Kundalini And Evolution

The authors of the Tantras speak of history as a decline, a falling away from an original perfection. As the ones who revealed the techniques for awakening Kundalini, these authors ought to be listened to. What we call evolution, they call a darkening. What we call progress, they call a lapse and a forgetting. They depict human history as a stage-by-stage descent into chaos. These descending stages are the four "ages" of Hesiod's "Works And Days," the Ages of Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron.

In the remarkably parallel Hindu picture, our present era (Hesiod's Age Of Iron, and the Age Of The Wolf of Norse legends) is called the Kali Yuga, the "time when Kali is wide awake," Kali being the female deity symbolizing the elemental, primordial forces, which become destructive when not balanced by a transcendent stillness. The Kali Yuga is a time of alienation from that which transcends the world, a severing of the links with the Primal Spirit, leading to the predominance of all that is merely material and physical. As The Visnu Purana puts it: "...property alone will confer rank; wealth will be the only source of devotion; need will be the sole bond of union between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation..." Surely this describes much, if not all, of the outer social and economic world in our era. Far from evolving, we are descending. It's for this reason that there's been such a widespread current awakening of Kundalini, because it's on the physical body that Kundalini works, opening a sort of Last-Chance-Saloon path to transcendence, when the more ancient and more spiritual paths have been largely lost, and we're stuck in our own heads and nervous systems, floundering in the surrounding materialism.

That Kundalini heals and re-balances the body and brain is beyond doubt. I am undergoing this physical reshaping myself. However, as it goes on, I can feel it being resisted by forces from outside me, by energy fields in my environment. As my center grows more still, the powers trying to throw it off balance become more and more external, and more powerfully external. When Kundalini awakens, sensitivity to the surrounding energy field becomes so heightened as to be sometimes frightening. The Kali Yuga is right there in your face. An opaque being is standing an inch in front of your eyes. Personal weaknesses and problems become charged with a force they never had before, as if they too come from outside you, and are no longer merely the quirks, loveable or less so, of the guy or lady you used to be.