work of Tummo is not being accomplished so I rarely engage in it. 

 

Nevertheless, it is interesting that you discovered these Tummo basics spontaneously by yourself during your practice. It is another example illustrating that the methods of Bön and Vajrayana are by no means something artificial and imposed on the practitioner, but that they draw on natural processes. An observation that I tend to highlight in my teaching; especially beginners in the west often find this insight helpful as they can be somewhat perplexed by some of the methods at first.

 

But you are quite right, it is better not to try taking your Tummo practice to the next level on your own, i.e. without personal instruction allowing you to do this safely.

[Pilgrim]

3 hours ago, Armando said:

Nevertheless, it is interesting that you discovered these Tummo basics spontaneously by yourself during your practice. It is another example illustrating that the methods of Bön and Vajrayana are by no means something artificial and imposed on the practitioner, but that they draw on natural processes.

I agree with you. This is why I respect the lineages. Experience confirms the truth of what is. The amazing part to me is how shallow my wisdom is and how great the wisdom of those who have already been here  and reached the next evolution truly is.

[Armando]

15 hours ago, Pilgrim said:

I agree with you. This is why I respect the lineages. Experience confirms the truth of what is. The amazing part to me is how shallow my wisdom is and how great the wisdom of those who have already been here  and reached the next evolution truly is.

 

Of course, I respect the lineages too. However, I encouraged you to share your personal experience because I knew this wouldn't touch upon any lineage questions. Your personal experience is yours alone. Where you should go from there is another matter entirely.