Stuart Sovatsky, copresident of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology and trustee for the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), has studied kundalini and psychotherapy for three decades. In the following essay, he illustrates the evolution of kundalini throughout a typical lifespan. Detailing the specific stages of kundalini unfolding, he explores its relationship to our life cycle before we are born, in our embryonic stage, and through childhood and adulthood. He also introduces practices for activating kundalini. Sovatsky answers these questions: Does kundalini exist before we are born? How do sexuality and celibacy affect the yogic pursuit of kundalini? And do we all have the potential to experience kundalini?
Vibrant well-being, overwhelming ecstasy, effulgently enlightened consciousness, the summit of human evolution, pathway to an endless eroticism, the Great Procreatrix, the deification, regeneration, and immortalization of the body, the somaticizing of spiritual aspirations, the teleological freeing of soul from flesh via the literal unwinding of the mortal coil into its constituent elements, the lost wisdom of the serpent of Genesis and the fuel of all human genius, the energy of the Dionysian revelry, the spiritual side of DNA, Christ’s fiery baptism and that of His followers ever since, the seething cobra sheltering Lord Buddha—such are the ancient and modern claimed manifestations of kundalini, literally, “the mother of all creation and of all yogas.”
The practice can be traced back at least five thousand years to the archeological relic known as the Pashupati seal. It depicts an antler-crowned demigod, sitting cross-legged with one heel pressing his androgynous perineum and the other the root of his erect penis. He is mildly breasted, with a phalam fruit in one hand and a phallic staff in the other. This is assumed to be the ultimate attainer himself, Shiva, reincarnated some twenty-eight times, most recently as Lakulisha, the staff-bearing Gujarati saint (ca. 100CE). He in turn was the inspiration of the legendary yogic saints Goraksha-nath and Matsyendra-nath, from whom all modern forms of hatha yoga have emerged.
Indeed, kundalini has ancient Vedic references in terms of an inner sunlight, an inner soma (nectar of immortality), divine vayu (circulating wind), kunamnama (a “crookedly shaped,” serpentine) potential that the bodily vayu of the ancient keshin (“long-haired” ascetic) churns into serving his spiritual goals to know ultimate reality and its inherent bliss. And, as paths to the ultimate multiplied over the millennia of Indian history, those that were more inclusive of a positive role for the body (rather than on consciousness itself and meditative and ascetic modes of transcending the body) could be discerned.
Whether Buddhist or Hindu, they became known as tantra, the “expanded teachings” on the “interwovenness” of the ever more subtle vibrational dimensions of reality. While advaita (nondual) paths simplified their focus toward a singular oneness of consciousness, tantric traditions tended to broaden their scope to include the cultivation of the mind’s spiritual powers, the material world, and, most significantly, the body. Extreme longevity and even physical immortality were attempted via rituals, sexo-yogic and celibate transmutations, and the herbal-mineral preparations of rasayana.[2] Important texts include Kula-Arnava, Mahanirvana, Tantra-Tattva-Tantra, Panca-Tantra, Shiva-Sutra, Tripuropanishad, the great Abhinava-gupta’s Tantraloka, Vamakeshvara-tantra, Kama-KalaVilasa, Saktavijnana by Somananda, the Amaurghasasana by the legendary Goraksanatha, Jnaneshvar-gita, Shiva-Samhita, Gherand Samhita, Hathayogapradipika, and Thirumandiram.
The interwovenness of tantra typically resolved to the reverberations between masculine and feminine qualities, deified as Shiva and Shakti (or Durga, Kali, and other goddesses): the primordial couple. Their interactions create not only endlessly reproductive and evolving lineages, but also the entire manifest universe. Between all males and females and within each individual reverberated Shiva’s tendency toward absolute and unwavering consciousness with Shakti’s wide-ranging dynamic powers, from the most nurturing to the wildly purifying and even antinomian or “transgressive” (of orthodox or conventional) practices.
