Kundalini Symposium - 19 June 2022

What is Kundalini?

You have within you a latent energy waiting to transform your life known as Kundalini. This legendary power is believed to catalyze spiritual evolution. For centuries, the secrets of kundalini have been guarded by masters and buried in esoteric texts around the globe. Many people teach kundalini yoga, but few have actually experienced a kundalini awakening.

Initiation into the Mystic Path
International Kundalini Symposium brings together some of today’s most prominent voices in the small pool of kundalini-awakened individuals to demystify this mysterious phenomenon. From personal accounts and yogic practices, to research and historical perspective, this compelling panel of speakers will weave together both the mystical and practical perspectives on the rise of kundalini energy to transform our lives and humanity.

Up to now self-styled holy men and gurus have told us Kundalini was an esoteric process for raising consciousness. They’ve told us they could instruct novices and experts alike — as long as they were willing to pay. The problem is that classifying Kundalini as a means to “spiritual enlightenment” limits its benefits to a realm many people have neither the time nor the inclination to explore. What’s more, many people are put off by terms like “higher consciousness” and “enlightenment.” On the other hand, if they knew that Kundalini Meditation had therapeutic health benefits, they’d be eager to learn about it.

Says JJ Semple, “My students tell me, ‘Don’t give me something to believe in; give me something to DO! I want techniques for self-healing. I also want to awaken, to become enlightened.’” I tell them that, even with an aroused kundalini, awakening is a gradual process: “The ultimate aim of meditation is to become more and more conscious. Enlightenment, therefore, is becoming fully conscious, and I’ve never met anyone who’s accomplished that overnight.”

Perhaps, you don’t think there’s such a thing as “The Life Force.” You’d be mistaken. Our books on kundalini and energy cultivation techniques cover a variety of topics ranging from kundalini meditation to sexual alchemy; they feature accounts of  energy activation that can only be understood as the stirring of a life force energy. There is no other explanation.

All speaker and artist proceeds of this event will go to Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), a non-profit organization that rescues kids from the sex slave trade.

Meet Duncan Carroll, Kundalini Filmmaker

"After a long search I came across the autobiography of a man named JJ Semple, who detailed his kundalini awakening after following the method outlined in a little-known Taoist text called The Secret of the Golden Flower. JJ's account was refreshingly non-mystical. In fact, he seemed like the only person on Earth who'd had a spiritual experience and managed to keep their heads on straight.

"It was after meeting JJ that I decided to make a film about kundalini and the meditation he used to activate this life force energy, knowing, al the while, that the topic would be considered controversial."

This was the manifesto that followed my 2012 meeting with Duncan Carroll. His sincerity, and yet his insistence that kundalini be approached scientifically, convinced me he was the perfect person to handle the challenge of filming the effects of what is commonly referred to as a "kundalini awakening."

Listen to Duncan sum up the challenge in his own words.

The project needed an engineer, not a pandit or a sage—a person searching for truth, not followers. That's Duncan, a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon and an established software engineer, whose metaphysical experiences date back to childhood.

To this end he created a fundraising project Super Meditate Me that's already secured$145K in its drive to reach $500K.

If you're a person who believes there's more to life on Earth, that a higher consciousness rules  our universe and kundalini is a pathway to evolutionary progress, what Gopi Krishna called: the 'evolutionary impulse,' please consider donating to the project.

For more about JJ Semple's experience and work.

Selection of a Kundalini Activation Method

Some people have the luxury of selecting a method; for others Kundalini arrives involuntarily. The goal of a method is to permanently awaken Kundalini. An involuntary,
or spontaneous, Kundalini activation can be temporary — although some effects may endure. No one forgets a Kundalini awakening.

The following is taken from my book, The Backward-Flowing Method: The Secret of Life and Death...

The Brain Continues to Evolve

"According to Gopi Krishna’s findings, 'There have been very few instances of individuals in whom the serpent fire burned ceaselessly from the day of its awakening until the last.' What does this have to do with 'kundalini meditation'? It establishes one criterion for qualifying a method of 'kundalini meditation': namely, that the method’s results must be permanent, not temporary. What’s more, we must realize that when we speak about method, we automatically exclude involuntary Kundalini experiences. Why? Because, by definition, if we talk about involuntary, we are talking about a Kundalini experience that can happen anytime, anywhere, in any set of circumstances, and cannot, therefore, be the result of any method. A method must be a systematic process with documented controls and predictable results. It must be a system anyone with the proper training can apply in order to produce the same results over and over, time after time. Moreover, to be considered, it must be a method that is safe, repeatable, and standardized. So, what is the ideal 'kundalini meditation'? I would say it’s a system that is:

• Voluntary. It doesn’t happen on its own account. Its techniques are based on the documented experiences of others. The practitioner chooses to apply these techniques in order to achieve predictable results. 

