Kundalini and the Now

If your goal is enlightenment, why bother with kundalini? After all, even its proponents admit there are risks to raising kundalini. Things do go wrong on occasion: the initiate never achieves his goal, the energy never awakens, it awakens in some frightening manner, or some sort of psycho-physical damage occurs.



There’s far too much hustle associated with enlightenment. Is it reachable? Is it achievable? Is it teachable? Do you need a guide? Recently, I got a call from someone willing to pay me if I could guide him to enlightenment. He got angry when I asked him, what effort he’d have to make, why he believed he could do it, and what enlightenment was. Not that I told I could help him, I didn’t. My questions made him angry — that I should just shut up, wave a wand and voila, he’d be enlightened.

Well, what is it? What is enlightenment?

Is it the highest possible state of human evolution? Will all humans eventually become enlightened? Which leaves me to think there’s a physical component to it, just as there’s been at every stage of human evolution — Something in the brain changes. Usually over long periods of time, enough time for an attribute to be passed along to DNA. Or is it a stage only attainable by an individual on one off basis after an arduous preparation, like a Boy Scout earning merit badges.

Which causes me to rework the old saying: "Is it easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the unenlightened to become enlightened?" Not just because we’re so completely unenlightened at this moment, but because no one really knows what it is.

I wish people would stop talking about enlightenment as if it was like learning to drive a car or winning an Oscar.

It obviously isn't. In the first place, no one has ever defined enlightenment. It's a condition everyone claims they'd be able to recognize should they run across someone who is enlightened. A highly subjective claim.

Is enlightenment relative or absolute? Is it like switching on a light? Or is it a steady drip-drip-drip of becoming more conscious? For the time being, I like my working definition:

"The ultimate aim of meditation is to become more and more conscious. Enlightenment, therefore, is becoming fully conscious."
~ JJ Semple

It leaves room to include the struggle inherent in the journey. And because I learned so much during my journey, I can't shake the conviction that the journey is as important as the destination.

"Self-realization begins at birth. It is as much the journey as it is the destination."
~ Araminta Matthews

Secondly, designating or labeling a person as enlightened is problematic, and is usually bandied about frivolously. Is the so-called enlightened one actually enlightened or is he/she just a spellbinding talker? Think back. To the various Jonestown-like episodes in recent history. Were those self-anointed prophets false or real?

Eckhart Tolle says, "The enlightened person’s main focus of attention is always the Now, but they are still peripherally aware of time."

Gandhi Spinning

Which would seem to point out that the more you stay in the Now, the less likely you'd be talking about it. In fact, wouldn't someone In The Now live a fairly uncomplicated, simple life? All the better to stay in the Now. Simple actions = fewer distractions. Like Gandhi spinning cloth, an almost inconceivable way of life for the westerner.

"So do not be concerned with the fruit of your action — just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord. This is a powerful spiritual practice. In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the oldest and most beautiful spiritual teachings in existence, nonattachment to the fruit of your action is called Karma Yoga. It is described as the path of 'consecrated action.'"~ Tolle, Eckhart. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (p. 68). New World Library. Kindle Edition.

When Tolle talks about staying in "the Now," he is repackaging "mindfulness," which itself is a rediscovery of Gurdjieff's "self-remembering" — the idea of freeing oneself from psychological time:

"The time-bound mode of consciousness is deeply embedded in the human psyche. But what we are doing here is part of a profound transformation that is taking place in the collective consciousness of the planet and beyond: the awakening of consciousness from the dream of matter, form, and separation. The ending of time. We are breaking mind patterns that have dominated human life for eons. Mind patterns that have created unimaginable suffering on a vast scale. I am not using the word evil. It is more helpful to call it unconsciousness or insanity."
~ Tolle, Eckhart - The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (p. 67). New World Library. Kindle Edition.

How difficult it is to stay in "the Now" can once again be compared to a camel's passing through the eye of a needle. It's very difficult, and very painful.

Attaining enlightenment — whatever it be — is so complex, yet so simple. The catch being that for most people the Simple is, and always will be, out of reach.

