The Biology of Kundalini

Activating Kundalini begins with biological transformation, using energy cultivation techniques to arouse the body’s hidden potential.

Since kundalini is a biological phenomenon, it needs to draw energy from a biological source in order to accomplish its purpose. That source happens to be sexual energy, the same energy source involved in procreation. How could it be otherwise? The energy used to create life is the same energy used in re-birth. What other source in the human body has the requisite supply of the necessary energy to accomplish a rebirth?
 

Nevertheless, each individual is configured differently which means outcomes do vary, not only on account of anatomical, genetic, and neurological differences, but also because the triggers responsible (meditation, tantra, shaktipat, drugs, etc.) for activating Kundalini vary greatly. Different triggers produce different effects. In fact, the rules that produce a variety of human shapes and sizes in the physical world also govern the multitude of metaphysical effects that kundalini produces.

It is an unpredictable physiological process. For that reason, you need to study the phenomenon before presuming it's appropriate for you at the present time. There’s also a commitment/dedication component. So, is it reasonable to dedicate your time and efforts to an unpredictable process that demands commitment?

Transformation is not a single event, but a stream of energy events, each one a challenge. So much goes into completing the process: inspiration, motivation, discovery, detective work, exercise, meditation — to say nothing of frustration, disappointment, and disinformation. Choosing a viable method is vital. The path is long, hard, and uncertain.

Up till now, there is no one method for shepherding a novice through the entire process that has a one-hundred-percent success rate. However, Golden Flower Meditation worked for me, resulting in a full-fledged, permanent kundalini awakening.

On the flowchart below you will notice two phases, what Ram Dass called the You do it! and It does you! phases. In the first phase, you do all the work. Whether consciously or unconsciously, deliberately or accidentally, you become inspired. Whatever! It’s up to you to find and manage the various elements. Motivation, detective work, decoding, practice are also up to you. It’s only during the last phase that things get really interesting, not that they’re uninteresting beforehand. But there definitely is a transition from the You do it! to It does You! phase.

To put the preceding flowchart in perspective, imagine a similar chart tracing the path of a typical American doctorate level education. The process is long — getting a PhD is a grueling process — but the information is readily available. Want to study chemistry? No problem. Ten thousand college catalogues at your disposal. Get good grades in high school, find a college that suits you and you’re on your way. On the other hand, informing yourself about secret teachings such as kundalini is not as easy. There is no approved curriculum, no regulating body, no accepted practices, no Secret Teachings for Dummies guidebooks. You’re on your own. All you have is your own inspired motivation, some hint that there is something out there — something for you. Beyond that you have no idea what’s in store for you. No idea that the overhaul you are pursuing is really a biological process. Golden Flower Meditation leads to a neuro-biological overhaul.

Through my practice of Golden Flower Meditation, I discovered the remarkable self-healing capabilities of the Kundalini~Life Force. My nervous system was stimulated such that the natural chemical substances of the body were recombined and used both to correct a deformity and also to induce a higher consciousness. After successfully activating the Life Force, this amazing energy source inventoried my entire body, immediately transmitting vital energy throughout the nervous system to the deformed parts of my body. What kinds of conditions are treatable? Any condition caused by damage to nerve endings or circuits.

How does GFM work? Correctly implemented, the active Kundalini triggers a process known as sexual sublimation that distills seminal fluid, or cervical fluid, in the case of a woman, and draws this distilled extract of sexual energy up the spine into the brain. This kicks off autonomic self-healing mechanisms that use the nervous system to revitalize neural related disorders. Normally, GFM has little effect on degenerative diseases such as cancer, heart disease, or stroke. However, by practicing GFM and eating more pure raw foods, the body is less likely to degenerate.

What if there were a mechanism in the body capable of revitalizing the brain and the nervous system, of counteracting the ill effects of neurological degeneration? That mechanism exists. It’s known as Kundalini Shakti  — the vital energy responsible for your incarnation. To avail yourself of it in later life for creative and for healing purposes, I practiced Golden Flower Meditation. It’s not the only method, but it is one I found to be permanent, voluntary, safe, repeatable.