David Kinsley’s Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas and Gudrun Buhnemann’s The Iconography of Hindu Tantric Deities (Volume I) describe the polar qualities of tantric goddesses, conveying both the benign and nearly unbearable purificatory powers of the awakened Mother Kundalini.
Unwavering auditory meditation upon mantric vibrations revealed deeper beauties and empowering intricacies within the mantras while also adding brilliance and clarity to the unwavering consciousness. Important mantras include Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya, Om Namo Shivaya, So-Ham, and Om Bhur Bhuva Swaha Tat Savitur Varenyam Bhargo Devasya Dhimahe Dhyo Yonah Prachodayat. Likewise, visual meditation upon sri yantra’s interpenetrating triangles would blossom into an infinity of vibrations as the meditator approached the radiant, inner source of his or her own consciousness—and perhaps of the subatomic structure of the manifest universe itself.
Of central importance, and dating back to the Taittiriya-Upanishad, are descriptions of a subtle energetic anatomy (sukshmasharira) revealed via body-scanning meditations. This subtle body was seen to pervade the fleshy “food-eating” body (anna-maya kosha), consisting of some 72,000 nadis (subtle channels) and spinally aligned chakras (function-based ascending centers). Within these subtle structures, prana, the generic life energy, was seen flowing in various circuits ( prana-pran, inhalation functions; apana-pran, exhaling and eliminative functions; vya-pran, circulating function; samana-pran, digestive function; and udan-pran, throat and speaking functions).
The primordial kundalini energy itself was seen glowing and seething at the perineum in the muladhara chakra, the “root generator” center that governs the earth element. The locus of sexual passion was discerned in the lower abdomen in the svadhishthana chakra that governs the water element. Willfulness was identified with the navel-level manipura chakra that governs the fire element. Anahata chakra was associated with the heart and its surges and moods of devotion, longing, courage, and love.
While the first three chakras govern the fleshy body (annamaya kosha), anahata governs the air element and is associated with the nonphysical energy body, the prana-maya kosha. The vishudhha chakra, located at the throat and associated with speech, governs the subtle etheric element, including the manomaya kosha, the thinking-emotional body. Ajna chakra is located in the head behind the midpoint of the forehead. It functions as the ever more refined capacity for reflective discernment and subtle judgement in the vijnana-maya kosha, the body of subtlest discriminations.
The reflective capacity of ajna chakra hovers around a central point of advaita nonduality or, more precisely from tantric perspectives, dvaita-advaita, “oscillating duality-nonduality.” It is capable of the most refined discernment, extending into psychic powers. Sahasrara chakra within the ananda-maya kosha (causal bliss body) is the “thousand-petalled lotus” of endlessly effulgent light and bliss that is beyond all concepts and intellectualizations, where male and female live in ecstatically commingled union.
All the practices of hatha yoga— asanas, mudras, bandhas (visceral contractions), and pranayama—help to awaken the dormant kundalini in the muladhara chakra. Likewise, the vibrational practices of mantra yoga— japa (rosary-like mantra repetition), kirtan (group chanting with an awakened leader via an energetic transmission known as shaktipat), and personal mantric prayers over the course of many years—can awaken kundalini.[3] Still-sitting meditative practices tend to minimize the complete awakening of this energy, but instead focus upon inner peace, undifferentiated consciousness, compassion, insights into impermanence, and the limitations of egoic identifications.
Below is a regime of twenty asanas with chakra meditations and breathing prescriptions that are sequenced to awaken the chakras in preparation for kundalini arousal.[4] (Table 18.1)
| Table 18.1 |
Once kundalini awakens (or its far more common precursor, pranotthana, pranic awakening, occurs), many of these initially intentional practices can emerge spontaneously. Given the requisite level of pranotthana and meditative relaxation, one’s body just starts moving into various yoga postures, mood-enhanced dance movements, intensified breathing patterns, and spontaneous utterances. At that point, many of the yoga “practices” reveal themselves to be innate or endogenous (though typically dormant) in all humans, with cognate phenomena visible in numerous charismatic or “inspired” religious and spiritual traditions worldwide.
