Olga Louchakova is a professor of transpersonal psychology and director of the Neurophenomenology center at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. She is a master teacher of the Hridayam® School of Kundalini Yoga. In this essay she shares her experience with kundalini awakenings—how kundalini interfaces with physical and mental health. Having worked as a neuroscientist at the Pavlov Institute of Physiology in St. Petersburg, Russia, she combines this knowledge of the biology of the brain with her experience of kundalini to detail the different possibilities of energy openings in chakras, meridians, and “knots,” otherwise known as thresholds where kundalini energy can become stuck and cause sickness, disease, or emotional turmoil. She also advises those who experience these challenging kundalini awakenings that there are ways to work through them and experience their spiritual power in a positive way. She answers such questions as: Are certain chakras or areas of the body associated with particular autoimmune diseases or nervous systems malfunctions? Can we better prepare for kundalini through expanding our awareness of ourselves on all levels, including psychological and spiritual?
Kundalini has a dual nature. According to Indian metaphysics, “she” is Shakti, the manifesting power of the universe, flowing from spirit into matter. In her reverse flow, which is one’s spiritual awakening, she flows back to her source in spirit. Through her flow, matter and spirit manifest as the opposite ends of a single continuum. This living energy in the human body connects the dual realities that our mind-born philosophies have sentenced to forever exist in different ontological orders: the realms of the “real” and the realms of the “ideal.” Mystics of all traditions have always seen these realities as connected, as a continuum from corporeal “earth” to spiritual “heaven.” Through the spectrum of subtle energies, the solids of the material body flow into intangible creations of the mind. This “mind-stuff” continues into a domain that is completely transcendent to any materiality, into that which is transcendent to thought itself and to any meaning or form, and which possesses only the suchness of existence, sentiency, and eternal fullness in the “now.” This is the path of the return to the self, the path of kundalini. It always contains a paradox of the immortal spirit, unveiling itself moment by moment in the density and darkness of the perishable, finite, limited human body. Thus, the body becomes a participant in spiritual awakening and a conduit to energies of a high spiritual nature, which bring to light whatever obstacles and latent conditions were dormant in the body.
Traditional kundalini yoga dealt with the paradox of embodied awakening by introducing preliminary spiritual practices that prepared the body for a current of high spiritual energies. The practices of ethical purification, of awareness directed to bodily sensations, and of physical postures and breath control were intended to precede the activation of kundalini energy. Body, psyche, and behavior, thus brought into alignment and harmony, created the perfect container for the awakening of kundalini. Ideally, like a river flowing through a clean and welcoming riverbed, the transformational energies penetrated and informed the perfected body without causing any problems for the health of the body or mind.
By contrast, the spontaneous awakening of kundalini amid the ongoing stresses of life is by no means an event that adds to the harmony of our being. On one side, spiritual awakening leads to the attainment of self-knowledge and hence happiness. On the other side, the uncalled-for transformation inherent in awakening creates conflicts with the feeble homeostasis of our existence. How does the body respond to spiritual awakening? What does such awakening do to our physical health? An embodied kundalini awakening contains the promise of full physical health, but may well bring out or activate dormant diseases that manifest until the body “clears up” or resolves these potential blockages and then restores the flow of energy. Because of the way spiritual awakening unfolds, fields such as psychosomatic medicine, psychoneuroimmunology, and other areas of medicine that take into consideration the connections between the mind and the body can be of special use in troublesome kundalini awakenings.
Consider the relationship between the immensity of spirit and the finality of the body. Here is the story of Sherry, a woman in her mid-forties. One night, she felt strong anxiety and a pain in the left side of her body, culminating in the chest. She wondered if she was having a heart attack. She decided to put off calling the ambulance, hoping the pain would subside. Indeed, after several hours of turmoil, her state shifted. The pain was gone, and she passed into a new state of being in which she was simultaneously herself and every living being there is. She was insects and animals, whales and angels, her children and her ancestors, saints and killers, extraterrestrials and beings yet to be born. She/they experienced delight, pain, insights, terror, love, perils and paradise, births and deaths, and everything else imaginable. This continued for some time, and then subsided. If one’s own life can be hard to cope with, how much harder it is to be present in the life experience of all beings! The sentience that lives in the heart of everyone and everything and contains the whole universe revealed itself through Sherry’s experience of heart pain.