How does kundalini fit in with enlightenment, the Now, and nonattachment?

Very simply, it brings to bear the organic, somatic, metabolic, and hormonal resources of the body, allowing the mind and ego to rest while it does the heavy listing of staying in the Now. Kundalini creates a new Being dedicated to returning You to your true self.

And it isn’t a collection of merit badges, a reward for prayerful behavior, kindness to animals, or inspirational fellowship.

As pointed out by Mariana Caplan in Halfway up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment, a book that examines Enlightenment from many angles.

“Author Lee Sanella explicates Carl Jung’s perspective on the kundalini: ‘Jung described the kundalini as an impersonal force,’ writes Sanella. ‘He argued that to claim the kundalini as one’s own creation is perilous. It leads to ego inflation, false superiority, obnoxiousness, or even madness. For him, the kundalini is an autonomous process arising out of the unconscious and seemingly using the individual as its vehicle.’ 

“This definition suggests that enlightenment neither belongs to an individual nor is personal to them. A person does not experience the energy of enlightenment because of their good deeds or their extraordinary nature. The movement of enlightenment is an unemotional force, indifferent to personalities and personal preferences, that uses the most suitable human vehicle to fulfill its needs.”

Caplan, Mariana - Halfway up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment

This underlines the evolutionary aspect of kundalini, that it doesn’t just awaken on command or through a practice of some sort.

There are two schools of thought:
1) You are selected to play a role in evolution because of certain karmic qualities you possess. You are not selected because of something you did or didn’t do. Nevertheless, if it does happen to you, think of yourself as a conscript in the evolutionary upward march. You are neither a prophet nor a victim; you serve some greater purpose.

2) You can awaken kundalini by some sort of effort — yoga, meditation, prayer, good works, intervention of a guru. You are not selected at random to play a role in evolution; you are the prime mover in the process.

Once active, however, don’t expect that you can just relax and let kundalini take over. It’s not automatic. As a conscript, you have to make sacrifices — one of which is subduing your ego.

Leaving aside the risks of awakening kundalini, taming the ego work is never finished. Nevertheless, kundalini does jump start the process.

Here’s an excerpt from my latest book, Kundalini Musings, looking back on how kundalini affected and instructed me. Notice I don’t say “enlightened” me: 

"How do we change our consciousness? That’s the purpose of Kundalini — a powerful, yet dormant mechanism in our beings that allows us to realize our full potential. Kundalini is the motivating catalyst behind the transformational experience. It's the key to our changing our consciousness. How? Kundalini stimulates neuroplastic activity in the brain which, as a consequence, changes our metabolism, our organic and hormonal structure. Overtime, our behavioral aberrations vanish. We are no longer cogs in the machine.

"So how do we change human nature? We don’t. We run an 'end run' around it; we change our state of being, our consciousness. How do we do this? By raising Kundalini in a safe, permanent fashion. How does this work? My books detail the process, but the upshot is Kundalini produces an entirely new being, remolding your DNA.

"It’s an active process. You can’t pray for it to happen; you can’t do it by reading philosophy, by undergoing psychoanalysis, or becoming a scientist, lawyer, or doctor. You can't even grasp it intellectually. Why? Because you can't see the mountaintop until you're on top of the mountain.

"You have to involve the whole being. Master three powerful meditation techniques: diaphragmatic deep breathing, control of heart rate, the backward-flowing method and you’re there, standing at the threshold of a new being."~ JJ Semple - Changing Human Nature

Does Kundalini lead to enlightenment? Is there a cause and effect relationship? There’s so much to ponder. Nevertheless, think of staying in the Now (aka, Mindfulness or self-remembering) and Kundalini as complimentary partners in the great work of returning you to the simple, non-attached life. What’s at the end of the journey for you, only time will tell.

Awakening is NOT Enlightenment

Google the term Awakening, or surf Facebook long enough and you are bound to come across someone claiming to be Awakened. An experience of Awakening can be triggered by many different things from meditation to nature to psychological turmoil of some type.

