My Kundalini Experience

Like many seeking spiritual knowledge, I started as a novice, looking for something that didn’t exist in the material world. Religion hadn't worked for me, neither had higher education, nor specializations such as law, medicine, business. I wanted to take an active part in my development, to probe for truth beyond the confines of my narrow world. I wanted to be the creator of my own Being.

High Desert Sunrise

As far as career paths, I felt that everyone around me had already figured things out; all they had to do was learn the ropes, keep their mouths shut, and the doors of riches and success were open to them. I wanted something else, something that would allow me to figure out who I was. At the time, I didn’t know much about spirituality. In fact, the first self-realization technique I came across was hypnosis.

Almost immediately, however, I sensed there were other forms of consciousness. I thought this was great! I picked up a few books, listened in on a few conversations about yoga and meditation. Pretty soon I found myself on the spiritual bandwagon — Yoga magazines and studios, spiritual bookstores, so-called highly evolved friends, etc. I began to investigate the concepts and employ the vocabulary. Initially I was a dabbler, I practiced Hatha and Kundalini Yogas off and on, but something pushed me toward a deeper exploration. I advanced from dabbler to practitioner. A few months into my meditation practice something unexpected happened. I started getting feedback.

Feedback from my Body

My body started changing. Profound psychological and mental changes occurred as well, but the bulk of the transformations occurred in my physical body. Moreover, once the transformations began, my body took over on its own. How does a body take over and effectively transform itself? Very simply, I had aroused a power within myself known as Kundalini, our natural life force, the power that shapes our bodies in the womb. I began to think Yoga and meditation were merely means of physical improvement. Little did I know that the Golden Flower Meditation I was practicing would lead me to metaphysical discoveries.

A Childhood Injury Led me to Kundalini

If it wasn’t for a childhood injury that deformed me, I might never have discovered the amazing transformative power of Kundalini. The extraordinary factor in my case was that my injury occurred when I was very young, so young I actually suppressed all memory of the accident that caused my injury.

Years later, when I was thirty-four, a stranger handed me a book entitled The Secret of the Golden Flower. It was a serendipitous moment, the beginning of my recovery process. I didn’t realize it at the time. In fact, I put the book away for over a year. Sometime later however, I picked it up and began practicing the method of meditation in the text. At first I thought I was wasting my time.

Kundalini Started Transforming my Body

The method in The Secret of the Golden Flower was for real. Not only was it for real, this ancient method turned out to be the safest and most complete Kundalini method I’ve run across in my forty years of research. Why? Because it advocates using the backward-flowing method.

Upon awakening, Kundalini recognized my deformity and immediately began to restore my body to its original state, a pristine state of perfect symmetry that existed before my accident. If that hadn’t happened, my focus on Kundalini — like the focus of so many others — would probably have centered only on consciousness. As it was, I realized the practical healing benefits of Kundalini are as important and as wonderous as the metanormal effects that occur later on.

A New Phase of Kundalini Research

The fact that my childhood injury allowed me to discover the amazing transformative power of Kundalini has led me to frame Kundalini in entirely different terms from many other practitioners and researchers. I believe that the most important aspect of Kundalini — aside from its amazing curative power — is that Kundalini is actually an ancient scientific tradition, one that might be called Life Force Science. I did not get this from reading books like Wholeness and the Implicate Order or Mysticism and the New Physics, books written by scientists who, for one reason or another, hit a dead end in their interpretation of the universe, thus turning to mystical explanations. I came to a realization that Kundalini was a key to exploring a new science — the science of consciousness. The act of raising my Kundalini turned my body into a laboratory — one whose processes I could observe and document in a scientific manner. A process for others to explore...the same way I have explored it.

First, I observed that the diaphragmatic deep breathing I practiced created an energy buildup in my lower belly. I realized this was Prana, the life force energy, and it had a purpose. During meditation, I was able to slow down my heart rate, which seemed to create a vortex of all-encompassing consciousness with my puny being at the center. I noticed this energy in the belly had the property of direction and, if it had direction, I realized I might be able to guide it. But how and where? The words "backward-flowing method" came to mind. Quickly, I looked up the term in The Secret of the Golden Flower. And there it was — almost taunting me to order the energy to change direction. I did, and the rest is Kundalini lore, experiences and wonders so many others have shared. The energy:

• working its way up my spine to the brain,
• opening the chakras along the way,
• reengineering my body,
• plunging me into the energy continuum.

All of which should not be thought of as metaphysical phenomenon, but should be treated as scientific actualities, albeit ones the science of today has not yet discovered. Gopi Krishna knew that Kundalini is science; he wrote about it eloquently in his many books. Kundalini is part of the science of consciousness, just as the heart attack is part of medical science or the orgasm is part of reproductive science and biology.

A Reliable Method of Awakening Kundalini

Not only did I learn about the self-healing potential of Kundalini, I realized the method I used to arouse my Kundalini was more related to science than to mysticism, religion or spirituality. Why? Because Golden Flower Meditation (GFM) is capable of producing results with the consistency and predictability of a scientific experiment. So even though I started out as a spiritual seeker, I have become a Life Force Scientist. And as I scientist, I suggest that we research all aspects of Kundalini Awakening, from documenting the most reliable methods of activating it to examining the metanormal effects it produces. The best way of documenting Kundalini experiences? Tried and true peer review!