Sherry managed to surrender to the experience of what she later discovered was kundalini opening her heart center. She was also able to integrate this experience with the experience of mundane consciousness, which returned after the opening had passed. But one may imagine a less benign situation. For example, French Benedictine monk Henri le Saux, also known as Swami Abhishiktananda, experienced a full-blown heart attack that was evidently a spiritual awakening within his heart center.
The juxtaposition of the spiritual expansion of an opening heart center and the limitations and “normalcy” of everyday ego-based consciousness creates a significant conflict for the mind. As one of my meditation students, an eight-year-old girl, rightly noticed, “Inside we are much larger than on the outside.” If one’s mind is too attached to the trivial, is closed to the perception of the nonordinary, or is simply afraid to lose control over the habitual dimensions of time and space and one’s habitual power relationships with others, the state of consciousness associated with the heart center’s opening will be threatening to one’s psychological status quo. Thus, spiritual energies that need to be channeled toward the spirit—the nonmaterial level of the body-mind-spirit spectrum—will be trapped in the corporeal domain. Like lava, which is safe, vital, and useful when abiding at the core of the earth, such energies are safe, vital, and useful when they are allowed to follow their natural flow into the spirit. But just as released lava burns the surface of the earth, these spiritual energies cause physical afflictions when they become trapped amid our psychological inability to surrender, to be authentic and honest with our inner experiences, or simply to face the painful contents of emotional experiences, shameful memories, or insufficiencies of the self. Then, the intermediary of the mind between the physical body and the spirit becomes contracted or closed, the flow of energies opening the spiritual dimension is blocked, and the physical body takes the brunt of this energy that does not belong to it. This is why heart attacks or strokes may be associated with spiritual awakening—a price the physical body pays for being the conduit of spirit while living an unbalanced, so-called normal life.
I first recognized that the kundalini process can include physical problems in the late 1980s. I had been working as a medical doctor and neuroscientist while also teaching intense kundalini-raising practices in the Russian spiritual underground community during the years of Soviet power. At times, my participants developed exacerbations of chronic conditions such as gastritis, angina pectoris, or migraines. But as meditation deepened, awareness of the body brought the psychological conflicts associated with pathology to consciousness and allowed them to be resolved: the symptoms disappeared, and then all practitioners reported a subjective improvement in their health.
As my observations cumulated over the years, it became clear to me that health problems can develop in people who do not practice kundalini techniques but are the subjects of spontaneous kundalini awakening. However, health conditions associated with kundalini awakening tended to self-heal or present few complications or residual symptoms, while regular “unspiritual” health problems—even those with the same diagnosis—commonly worsened and demanded medical treatment.
Gradually, it became possible to differentiate between several kinds of disease that were obviously related to kundalini awakening. Cardiovascular problems associated with kundalini, such as strokes and heart attacks, differed from regular strokes and heart attacks because they healed better, faster, and with fewer complications and were accompanied by profound personal transformation bordering on character change. In contrast to personal changes in response to the disease—such as might occur as a result of the life-transforming influence of hardship—it was as if these conditions were wrapped around a particular neurotic conflict. Positive personality or character dynamics occurred when the conflict was resolved, and this in turn caused the disappearance of the bodily projection of the conflict: the disease.
Both strokes and heart attacks are related to the areas of the body where, according to the kundalini process model, there are important centers associated with the principal structures of the psyche and transcendent spiritual experiences of a higher order. Spiritual experiences in these areas are related to psychological experiences. In a sense, both can be seen as residing along a continuum of meaning that begins in personal realms (within the domain of the ego) and resolves into spiritual realms (beyond the ego). Those kinds of polarities in meaning associated with our inner structure are described in Jungian literature, and in my studies of the phenomenology of the self this kind of organization of meaning becomes especially prominent.