At the moment, Kundalini Shakti is in hibernation, waiting for you to activate it. A popular explanation, really a misconception, says that if kundalini is not awakened, it is dormant, completely inactive. If that were true, we’d all be dead. Kundalini has a maintenance aspect, Prana Shakti, which is always functioning. It’s actively at work on you now, maintaining your autonomic functions. The life force has two aspects: Prana Shakti maintains your basic functions such as blood flow, digestion, and breathing; Kundalini Shakti fosters self-healing while opening you to higher consciousness.

The Thing That Really Triggers Kundalini

If there’s ever to be a scientific study of Kundalini, so that Kundalini awakenings can become widespread and verifiable, then the single thing that triggers Kundalini needs to be isolated. Kundalini awakens in a multitude of situations, with a plethora of apparent triggers: drugs, meditation, emotional catastrophe, shaktipat, even the bizarre practice of erotic asphyxiation, but these are merely circumstances, that surround the moment of awakening, they are not the trigger itself. We must look deeper to find the first cause. I think an indication of what the trigger is can be found in two small statuettes, both bronzes, from the Kashmiri and Tibetan traditions. These bronze statues combine two figures, but were made for individual meditation. One is the Tibetan yab-yum image of Vajrasattva, the Diamond Thunderbolt Sceptre seated in upright sexual congress with Vajradhatvisvari, the Diamond Thunderbolt Wisdom. The other is the image of a rampant Kali, again in the upright position, straddling the erect penis of the dead Shiva.

Vajrasattva has huge eyes. They stare out across Vajradhatvisvari’s shoulder on the brink of terror. He’s staring into the void, one foot lifted in a stamping movement as her body climbs his in a zigzag motion like a bolt of lightning. In the other statue, Shiva’s eyes are closed, while Kali’s eyes stare straight ahead into the same terrifying ecstasy. This is the moment when the physical eyes see the complete reality of space/time, of which our visual world forms only a small part.
 

Kali’s Eyes Stare Straight Ahead

Relativity and quantum mechanics both teach that space/time is static. This reality need not be confined to mathematical formulae, or remain a mere scientific concept. It can be experienced bodily, as the statuettes show. If all of time and space is present here and now, it follows logically, and in the most down-to-earth way, that the moment of my death is present here and now. I can look at it, experience it. This is what Vajrasattva and Kali are staring into — the fact of ending. This is what the corpse Shiva has already achieved. So what, then, does his phallus indicate? Surely a dead body is an inert, flaccid thing. On the level of reality where this trigger of Kundalini is found, ending is an action. It’s frightening, but it is something that is done. Ending is not something that’s inflicted on me, even though my body might be in a state of prostrate inertia.

This is not sexual fantasy either. It’s the moment when experience accords most with reality. Our bodies, including our brains, are made up of subatomic particles. Quantum mechanics shows that subatomic particles are not "things," they’re "events." My body is an "event" moving through days and nights that are a matrix of "events." Kali riding Shiva is an "event." Vajradhatvisvari climbing the Thunderbolt Sceptre’s body is an "event." And, as Feynman showed in his space/time maps, every subatomic event is marked by the annihilation of the initial particles and the creation of new ones. Vajrasattva’s eyes and Kali’s eyes are wide and stare-y, on the brink of terror, because consciousness can go down to this depth. The inner eyes can keep open even at this moment of becoming void. This is do-able. It’s more than a verbal concept. Consciousness, at the most fundamental level, is a quantum process. It’s been shown experimentally that the human eye, when it becomes adapted to the dark, can detect a single photon, with its zero mass, and its status as both wave and particle.

A quantum process of consciousness triggers Kundalini, but the question remains, why, then, does Kundalini have such a radical effect on the external, physical body and on the human brain? If the trigger is so subtle, how can what it triggers — Kundalini — be so outwardly powerful?

The universe is held together by four forces: the strong force, the electromagnetic force, the weak force and the gravitational force. The strong force binds atomic nuclei together. The electromagnetic force is the force that holds in balance the process of attraction and repulsion between charged particles, and allows particles to form new combinations. The weak and gravitational forces work on more long-range interactions. Kundalini is experienced as power because Kundalini begins as a flash, a "lightning flash," of the strong force (Vajra also means "Diamond Thunderbolt") at the nucleus of the atom, and then works outwards, or rises, through the more material manifestations of the electromagnetic and weak forces (the body in space and time). This is why the circumstances that surround a Kundalini awakening can seem so confusingly varied. The sexual symbolism of the statues is appropriate, because this lightning flash that triggers Kundalini, is very similar to what can happen at the moment of orgasm, if consciousness strips itself down to nothing, so that orgasm is suspended and something else comes into being.

