Hi all,
there is a German author (Dietmar Kraemer) who claims that you can die from kundalini and that he personally knows several cases.

I personally have never heard of that and I am also on some sort of a crusade to explain to people that kundalini can be challenging because it opens our unconscious mind but that it is not a disease, let alone life-threatening.

Unfortunately, I am having a hard time to reassure some of my German clients who have read the book and are in a state of high anxiety.

I think that the author can not possibly know why these people died. He did not conduct a post-mortem and his ideas are possibly just the result of his own unresolved fears. I certainly know that many people are AFRAID to die of the kundalini and to go mad but I never heard this actually being proven to happen.

What is your take on that?

I agree with you, Tara: that's a very extreme view, and it would be difficult to substantiate. In the first place, one would have to come up with some kind of medical definition for kundalini, which would be difficult. The the presence of this "syndrome" or whatever would have to be established and causally related to the death.

I have heard and read references to kundalini as contributing to bipolar disorder, and even schizophrenia. The former seems a possibility, but I think the latter to be quite a stretch.
- see http://pathwaytoascension.word...re-kundalini-rising/

Hi Phil
thanks for that.

I am very good at the differential diagnosis of mental disease and the so-called kundalini psychosis. I could write a thesis on it - lol. It's not the same at all and can easily told apart.

Anyway, the diagnosis of bipolar gets handed out like smarties here in Britain. It would ridiculous if it would not be for the dangerous drugs that are handed out for it, as well. Very worrying trend for me as a psychotherapist.

Still wondering how I can reassure my clients - what would you do, Phil?

Tara, I can't offer any special expertise, but here is one possibility for your consideration.

How about asking your clients what they are actually experiencing in the present moment as they talk to you. Can they tell you what is happening in their body, right now? What feelings or emotions are they experiencing, right now? What thoughts are going through their heads, right now?

Pursue this line of investigation for some minutes. What is happening now? And now what is happening?

Tara, have you heard of the book " The Biology of
Kundalini". Alot of it is on line for free. Perhaps there may be something in there that could offer some assistance.

http://www.biologyofkundalini.com/

On the left hand side you will find selections of many writings.

Tara, I usually tell people who are struggling with pronounced mood swings to see a counselor and inquire about medication, especially if it's disrupting their lives in some manner.

I honestly don't know about the kundalini/bipolar connection. K will accentuate emotional states, but I think bipolar disorder is more than this -- something that doesn't correct easily, or respond to meditative and other approaches, as K does. Trying to medicate K symptoms might have some limited effect, but usually it seems to do more harm than good. Bipolar disorder can generally be addressed with the right medication.

Thankfully, I haven't had to work much with people who have bipolar disorder, and those who have mood swings and K usually see some stabilizing of their moods in time.

There's a series of videos on Youtube by a guy who suffered from bipolar disorder and came to the conclusion that it's a sort of psychological purging. He thinks it's best left to run its course, and that medication actually exacerbates the cycling. Of course, like many people who speak from personal experience, his research is based on a survey with a sample size of 1 (i.e., himself!). I have no idea how generally applicable his conclusions might be. I read his book on Kindle, too.

Thanks guys, for the replies. I think I will tell my client that I have discussed the matter with you here on the forum and that none of you have heard either that one can die of kundalini.

Derek, I work along some similar lines but first try to address the matter on a cognitive level to get this out of the way. Not easy, in this instance.

I have also written to the author himself but got no answer. Why does that not surprise me?

If i remember right, her name was El Collie , or similar. She committed suicide, because she couldnt bear the k any more after 15 years, or so.

Gopy Krishna almost died because the k has rised up the wrong channel. Not Sushumna, but the sun channel Pingala. As he wrote, he only survived because with his last willpower left after a long period of intrinsic burning he was able to send the k up the right channel, Sushumna.

Bliss in the Heart,
Gopi Krishna 'almost died' - how can such a statement be substantiated? Sure, he felt bad and suffered but who is to say he 'almost died'?

'Because the kundalini rose in the wrong channel' - again - who can know, let alone diagnose such a condition?

