Kundalini and Spirituality

And through this citadel walk graceful men and women with lovely elongated faces and calm, knowing eyes—with a glint of mischief—and they are perfect and know it and they are imperfect and know it.

—Freda Warrington, Elfland

I received the frantic call near midnight. “My son is speaking another language!” the woman cried. “His hands are so hot, I can’t even hold them.”

This mother went on to explain that her son had awoken the day before and told her that a “man full of light” had come into his room and touched his heart. Since then, the ten-year-old had been insisting that there was more to life than his parents could see and that if we could but see the light around, we’d all love each other. To prove his point, the child had placed his burning hands on his mother’s heart, and her long-standing arrhythmia had disappeared.

I believe that this child had experienced a true mystical moment, which could be called a sudden awakening of his kundalini. The kundalini leaped so high, he achieved near-instant wisdom. After encouraging the mother to take the appropriate medical steps, I suggested a few readings about kundalini, enlightenment, and mysticism. She became less frightened and called back a few days later to report that the child’s enlightenment experience, for it was truly that, had faded. The heat cooled; he remembered his English. But something remained different about him, his mother told me. “He has a kindness that simply radiates from him.”

This child was able to quicken from “normal” to “sage” with an immediacy few of us experience. In many ways, however, his path is just beginning. The spiritual is about living fully in the spirit—the keyword being living.

Kundalini as a Stairway to the Divine

Kundalini is more than a metaphor for a rush along our nervous system. It is not a pretext for animism or spiritism or an excuse for out-of-control behavior. All kundalini-based practices are aimed at filling us with the spirit that is already present. Dynamic and evolving, they stair-step us to enlightenment; our job is to walk up the ladder. Regardless which branch of yoga or kundalini practice you explore, the message is the same: there is a higher goal, and that higher goal is to live as your highest self. Kundalini is an energetic staircase that, if climbed, leads to one place and one place alone: the Divine.

A contemporary expert on yoga, B. K. S. Iyengar, puts it this way: The aim of yoga is true union with God. All practices and disciplines should “yoke” the parts of us to bring our soul into the position of peering evenly at all aspects of life.

This is the teaching of mystics across time. Yogic and Tantric practices are entirely based on the awakening of kundalini energy, the raw Shakti power latent within each of us. This force can be initiated by a guru or compelled by disciplines, including breath control, physical exercises, visualizations, and chanting. It can flip on overnight; it can even be gifted by a spirit. No matter what the initiation method is, the kundalini energy slides up the spine and the initiate begins to feel differently.

On each rung toward divinity, with each increment of kundalini energy, we face the demons of our fears. To avoid pain, we might be tempted to stop the ascent of energy, to lose ourselves in confusion and to fall into licentious practices. In the end, as we continue to strive, the challenges we face bring us into oneness with the Divine. We attain higher consciousness through the merging of our feminine energy with our masculine energy, our physical self with our divine self. We enjoy divine wisdom, self-realization, gnosis, self-knowledge, pure joy, pure knowledge, and pure love.84

Kundalini in Christianity,
Islam, and Judaism

Three major world religions each include a story of kundalini energy, although they call it by a different name.

Salaat is the kundalini yoga of Islam. Many branches of Islam overlook the feminine qualities of God. Salaat, in contrast, acknowledges that ancient Arabs believed that Allah had a counterpart. Her name is Al-Lat, a name considered to be the same as Salaat. Her name is a reference to the burning, or serpentine, fire that activates a solar force in the spine. As with other forms of yoga, this serpent power is feminine. As with other forms of kundalini yoga, the goal of the Salaat yoga process involves helping the serpent power rise between the first chakra and the seventh through the nadis, thus activating the path of enlightenment. In raising this fire, Salaat yoga employs asanas, or postures, similar to those of traditional Yoga. It also recommends a set of purification processes comparable to those of Christian traditions, including the laying on of hands and foot washing.81