Thus, we might distinguish two forms of kundalini yoga: the preparatory and willfully practiced form and the awakened and spontaneously emergent form. To further understand the latter, we must situate this “ultimate mothering energy” within the context of gestation and infant developmental behavior, as well as animating maternal labor contractions. For these are times when kundalini is temporarily and spontaneously active in the course of ordinary life.
Kundalini’s motherly creativity is first visible microscopically in the nucleus of the fertilized ovum as, literally, the immortalizing chromosomal process of cellular meiosis. The spiraled, bifurcating genetic strands quiver animistically like enthralled lovers, separating and realigning themselves within the nucleus of the fertilized ovum that divides again and again, recreating this same fibril ritual within the nuclear sanctum of each newly reproducing cell. What guides this primordial origination of all bodily life? Kundalini, the “coiled serpentine wisdom-energy.” Thus, in contemporary terms, kundalini might be renamed “meta-DNA.”
As the zygotic cells divide and ball up, kundalini quickens embrylogical development toward a recognizable human form. An elongating groove folds into itself and creates the dorsal protospinal cord whose subtle channel, sushumna, will be the favored pathway for adult Kundalini activity, while below, a ventral alimentary pouch and protoorgans manifest inside the emergent gut. This is the first step in separating the body’s “heaven realm” of neural consciousness functions from the earth, air, water, and fire realms of digestion, circulation, elimination, and so on; thus kundalini creates a bodily home for the jiva, the “one who lives”—the “soul.”
Continuing on, sweet-tasting mucopolysaccharides will secrete into the developing oral cavity as it divides from the heavenly cranial vault, causing the tongue to lick itself away from the heavenly hypophysis (protohypothalamus, pituitary, pineal) and into the earthy and watery realms of the just-forming mouth.[5]
The anterior end of the protospine blossoms into the protobrain, altogether forming the anatomical armature of Darwinian evolutionary history from invertebrate to vertebrate to Homo erectus and the uniquely neocortexted Homo sapiens. Simultaneously, kundalini will manifest a gill-slitted fishlike stage and tail-bearing and other lower-mammal stages in a mysterious process that biologists call ontogeny phylogeny recapitulation—a replaying of billions of years of evolution within the gestation of every human being who has ever lived.
Equally mysterious, kundalini manifests a urogenitally androgynous perineum stage that, for the advanced yogi, will later “fertilize” him with the bioconcentrated powers of the entire polarized universe. Thus, the supreme importance given by yogis (and seen in the Pashupati seal) to the heel-to-perineum Siddhaasana, “sitting pose that unleashes supernatural powers.”
All the while, fetal movements perform their own profound asana dance, coaxing and vibrating arm buds and leg buds into tiny arms, legs, and fingers while also articulating joints, organs, heartbeats, and even pouting and smiling into existence. When the fetus is fully formed, kundalini sequesters herself at the posterior node of the spine (the muladhara chakra or “root center”) and becomes quiescent.
When the fetus attains individual viability, this same kundalini dimension within the mother’s body engenders the throbs of labor contractions and the ensuing downward pushing and birth of the child. Thereupon, spontaneous protolinguistic developmental sound-making emerges in the newborn as protomantric (bija) emotion- and larynx-developing utterances. Likewise, neonatal developmental stretching movements continue to more fully incarnate the neonate via protoasanas of hatha yoga. The baby’s common spellbound staring into space or at some object emerges as one of the earliest of spontaneous meditative concentrations, whose adult version has been aptly called, “beginner’s,” “pure” or “unconditioned” mind.
As enculturation proceeds, the child’s mouth- and tongue-shaped sounds will be molded into a native language and her movements and musculature into producing the skills and actions expected within the home culture. Although the primordial “pure consciousness” and its capacity to “rest in itself” will remain, her operative “ego mind” will be slowly filled with concepts, memories of delight or terror, moods, desire, and so forth, that ever more individualize her.