Gopi Krishna said so himself, I know, but he was completely confused in the bad stages of his k rising. Also, he always stopped eating when his k was strong in him and weakened his body in that way.

To me such statements are akin to saying 'he almost died because a demon possessed him'. Superstition!

My experience with men in the k process is that they tend to freak out much more over symptoms then women do who are used to sexual energy being in their whole body rather than only in the genitals, feel living moving beings growing in them, experience pain every month and hot flushes in menopause. (If you do not know that hot flushes are harmless, it's easy to imagine you are burning to death)

I made the effort now to read the author's book and his statements are - in all due respect - ridiculous. The cases he describes look to me like mental cases and they were not even his clients - just acquaintances - and 'they all died of kundalini'. Yeah, right! (Sorry, running out of breath to argue my case in the face of such arrogance and stupidity) The sad thing is he frightens all these people...

Wish me luck, to tell all this my client without becoming sarcastic.

Yes . . . good luck, Tara. I hope it goes well.

I had some email exchanges with El Collie years ago. She was very kind, and generous in sharing her knowledge of kundalini, even hosting a helpful web site.
- see http://spiritualemergency.blog...count-el-collie.html for an account of her kundalini story.

And here's an exchange among those who were her friends:
- http://www.kundalini-gateway.org/ckress/comment.html

I'd not heard that her cause of death was suicide, and the exchanges don't seem to say this, though they do allude to an extended period of pain and suffering. All in all, she seemed to be integrating the K process -- at least that's what I'd gathered from her blog posts and emails.

Phil,
if i remember right, i found this suicide information those days on another kundaliniforum from Bob Boyed. But i might err. A minute ago i did a google and found this: http://thetaobums.com/topic/7759-shaktipat/page-30 . Read about in the middle of the page: " El collie was a good friend of Dr. Morris's. I was around when she committed suicide because ..... "


Tara, why so furious ?
I simply wrote here what i remembered of this book of GK. Yes, as he wrote, he really "almost" died. he said already good bye to all his familie members, and , as he wrote, only by an inner message he survived. this message told him to raise the k through the middle channel. An, yes, i think there isa a possibility to judge which channel the k is rising up: once the k reaches the area of the chest, in some way the third eye is already activated somehow, and one kan see inwardly the k rising. it looks very spectacular. it looks like a firework of sparkles in all colors flying away from the center of the spine. ok, i have no experience about what Tucker her some while ago called the "Death zone" or "death channels" or somewhat similar, but i (humbly)guess it looks then a little different when the k goes up some other channel. You wrote that GK didnt eat in periods when his k was strong. GK wrote that he simply COULD NOT eat amy tiny peace of rice or whatever. It instantly began to burn extremely in his stomache and gud etc, and that he had this hard pain for several days.
Heat : I am not female, so i cannot judge the amount pain women have in their menopause. But i know the heat pain from the k . It starts mildly, getting stronger and stronger over the hours, and after some while you feel a heat that has the strength of burning fire right near your skin. the only difference: it does not really burn your skin to charcoal. put a candle under your arm, then you know about this strength of heat, but not only on one square cm, but along your whole leg. i think about two years ago here on this forum we had a member , who called himself Bob May. he said that this heat had caused him to leave his body. and it still existed in the beyond til he finally resolved in an infinite ocean of light ...

" 'he almost died because a demon possessed him'. Superstition! "
i didnt say that. But "superstition" ??? What you mean with that. Devils are superstition ? If you ever had an encounter with a devil, you surely wouldnt say it that way. I had !! One time a devil was beating me, and i was flying and finally dropping about 3 meters away. Read the biographies of Padre Pio. He regularly got legnatas and was buscarled from devils. similar Fra Elija. btw: Angels are real too .....

peace

BlissintheHeart
sorry, if I came across angry - I am not angry with you at all. Unfortunately, in these posts the tone of voice is lost, despite all the smileys we put on.