In the original language of the Christian Old Testament, as in the Jewish Torah, the word for “Holy Spirit” is feminine. The flames that appeared over the heads of Jesus’s followers at the first Pentecost are considered a feminine fire. Later, secret Christian brotherhoods, such as the Masons, spoke of a spirit fire that rises through the spinal column.82

In all three traditions—Islam, Judaism, and Christianity—humans are believed to have been created out of red dirt or clay. This signifies the formation of the physical body out of fire. The first man, like the first syllable of the sacred name of Jehovah, was Yod, which represents the Flame, the Cause, the One on which all things are based. The second letter of God’s name is He, which is feminine. From these come Vau, or son, and in last place syllabically, a final He, or daughter. Thus, we find in the earliest roots of all three major religions the story of the male and female aspects of God and ourselves.83

Attaining this spiritual reality is a possibility open to all of us. This was the teaching of the rishis, or wise ones, who first brought us knowledge of the kundalini. This is the teaching of the well-known contemporary guru Gopi Krishna, who described his spontaneous kundalini awakening this way: “Suddenly, with a roar like that of a waterfall, I felt a stream of liquid light entering my brain through the spinal cord…I was now all consciousness without any outline…immersed in a sea of light, simultaneously conscious and aware at every point.”85

Further describing himself as a vast circle of consciousnesses, his body a prick within it, Gopi Krishna experienced extreme exultation and happiness. He came to believe that kundalini energy underlies most of the religions originating with personal revelation. He also understood that this aspiration for consciousness was physical in orientation, originating in the brain, in the region called Brahma-Randhra in the yogic tradition—possibly the pineal gland.86

Personal Enlightenment Leads to Global Enlightenment

Gopi Krishna recognized the enormous potential of kundalini energy. He noted its connection to sex and materialism, the energy of the first chakra, and that because of our compulsive nature, humankind can and has used the kundalini force for harmful ends. But he also understood that kundalini energy must be awakened, and not only for one’s personal attainment of bliss. It is also a necessary ingredient for human and planetary evolution.

As Krishna expressed it, nature’s higher law is evolution. Each of us must personally safeguard our kundalini awakening, applying principles such as decorum, morality, and discipline in order to orient the kundalini toward the advancement of consciousness. Toward this end, he advocated sex within a loving relationship, diet control, practical work, and other methods for living a normal life. Collectively, we must harness the kundalini power to become a better people.87 Though Gopi Krishna’s advice doesn’t officially mirror the ten living principles discussed in chapter 8, they are similar. To follow the principles of life is to flow with our kundalini, and to lovingly flow with our kundalini is to embrace the divine life.

Gopi Krishna invites a solid, grounded approach to kundalini, one that complements spirituality with practicality. By doing so, he enforces two Hindu principles: karma and dharma.

Karma and Dharma

A lot of people ask me what karma means. The common thought is that it is a law of judgment. If I injure someone, the same will be done unto me. Conversely, if I’ve been really good, I’ll reap a reward.

This simplistic notion doesn’t make sense. Take a look at victims of childhood abuse. They did nothing wrong. Yet studies show that survivors of such suffering live painful lives, physically, emotionally, and relationally. If there were some grand way for the score to be evened, wouldn’t their lives be better instead of worse? We’ve only to examine the list of the rich and famous to figure out that money can equate to the “Get Out of Jail Free” card from the Monopoly game—or perhaps one better, a “Never Go to Jail” card.

I’ve discovered that karma is a much richer and a more loving principle than one of cause and effect. Enlightenment is the assumption of forgiveness and restoration. This means that karma is a tool for learning, but it is also a healing process, a way to evolve into the perfection that we are. In fact, on the Vedic path, karma means action. We pursue yoga and other kundalini pursuits so that our actions match our goals. If we desire union with the Divine, then we must adopt the disciplined behavior necessary to attain that oneness.

Bliss and enlightenment are worthy, desirable goals, but it can be difficult to take the action steps to achieve these. Whatever our distractions, be they a plate of cookies or a sexual fling, these off-path activities earn us a reaction from the universe. We gain weight. We lose our spouse. We become more unhappy and further away from the ultimate goal of unity.