The power of Sanskrit (and other sacred languages) is based upon its salutary sonic or mantric effects on all dimensions of the maturing body, far beyond the semantic utility of conceptual meaning—thus, the emphasis upon nuanced pronunciation in all sacred language instruction. For the mesh of words, concepts, and “forms” inevitably reifies a secondary “ego” mind that can become self-obsessed with worded thinking and grow out of touch with the primordial consciousness of “pure feeling-awareness.” Thus, mantra and silent meditation become ever more important practices in “remembering” the unconditioned consciousness itself.
As the individuating process continues, the child’s glands will grow in congruence with common emotional states—anger, sorrow, joy, love, desire, shame. Likewise, via the events of her life, she comes to feel ever more unique ( too unique and overly embedded in her historical conditioning, according to spiritual psychology). The primordial kundalini will remain dormant and, quite likely, grow ever more unknown within more “worldly,” “ego-based,” or “materialistic” cultures (such warnings can be found in many ancient texts).
Thereafter, the more general life energy of prana will guide physiology and empower thought processes, willful movements, and maintenance-level growth. But when growth intensifies during puberty or pregnancy, prana reenters a heightened condition of pranotthana, as is visible in the glow of infants, pregnant women, new fathers, and pubescent teenagers and the purported glow of saints. Lesser modes of pranotthana include the glow of superathletes, charismatic musicians and leaders, and those in certain psychedelic drug states. A miraculous pranotthana manifests in ordinary people in heroic moments, such as a mother lifting a car to save her child or a father enduring life-threatening situations to save his family.
Under special conditions, as introduced above and to be discussed in greater detail below, pranotthana vibratorily goes so far as to foment the reactivation of the dormant kundalini that was so very active during gestation. In this process—whether gradual or sudden—spontaneous sounding (anahata-nad), movements, and yoga positions ( sahaja) yoga) will emerge, breaking through the enculturated habits of body and mind, even breaking through learned, static hatha yoga postures. As sahaja (spontaneously arising) yoga, this takes on a surreal, that is, super-real, quality. As one of the most advanced of all kundalini yogis, Jnaneshvar, wrote,
Likewise, under the influence of escalating pranotthana, viscera, musculature, and various moods of longing ( bhakti, yoga of devotional moods) vibrate the larynx in characteristic overwhelming, trilling fashion as heard in operatic, Sufi qwaali, Judaic nigune, yogic anahata-nad, and shamanic and indigenous trance singing. These moods also gyrate and twist the body into ecstatic dance and, most mysteriously, into various time-honored yoga asanas—as well as others unnamed or unknown to the yogi—in the same innately emergent way that neonatal movements occur or, more vigorously, as birth contractions taking hold of a laboring mother’s body. Thus, the mystical significance of hatha, “forceful,” yoga asserts itself far beyond any egoic modes of agency.
Indeed, the passion of these longings is as compelling as any romantic love affair, revealing another mystical significance of hatha, the union of sun (masculinity) and moon (femininity) within a singular body. While seated, the heel magnetically draws itself into the once-androgynous perineum (siddha-asana) of the so-awakened one, like a flower unfolding in time-lapse photography. The spine becomes tumescently erect (uju kaya), similar to how the genitals can arouse at the thought of one’s beloved. The diaphragm lifts into the chest (uddiyana-bandha), and the anal sphincter throbs and draws upward (mula-bandha).
Yoga as the union of Shakti and Shiva seems no mere symbolic metaphor to the kundalini yogi whose whole life becomes enthralled by these energies. Five to ten hours per day, for decades unto death, are consumed by the inner yogic pregnancy. Indeed, the ardha-nari manifestion of the ascetic Shiva as half male and half female could not be clearer as to the primordial, inwardly erotic and outwardly chaste powers unleashed by kundalini.