Kundalini and Poverty: Same People, Different Situations

It's often suggested to spiritual seekers that there's no way to care for the poor and reach for spiritual release at the same time. Individual souls are on an individual journey; each person must fend for his/her own soul, find his/her own path. That the outer trip is fraught with insurmountable snares and therefore one should concentrate only on the inner trip. The notion here is that evolution will take care of the less fortunate. A rising tide raises all boats, so to speak.

Back in the 1970s, Isaac Bentov developed this "rising boats" theme along similar lines as today's Kundalini people, who say Kundalini is accelerating evolution by writing changes in consciousness into DNA.

So where does that leave America's poor? Or the poor and disabled around the world, for that matter? Should the rest of us be trying to help?

This week, CNN ran a Special on Poverty in America that focused mainly on women — how easy it is for them to become homeless and impoverished while working more than 40 hours a week.
 

Situation 1: Homeless, Jobless, and Impoverished

Yes, it's hard to believe that poverty has spread to the proportions it has. Life is precarious. We are all under constant threat of annihilation: war, terror, hunger, joblessness, poverty. The Bible warns us not to forget, but somehow we do. In fact, its parables illustrate the fragility of life, even at the highest levels.

Yet, our egos tell us we've come a long way. Were in the home stretch. There's nothing more to accomplish, nothing wrong with wealth. And, per se, there isn't. Just like intelligence, it's what you do with it that counts. Only by balancing the material with the spiritual can we achieve success. The rest is ego driven. Yes, ego was needed in primitive times. No longer in a primitive state, we're still in survival mode, but the rules are changing. We no longer need more. In fact, less is now more! The ego will continue to serve a purpose, but it must be sublimated.

Bentov says we will all be enlightened — after a million more years of evolution. Probably exist in bodiless form. I think we will, if we are able to meet the challenges of survival.

If we didn't inhabit bodies, all our problems would vanish. Negative emotion, war, greed, violence, prejudice, fear would not exist. But we DO live in bodies that control our perceptions and our so-called needs. How do we get persons whose needs are boundless living next to persons who have nothing but a shopping cart full of plastic bags? What mechanism in the brain makes us believe we need more than our neighbor?
 

Situation 2: Cozy, Well-fed, and Upward Mobile

These two images were captured within three blocks of each other, highlighting the contrast between generational poverty and relative security.

Bentov says the people in mental hospitals are the highly evolved. We just don't know how to communicate with them. And because they do not perceive the world in the same terms as "normal" people do or are unable to communicate in the language the material world, we institutionalize them. I don't know if he's joking, but every time I encounter a person with alcohol or drug addiction issues, I come away believing they are searching for redemption, that their issues are more spiritual than material. But they're stuck in an escape syndrome of drugs, alcohol, addiction, domestic violence. They are searching in all the wrong places and they can't find their way out.

When I ask a street person why he/she wants to "get high," they reply in much the same terms as a spiritual person explains why he meditates. It's not by accident that they use the term get high. Both seek release from material concerns.

Although I don't see meditation catching on in homeless shelters any time soon, I don't believe that conventional treatment methods are working either. Poverty has become an endemic issue; it's sapping our resources, bequeathing more of the same to more and more people, many of them yet unborn.

I've got my double latte espresso. What have you got?

And now that countries and states are legalizing not only pot but also heroine and other drugs, more and more people are going to give up and drop out permanently. It's no longer a question of reform; we need a change of consciousness — a high built on true spiritual foundations. Without drugs or alcohol.

Bigger government isn't the answer. That hasn't worked in the past and it won't work in the future. The answer is people turning away from physical gratification, exploring the metaphysical potential within each of us.

Realistically, many eons of evolution are needed before the tide raises all boats. Or so it seems to me. But I'd like it to be generations instead of eons. Surprise me!