Recently in psychological literature, there has appeared a plethora of works, including those by Eugene Genlin and psychologist Steven Rosin, that place meaning upon the spatial organization of the body. Mind dwells in the body, whereas body-mind-spirit inhabit a continuum; they are not separate, watertight compartments. These and other concepts addressing the continuity between the body and our internal worlds are becoming increasingly present in public awareness. They relate well to the kundalini process, as they describe the realities of inner experience and the dynamics of the process as it emerges.
In the case of kundalini-related strokes or heart attacks, the neurotic conflict on the level of the mind blocks the resolution of awareness into spirit, which the energy and vector of the process of spiritual awakening require. But when the obstacle is resolved, the process becomes harmonized with its internal tendencies, and instead of causing affliction to the physical body, it causes an experiential unveiling of the spirit connected with the area of the body where the affliction existed. In other words, gateways to spirit open at the location in the physical body where the disease used to be, in the affected areas of the brain or heart. The same holds true for other areas of the body that correspond to spiritual centers.
The next group of physical afflictions relates to those areas of the body where there is less possibility of an associated neurotic conflict due to the specific meanings associated with these areas, because such meanings are multilevel and present a very complex structure. In the Indian psychology of kundalini yoga, at least two levels of mind are differentiated: mind without certainty of knowledge ( manas in Sanskrit), and mind—intellect—that has certainty ( buddhi in Sanskrit). In Western science and philosophy, the levels of the mind and the types of cognition form a complicated, frequently self-contradictory map. What is important to the understanding of kundalini-related pathology is to differentiate between the thinking that relates to solving mundane problems and the frequently preverbal set of deep existential beliefs that govern our behavior and relationship with life. These thoughts or beliefs concern what is real and unreal, what it means to die and to exist, what is moral and what is not. There is a group of centers in the body that are specifically associated with these mental processes. While none of these processes are better than others, some of them are truer to the reality of spirit, to the “enlightened” state of mind that accepts the primacy of the ideal, of spirit. Others are mostly true to the reality of the unenlightened mind: the premises associated with a purely materialist orientation. These mental domains are associated with structures of the subtle body that are called “knots” in the psychology of kundalini.
In contrast to other structures of the subtle body such as chakras or meridians, knots are thresholds, places where the current of kundalini energy, or the process of spiritual awakening, tends to become stuck in a specific way. If kundalini leads one to the unveiling of one’s essential self—to a recognition of the realness of the ideal world (spirit as the essence of the self)—the self is mostly veiled in the zones of the subtle body knots. Thus the obstructions or conflicts in those areas are related to the dynamics of a deep understanding of one’s nature, as opposed to the dynamics of simple neurotic conflicts. While delusions about one’s enlightened nature are not neurotic conflicts per se, they are in a sense afflictions associated with the kundalini process itself. When energy gets stuck in one of these zones, it develops a physical pathology specific to that zone. As the kundalini process progresses, this “stuckness” clears; we become more aligned with the truth of our nature, and the symptoms disappear.
The first knot is located in the area below the navel. In Indian kundalini-related metaphysics, it is known as the knot of Brahma, the Creator. The essence of this knot is the understanding of the subtle realms underlying the perceptions of the material world. It is also the understanding of the different degrees of materiality, from gross to subtle. Clearing obstructions in this area can be associated with the development of prostate cancer in men or fibromatosis and various pathological conditions of the uterus in women.
Next is the knot of Vishnu ( Vishnu-granthi in Sanskrit). It is located right above the center of the diaphragm. Transitioning through this knot involves important transformations in one’s perception of self and others and in one’s relationships with other people. While kundalini energy dwells below the knot of Vishnu, we perceive and relate to others as “objects” without consciousness. When kundalini rises above Vishnu-granthi, our relationships with other people deepen and become more complex, and we are capable of perceiving other people as filled with the same depth and intensity of life and consciousness as ourselves. In psychological terms, this is a transition from object relations to real relations: the perception of consciousness in the other. Thus, this threshold of kundalini is connected with the veiling of the universal nature of consciousness: the sameness of self at the heart of all beings. I have observed that in the kundalini process, the opening of this center is frequently associated with diabetes, which doesn’t go away afterward but does become controllable as the knot is passed.
