A Meditator’s Guidebook to The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Kundalini Meditation Method

By JJ Semple

Since the publication of Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time in 2008, readers have asked for an in-depth guidebook on using The Secret of the Golden Flower (SGF) to awaken kundalini in a manner, and with the same results, as described in JJ Semple's Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time.

This is that book, a much-anticipated companion guide to the SGF as well as a sequel to his autobiographical kundalini memoir.

A treatise on Chinese kundalini meditation and ontology, The Secret of the Golden Flower (SGF) is a third-century masterpiece, whose teachings are obscured by a poetic style and baffling metaphors.

In fact, the SGF has two objectives. One, it's a manual for kundalini meditation, even though the term "kundalini" never appears in the text. Put aside what you may have been told or read about the SGF and accept this as fact — one borne out by centuries of realized practitioners who practiced the method, a fact vetted by contemporaries such as Gopi Krishna.

Two, it's an explanation of ontology, which the dictionary defines as: “the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being.”

Neither objective is readily understood without practicing the method. Sure, it’s possible to approach the text as an academic challenge, but the best way to reconcile the two objectives is by practicing the method, which, if you are patient, allows you to “grok” the ontological elements as you move forward. The two are not separated in the text; they’re mingled together, which, as you might imagine, makes understanding problematic.

This book is the first to examine and extract the actual, workable teachings from the underlying methodology in the SGF and shape them into a practical modern method. By cross-referencing both the Cleary and the Wilhelm versions, the author explains each version's contribution to the kundalini awakening process. A chapter comparing Golden Flower Meditation (GFM) to the Microcosmic Orbit (MCO) is also included.

Says JJ Semple, “Although the ontological portions obscured the practical aspects to some degree, I decided to forge ahead. Ultimately, once the meditation took its course, once the light started to circulate, I was catapulted out of the limiting duality of the physical world into the metaphysical actuality of ‘the great One...which has nothing above it.’

“As my practice moved forward, the ontological portions took on meaning. To my amazement, my kundalini became aroused and ultimately active, which surprised me greatly because I’d never heard of kundalini. As already stated, the word isn’t mentioned in the SGF. Surprised and distressed to find myself in a state I had no name for, I quickly realized it wasn’t something I could talk about with so-called normal people, much less to members of the medical profession. This was in 1971; there wasn’t a lot of information about changes in ‘Being,’ at least none I was able to find. I was being transformed by the oft-alluded-to ‘Primal Spirit,’ whose power and purpose I finally understood. Fortunately, I kept a journal of my practice.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Life Force Books
• Release date: Aug 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463206942

JJ Semple

JJ Semple has worked as a film editor for NBC with TV producers Stuart Schulberg and Ted Yates, and he edited “Assassin,” an independent feature film, for Rod Bradley's Streetlight Productions.In the 1970s and 80s he lived in France, where he directed his own training school, Arazon, a company that prepared managers for negotiation and problem solving. After attending a French business school, he established a subsidiary of UNILOG, a leading French software company, in the US. He returned to Paris to work for Apple Computer Europe, designing multimedia programs. He also taught a multimedia course at the American University in Paris. It was during this period that he began writing feature screenplays.His screenplay, “Everyone Wants to Make Movies” (co-written with Mark Richardson) won the Telluride award in 1997, and their screenplay “Little Dan” won first place at the Telluride Independent Film Festival in 2000.Semple's formal education includes studying English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania and George Washington University, and a master’s degree in marketing from Hauts Etudes de Commerce in Paris.His personal education involves yogic practices and spiritual exploration, inspired by a wide variety of teachers, writers and philosophers, including Gopi Krishna, Milarepa, and Lao Tse. However, his worldly accomplishments pale beside his thirty years of investigating workable methods for activating the Kundalini~Life Force. JJ Semple is one of the foremost authorities on the practice and application of Kundalini~Life Force Science.