• Permanent. The results last a lifetime; the individual experiences daily Kundalini-Life Force activity that “burns ceaselessly from the day of its awakening until the last.” 

• Safe. It does no harm to the individual. In fact, it serves as 'an upgrade mechanism,' restoring proper health and stability to the body and the entire being. 

• Repeatable. The method can be used over and over, time after time, in a scientifically controlled manner to produce the same set of predictable results.

"Does this mean that involuntary or impermanent Kundalini experiences have no value or validity? No, it means that in order to advance this work, we must define what the work is. Can we not learn from involuntary or impermanent Kundalini experiences? Yes, of course we can. But just as a material scientist, who accidentally mixes several chemicals together in his lab, must repeat the process under scientifically acceptable conditions for it to be considered valid, the person who experiences an involuntary Kundalini awakening must be concerned with the repeatability of his process. If it isn’t repeatable, what lasting benefit can be attributed to the process? And if the effects do not last, isn’t that sort of like taking off in a flying contraption only to have it crash to the ground after 150 yards?"

If we believe that the biology behind Kundalini is linked to evolutionary advancement and it will ultimately — one way or another — be available to all persons, then we need to refine available methods and vet them. Let the experiments with Kundalini in the laboratory of individual bodies become an experiment on a mass scale across a vast number of willing and able bodies.

I'm glad I used a method; everything it claimed to accomplish was accomplished. 

Who Looks Outside, Dreams; Who Looks Inside, Awakens

The title of this post is taken from a plaque I received as a Christmas present a couple of years ago from a good friend. When I tore the wrapping off and read it, I felt a shiver go down my spine as the truth of the words resonated. Since receiving it, I have pondered what the words "to Awaken" mean in practice.

The Buddha, when asked "Who are you?" said, "I am Awake." To be Awake means to break free of the bonds Maya, what the Buddhists call the world of illusion and delusion. To see reality as it really is, not as it appears to be, is to realize the unity behind the perceived separation. As Jung said all those years ago, to look outside is to never find the treasure that lies within. To look externally for what can only be found inside is the trap human consciousness falls into. Awakening is an inner process. External factors can aid in this process, but the ultimate Awakening is an awakening of inner consciousness that shifts the perception of the world and brings alive, insights, intuition and illumination.

To be Awake means to realize that our thoughts and feelings are not who we are. It means to experience an aspect that has nothing to do with thoughts and feelings: SOMETHING that remains constant when thoughts and feelings change, SOMETHING that remains stable and enduring when everything else is shifting and changing. To be Awake is to be in contact with this SOMETHING. To stand apart from the drama, not by being detached, but because of the realization that it is not real even though it appears to be very real. To be Awake is to be in contact with a higher level of consciousness, such that life flows and has a harmony and balance it didn't have before. Yet, life after awakening continues much as it did before, which is the paradox of the entire process. The difference is in the quality of that life and how events in life are dealt with. A Zen description of this says, "Before Awakening, chop wood, carry water; after Awakening....chop wood, carry water." Same actions, but the context within which the actions are being done shifts; the 'I' (subject) is no longer, there is simply the action of chopping wood and carrying water.

Prior to Kundalini awakening, I felt a need to control everything in my life. The result of this was generalized anxiety and loss of freedom. The realization of this need to control, deeply buried in my subconscious, came about not by reading a spiritual book, but by having a conversation with a coach who I had been doing some transformative self-development work with as the leader of a team.

She said, "It’s like having a five year old in charge of the team: you don’t listen and you make people wrong." When she said that to me, I felt like I had hit a wall, which I had — the wall of my own obsessive need to control. I couldn’t listen to people because I wouldn’t be in control. It was my way or the highway, and I realized that this way of being stemmed from a decision I had made when I was young: that life was scary and it had be controlled — hence the rigidity and inflexibility I showed when members of my team made suggestions about doing something differently than the way I wanted it done. Realizing this, I also realized the absolute absurdity of the decision. There is no way to control life or what happens and, in that moment of realization, I let go of my need to control. By hitting the wall, which is what happened, I got to see the impact that my controlling way of being was having on the members of my team. I gave it up, thus creating the possibility of freedom and I have to say the results have been nothing short of miraculous in terms of how I have been able to flow and respond to life.

As a result of this experience and insight, I am convinced that the ability to operate from an Awakened state of being is closely linked to the letting go of control. To accept what is and surrender to it. The funny thing is that I have often written about the importance of surrendering when on the spiritual path. I realize now that after surrendering so completely when Kundalini rose in 1999, I went right back to trying to control everything in my life and my environment. This is because the need to control was hidden from my view. Until it became shown to my consciousness, it had power over me. The rising of Kundalini set in motion the events that would result in my having to confront this decision and its impact.