Breathing will become heavy or racy ( bhastrika or kapalabhati pranayama) to animate the passionate stretching and longing. Altogether, we see why Ishvara, “the Mover,” is the deity named in ashtangha yoga’s second step of salutary prescriptions (yamas), while in the hathayogaprapika, bodily prana is also deified. Thus, the yogi gradually becomes (“gestates” into) the deity whom she has long been devoutly worshipping. In other words, a naturalistic quickening of the entire human being unfolds, sui generis. This is Kundalini, the Mother of all Yogas.
Likewise, we can understand common passive verb usage in ancient yoga texts, where one “gets” (manifests) some asana or bandha or mudra. Since it does not feel like the ego is involved in these “actions” any more than in embryonic body manifestation, one cannot discern any personal agency in their occurrence. Charismatic Christian’s plainly call such phenomena, “manifestations” of the “Holy Ghost.”
Other cross-tradition cognates include spontaneous Judaic and Islamic spinal-rocking davvening and zikr, Tibetan tumo heat, inspired Taoist tai chi, Bushman thxiasi num, shamanic and voudoo trance-dance, yogically derived Andalusian flamenco and inspired, stomach-undulating belly dance, the charismatic quaking and shaking in Quakerism, Shakerism, and Pentacostal “Holy Ghost” dancing, and Orthodox Hesychasm’s quivering.
Raja yoga and Buddhism’s still-sitting, long meditation periods seek the same awakening, but restrain the body in hopes of channeling all energies directly into the erect spine, thus bypassing the cultivation of numerous expressive and emotional potentials within the mobility of the body. Mortifications, severe vigils, and flagellation are the most desperate of the unnatural methods. Even Elvis Presley’s charismatic gyrations and his teenaged fans’ pubescent screams can be located at the beginning of this far more profound continuum.
Indeed, kundalini phenomena are not only cross-culturally ubiquitous, taken altogether they arguably indicate an innate somatic dimension to all manifestations of spirituality and religious aspirations. Within our still-dominant Freudian/Darwinian theories of development, I will make the case that altogether, these and other kundalini yoga spontaneous phenomena constitute as-yet-unmapped “post-Freudian,” “post-Darwinian” stages of adult maturation.
That is, they are beyond Freud’s “final” stage of genital primacy and Darwin’s stage of mature fertility (thus, the perennial rub between sexuality and spirituality in many traditions). Likewise, they are beyond the egoic developmental stages of conventional Western psychology, as Michel Foucault notes with his concept of ars erotica and Ken Wilber, Jorge Ferrer, and Michael Washburn note with their notions of transpersonal development.
Just as Freud chose to name the fundamental developmental force “libido” or “yearning,” so, too, does chapter 7, volume 11 of the Bhagavat Gita, as personified in the words of Krishna: “Dharmaviruddho bhutesu kamo ‘smi bharatasbha.” (“I am the passion [ kamo, desire, yearning] in beings that will manifest the greatest maturation, truth, and goodness.”)
According to Freud, this yearning is experienced foremost as sexual desire based in genital puberty, the hallmark of biological adulthood. Kundalini yoga merely reopens the matter of human development whereby the spine, hypothalamus, hypoglossus, and pineal and cerebral lobes are seen as capable of undergoing “puberties” with all the alterations in physiology, identity, and existential life purpose and even mortality itself that were attendant to genital puberty, but now with a more spiritual emphasis. Indeed, one of the oldest terms for yoga is shamanica medhra, “releasement beyond the genital thrall.”
Yet, in their exportation of yoga to the West, early teachers such as B.K.S. Iyengar, Krishnamacharya, and their successors were not prepared to convey these endogenous depths, but modeled their instruction of the ancient asanas (and others invented at the turn of the Century 7 upon the pedagogy and aesthetics of European ballet and gymnastics (complete with hardwood floors and mirrored walls); thus the perfection of held positions became the disciplined practice. These “positions” tap the outer edges of the Kundalini dimension and thus their singular therapeutic efficacy, but rarely so far as to enter inspired movement or transfixed stillness. Indeed, the concentrated willfulness of the practices quite effectively suppresses the sahaja path for the vast majority of practitioners.