Book preview

I

THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER AND KUNDALINI

"The statements of this kind that during the process the shukra (semen) dries up or becomes thin, that the male organ shrinks, or that the sexual appetite is lost, contained in old manuals, cannot fail to convey important bits of information to the modern savants engaged in the investigation. An ancient Chinese work, The Secret of the Golden Flower, contains unmistakable hints about this process, which no one with some knowledge of the subject can fail to notice, and yet Jung, in his commentary on the book, entirely preoccupied with his own theories about the unconscious, despite the unambiguous nature of the statements in the work, finds in it only material for the corroboration of his own ideas and nothing beyond that. The same thing happened in a seminar held by him on Kundalini of which a written summary is still available in the Jung Institute. Not one of the savants present, as is evident from the views expressed by them, displayed the least knowledge about the real significance of this hoary cult and the tremendous import of the ancient doctrine they were discussing at the time." ¹

THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF RELIGION AND GENIUS - GOPI KRISHNA

1

WILHELM OR CLEARY

The Secret of the Golden Flower has two objectives. One, it’s a manual for kundalini meditation, even though the term kundalini never appears in the text. Put aside what you may have been told or read about this book and accept this fact. If you believe it’s something other, you were probably misinformed by someone who has never practiced the method. Two, it’s an explanation of ontology, which the dictionary defines as: the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being . Neither objective is readily understood without practicing the method. Sure, it’s possible to approach the text as an academic challenge, but the best way to reconcile the two objectives is by practicing the method, which, if you are patient, allows you to grok the ontological elements as you move forward. The two are not separated in the text; they’re mingled together, which, as you might imagine, makes understanding problematic.

Although the method is not plentiful in detail — it takes a minimalist approach — it is a manual for activating kundalini and I used it as such, not that I encountered the term kundalini during my practice of the method. I didn’t. I did discover that too much detail can overwhelm a practitioner, and that’s why I stuck with it. I liked its emphasis on correct breathing. I figured that if I learned to regulate my breathing using the pointers in the text, I’d have fewer moving parts to deal with. Many methods burden the learner with volumes of anatomical descriptions and variations in techniques. Yes, the book is written in an esoteric manner, but I found that I began to understand its teachings as I practiced the meditation. What else can a student ask for?

Of the two most prominent translations, I used the Wilhelm translation, often scorned nowadays for the quality of its translation by the translator of the other version, Thomas Cleary. Why did I use the Wilhelm version? For the simple reason that Cleary’s version was published in 1991 and I started my practice with the Wilhelm version (first published in 1931) in 1971, 20 years before the Cleary version appeared.

Yes, I used the Wilhelm — warts and all, according to Cleary — to activate kundalini in a safe, permanent manner. Could I have used the Cleary and achieved the same results? Probably. And that’s why bickering over that translation is so pointless: either text allows the serious practitioner to activate kundalini. But then again, neither Cleary, Wilhelm, nor Jung ever activated kundalini. And that’s where this book comes in — to clarify the teachings for those wanting to use either text for its primary purpose — awakening kundalini.

Cleary offers a useful appraisal of each version’s approach to organizing the text in Chapter IX of his Translation Notes. He also informs us that he translated all 13 chapters of the text while Wilhelm only translated eight:

This and the following three sections, comprising the rest of the text as it is found in the canonical version on which the present version is based, are entirely omitted by Wilhelm in his rendition, because he considers them of ‘inferior quality.’ He does not, however, explain the basis of this evaluation. While it is true that these last four chapters go back to basics again and again, this is in fact a general characteristic of the whole text, which repeatedly reviews fundamental theory and praxis as it develops the details of their experimental implications. It may be that the difficulty of these sections, which contain a relatively high concentration of Buddhist and Taoist technical terms, discouraged Wilhelm from translating them. ¹

Aside from his last comment as to Wilhelm’s motives, about which the truth can no longer be established, Cleary’s statement is insightful: theory and praxis are scattered and tangled throughout. As to the benefit derived from these ontological contents, unless the reader has successfully practiced the method and awakened kundalini or has an understanding of science, philosophy, and mysticism, these theoretical teachings are difficult to apprehend — because they depend on praxis. I don’t understand all of them, only the ones that became intelligible during my 5o-plus years of practicing the actual energy cultivation techniques in the text. But, then again, I didn’t need to because my goal was awakening kundalini.

Because this present work is based on my kundalini practice with the Wilhelm version, I decided I cannot become entangled in the excesses of Buddhist and Taoist terminology noted by Cleary: This book covers Chapters 1-8 of the Wilhelm version — the only version I have first-hand practical knowledge of. Then again, even Cleary concedes that Chapters 9-13 favor Buddhist and Taoist technical doctrines and references.