Now, so many years later, I understand the full meaning and impact of control. I also see that nobody made me take the decision that I had to control life; it was me alone. This decision to control life is something most humans make. At some point, our environment fails us in that it doesn't behave the way we expect it to. In the face of this failure, it is natural to say, "I will control things from now on."

So like me, the child might become bossy and domineering — always demanding his own way. Or it might show itself in other ways, but being bossy is the gold standard of control. I smiled when I heard my four-year-old niece acting assertive and bossy. At four it's cute, but 40 years later it can result in a very narrow, limited life. However, it's a highly successful and lucrative strategy that motivates many to achieve, but it isn't for me. I am so grateful that I was given the grace to realize this and the choice of whether to give it up or not.

Integral Yoga – Every Moment is Prayer

The word Yoga simply means union. The moment of oneness with the absolute. In common parlance currently in vogue, the term has come to represent physical practices, asanas or poses and nothing more. The poses assumed by Yogis to gain control of the body are simply one small aspect of the vast number of spiritual practices called Yoga. The poses are from the branch of Yoga called Hatha Yoga.

Throughout history, humanity has experienced leaps in consciousness through revelation. Whether it is the prophet Moses, Jesus, Buddha or the founders of various other religions, awakening of the kundalini and subsequent ascension of the individual to a state of illumination is accompanied by revelations that then gather a following, become part of religious practices.

Depending on the era of birth, the geography of the individual, his level of education and creative abilities, there are wide variations in the resulting revelations. They all point to the same reality but they are all expressed differently. As mentioned in my previous post, these methods are ours to use as we see fit and the path taken towards self-realization which works for one most likely will not work the same way for anyone else. This needs to be understood before accepting a rigid set of techniques and before proselytizing others.

Tied at Mooring – Tranquil Summer Days

A better approach is to figure out what path best allows you to find inner peace and drop the external mask, the persona that obscures your inner reality for the sake of fitting in with the outside world. Sri Aurobindo, the Indian mystic and Ken Wilber, the modern day mystic whose ideas are the inspiration for the ''Matrix" movies are two proponents of an integral yoga. A collection of practices that address every aspect of the human state and approach the quest for self-realization as an incessant stream to be lived each moment rather than a set of rituals performed at a certain hour.

Classical yoga divides spiritual practices into four kinds of yoga. This classification is exhaustive. Nearly all practices and states of being, and methods of worship fall into one of the four categories, regardless of the religion of the practitioner.

The four paths of Yoga: There are four traditional schools of Yoga, and these are: Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Karma Yoga, and Raja Yoga. While a Yogi or Yogini may focus exclusively on one of these approaches to Yoga, that is quite uncommon. For the vast majority of Yoga practitioners, a blending of the four traditional types of Yoga is most appropriate. One follows his or her own predisposition in balancing these different forms of Yoga:

Jnana Yoga: Jnana Yoga is the path of knowledge, wisdom, introspection and contemplation. It involves deep exploration of the nature of our being by systematically exploring and setting aside false identities.

Bhakti Yoga: Bhakti Yoga is the path of devotion, emotion, love, compassion, and service to God and others. All actions are done in the context of remembering the Divine.

Karma Yoga: Karma Yoga is the path of action, service to others, mindfulness, and remembering the levels of our being while fulfilling our actions or karma in the world.

Raja Yoga: Raja Yoga is a comprehensive method that emphasizes meditation, while encompassing the whole of Yoga. It directly deals with the encountering and transcending thoughts of the mind.

The most common is the path of devotion, known as bhakti yoga. Praying twice a day, attending mass on Sunday, reciting the Lord's Prayer are all forms of bhakti yoga. This path, of faith, of absolute surrender to the divine is the most common form of worship. This may suffice for the average individual that worships out of a sense of social obligation, but not for the seeker on the path. Praying or meditating for an hour still leaves about 15 waking hours in the day that are not devoted to the quest. It is not just impractical to meditate or pray for hours on end while ignoring worldly duties, it is also unnecessary.

The Rising and the Falling

We need to remember the underlying goal of all this effort. The final stage, commonly called enlightenment, is beyond understanding. One can't aim for it and set course like a ship sails to a port. However, we know that the way to this destination goes through a constant process of awakening the true self and staying awake. Constant mindful awareness to each action, constantly breaking thought patterns that take us away from the here and now. By becoming aware of the mental agitation, by becoming cognizant of the constant unrest within us, we learn to witness it. To separate, for the first time ever, the mental apparatus that thinks, from the true self that is the witness. It is not I that does the thinking. I witness the mind as it creates the thoughts. Each time I step back and witness the mental machinery, it is also a process of detaching oneself from that mental chatter.