Furthermore, to fit modern values, the inwardly “erotic” celibacy known as brahmacharya, held for thousands of years to be essential to kundalini yoga, has been largely dispensed with. So we barely ever see a modern practitioner who has fallen in love and married her yoga, with eight to ten hours of its spinal mysteries unfolding per day, decade after decade unto death, infused with the romance of a challenging, yet deepening love. As noted in the Bhagavad Gita (11:14), “He is my true devotee, whose voice is choked with emotion of love for me, whose heart is moved with tears rolling down from the eyes.”
Indeed, Sri Aurobindo has called brahmacharya the “foundation” of all Indic wisdom traditions and cultural sophistication:
It is also reflected in its role as the first of the four Ashramas, quartenary stages of the idealized, hundred-year lifetime (and reincarnating series of such lifetimes).
Yet the vast majority do not remain celibate yogis after age twenty-five, but enter a second stage, called Grihasthya Ashrama (sacred householder life), of marriage and familial creation into one’s fifties, whereupon one’s own children begin to marry and reproduce. Kundalini takes the form of apparently eternal lineage propagation and the mysterious phenomena of sahaja yoga rarely manifest.
A subsidiary householder’s brahmacharya of one sexual union per month is considered within dharmic rhythms suitable for a moderated practice of kundalini yoga. If the tongue-hypothalamuspineal puberty of khechari mudra should awaken, the couple might engage in the coitus reservatus of pariyanga, erotic yoga. According to the South Indian master, Thirumoolar,
From the age of fifty to seventy-five, vanaprasthya ashrama, retiring grandparent stage (literally, “forest-dwellers”), emerges, where-upon one’s grandchildren begin to bear children. The sense of the eternality of lineage spreads forth visibly in both directions as the embodied truth of human life. Thus, Kundalini matures these individuals to being equal to lifelong, creative marriage. Here, the powers of interpersonal devotion, forgiveness, apology, fidelity, honesty, and love mature between the spouses as Shakti and Shiva, the creative partnership of the human version of the primordial forces that manifest the entire universe. In this sense, the devotional worship of Krishna and Radhe as the divine couple is considered by some to be a form of kundalini yoga.
Beginning at seventy-five years, the “world shedding” sannyasa ashrama begins, whereafter great-great-grandparenthood can emerge. During sannyasa, prana and its most revered aspect, citta (“consciousness stuff”), are ever more released from adaptation to “worldly ways” of life, and one returns to the unconditioned or pure mind. A deepening spiritual wisdom of eternal rather than merely contemporary truths regarding the deeper purposes and possibilities of human life is discerned. Consciousness and body recognize their very different fates, the former as eternally aware and the latter as destined to wither upon death into the primordial elements of earth, air, water, and fire. Regarding consciousness, death is understood as an ultimately positive experience of mahasamadhi, the great knowing of the originating source of all, everawake consciousness, compassion, discernment.
Five generations of happy, creative marriages comprise the ideal social manifestation of Mother Kundalini as a wholly enlightened culture, via the grihasthya householder path. Each family member matures to the point of being equal to the requirements of marriage and family life, with grand, great-grand- and great-great-grandchildren and parents all flourishing. A world of such lineages fulfills the greatest possibility of the central maxim of Sanatana Dharma (the indigenous name for all Indian wisdom traditions): Vasudhaiva kutumbakam, “The world is, indeed, one [unbroken] family.”
The joint-family system that incorporates newlyweds and in-law families is a structural manifestation of this hoped-for ideal and the extremely low (5 to 8 percent) contemporary Indian divorce rate are testaments to and remnants of this increasingly forgotten sociological ideal of a fully dharmic, highly enlightened society. The energetic foundation of such a social order is kundalini, from the quivering chromosomes of meiosis, to the blush of adolescent puberty and new parenthood, through great-great-grandparenthood, and the esoteric khecari mudra puberty whereby the pineal orgasm secretes the mystic soma or amritas (nectar of immortality).
