Phil, has your own spiritual process included a lot of kundalini activity? Is that part of what has drawn you to investigate the terminology and methods from Eastern traditions?

Yvonne Kason in her book Farther Shores has worked out a diagnostic tool for kundalini experiencers. This is what I use to 'diagose' my clients. (It's not a disease, so there is no diagnosis - it's just feedback because they all want to know whether they have kundalini)

Derek, you may want to get yourself that book and use that questionaire.

Phil, the experiences of Gopi Krishna I would call a 'kundalini catastrophe'. I think his suffering was greatly aggravated through his unwillingness to talk to somebody who knew what was going on with him.

I know he had good reason to mistrust many 'teachers' but surely he could have found someone in a country that kind of 'invented' kundalini yoga. He could at least have tried but he did not. Which makes me wonder whether there was also quite a bit of ego going with him. But he turned out to be a great guy, engaging in feminism in his country, which is quite wonderful, really.

Also, every time his symptoms became intense he stopped eating, which was very dangerous to his physical health.

Not everyone experiences this beam of energy going to the third eye that you describe. In my experience there are all sorts of energy experiences and they can differ a lot. What they all have in common is that some energy from the abdomen rises up.

Tara, I wasn't suggesting that Gopi Krisha's experience be considered paradigmatic, only that his point about kundalini working to open/sustain new potentialities rooted in the brain resonate with me.

quote:

Not everyone experiences this beam of energy going to the third eye that you describe. In my experience there are all sorts of energy experiences and they can differ a lot. What they all have in common is that some energy from the abdomen rises up.

I haven't encountered many people who would state that the energy rises from the abdomen. That's certainly not my experience. Usually, they sense it arising from the base of the spine -- at least initially.

Jim Arraj once took some quotes about k awakening and symptoms from my book and arranged them into an interview.
- see https://shalomplace.org/eve/for.../25010765/m/38210765
The symptoms apply primarily to the early stages of k awakening. I do not propose them to be essential indicators in all cases, of course.

I see that Wikipedia has an article on "Kundalini Syndrom" with symptoms listed and even diagnostic inventories.
- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini_syndrome

Both the perineum (muladhara) and the abdomen (manipura) are important "locations".
Traditionally, muladhara is seen as the base of kundalini where all this latent energy is waiting to become manifested in a proper way. As the individual spiritually evolves, this energy can rise and fall back to muladhara. The awakening of manipura is an important moment since kundalini switches its base there from muladhara. So from that moment on, kundalini doesn't drop anymore below and the risk to recess on the spiritual path drops significantly. This truly is an important moment, because the individual starts to enter a period of spiritual stability.
So I believe both Phil and Tara are right. It depends on the level of spiritual evolution of the individual. I feel most of kundalini activity in the abdomen and the heart, also higher up, but aside from the fact that my t*sticles sometimes feel like freezing off even though it's steaming hot outside, I usually don't feel much physical kundalini effects in the lower regions.

Aion
I remember I was asking you if you were male or female - now I know

Just to clarify - with abdomen I mean the entire region from the navel downwards, front and back. So the base of the spine is within that region.

In Tibetan Buddhism kundalini (tummo) is awakened at the navel (that is manipura in your terminolgy, Aion, right?). We do not distinguish between navel and root chakra but the entire abdominal cavity is seen as one chakra.

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Originally posted by KundaliniTherapist:
Derek, you may want to get yourself that book and use that questionaire.

Yes, it looks useful, thank you.

quote:

Originally posted by KundaliniTherapist:
the experiences of Gopi Krishna I would call a 'kundalini catastrophe'. I think his suffering was greatly aggravated through his unwillingness to talk to somebody who knew what was going on with him.

Perhaps he took as his role model his father, who considered it part of his spiritual practice not to talk to anyone at all, not even his own family.

I note also that GK's practice was an aggressive form of concentration meditation. People who do exclusively concentration meditation sometimes do develop a grandiose self-image and a mistrust of others. It's also repressive, and I've read other accounts of people doing it to the extent that the dam finally bursts.

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:
I see that Wikipedia has an article on "Kundalini Syndrom" with symptoms listed and even diagnostic inventories.
- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini_syndrome

That article lists some attempts to make the subject academically respectable. I can't see that happening until they come up with a more mainstream word than "kundalini." Even "spiritual," in many quarters of our rationalist-materialist culture, is enough to get the material filed under "W" for "Woo-Woo."

That's a good point, Derek. I don't know what else you'd call it, however. There's already considerable name recognition with "kundalini."

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I don't think all Hindu yogic paths emphasize kundalini awakening. Jnana yoga, for example, and even raja yoga, say little about it. Even teachers of the Bhakti path do not emphasize kundalini.