Biology and Consciousness
The reason I pursue this is because I have first hand observational experience of metaphysical activity in my own body. Myself and millions of others. Trouble is, even though our experiences are very similar, occur irrespective of culture, language, geography, physical characteristics, without any intimate contact between subjects, material scientists still label these experiences as anecdotal. But every scientific breakthrough starts out as a hypothesis, based on some combination of intuition and anecdote. The reason that biology is important is that, unlike divine inspiration, which must be seen as God randomly choosing candidates for inspiration, Kundalini, induced by the body's biological triggers, becomes an evolutionary mutation capable of modifying DNA within the span of a single lifetime, and even more important, an evolutionary improvement capable of being passed through DNA to future generations.

The Self

We all feel, sometimes obscurely, sometimes urgently, that if we could only escape from ourselves — from our ego, egotism, self-centerdness, selfishness, whatever word we use — we'd emerge into a limitless field of freedom. We attempt to break out with drugs, alcohol, sex, prayer, gambling, altruism; thrills, escapes, addictions, and diversions of all sorts — none of these work. The instant we glimpse the reality beyond our own center something snatches us back. The reason is fairly obvious: selfhood isn't a chimera of the mind that can be shaken off with a bit of positive thinking or by getting plastered. Selfhood is physical. It's in our DNA. Every cell of my body is me. Selfhood, in fact, is as much a product of evolution as our ability to grasp with our thumbs or think logically. It should be cherished. In our efforts to free ourselves of selfishness, self-centeredness, etc, we're in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

The Energetic Revival

Alchemical texts speak of the grain of gold hidden at the bottom of the mine, under the earth. The mine, the earth, is the body, and the grain of gold is the embodied self. It's funny that the shaft dug down into the earth has the same name as the possessive form of "me" (mine).

Down in the depths of the mine lies the lead that's to be turned back into gold. This is the real, or pure, self that is to be purged of its dross. What is the dross? The dross is conditioning, our false idea of what, and who, we are. At the moment of conception we are pure gold. The conditioning that drags us away from that primal state is deep and powerful: our sense memories...everything we hear, taste, feel, touch, and see; the impact of our basic instincts...cold, heat, hunger, fight and flight; as well as our social constructs...pride, anger, greed, fear, and loneliness. The conditioning that we undergo from the moment of conception onwards isn't just a mental attitude; it's physical. Conditioning works its way into our bodies, into the way we speak, walk, breathe, and make love. Only a powerful energetic revival can overcome it. This energy is Kundalini.

Kundalini lies coiled asleep at the base of the spine. What wakes Her? What is the trigger? I think it's the awareness that there is a real self somewhere, up there, in the brain — or above and beyond the brain.

At first, we don't really know because this real self is also, paradoxically, everywhere. It's down in the mine, as well. It's under the earth. It's the Siva Lingam at the base of the spine, round which the sleeping Kundalini lies coiled. This is why Kundalini feeds on sexual energy, because the Siva Lingam at the base of the spine is the "self-subsisting state" in an erotic form, the erotic force that creates physical life and puts each one of us into separate bodies. And, the fact that we end up in separate bodies drives us to love, and couple with, other separate bodies. Kundalini feeds on sexual energy, yet takes us into the "self-subsisting state."

The Tantric texts have many interesting things to say about selfhood. That the Tantric reality is complex is merely a true reflection of the complexity of selfhood. It has to do with the chakras. The Muladhara Chakra, at the base of the spine, is the place where selfhood is purely physical, a fact of blood, bone, nerve tissue, and DNA. Sexuality is said to originate in this chakra, where our physical separateness is most strongly felt, and not in the Svaddhisthana Chakra at the genitals, where the first upwards movement towards another person occurs.

When Kundalini opens the Manipura Chakra, in the belly, the experience is often traumatic, because this is where selfhood is felt as opposition to, and struggles against, other people. The Belly Chakra is where we burn with competitive striving, and with the dread of failure. When we find our true self, the same energy that made us afraid, now makes us fearless and strong. The Heart Chakra, or Anahata, is central. It is where the real self, in its cosmic form, resides. That is why this chakra is hard to open, even when Kundalini is coursing up through the body. Again, it has to do with our relationship to others and with the world outside us. In some weird way, the world outside us disappears; other people are taken away from us, and then, by a miraculous act of grace, other people, and the physical world, return to us, as part of us, in a paroxysm of love. The Visshuda Chakra, at the throat, is sometimes called "The Threshold Of Enlightenment."

Vissudha means purity. When Kundalini opens this chakra, the self is no longer felt to be a separate thing. The identity of all things with the self is directly seen. "I" am the bird on the shed roof. In fact, I'm the shed, too. I'm even the lawnmower hanging on its hook inside.

In the Ajna Chakra, in the brain, the self is experienced as wholly other. The self is seen to be something coming from another dimension. The Tantras say that the Ajna Chakra is the place of the third Siva Lingam (the other two are at the base of the spine and in the heart), the Itara Lingam, and of the mantra "AUM," and of the Ahamkara, or "I-maker." Itara means "crossing over from beyond." AUM combines the male sound "A" and the female sound "U" in the central channel "M." And Ahamkara, the I-maker, is where the blueprint of our perfect body comes out of the void.