Yet, there is an alternative to the four-staged path of ashramas wherein the power of the developmental trajectory begun in the womb predominates over sociological adaptation and family creation. This second and far rarer marga, or life path, manifests as the variety of monasticisms throughout world history. In the yogic model, it is known as nivritti dharma, “naturalistic, without intentions way” or lifelong sannyas. Instead of joining in the family jati or trade or by leaving one’s “worldly” occupation and bypassing the romance of mating (or via some tantric form of brahmacharya within marriage), those on this path become yogis in the original sense of the term. Indeed, to this day, modern Indian civil law grants “renouncing the world” to follow the spiritual aspirations of yoga, meditation, and religious practices as honorable grounds for divorce.
The following schema situates numerous manifestations of kundalini and trace the complete maturation of all potentials, physical and spiritual, of Homo sapiens.
Sperm-ovum fertilization: zygote, blastula, and gastrula stages develop.
Starting at the embryonic spinal base, kundalini energy-intelligence guides the formation of the neural groove, the evolutionary fundament of all ever more complex vertebrate bodies, from amphioxus on; gill-slits, tail, and other “ontogeny phylogeny recapitulation” vestigial phenomena emerge and vanish; organs form; heart beats as anandamaya kosha (causal body), vijnana-maya kosha (reflective-mind body), mano-maya kosha (neuroendocrine-based mind/emotion body), prana-maya kosha (mitochondrial-meridian vital energy body), and anna-maya kosha (food-eating or “ordinary” fleshy body) develop.
Jiva (“the one who lives”) enters the causal body.
Continued gestation of the fetal body toward fragile sufficiency by the sixth or seventh month as kundalini completes its formation of the body and recedes into dormancy at the spinal base; the more generic “life energy” or prana of the prana-maya kosha (udana, samana, apana, prana, vyana circuits of head, gut, elimination, respiration, and circulation, respectively) continues as the flesh body’s (anna-maya kosha’s) sustaining force, as nourished with earthly foods and oxygen via the umbilical connection to mother.
First breath, umbilicus cut, eye contact, reaching, anahata-nada (polysignificant neuroendocrinal developmental utterances that are related to the yogic developmental breathing of pranayama—a “crying” that can be overassociated with adult anguish); psycho-motor developmental movements akin to sahaja yoga asanas and hand and finger mudras emerge; nursing.
Teething, walking, play; glandular secretions underlying characterbuilding sentiments of yamas and niyamas (specific character-trait cultivations and moral observances) begin to fructify within the child’s social and family context; language appropriates mind and tongue, and psychosomatic enculturation occurs; prepubescent pranotthana sustains the child’s growth, visible as “the glow of childhood.”
Childhood pranotthana intensifies, fomenting genital puberty/fertility as the embodiment of infinite future incarnations; hormonal-temporal urgencies quicken as gender-oriented desires; intermediate puberty of yama and niyama neuroendocrine secretions emerge, with emphasis upon developmentally sublimative brahmacharya ashrama; basic prepubescent asana and pranayama emerge in willful and minimal sahaja or “spontaneous” forms.
Karma yoga, the life of responsible action and character maturation; the mind matures beyond childhood’s scattered vitality toward pratyahara, the capacity for sustained perceptions and careful attention; second ashrama of householder family creation of pravritti path or the solitary mystic nivritti path is entered; diverse worldly involvements are varyingly dharmic or aligned with the endogenous maturational process; the maturations known as the “good neighbor” or “well-balanced person” emerge; if pranotthana continues to intensify via dharmic life, the postgenital puberties of urdhva-retas quicken.
