1) Kundalini Experience

05-31-2001, 10:31 AM

>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 (TM). 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 subscribed 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.