Awakening is characterized by an experience of knowing that the personal self-narrative is not the correct story; there is an awakening to the truth of who one really is. Consciousness, which was identified with the body and mind, dis-identifies and becomes free, hence a realization of higher consciousness is experienced. However, in many cases, this Awakening recedes, giving way to the return of ordinary consciousness. Expressed differently, consciousness re-identifies back with the body/mind and is followed by a period of adjustment, often accompanied by a longing and yearning for the return of the Awakened state. There's no doubt that any experience of awakening, where one experiences a shift that alters consciousness, is transformative, but, at the same time, not always transformative to the level of Enlightenment. Too many people use Awakening and Enlightenment to mean the same thing, but for me, they are different.

Many famous people have had Awakening experiences that were the result of intense psychological trauma — two examples being Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie. Both endured many years of depression. It was a thought that triggered their awakenings. For Tolle, the thought was "I cannot live with myself anymore, who is the I and who is myself." This thought was enough to shock his consciousness out of its normal patterns of identification, allowing him to become aware of who he really was.

I am less familiar with Byron Katie's story, but I believe her awakening was also triggered by a thought. Her method of self-inquiry, The Work, teaches individuals to examine thoughts to see if they are true. As a result of their Awakenings Tolle and Katie are enlightened.

A snapshot of how Katie's The Work operates

The trigger for many awakening experiences is the questioning of thought, or to put it another way, the questioning of the identification of consciousness with thought. The process of questioning or inquiry — frequently a result of great pain and psychological trauma — seems to provide a portal into the NOW, which triggers Awakening. Afterwards, life is never the same. It's as if consciousness recognizes that it had been bound, is now free, and is going to create and create and create; and so you have The Power of Now from Tolle and The Work from Katie. These are two examples; there are more.

My first experience of Awakening was triggered by a painful stressful psychological circumstance. Something happened and it was so shocking to my mind and consciousness that energy rose and I began to shake. At the time, I didn't realize it was an Awakening because I didn't have the words to express it, even though I had practiced Mahayana Buddhism for almost 10 years. It was only in the weeks and months that followed, when life calmed down and I became relaxed, that I realized "something" profound had happened. So while the phenomena of "inquiring into my thought" didn't happen for me, the element of psychological trauma was very much present and is the element I consider to be common in all degrees of Awakening to a greater or lesser extent.

I recently came across some research on this topic for the MSc that I am studying for, which shows that out of a study of 161 people who submitted accounts of their awakening experiences, 23 percent were triggered by or associated with intense turmoil and distress (Taylor, 2012 b). Interestingly, the type of turmoil didn't seem to be as important as the intensity. I didn't take part in this research, but my own experience supports this finding. For many people the experience fades, leaving just the memory and yearning.

Enlightenment is NOT Awakening; it is different in one respect in that enlightenment involves the transmission of spiritual energy and a transformation of identity. The Enlightened Masters in the past could transmit this spiritual impulse to their disciples/devotees. Accounts by devotees about the force of the spiritual transmission felt from their Master abound. It is this aspect of the process that distinguishes Awakening from Enlightenment. It might sound arrogant, and I say so from the place of being Awakened, but not enlightened, that if I don't feel an energy from the person who is claiming to be enlightened, then my view is that this person has had an awakening experience, but is not enlightened. In the burgeoning world of people claiming to be Awakened/Enlightened some tool of discernment is necessary to navigate the precarious, unpredictable spiritual waters without being lulled. Don't get me wrong, being Awake is a huge gift of Grace, but it's not the ultimate.

In the shift from the human to the spiritual that we are going through, many people will be having Awakening experiences and then claim to be Enlightened. This may not be done to intentionally deceive, but only as a result of the ego mind (identity) interpreting the experience and elevating it.

To determine whether or not they reach a state of Enlightenment, Awakening experiences need time to be integrated. Speaking immediately afterwards is not advised. This is where the adage "those who know don't speak, and those who speak don't know" comes from because it takes time for the experience to marinate and incubate, and speaking too soon can affect the process. Awakening is a stage on the path to Enlightenment; it is not IT.