But I am a bit annoyed with this German author, though, with whom I had now a number of email exchanges, in which he did his best to discredit me , while not coming forward with any shred of evidence for his claims that you can die of kundalini

I am unhappy about this because my clients are reading these books and it is very hard for me to reassure them that some other author are irrational and superstitious in a field that we are working in. (my example with the demons were not meant to go against Catholic beliefs - sorry)

About the pain: yes, there can be pain in the kundalini process, I know, I had plenty of it myself. But it is not the kundalini that hurts but the k simply highlights our own tensions resulting from our inner conflicts. Once these inner conflicts are resolved the pain subsides while the k is as strong as ever. I have seen this happening in myself and many of my clients.

About the k going up the 'wrong' channel: in my thinking this does not happen, either - these 'channels' are just metaphors. I do not believe in some sort of invisible plumbing system that pervades our body.

A more accurate idea would be to talk about 'currents' like in a river. These currents can be disturbed and cramped due to our own fears and faulty perceptions that result in pain once the k highlights them.


About the 'almost died': I think this can only be claimed by someone who had a near-death-experience. Otherwise we need to see it as an expression of 'I felt very weak and bad'.

I try my very best to be evidence-based in my approach.

quote:

About the k going up the 'wrong' channel: in my thinking this does not happen, either - these 'channels' are just metaphors. I do not believe in some sort of invisible plumbing system that pervades our body.

A more accurate idea would be to talk about 'currents' like in a river. These currents can be disturbed and cramped due to our own fears and faulty perceptions that result in pain once the k highlights them.

That's quite different from the Hindu perspective, but it resonates with my own experience as well.

I wonder, however, if there aren't different kinds of experiences that fall under the concept of "kundalini." We use the term all the time and presume some kind of shared understanding of what we mean. It would probably detract too much from this topic to get into just how people would define kundalini. Maybe a new topic?

No problem, Tara, welcome, wallay sapayan (This is visayan language, hehehe )

" (my example with the demons were not meant to go against Catholic beliefs - sorry)"

in my case they surely dont. i m not this kind of dogmatic christian, rather interested in comparisons of religions, but still going one way only. And demons are "international" , hehe. there are demons in Hinduisme, for instance too, but my feeling is, they have another purpose there. They are in Hinduisme not primarily ment to destroy somebodies faith,
(among other they try this too, of ooarse) but to do a cleaning inside the individuum, to destroy obstacles (in the hard way) and thus make the way free to go upstairs .... The whole fellowship of Shiva and Kali are like this.

Channels:
may be i m wrong, but i think the first one who brought up this concept of nadis was Gorakshanat. His (wrong !) thinking was that the nadies are the real physical nerves. And later somebody states that we have 70,000 of them . By looking inside, he counted them. (Wasnt that patanjali, who invented the Hatha Yoga) . "Tucker" here on this board made an interesting generalisation, including the chinese version of the k, and introducing more major channels , some at the back, (Hindu), some in the middle of the body, and some in front of the body. This opened a little my eyes and explained some of my experiences, for instance the heart chakra included in the spine, this sweet heart feeling in the middle of the chest, and the feeling of air in front of the body. one time the k was jumping inside. then you are really aware of these different locations. The same with the third eye. one location is inside the brain, one is in front of the brain.

Death by k :
I do not know this author, and i know that a lot of nonsense is written, especially by some esoterics who never had any k experience, but who simply collect some informations from everywhere around, and publish it, because they need to earn some money.

But honestly, i wouldnt subscribe that the k could not kill. If you would not accept GK, take as an example "Bob May" ( here on this board) who probably had some kind of NDE, but he never gave any more specifications.
Or take for example the Nirvikalpa Samadhi. (to get this you open the crown chakra and enter by k into the associated world and consciousness. ) Ah, and no, i never have been there, hehehe. My guru said those days, that when you stay there longer that 8 hours, you have completely forgotten that there is a life on earth too, and you would never come back. On earth we then call this: death. It is usually Gods affair to bring such a soul back to earth. And remember: Ramakrishna stayed in this state for 60 days !!! That he came back this was simply the merit of a nun who saw his body, realized the extraordirary condition of this body (didnt get black and moldery) and took care of it.
Yes, Gods ways are unexplainable !

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