Karma does not punish; it could be termed consequences. We act, and then there are consequences, good or bad. This process could seem like a neverending loop, and it would be if we never grew and changed. Teacher Ravi Ravindra states the law of karma as this:

“As one acts, so one becomes; as one is, so one acts.” 88

One of the ways I employ the gift of karma is to ask for universal feedback for my behavior. If I err, I don’t want to wait five years or a lifetime to make a correction and express my true, more loving self. So I play an instant karma game. In other words, if I make a mistake, I want to know about it immediately.

The approach works. One day I threw a newspaper into a public garbage can—and missed. Feeling lazy and overwhelmed with a baby in diapers, I pretended I hadn’t noticed. The next day I found a heap of garbage on my lawn. I cleaned it up, smiling. I actually felt loved; the Divine cared enough about me to nudge me to improve. I now think more often before I act.

The key to the karma game is to abstain from shame, the energy that insists that if you do something wrong, you are wrong. Healthy guilt simply says, “This isn’t you. You can change.” It’s actually an empowering emotion and a call to evolution.

Within the law of karma is the whisper of evolution. If we act with integrity, we become a better person, and it is easier to be kind and loving. Progress takes nothing more than an active commitment to evolution.

In yoga, kundalini energy is like an escalator that moves us toward a singular goal, the transformation from our natural form to a perfected form. The word for our natural or vulgar state is prakriti in Sanskrit. When in this state, we repeat actions that keep us stuck, unable to flow with our kundalini. Even if the kundalini is activating our spiritual awareness, our visions will get confused with human-induced fantasies. Through a disciplined approach to kundalini, we become sanskrita, or “well made.” 89

If karma is the principle that makes us look at our actions to determine if they are freeing us from prison walls or entrapping us, then dharma is the other side of the coin, the reason we self-examine and evolve personally. If karma calls us to act in alignment with our spirit, dharma shines the light on our spirit.

Dharma means “obligations.” This concept acknowledges the need to operate within a set of personal duties and responsibilities. When we do this, we sustain the cosmic order and evolve into our greater self.90

As dry as this definition sounds, if it were opened like a coffee-table book, beautiful images appear. Dharma infers that we are here on this planet at this time for a higher purpose. We are needed. We are important. Only you can gift this world in the way unique to you. Kundalini energizes this central purpose, ultimately lifting us into a state of personal freedom, or moksha.91 Paradoxically, the person who has secured perfect freedom is the person that understands the holiness and joy of blending love and selfless duty within the mortal body. This freedom breaks the constraints of maya, the illusion that we are separate from the Divine. We do not become less than who we are; we can simply be more of who we are, more often—in and through everyday life, not in spite of it. As shared by Ken Wilber, an author, deep thinker, and modern mystic, “The awakened Sage is not merely a unique oddity, living alone in a cave in India or perched on a mountain top in Tibet. The awakened Sage—or simply awakened Human—is actually the nature of our very own consciousness, even here and now.”92

Kundalini’s Invitation to Experience the Now

Sometimes we work so hard to grasp enlightenment, we don’t see it’s snuck up on us from behind. Sometimes we get so caught up in wanting to awaken our kundalini, we don’t realize it already has woken up and is at work in our lives. Sometimes we are looking so hard for the dramatic, mind-blowing effects of kundalini, we don’t notice the subtle yet profound ways it is moving within us and opening us up.

If enlightenment ever seems far away, or you want to experience the magic of you in this moment, stop and breathe. Let enlightenment catch up with you. Being present is the key to right action and acceptance of purpose.

exercise

Being Present

Try this exercise any time you are feeling guilty about the past, which interferes with the truth of karma, or scared about your future, a resistance to your dharma.

Stand and breathe naturally. Notice the is-ness of this moment. Now inhale, exhale, and inhale. Put your palms together at your heart and then cross your hands over your chest. Finally, on a last exhalation, open both hands on either side of your body, and think this: I breathe out and release to infinity.

Become the infinite in the finite. Now carry on with your day.

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