Before getting into the method, however, let’s go over a wee bit of ontology, starting with two terms found throughout the book: Primal Spirit and Conscious Spirit. According to The Secret of the Golden Flower (SGF), the Primal Spirit is the formative energy responsible for our physical embodiment; the Conscious Spirit is the ego and its agents, the senses. The senses feed us an endless flow of information. Society (our parents, teachers, friends, family, and the media) tells us what this information means, and our perceptions — what we perceive with our senses — become reality. What we are taught to believe in and hold as values determines our opinions and beliefs. We think we are free, but we are slaves to the cultural, familial, and educational patterns bequeathed to us. Living under the various illusions we are conditioned to, it is very difficult to extract (de-condition) ourselves without recourse to the primordial, super-conscious Primal Spirit.

"After the process of creation of the body is complete, Kundalini Shakti is said to go into a dormant state. But it can become active again later in life as the spiritual process known as a Kundalini awakening. But rather than creating a new life form from a fertilized ovum, it now undertakes a process of renovation of the existing human body, particularly the brain and nervous system, so that a more advanced faculty of mind — cosmic consciousness or enlightenment — can be manifested." ²

When I first read the SGF over 5o years ago, I did not understand this, nor did I know where to begin with the meditation. Did I tell myself it was hopeless, that I might as well give up? I decided to sit and work on my breathing — an approach I later learned originated with the Buddha, i.e., to sit in one place until something happened.

Although the ontological portions obscured the practical aspects to some degree, I decided to forge ahead. Ultimately, once the meditation took its course, once the light started to circulate, I was catapulted out of the limiting duality of the physical world into the metaphysical actuality of the great One...which has nothing above it.

As my practice moved forward, the ontological portions took on meaning. To my amazement, my kundalini became aroused and ultimately active, which surprised me greatly because I’d never heard of kundalini. As already stated, the word isn’t mentioned in the SGF. Surprised and distressed to find my being in a state I had no name for, I quickly realized it wasn’t something I could talk about with so-called normal people, much less to members of the medical profession. This was in 1971; there wasn’t a lot of information about changes in states of being, at least none I was able to find. I knew what had happened. I kept a journal of my practice; I could recite the transformations taking place. I was being transformed by the oft alluded to Primal Spirit, which I had awakened, and whose purpose I finally understood.

I knew I would write about my experiences someday, ³ but at the time I was too busy watching it revitalize my being and wondering what it would do next. Besides, in the little I did let out to others, no one believed me. It’s all in your mind, they’d say. I knew this to be untrue, but I had no way of proving it. After all, kundalini activity is invisible. Although the effects do make gradual physical and metabolic, as well as cognitive and emotional changes, they are beyond the ken of science at this time.

"The relationship of the individual consciousness to the Universal might be described as follows: In the same way that a drop of water from an ocean is of exactly the same chemical constitution as the ocean, but is not the ocean, our limited human consciousness is of the same essence as the Infinite Consciousness, but is only a tiny drop of that Infinite Consciousness that has been made to perceive itself as finite.

"The term maya is often used in the sense of a veil that makes an illusory world seem real to the observer. It is, rather, the power of Shakti wrapped around the spark of consciousness in us that makes it perceive itself as separate from the ocean of Infinite Consciousness. As an ancient, well-known Sanskrit mantra states in this regard, referring to the term poorna, which means wholeness or completeness." ⁴

How did I finally find a name for my condition? A friend told me about the Samuel Weiser Book Store in New York City so I flew from Paris to New York to continue my search. To add to the serendipitous nature of my quest, five minutes after entering the store I found myself staring at the spine of a book entitled Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man by Gopi Krishna. How I gravitated to this one title in such an immense, cavernous store, I don’t know, but after perusing the book for two minutes, I realized I’d found a label for my condition. That Weiser’s closed down in 1991 says more about the turmoil in publishing and book retailing than it does about interest in spiritual topics. But that’s another story.

In the meantime, kundalini has become an all-encompassing term, too big for one language or tradition alone. Let’s forget terminology conflicts for a moment and define Kundalini as a two-step biological process that:

Awakens dormant energy through sexual sublimation,

Releases super-conscious energy throughout the body, once the sublimated sexual energy rises to the brain.

However, while kundalini is a biological process, it is also a rebirth/maturation process, which many seekers tend to ignore until faced with the prospects of living the rest of their lives with this awakened energy. How does the rebirth process work? Firstly, you must accept kundalini energy and not struggle against it. Unfortunately, many have trouble with acceptance — to their ultimate chagrin. But let’s say an individual accepts this energy, what’s next? Kundalini doesn’t only re-engineer your body; it reconditions your metabolism, emotions, and intellect. It may even affect your genetic