Kundalini strikes again....This Time an Eminent Neurosurgeon

A couple of weeks ago I submitted a draft paper for my MSc in Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology to my personal tutor for his comments before submitting the final paper in early December. In his feedback, he wrote that it might be useful to look up the work of Eckhart Tolle, Katie Byron, and Dr. Eben Alexander. Eckhart's work I am familiar with, having read The Power of Now and A New Earth many times. Byron I am less familiar with, but know the system she has developed called, The Work, is based on questioning our thoughts and asking, "Is this thought true?" I haven't read any of her books or attended any of her trainings. However, I have heard both her and Eckhart speak when I was a volunteer at a mind, body, spirit center in London some years ago.

Proof of Heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander

Dr. Eben Alexander, however, I knew nothing about. I hadn't even heard his name until my tutor put it in his comments. All my tutor gave me was his name so my first stop was Wikipedia which I realize isn't the best academic source, but I wanted to get a general flavor of what he is claiming and what he is claiming shocked me. He is claiming nothing less than Proof of Heaven, which is the title of his book about his near death experience (NDE). Historically, I have been ambivalent about reports of NDEs. I feel intuitively that they stem from brain activity — particularly right brain temporal lobe activity triggered by spontaneous Kundalini. However, the fact that this account was written by a well-respected neurosurgeon (Dr. Alexander), who knew a great deal about neuroscience, got me to thinking. If my tutor recommended this research and expected to see some reference to it in my final paper, I had better knuckle down and find out more about it.

On my way to work I stopped off at a bookshop and asked if they had Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife in stock. I was in luck; the shop assistant picked the last copy from the shelf. Glancing briefly at the cover I saw that it had a butterfly on it which holds personal significance for me. So feeling intuitively that there was something in this book which was going to be important, I thanked the shop assistant and left.

When I returned home from work that evening I opened the book and began to read. Dr. Alexander claims that e-coli bacterial meningitis shut off the neocortex of his brain which resulted in his coma and subsequent NDE. I am no neuroscientist/neurosurgeon so I can't comment on this.  However, the description of the pain he endured and the associated physical symptoms screamed to me, "Kundalini."

On page 13 of the book, he writes, "I shifted slightly in bed and a wave of pain shot down my spine." In the next paragraph, "Instantly the pain ratcheted up another notch — a dull, punishing throb penetrating deeply at the base of my spine." On page 16, he says: "Pushing open our bedroom door, she (Eben's wife) saw me lying in bed just as before. But looking closer she saw that my body wasn't as relaxed as it had been, but rigid as a board. She turned on the light and saw that I was jerking violently. My lower jaw was jutting forward unnaturally, and my eyes were open and rolling back in my head."

On pages 17-18 he continues: "When the EMTs wheeled me into the Major Bay 1 of the ER, I was still convulsing violently while intermittently groaning and flailing my arms and legs. They went to work on me, I was squirming like a six-foot fish pulled out of the water. I spouted bursts of garbled, nonsensical sounds and animal-like cries."

I hold the Buddhist view that there is nothing in the inner world to be afraid of and while I haven't had the rich intense vivid visual experiences Dr. Alexander had, the convulsions are something I identify with. For many weeks and months after raising Kundalini, my body would convulse just before sleeping. It still happens occasionally, but I have learned to trust and surrender to the energy and when the episode ends I am left feeling calm and relaxed.

After reading his account, I googled Dr. Eben Alexander and kundalini to see if anyone had connected his experience to Kundalini, but the combination only resulted in a few articles. Had I expanded my search to include near death experience and kundalini I would have found many links. I am very aware that the connection between the two, although rather commonplace, has not been extensively explored. Nevertheless, those of us who are more experienced with this energy need to read Dr. Alexander's account, as well as the many other NDE accounts. If the consensus is that NDEs are driven by the spontaneous eruption of Kundalini energy, it solidifies the hypothesis for research around the connection between Kundalini and NDEs.