The third granthi, the knot of Rudra, coincides with the location of the vestibular area in the brain stem. Obstacles or conflicts at this threshold are psychologically connected with the negation of the self, from the most primitive and mundane manifestations of self-hatred to intricate and sophisticated forms of negation of one’s own existence. When energy gets stuck at this center, people can develop vertigo, which goes away as the process progresses and self-hate and self-negation are resolved.
The two other groups of health conditions I have observed involve cancer and mental health. As much as I would like to present a coherent theory of cancer in relation to kundalini, I consider the area too complex and the etymology of cancer too diverse to present such a theory at this stage of our evolving knowledge. Even in the case of diseases more evidently connected to the process of spiritual awakening, such as the strokes and heart attacks previously mentioned, conclusions about their relationship to spiritual awakening are based on my intuitive understanding and my many observations of both the symptoms and spiritual advancement, taken together.
It is necessary to keep in mind that no scientific research has yet been conducted to evaluate the stages of the extremely complex process of spiritual awakening, to prove the existence of kundalini itself, or to suggest the measurable validity of her connections with particular diseases. The only proof supporting this intuitive knowledge is clinical practice: working with people who are in the process of psychosomatic kundalini-related disease correlating to the kundalini process model, and observing the subsequent improvement of health and the predictability of the developmental stages that follow.
When we consider a process of such duration and depth, one rooted in realities of a metaphysical nature, perhaps we must look toward scientific research yet to come. The modern scientific paradigm is materialistic, and medicine does not yet have much knowledge about systemic, multimodal developmental processes in the psyche or psychosomatic conflict that could affect the physical body. Having said this, however, I should also note that numerous clinical observations, as well as successful work in managing and healing psychosomatic disorders that emerge in the process of spiritual awakening, argue for further research in the field. With cancer, however, studies can become especially complicated, as the anomalous growth of cells in cancer may be related to numerous psychological conditions, conflicts, deficiencies, and extremes.
The last condition I will address in this essay is bipolar disorder, one of the most “popular” diagnoses in modern industrial culture. From the standpoint of kundalini, bipolar disorder may be rooted in the spiritual awakening associated with the complex of centers of the spiritual heart. While the chakra system is generally thought of as originating from a Hindu analysis of spiritual awakening, this system of centers, known as lataif in Arabic, is less familiar and is rooted in a different spiritual “technology.” The centers of the heart are, in fact, found in all traditions that postulate the ultimate reality as the Self, and that describe the manifestations of the Self in the human body in the construction of the human, experientially perceived self. This includes Hesychasm (the body-based system in Christian mysticism), Sufism, and the Shakta-Vedanta teachings of Hinduism. Centers of the self in the chest are also known in other spiritual systems and wisdom traditions such as the shamanic cultures of Latin America and the Hellenistic cultures of the Mediterranean. My research has mainly involved Hesychasm, Sufism, and Shakta-Vedanta, so the following description of the centers is related primarily to these three traditions.
The complex of the centers of the heart includes five domains, each associated with a set of psychological functions and spiritual experiences. It appears, however, that the bipolar disorder-like condition is associated with only three of these centers, so I will restrict my discussion to those three.
It is commonly known that all types of bipolar disorder include fluctuations between depression and mania. There are specific locations in the complex of the heart where depression and mania are normal, expected experiences. In a sense, one can say that in the kundalini process associated with the opening of the heart, depression and mania conditions are predictable states of the purification and transformation of the subtle body.
The center on the right side of the chest is associated with the experience of depression. This center is described in the teachings of the Indian saint Sri Ramana Maharshi; however, he does not address the psychological aspects of it, only the associated spiritual experiences. People who have spontaneous spiritual awakening going through the right side of the chest, however, may experience spiritual conditions as entirely secondary to the mood swings of early emotions, experienced most often as depressive episodes and a clouded mind. Physically, this center is located above the third rib on the right, near the right edge of the chest bone. Psychologically, it is associated with the individual’s history, especially the early experiences that helped shape what in self-psychology (an American psychoantalytic school created by the analyst Hanz Kohut) is known as “false” self versus the so-called “true” self. Consequently, the developmental tasks of kundalini in this center are those of deconstruction of the false self and explication of the true self. According to my observations, this deconstruction process, as a stage of spiritual development, can last for up to several years if the kundalini energy continues its motion upward. In the case of a stuck process, deconstruction turns into depression, which can stay for life.