Yes, that is true. Hinduism is incrdibly complex and it almost does not make sense to give it only one name becasue there are so many paths within it.

I referred to Anandamayi Ma who is a widely acknowledged avatar (god person - never incarnated as a human - just like they consider Jesus). She does not follow any of the hindu schools and explicitly said that she considers kundalini essential for enlightenment.

Derek
I have obviously no real idea what was happening to you. Just some general thoughts that may apply to you or not. Please feel free to dismiss them:

- Every opening of any chakra feels like a major breakthrough and falling away of a fake self that we had in place to compensate for the lack of real self that shines through with the opening of the chakra.
- You may have had an opening of one of the top chakras. Every chakra opening is equally important and we can only find complete union with God or enlightenment if we can unite with every part of our being/ every chakra
- the kundalini awakening signifies the opening of the abdominal chakra, where we have access to the greatest amount of energy. You may have opened that chakra through your primal work already or it may still be closed to some degree - obviously I would not know.

Hope this helps

quote:

I note also that GK's practice was an aggressive form of concentration meditation. People who do exclusively concentration meditation sometimes do develop a grandiose self-image and a mistrust of others. It's also repressive, and I've read other accounts of people doing it to the extent that the dam finally bursts.

Good point, Derek.
My therapy with my kundalini clients works becasue I help them to focus more on love. Love is like balm that pacifies the raging fire of the kundalini. If you think of love and energy/power/kundalini/desire as the main duality in life then it makes sense to cool the fire of the kundalini with love.

Gopi Krisha did not do this (at least I did not read that in his books), which may have aggravated him even further. However, he turned out extremely loving. For him as male brahmin (he was brahmin, wasn't he?) to engage wholeheartedly in feminism and alleviate the terrible suffering of women in India is nothing less than extremely loving.

quote:

Originally posted by KundaliniTherapist:
Derek
I have obviously no real idea what was happening to you. Just some general thoughts that may apply to you or not. Please feel free to dismiss them:

- Every opening of any chakra feels like a major breakthrough and falling away of a fake self that we had in place to compensate for the lack of real self that shines through with the opening of the chakra.
- You may have had an opening of one of the top chakras. Every chakra opening is equally important and we can only find complete union with God or enlightenment if we can unite with every part of our being/ every chakra
- the kundalini awakening signifies the opening of the abdominal chakra, where we have access to the greatest amount of energy. You may have opened that chakra through your primal work already or it may still be closed to some degree - obviously I would not know.

Hope this helps

Making sense of it has taken me some time, too. The earliest explanations that I put to it were from the Bible, "born again" or that "God had reached me." Later I found a good fit with the Buddhist fetter model and called it "stream entry." The chakra model I am not at all familiar with. Of the physiological symptoms that Kason lists, the only ones that applied to me were decreased sleep (four hours per night) and a persistent erection. But these applied only during an eight-day period, so it was the kind of episode that Kason calls a STEP rather than a STE. Anyway, all the details are in chapter 4 of The Phenomenon of Awakening.

Derek, you might fund useful Adyashanti's talk on the different qualities of awakening. He tends to use a generic/non-tradition-specific way of talking about awakening in the mind (to emptiness/spaciousness/transcendence), heart (to intimacy, oneness, love, fullness), and gut (to no-self) and says in his experience these aspects/qualities of awakening can and usually do open separately, and in no particular order, though the awakening of the mind aspect is often first. His descriptions resonate with me pretty strongly and I like the light hand he has with them (this is not a map, not a dogma, just a description of how things often seem to develop). A talk on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeSezeHLvY4

They resonate with me, too. I have read and re-read his book The End of Your World. In his model (described in the video you linked to), what happened to me is what he calls a "mind awakening." For a period of a few weeks, it also had the characteristics of a "heart awakening," but that faded away after a while. I don't think it was a "gut awakening" in his model.

I just had a look at Adyashanti's books. I picked out this quote from one of the reviews: "Adyasanti states that enlightenment does not have an experience of love or bliss. That divine ecstacy is only a salespitch."


If this is true (I have never read his books) I must totally disagree with Adyashanti. Tibetan Buddhism is clear about the fact that love and bliss and also wisdom is the essence of enlightenment. Just imagine a moment without love: what would it be? Hatred? Numbness? Fear? - whatever this loveless moment is, to me it would not be worthwhile. Similarly, a moment without bliss - what else could there be? If it is not numbness it must be something negative. Again that is not worthwhile.

There is so much nonsense that is spread by these non-duality teacher, it's unbelievable. What is even more unbelievable is how many people want to believe them