However, as interesting as his book is, I'm not sure his experience constitutes proof of heaven. He needs more time to assimilate his experience, more time to research it, more time to think about it in scientific terms before conferring religious status on the states he passed through.

It would be useful to hear the accounts of those who treated him in the ER and to know more about the drugs they administered. Will he dig deeper into the physical causes and the anatomical processes that induced the experience?

Has Dr. Alexander ever heard of Kundalini? And if so, will he pursue the connection to NDE, specifically to his experience? Does he understand that both Kundalini and NDEs take time to integrate? It took Gopi Krishna 20 years before he was able to write about his Kundalini experience. JJ Semple needed almost thirty years to be able to write about his experience. Will Eben Alexander continue to write about his? Or is his first book a "one and done?"

At the Kundalini conference which I organized and facilitated in April 2013, one of the speakers, a Kundalini Yoga Master, was asked the question, "Is Kundalini dangerous?" His reply was, "I think it is dangerous to ignore Kundalini."

Intuitively, I feel that Kundalini is the vehicle that is shifting certain people's consciousness. Why these people and not others I don't know? Nevertheless, we should be aware of the relationship between Kundalini and the NDE. That the two phenomena share enough commonalities for us to conclude that they are related.

Perhaps, Dr. Alexander's account is most notable because of his standing in the medical community as a respected neurosurgeon. Is he now considered a renegade because he ventured beyond the accepted confines of science? What do his colleagues think? He and his book have received a torrent of backlash from atheist neuroscientist, Sam Harris, who sees Dr. Alexander's book damaging the argument that consciousness is a by-product of the brain. Will Dr. Alexander recant?

As of this writing, it appears he no longer agrees with the neo-atheist position. It appears he now believes consciousness to be independent of the brain. What will he believe 20 years from now? What do you believe?

The 'I' and 'Me' revealed by Kundalini

I'm currently doing a seminar about living a life that defies the predictable and I learned the story of Colin Wilson, a British philosopher and writer. When he was young, he dreamed about becoming the next Albert Einstein, but at the age of 16 his family fell on hard times and he had to leave school and go to work. He was so unhappy he decided to kill himself.

He took a bottle of hydrochloric acid and was just about to drink it, when he had two insights. The first was that there were two Colin Wilson's within him:

• The first was the idiotic teenager, self-pitying boy who he called his 'idiot' and then there was the other Colin Wilson who wanted to make a difference in the world by becoming the next Einstein.
• His second insight was that the 'idiot' was going to kill them both. (Acknowledgments to Landmark Education for this information.)

Since awakening Kundalini I have been more aware of the idiot or what I call 'me.' This is the part of me that wants to survive, look good, play it safe and then there is the other which I call 'I' which wants to share, contribute, make a difference.

At every moment I get to choose which one I am going to be. Both are there because the 'me' was created by language (acculturation programming that begins the day we are born) and is designed for survival, but the 'I' was there before 'me'. Out of  'I' we build 'me'. When Kundalini rises, it changes the mind and body by working directly on the nervous system to strengthen and balance. But it also expands consciousness so that spiritual writings resonate much more deeply than before Kundalini rose. Kundalini shifts the consciousness  from 'me' back to 'I' where it initially came from. Now I find when I meditate that I watch 'me' from the place of 'I'. This is difficult to explain and I don't want to give the idea of a split personality, this is very much internal phenomena that  doesn't affect interactions with people or with the world.

This realization profoundly affected Eckhart Tolle, who wrote in the Power of Now of the moment after he had spent many years suffering from depression when he said to himself, "I cannot live with myself any longer." Suddenly he was struck by the two Eckhart's within him. 'I' and 'myself' and he asked "who is me, and who is myself?" This insight shocked him into realization and has resulted in him being a world famous spiritual teacher. He says after this "he felt himself being drawn up into a vast vortex of energy" which I assert must have been Kundalini.  It was the combination of insight and energy which shifted his consciousness permanently into the place where he is who he is today.