This center can be experienced as a condensed sense of somatic personhood, which expands into the inner awareness of the body. Its meaning and contents are related to one’s individual history and packed with memories of early childhood interactions, including old painful emotions. When we become aware of the constructs of the self through this center, empty or depleted areas of the early self can surface, and typical results are fatigue and deep emotional pain. While therapeutic intuition is not the best research tool, I can say that on many occasions when my clients reported symptoms reminiscent of chronic fatigue, such symptoms were associated with a tangible sensation centering on the right side, which I perceived energetically as the opening of the right-side center. When the process was completed, primarily through self-psychology techniques—which could take as much as a couple of years—the symptoms of fatigue disappeared.
This center of awareness on the right side of the chest is emphasized in the writings of Maharshi as the seat of the “I” sense: the somatic sense of individual personhood that leads into the interior quality of the Heart. The nondual experience, however, emerges not in this right-side center but in the core of the chest, in the center known as spiritual heart (or qalb in Sufism), which is connected with the right-side center by a small, internal subtle meridian. In spiritual seekers with an interest in nonduality, and especially those exposed to the environment of New Age neoVedanta satsangs, frequent fluctuation of awareness between the core and the right-side center create a typical dynamic of fluctuation between the “nondual” state of mind and the state of mind resulting from the right center’s process of deconstruction: fatigue, depression, or early memories. These fluctuations are especially active for people who enter relationships with their partners during this time in their development. Then, the seeker finds herself in the position of being “enlightened” one day and immersed in mundane and emotional pain the next, and then enlightened again, and on it goes. This is a condition of the developmental of the heart.
On the left side, corresponding to the anatomical heart, sits another center, which can be associated with the maniacal state. In the heart, everything acquires cosmic proportions. Sherry’s experience, described at the beginning of this essay, involved the opening of the left side of the heart. This center is associated with the physical heart. It has the pure emotion of love at its depths, and God as love is known here at a depth beyond the thickness of the muscle.
The dreams and impressions associated with the center on the left side of the chest—which is located approximately below the third rib and into the thick of the heart muscle toward the center of the chest—are generally characterized by their cosmological, transegoic character. An example of perceptions associated with this center is found in the Bhagavad Gita, where the hero, Arjuna, asks his friend Krishna, a divine being, to show his true form. The cosmic form of Krishna contains all possible opposites as well as images of cosmic birth and destruction, all of which overwhelm Arjuna. Another example of this kind of perception is found in the legend where Krishna’s mother looks into the mouth of her child, trying to figure out if he is the one who stole the butter. She sees innumerable universes within the body of the child, and these are the universes of the heart. In Greek mythology, a similar situation takes place in the myth of Zeus showing his true form to Semela. The cosmic heart of Inanna and the cosmic heart of Sufism also refer to this phenomenon.
It is necessary to “purify” this center because its content varies from cosmological visions to expressions of the meaning of what is called in esotericism the Divine Names: the aspects of the mind condensed in relatively homogenous fields of meaning such as Beauty, Mercy, Power, Betrayal, Violence, and the like. Sometimes, when this material that is usually hidden from daily awareness breaks through, it can create mania—or even psychosis. The metaphysics of the Divine Names is quite complex, but in practice, the Names manifest those psychological overtones that give the experience of them a certain quality of interpretation. They serve as lenses to one’s perception of the world by giving the perception a specific ambiance: the overarching meaning that seems to interpret one’s whole life. For example, if the lens that is the Divine Name Betrayal is stationed in the heart, many experiences will be interpreted as related to betrayal. At first, I will see myself as a betrayer; then I will see others—in fact, the world—as betraying me. The experience of a Name and the stories connected with its meaning can obscure normal perception, and in combination with the magnitude of scenes that play out in the cosmic perception in the heart, make everything appear manic.
