1) Kundalini Experience

[Guest guest]

>From _The Kundalini Experience_ by Lee Sanella, M.D.

 

Chapter 1

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF

PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL

TRANSFORMATION TODAY

 

Half a century ago, in a seminar on the kundalini, C. G. Jung (1932)

and his colleagues observed that the awakening of this force had rarely, if

ever, been witnessed in the West. They suggested, ironically, that it would

take a thousand years for the kundalini to be set in motion by depth

analysis. It is hard to believe that the kundalini phenomenon was unknown

in premodern Europe, given the long-standing fascination with alchemy (as a

psychospiritual discipline) and magic. Can we seriously believe that the

ancient Druids, who were magi and hierophants, were ignorant of this force!

Or that the mystics of ancient and medieval Christendom never experienced

the phenomena accompanying its arousal! It is easier to concede that modern

depth analysis might require a millennium for it to effect a kundalini

awakening.

However remote Jung considered the possibility of an accidental or

voluntary arousal of the kundalini in his day, he certainly had a clear

grasp of its psychological significance. He told the allegory of a medieval

monk who took a fantasy journey into a wild, unknown forest where he lost

his way. While trying to retrace his steps, he found his path barred by a

fierce dragon. Jung contended that this beast is the symbol of the

kundalini, the force that, in psychological terms, obliges a person to go

on his or her greatest adventure--the adventure of self-knowledge. One can

only turn back at the cost of sacrificing the momentum of self-discovery

and self-understanding, which would amount to a loss of meaning, purpose,

and consciousness.

The awakening of the kundalini signals one's entry into the

unknown forest of hidden dimensions of human existence. As Jung (1932) put

it:

 

When you succeed in awakening the kundalini, so that it starts to

move out of its mere potentiality, you necessarily start a world

which is totally different from our world. (p. 110)

 

Jung went on to describe the kundalini as an impersonal force, which is in

consonance with the Hindu sources. He argued that to claim the kundalini

experience as one's own creation is perilous. It leads to ego inflation,

false superiority, obnoxiousness, or even madness. For him, the kundalini

is an autonomous process arising out of the unconscious and seemingly using

the individual as its vehicle.

This transmutative process was, admittedly, rare when Jung first

considered it. This is no longer the case. Today kundalini awakenings occur

more frequently, with and without training. What has happened! Some might

argue that there has not really been any increase in kundalini cases at

all, but that the intellectual climate has changed and people speak more

freely about such experiences. There may be some truth in this, but I

venture to suggest that there is another, more significant cause: People

experience kundalini phenomena more frequently because they are actually

more involved in disciplines and life-styles conducive to psychospiritual

transformation.

Since the LSD revolution of the 1960s, the employment of

nonrational (not merely irrational!) methods of awareness expansion or

intensification has become increasingly acceptable, even fashionable, in

certain sectors of our Western society. New therapies involving some form

of meditative practice have sprung up. Hundreds of thousands of people, we

are informed, practice Transcendental Meditation . Many are engaged in

Yoga, Vedanta, and the different schools of Buddhism--Zen, Vajrayana,

Mahayana, Theravada. An even larger number of people pursue psychic --arts,

like dowsing, "channeling" (mediumism), magic, witchcraft, and

psychic healing. And many more have a passive interest in, if not

fascination for, such matters.

Some sociologists speak of an "occult revival" in our times, others

of an "East-West encounter," while still others warn of the "new

narcissism." Most commentators note that our Western civilization is in a

state of profound ferment. A growing number of critics read our situation

as one of crisis, whose outcome may well determine the destiny of humanity

as a whole.

Jung (1964), for instance, pointed out that a period of

dissociation is at once an age of death and rebirth. He referred to the end

of the Roman Empire as paralleling our own era. Anticipating the

revolutionary insights of Ilya Prigogine( 1984), Jung remarked:

 

...When one principle reaches the height of its power, the

counter-principle is stirring within it like a germ. (p. 142)

 

What that principle is which is presently being replaced by

its counter-principle, we can learn from the works of Lewis Mumford

(1954), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1959), Theodore Roszak (1971), Charles

A. Reich (1971), Morris Berman (1984), and Jean Gebser ( 1985). They are

among those who champion the idea of an

emerging "new age" or new consciousness. And that new consciousness

supersedes what Gebser styles the "rational consciousness," with its rigid

left-brain orientation to life and its anxious defense of the ego as the

measure of all things.

