Cross-cultural Evidence

Kundalini is a transcendental phenomena, one which lies outside of time and space.

We cannot understand how powerful the experience of kundalini awakening really is, but we can see its effects on our lives and the effect that awakening has had in terms of changes and functioning of society and various cultures. For example, the effect of kundalini awakening is said by many researchers and yogis to be at the basis of the experiences had by Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Rama and other great religious and spiritual figures from history.

While researchers continue to scientifically probe the phenomena itself, its components, its related events and ramifications and its ability to affect machines, another type of researcher is examining the phenomena in its social setting and anthropologically. As a universal phenomena we can see kundalini everywhere, in every culture and at all times. John White states: “Although the word kundalini comes from the yogic tradition nearly all the world’s major religions, spiritual paths and genuine occult traditions see something akin to the kundalini experience as having significance in divinizing a person. The word itself may not appear in the traditions, but the concept is there nevertheless, wearing a different name yet recognizable as a key to attaining a God-like stature.” (1)

Altered states

Kundalini induces an altered state of consciousness (ASC), that is, it takes us to realms of inner experience beyond those normally accessible to modern man. Arnold M. Ludwig writes, “Beneath man’s thin veneer of consciousness lies a relatively uncharted realm of mental activity, the nature and function of which have been neither systematically explored or adequately conceptualized.” (2) Ludwig and other ASC researchers cite daydreaming, sleep and dreams, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, psychosis, hysterical states of dissociation and depersonalization, pharmacologically induced mental aberrations, sleeplessness, fasting and meditation as examples of ASCs. Anything can induce an ASC, any place or event can trigger a change in consciousness, however, usually we have to manoeuvre ourselves or use some agent to bypass the so-called “normal” functioning of the brain. We can say that our normal state of consciousness is the one in which we spend most of our waking lives. There are many people, however, who believe that the state of consciousness most people exist in is very limited and fixed, itself a retarded, degenerate and unhealthy state which induces fear of change, neurosis and disease. In terms of our inner experiences we are like retarded dwarfs, like the flea kept under a glass who, after hitting its head on the glass a number of times, ceases to jump hundreds of times its own height but rather, even when the glass is removed, continues to hop at a reduced capacity far below its innate potential. Yogis claim that we are like the flea, pathetic shadows of our former selves and far less than our potential, confined by vague fears and illusions, ghosts and memories in the mind. We are much more than we think we are. The kundaiini experience is at the peak of human evolution. It is the absolute and final state attainable by man, the experience in which he realises and merges with his pristine glory; the ultimate ASC. All other experiences fall short of this and are mere stepping- stones on the way, making up the repertoire of our lesser human lives. The real yogi or swami is the master of all realms of consciousness and can move into and out of any state he wants at will, depending on the degree of his skill and mastery. Various cultures have developed ways and means to attain these different realms of consciousness, each varying in its capacity to do so.

According to Erica Bourguignon, an anthropologist at Ohio State University, 90% of human societies practise some kind of institutionalized ritual to achieve altered states of consciousness. (3) For example, there is the solitary-vision quest of Sioux warriors, the hallucinogen-powered flights of South American shaman, the dream oracles of the Senoi people of Malaysia, the tribal dances of the Samo people of New Guinea, and the whirling dances of the Sufi dervish, to name but a few of the better known societies. In the west we use alcohol and drugs, revival meetings, rock concerts and discotheques with their mind and logic numbing, trance-inducing, mega-decibel music and “tribal” dance. Are we so far from “primitive” societies? Bourguignon wonders. “The fact that they are nearly universal must mean that such states are very important to human beings.” The need for attaining higher states of consciousness seems to be as basic as the need for eating or sleeping.

Somehow we have forgotten at our conscious, normal level of consciousness, that we have immense potential and that we can achieve bliss, knowledge and inner experiences which are more satisfying than the monotonous, humdrum existence we lead at present. Somewhere in our subconscious minds, at another level of consciousness, we know that something is missing and this knowledge nags at us. We want to get away from it all, to have a holiday (from the root for Holy day). From this there arises an instinctive and irrepressible urge and drive to fulfil ourselves and to attain higher and better states and experiences, though we may often fail to achieve them or real inner satisfaction. The alcohol ritual is one example of a self-defeating and destructive attempt to achieve true joy and inner bliss.

It appears that our methods are incorrect for attaining inner fulfillment, satisfaction and security. We have lost the keys and can no longer gain access to the higher and transcendental. We have been thrown out of the garden of Eden. It is for this reason that so many people have turned to yoga, meditation and the transcendental sciences for the means and techniques to enlarge their repertoire of experience and to attain insight into themselves and reality.