The first stages of the opening of the heart may be associated with fear “leaking” from the left side of the chest, a sense of immensity opening within, and a sense of insanity rising from the anatomical heart. Generally, it is an episode that lasts for several hours. In one of my dreams, Ramana Maharshi, who for me is the personification of the deepest heart-Self, was breaking into my spiritual heart from the left side. My students have reported similar dreams, and if, contrary to my experience, the emerging archetype is experienced as alien—that is, not friendly—these dreams can be quite frightening.
When the kundalini process proceeds normally, the centers develop in the context of normal life, and the awareness of unusual, depressive, or manic conditions of the left- and right-side hearts become integrated with the contents of normal awareness.
The processes connected with opening and healing the heart centers on the right side of the body can take several decades. In my own case, the process of bringing somatic awareness of the “I” sense to the right side started in the early 1990s; in the mid-nineties I discovered the passage connecting the right side with the core of the chest. The development of the center on the right included all the stages of the deconstruction of the false self and lasted until early 2000. Meanwhile, that process was accompanied by opening on the left side and fluctuations of mood that gradually became more and more integrated with the material from the right. On the left, I experienced three major episodes of opening, including very intense emotions associated with Divine Names and the core of love in the heart’s center. In 2000, the sensations and images on the right became more differentiated from one another, and there was the sense of archetypal “others,” with whom relationships gradually developed; their images became less and less frightening. I actualized the feminine (as myself) and integrated the feelings coming from the right side, and eventually my analyst identified my dreams as related to family wounds and paternal narcissism. This in turn led to the opening of a pattern of deep psychological definitions of the self related to my family constitution.
I have seen the fragments of this process in others, but because it is so longitudinal, it has been hard to observe its entire development in a single case. It is, however, possible to predict forthcoming developments in the process, and I have found them supported in my clinical experience.
Contrary to the process of relatively benign integration I experienced, if the opening is very deep, the energy is unstable, and the integration suffers for any of a variety of reasons, the stations of the heart become disconnected from normal awareness and are experienced as psychotic episodes. If energy begins fluctuating between the left and right sides of the spiritual heart center, it fosters a bipolar disorder, including mood swings, deep depression, and manic episodes.
The conditions I have described so far represent only part of the broad canvas of the possible conditions related to physical and mental health that are associated with spiritual awakening. The questions arise: How might one manage the physical aspect of awakening? What would be the work that would allow one to cut through the rising obstacles and challenges, and to enjoy communion with the spirit illumined by the goodness of the Divine Presence? All the usual recommendations for monitoring the kundalini process, including a healthy lifestyle, meditation, and reading literature associated with the rise of self-knowledge, can help. But in the case of somatized awakening, these things may not be enough to maintain a balanced and positive quality of life while the process unfolds.
I believe that in-depth personal work—involving focused awareness and raising to the surface of consciousness matters connected with an understanding of the self on all levels—is of the uttermost importance. This includes awareness of the whole map of the psyche, of all possible psychologies. The maps Ken Wilber has developed are helpful here, as they list the psychological perspectives pertinent to different levels of consciousness. All of these psychological perspectives work at certain stages of development during the awakening process and can serve as tools for self-knowledge. Direct intuition of the contents of one’s mind, awareness of one’s inner life, and introspection are the most important skills to cultivate. In a sense, one becomes a navigator of the internal universes of the mind, learning to unlock the puzzles that the developing, ever-deepening process of awakening presents.
The physical body, then, becomes a barometer that gauges the weather of the awakening process: disease is an indicator of the work to be done on both psychological and spiritual levels. For many people, disease becomes a blessing in disguise, as without this “call” they would never choose a path of disciplined self-knowledge. I remember, for example, the situation of a man who resisted the opening of his spiritual nature because he didn’t want to get distracted from building his life and family by spiritual issues. Being a person of strong will, he directed his entire awareness to external matters, fully succeeding until, in his midfifties, his internal universe opened within a period of three days. Every spiritual experience that would have happen during the previous twenty years was condensed into that period, and it was beyond overwhelming. Still, the person managed to integrate the information this opening afforded, even though it required a wholesale reorientation of his picture of himself, the world, and God.