The French psychiatrist Jacques Lacan has described the ego as

a "paranoid construct" by which self and other are kept apart. This is

precisely the orientation that underlies the whole scientific enterprise

with its insistence on splitting value from fact, feeling from

thinking--amounting to a "disenchantment" of the world, as Morris Berman

(1984) has termed it. However, this entire orientation stands challenged by

modern quantum theory and other avant-garde disciplines of science. More

than anything, it has been called into question by the very life-style to

which it has given rise and of which it is an integral part--our deeply

troubled Western civilization.

The ego-bound rational consciousness is ultimately unfit for

life. Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with the ego or with

reason. But where they are made the principles by which life is lived, they

become destructive. The ego is a necessary stage in the development of the

human personality, yet it is by no means its crowning accomplishment.

Similarly, reason or rationality is an intrinsic quality or power of the

human being. But it is only one among many capacities, and it is by no

means the most important one. In fact, both ego and reason are recent

appearances in the history of consciousness. And both are destined to be

surpassed by superior forms of existence.

The search for meaning and happiness, which occupies a growing

number of Westerners, is the other side of their profound dissatisfaction

with the prevalent values, attitudes, and forms of life. It is, in the last

analysis, a quest for that which lies beyond the boundaries of the ego and

reason. Unfortunately, this journey often leads not to a transcendence of

the ego and rationality, but to an immature denial of individuality that is

accompanied, paradoxically, by narcissistic preoccupations, ego inflation,

and an angry rejection of reason. This is evident in much of the

contemporary preoccupation with spiritualism, witchcraft, and magic.

I have also witnessed this regrettable tendency among those who

have stumbled onto the kundalini experience. But this says nothing about

the experience itself, which is not inherently regressive. On the contrary,

I view the kundalini awakening as an experience that fundamentally serves

self-transcendence and mind-transcendence. I tend to agree with Gopi

Krishna's (1971) appraisal of the kundalini. He wrote:

 

This mechanism, known as Kundalini, is the real cause of all

so-called spiritual and psychic phenomena, the biological basis of

evolution and development of personality, the secret origin of all

esoteric and occult doctrines, the master key to the unsolved

mystery of creation, the inexhaustible source of philosophy, art

and science, and the fountainhead of all religious faiths, past,

present and future. (p. 124)

 

But while I regard the kundalini as the evolutionary engine par

excellence, I do not wish to equate it with the ultimate reality of

existence.

 

Chapter 2

THE KUNDALINI EXPERIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIVITY

 

Personal accounts of the awakening of the kundalini tend to be full

of references to emotions, unusual thought processes, and visions, while

physical signs and symptoms or actual sensations are rarely mentioned.

Similarly, vague allusions to subjectively felt energy states and force

fields make up most of the descriptions of meditative experiences.

For the most part, these accounts merely reiterate standard

expectations and formulaic metaphors. Jung (1975) referred to the adherence

to traditional models as a dogmatism that has its origin in the

teacher-disciple relationship. Here the teacher communicates, both in words

and often through direct initiation, the esoteric knowledge or vision that

the disciple is to discover for himself or herself. In other words, the

teacher provides a framework of interpretation that then serves the acolyte

as a guiding light in his or her own psychospiritual journey.

Since intellectual analysis is typically downplayed in

traditional schools of esotericism, the disciple tends to make the

teacher's conceptual framework his or her own, without always looking at

the fit between that framework and his or her actual experiencing. And even

more independent-minded students, who question the inherited framework of

explanation, are seldom willing to make radical innovations. It usually

takes an accomplished adept and rounded personality of the stature of a

Gautama the Buddha or a Jesus of Nazareth to break with tradition in a more

obvious way.

The dependence on traditional explanations can clearly be seen in

the classical accounts of the kundalini experience, as set forth in the

Sanskrit scriptures of Yoga, notably Hatha Yoga. While this tendency is

readily apparent in Eastern writings, it is also true of Western

descriptions of psychospiritual processes. We have so far failed to clarify

the different states of the psyche and the body in regard to

"transcendental" or mystical experiences. There is as yet no commonly

accepted phenomenology that would allow us to comprehend such states

analytically and comprehensively.

For example, William James (1929) saw in the great German mystic

Suso a suffering ascetic incapable of turning his torments into religious

ecstasy. He wrote:

 

His case is distinctly pathological, but he does not seem to have

had the alleviation, which some ascetics have enjoyed, of an

alteration of sensibility capable of actually turning torment

into a

perverse kind of pleasure. (p. 248)

 

By contrast, Jung (1932) and his colleagues thought Suso had

experienced the kundalini process. These contrasting views would appear to

reflect the different interests that James and Jung brought to their study

of Suso. James was sensitive to the pathological element in religious and

mystical life, whereas Jung was primarily concerned with the relationship

between individuation and the kundalini.