Dharana begins: the dawning of awesome awareness of/as endless impermanence and soteriological radiance-secretions of tejas (“brilliance-radiance” of spiritual zeal) and virya (“virtuesecretion/radiance”) emerge; advanced asanas, mudras, bandhas (inner yearning-contractions), and shaking mature the body for more intensified energies; dhyana begins: devout and unwavering appreciation of the flow of endless impermanence and the poignant grace of life; the puberties of the linguistic anatomy (tongue, larynx, brain centers) underlying further meditative/mental maturation begin: simha-asana (tongue-extended “lion pose” seen in certain goddess images) and nabho mudra (inward-turned tongue, “heaven-delight gesture”) precursors of khecari mudra (tongue curls back in delight above the soft palate), initiating the puberties of the hypoglossal larnyx, hypothalamus, pituitary and pineal glands; anahata-nada, known rudimentarily as “speaking in tongues” and resounding in the sacred chantings of numerous cultures, emerge.
The desire-self identity matures toward the immortal soul-self identity; auras (auric glow of spiritual maturity) emerge; continuation of khecari mudra, culminating in the subtle pineal secretion-radiance of soma or amrita (“immortal-time essence,” revitalizing melatonin-like, endorphin-like hormone).
Kundalini awakens, initiating the puberties of the six chakras and the inner heat; shambhavi mudra, the puberty of the eyes and the pineal leading to inner vision of the soul’s (melatonin-like) radiances and the matter-time-space-scent-taste-light-bliss continuum emerges; unmani mudra, the “delight-gesture of free consciousness” cerebral puberty emerges; internal or breathless respiration in the akashic ethers emerges; grandchildren emerge for householders, and then the third ashrama of retirement and the fourth ashrama of worldly renunciation; great-grandchildren emerge for householders.
Fully matured origin-consciousness with, and then without, future waverings emerges.
Divya sharira: exceedingly rare full maturation of the ensouled body as an immortal “divine light body” of extraordinary longevity and moksha, complete maturation of all soul-body potentials.
I will close this essay with a brief look at the lineages of some of those who have achieved the ultimate spiritual evolution of Mother Kundalini. The most recent appearances of a saint of this maturity (at the turn of the Century and in the early 1950s) I have come across were documented in the book Hariakhan Baba: Known, Unknown by Baba Hari Dass 10, a lifelong Indian yogi residing in Santa Cruz, California. Other references to this Babaji, or perhaps to his guru, appear in Marshall Govindan’s Babaji[11] and Satyeswarananda’s Babaji.[12]
Known by various names, Satyeswarananda and Baba Hari Dass maintain that Hariakhan Baba is the several thousand year old “Babaji” who initiated Neem Karoli Baba, known as Richard Alpert’s (Ram Dass’s) guru, and the lineage of Paramahansa Yogananda, one of the first yogis to come to the West at the turn of the Century.
Yogananda attained additional esteem after his death in 1952 when his corpse showed no signs of decomposition, even after some twenty days. According to Los Angeles Mortuary director H.T. Rowe’s notarized statement:
According to the late Vinit-muni of Pransali, India, Hariakhan Baba/Babaji is also Lakulisha (150CE, born in Kayavarohan, India; organizer of the Pashupata sect), who initiated Swami Kripalvand (whose corpse showed no signs of rigor mortis during the first two days before his burial)[14] in the early 1950s, (and perhaps Babaji initiated many other unknown yogis). His image remains embossed in the Elephanta Island carvings (dated 500-600CE) near Bombay, which purport the “practicing [of Kundalini] Yoga as the origin and culmination of all life.”[15]
To help Westerners grasp the significance of these carvings, Indologist James Forbes ranks them with the pyramids of Egypt; I would also include the mound at Golgotha and Darwin’s Galapagos Islands research. The Vayu Purana, the Kurma Purana, and the Linga Purana discern Lakulisha (or “Nakulisha”) as the twenty-eighth incarnation of this immortal embodiment, known first as Shiva, Lord of Yoga.