Kundalini, a universal phenomenon

Reports have come from all over the world indicating that there is a psychophysiological phenomenon which exists outside of the barriers of social, cultural, religious, geographical and temporal boundaries and which resembles the phenomenon called kundalini by the yogis and sages of India. In Northwest Botswana, Africa, the !Kung people of the Kalahari desert dance for many hours to heat up the n|um so that the !kia state can be obtained. This state of transcendence resembles that in many yogic texts on kundalini in which states of consciousness beyond the ordinary and participation in eternity are described. One tribesman reports that, “You dance, dance, dance, dance. Then the n|um lifts you in your belly and lifts you in your back, and then you start to shiver… it’s hot. Your eyes are open but you don’t look around; you hold your eyes still and look straight ahead. But when you get into !kia you’re looking around because you see everything…” (4) Judith Cooper writes about the !Kung: “In one of the darker corners of the Dark Continent the !Kung people of the Kalahari keep in touch with the gods. Two or three nights a week the men dance around a fire, graceful as leopards, to the sonorous drone of the women’s chants. Soon the mood turns solemn, and the night air swells with unseen presences. Sweat rolls down the dancers’ bodies like sweet rain, as the n|um, the healing power, starts to boil. The moment of transcendence is painful. When the inner fire shoots from their bellies up their spines, the dancers shiver and tremble, fall to the ground or go rigid as stone. Some of them dance into the fire and out again, perfect as gods, their feet unburned. They can see into the essence of things now, even into the insides of other people, where malignant ghosts feed on diseased livers or prevent the conception of sons. Laying their healing hands on the sick, they bid the n|um to drive out the forces of darkness.” (5)

In the Chinese Taoist tradition it is said that when prana or chi, the vital principle, has accumulated in the lower belly, it bursts out and begins to flow in the main psychic channels causing involuntary movements and sensations such as pain, itching, coldness, warmth, weightlessness, heaviness, roughness, smoothness, internal lights and sound and the feeling of inner movement. It may cause the body to brighten and even illuminate a dark room. Yin Shih Tsu reported that he felt heat travel from the base of the spine to the top of the head and then down over his face and throat to his stomach. (6) These kinds of reports tally exactly with the experiences of yogis who describe kundalini as travelling up the spine with heat and light or with the surging energy of a snake preparing to strike. A classical description of kundalini from the yogic tradition comes from Swami Narayananda:

“There is a burning up the back and over the whole body. Kundalini’s entrance into sushumna occurs with pain in the back… One feels a creeping sensation from the toes and sometimes it shakes the whole body. The rising is felt like that of an ant creeping up slowly over the body towards the head. Its ascent is felt like the wiggling of a snake or a bird hopping from place to place.” (7) This also sounds very much like the description of the so-called “primitive” people of the !Kung tribe in the Kalahari desert in Africa. In medieval Spain, St. Theresa of Avila described her experience, which yogis call the awakening of nada, the manifestation of transcendental consciousness as sound. “The noises in my head are so loud that I am beginning to wonder what is going on in it… My head sounds just as if it were full of brimming rivers… and a host of little birds seem to be whistling, not in the ears, but in the upper part of the head, where the higher part of the soul is said to be; I have held this view for a long time, for the spirit seems to move upward with great velocity.” (8)

Conclusion

All of the above are classical kundalini type experiences, but they have occurred in different geographical locations and different times in history, because kundalini is not dependent on time and space. However, few cultures have documented the kundalini experience so well or consistently as the sages in India. The Indian culture seems to have been ripe to allow the yogic sciences to be preserved, cultivated and revered. As a result, a sublime philosophy has emerged and has been recorded in many books, a few of which have come down to us through the ravages of time and history. Books such as the Bhagavad Gita, the yogic texts such as Yoga Vashishta and Hatha Toga Pradipika, and the sublime beauty of the books of the Upanishads and Vedanta, which have inspired many of the great men and women of history from all over the world, are testaments to the existence of a once great culture. Sophisticated maps of consciousness, charts to allow us to enter the sublime bliss of altered states of consciousness and meditative experience, myriad techniques and processes and untold words and books for guidance have emerged and have been handed down over thousands of years. Nowhere else has the kundalini experience been so well, richly or scientifically recorded in all its sublimity and variation.

Swami Vivekananda sums up the whole question of kundalini as a universal phenomena when he states, “When by the power of long internal meditation, the vast mass of energy stored up, travels along the sushumna and strikes the chakras, the reaction is immensely more intense than any reaction of sense perception. Wherever there was any manifestation of what is ordinarily called supernatural power or wisdom, there a little current of kundalini must have found its way into the sushumna.” We see then that an experience exists which is one but which has had a vast impact on society and culture wherever it has occurred. The experience is one but the names are many. Yogis call this the awakening of Shakti or kundalini and have developed a vast, intricate, systematic and progressive science by which they can awaken this power which lies dormant in each of us and one which can evolve ourselves and society to new and undreamed of heights of experience and achievement.