Both James and Jung d to the scientific ideal of

objectivity. Nevertheless, both approached the subject of religious

experience principally through comparative analysis rather than rigorous

personal experimentation or laboratory testing of suitable volunteers.

There is, of course, a place for both comparative analysis and

experimentation. It is, however, chiefly by means of the latter--either in

the form of self-experimentation or the experimental study of others--that

we can hope to expose (and transcend) our own biases and preconceptions

about psychospiritual processes.

In particular, such an "obiective" approach can do away with the

common presupposition that psychospiritual states have nothing to do with

the body. This specific bias belongs to the age-old tradition of dualism,

which conceives of a split between body and mind or body and spirit. Modern

psychology and medicine have found the old scientific paradigm of

Cartesianism to be inadequate. After denying for several decades the

significance and even the reality of consciousness, these disciplines are

now in the process of reconsidering the very premises on which they have

been based. In a nutshell, they are coming to the conclusion that body and

mind form a dynamic unity or are polar aspects of a larger reality.

This switch is best captured in the humanistic psychology of

Abraham Maslow. In one of his landmark essays, he argued that the classical

conception of objectivity works tolerably well only in regard to inanimate

objects and, perhaps, lower organisms. When it comes to the animal kingdom

and to human beings, the detachment of the cool observer is, as Maslow

recognized, virtually impossible. While it is possible to eliminate some

of our preconceptions through intense self-examination, Maslow( 1983) held

that the best possible avenue was to marshal our capacity for love in order

to know and understand other beings "objectively." He wrote:

 

To the extent that it is possible for us to be non-intrusive,

non-demanding, non-hoping, non-improving, to that extent do

we achieve this particular kind of objectivity. (p. 18)

 

In the 1950s scientists began to study "altered states" of

consciousness in the laboratory. The first experiments involved the

electroencephalographic (EEG) study of yogins and Zen practitioners. Later,

in the 1960s and 1970s, many similar studies were made of TM practitioners.

Other tests were also devised to track down the physiological correlates of

these elusive psychospiritual processes. They included measurements of

heart activity and skin resistance.

Researchers also encouraged more open and immediate accounts of

personal experiencing, focusing in particular on somatic changes. This

procedure has led to the important discovery that there is a whole range

of phenomena in the process of psychospiritual transformation that are

constant and universal, transcending personal and cultural differences.

This is no less than traditionalists have claimed. It is now possible,

however, to begin to distinguish more carefully between personal

idiosyncracies and predictable patterns. This is especially important in

view of the fact that today the kundalini experience does not occur

exclusively in an esoteric setting where the teacher monitors the pupil's

progress.

The uniform aspects of the kundalini experience, furthermore, are

a potent indication that the experience is not illusory but real.

The signs and symptoms usually described, such as shifts in

emoting and thinking as well as the experience of visions and the hearing

of voices, appear to be largely determined by personal factors (the "set")

and external circumstances (the "setting"). But such physical sensations as

itching, fluttering, tingling, intense heat and cold, photisms (perceptions

of inner lights) and the perception of primary sounds, as well as the

occurrence of spasms and contortions, seem to be "archetypal" features of

the process, or at least of certain phases of it. It is this universality

that leads me to postulate that all psychospiritual practices activate the

same basic process, and that this process has a definite physiological

basis.

Yet, clearly, the emotional aspect of psychophysiological

transformation must not be underrated, for it is the source of the personal

meanings that each individual experiences in relation to the transformative

process. Together with the alterations in the thinking process, the

emotional changes have frequently been mistaken for mental illness. But, as

I have already explained, to interpret the kundalini experience as a

psychotic state is unwarranted. Although the experience may include

pathological episodes or aspects, these must be understood in the context

of the totality of the individual's life and the meaningfulness of the

kundalini experience itself.

The subjective dimension of the psychospiritual process is

richly varied, ranging over a broad spectrum of experiential

phenomena--from helpless confusion and depression to self-transcending

ecstasy and blissful superlucidity. The compelling quality of these

emotional states tends to overshadow the physiological details, so that the

experiencer of the kundalini process is apt to ignore the subtle changes

occurring in his or her physical condition. But whereas the

intellectual-emotional component of the transmutative process is highly

diversified, the somatic component is more amenable to systematic study.

For the reasons already stated, I will focus on the physiological

parameters of the kundalini arousal, reading them in terms of the model

developed by Itzhak Bentov.