To illustrate how spiritual awakening may be intertwined with health issues, and how one can cope with the challenge and live a balanced and healthy life, I will share a story of a friend of mine whose spiritual awakening was accompanied by diabetes, leukemia, and prostate and kidney cancers. I am choosing to share this extreme situation because my friend’s health and well-being at the completion of the process serve as empowering examples of courage and hope when dealing with a very tumultuous awakening.
This story is especially interesting because the organs targeted in the sequence of diseases my friend went through were not “aligned” according to the stages of ascending kundalini. However, every disease was resolved after he had attained significant and specific spiritual and psychological shifts, which, from my perspective, allowed the flow of the kundalini process through the area of the body to be freed from affliction. The only disease that happened “in sync” with the succession of stages in the process was diabetes, corresponding with the transition from a lower chakra “object relations”-based contact with the world to a real relationship with the other as the conscious self.
The next step in his process was the recognition of the self in the heart: the nondual experience of himself as “not the body,” which happens in the silent mind. While it is difficult to understand the full scale of thinking and conflicts that underlie a systemic cancer such as leukemia, it was evident that the problems were related to the whole functioning of the mind. At this juncture, he was reviewing his whole life and finding it meaningless and failed. The key event during leukemia, which I believe was instrumental to my friend’s recovery, was that he managed to stop his mind—he attained the condition of “no-mind” while reading Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. It cut through the maze of negative thoughts that were, in fact, existential obscurations of the nature of his own being. After reality emerged from this obscurity, my friend experienced a potent episode of kundalini: energy rushed through his entire body, and he became telepathic and able to perceive subtle energies.
After this event, he began to clear the latencies left in the subtle body. He developed prostate cancer, I think, in the process of clearing his relationship with the feminine—major relations with the unconscious and with the mother, the primary caregiver. The task at this stage was rooted in looking at his deepest convictions and regulating his relationship with certain parts of himself. The latter took several years and culminated in bringing to consciousness and reeducating the earliest parts of self. While he matured to a greater understanding of himself, he was not able to let go of his efforts to control many areas of his life, which contradicted his spiritual insight. Kidney cancer was next, and hopefully was the last disease my friend will have to “beat” in the process of his spiritual awakening. He has been enlightened, he is largely through with his psychological difficulties, and at sixty-four years old he is enjoying the first truly successfully conscious relationship of his life.
So, if spiritual awakening can have as a component the manifestation of various physical problems, what would be the way to avoid this, or at least reduce the cost to the physical body of awakening? This area requires careful medical research, which would allow us to distinguish the diseases connected with spiritual awakening—the group of somatoform diseases, when the symptoms present a coherent picture but show no pathology in laboratory findings—from regular diseases with the same diagnosis. Preliminary observations indicate that the “spiritual component” in the etiology of the disease affects recovery, providing for a fast and uncomplicated healing. Because of the profound personality changes involved, it seems at times that the disease goes away together with the old character structure; the new structure that comes in is devoid of the disease and healthy. Living well with spiritual awakening means opening to this fluidity of the personal self, opening to transformation, which takes one beyond oneself and changes one’s relationship with the world and others. Sometimes I think that the Indian expression “twice born” relates not so much to those who have experienced the true self, or nondual consciousness, as it does to those who, as a result of this experience, have changed so profoundly that it feels like the birth of a new person. This can happen at any age, defeating our beliefs in the stability of personality traits.
Understanding the process, its inner logic, its rootedness in one’s own beliefs and conflicts, its stretch through the continuum of body-mind-spirit, and its general spiritual nature seems to me crucial for navigating diseases toward a successful healing. It puts the sickness into a larger perspective, creates more intention toward healing, brings meaning into areas of seeming meaninglessness, and in general creates momentum toward attaining the highest objectives of spiritual realization. Diseases related to spiritual awakening are indeed a blessing in disguise. It is a challenging blessing, however, where the tasks of surrender, understanding, and patience are at their zenith.