Essentially, it is a process of removing conditioned responses and ingrained patterns that have long kept us enslaved. For the first time, we taste true freedom. A freedom from the human robot bound by those repetitive patterns and conditioned responses. A freedom to be spontaneous and "in the moment," seeing, for the first time, the world as it is, without the baggage of preconceived ideas, labels and notions of how the world should be. 

Integral Yoga understands the need to incorporate the different forms of yoga and devote each waking hour to the contemplation, service and realization of oneness with the absolute. Expressed differently, to know that one is a creation of that almighty intelligence, and can never be separate from it, one needs to provide methods that constantly awaken the consciousness from the slumber induced by our mundane "reality."

Motor Highway Fest

A kundalini awakening is simply an automated mechanism that takes over the psyche and goes about cleansing the soul of past conditionings and shows the individual how to proceed on the journey of realizing one's true self and union with the absolute. Some aspects of this process, such as revelation, are governed by the energy and require no assitance from the individual. Others require the ego to co-operate and surrender itself to the greater work being performed, knowing it will be completely dissolved at the end of the process. 

Knowing this, the various forms of yoga and techniques associated with them can be seen as methods of helping the individual see beyond the ego, to align the ego with the path of spiritual progress until it realizes its role as an interface with the outside world and not as the true self. At their most basic, methods of worship inculcate positive patterns into the psyche. A lifetime spent reciting a mantra and activating a state of surrender to the divine molds the brain, creating neuronal pathways that eventually allow the self to see itself clearly.

The best way to remove an ingrained pattern that leads us towards robotic behavior and prolongs the state of ignorance is to replace it with one that causes an upward spiral towards freedom. A pattern of repetitive behavior that eventually removes all patterns and conditioning. This is the true purpose of any method of worship. If a chosen method does not serve that purpose, it should be replaced by another, more effective one or augmented with other methods that achieve this goal.

It may seem like a contradiction in terms to advocate the use of ritual, repetition and conditioning if our final goal is to remove all such shackles, but it is not. It depends on the patterns we choose, how we practice, and why we practice a ritual.

It is important to have control over who programs your mind and what it is being programmed with. If I am doing it myself, aware of the effect of that course of action, I have a better chance of reaching my true self. If I allow friends, social groups, or worse, television commercials and the approval-disapproval control mechanism, high-school popularity contest that is the Facebook "Like" button, I remain stuck in the realm of ego, bound by the senses and the ego's craving for comfort and its tendency to create a false reality favoring a selective image of itself.

In future posts, I intend to write in detail about each path and how almost every action or thought can be a method towards the realization of the absolute.

Mindful Awareness and Affirmations - Powerful Tools for a Total Transformation

During my Kundalini awakening, I realized that the energy taking over, by itself, is not enough to create a fundamental change within the individual.


The ego has an immense amount of control over who we are as people and how we interact with our surroundings. Overtime, we develop habits and rationalize our beliefs to conform to a certain world-view. We have been programmed for power, competition, yet insulted and humiliated into submission by a system of education that demands conformity. We have been, in effect, shrunk down in size. Resentment for achievement — typified by the use of smear tactics to "bring down" public figures — has developed into a favorite social sport, aided and abetted by a complicit media. In fact, public opinion is shaped by what we are told to think about someone or some issue.

Original drawing by the author of his Kundalini awakening, circa 2008

When the Kundalini energy awakens, making you aware of your ego and it's convoluted grip on your soul, it's a shock to the system. Then comes the difficult task of facing the ego mechanism within you, at the same time you realize you must eventually side with the energy in bringing about its destruction.

In my case, for the longest time, I was a gullible person, incautious about the kind of people I associated with. Sound judgment of character and looking beyond the surface eluded me. This led to a series of associations that were not in my best interest. I was manipulated and didn't even know it. When the energy awakened, my third eye area in the center of the forehead throbbed incessantly for a few weeks, producing an avalanche of knowledge, insights, understanding of the nature of reality and consciousness. Within the first few weeks, the process of overhauling my psyche had begun. I was told by my inner voice — the higher power guiding me — to be patient and to go along with the changes, even though they might be difficult.

When the energy began churning my spine, there were intense feelings of hatred, anger, resentment at being misled by others, a collapse of my self-esteem which had been based on the old me, someone totally unaware of his mistakes and the machinations of others he had considered friends. As more and more repressed trauma was churned up to the surface, the loss of self-esteem and my feelings of despair continued. I had to keep reminding myself: these are thoughts. They are in my mind. We all possess anxieties and fear about our future. Before my awakening, I was a stressed out individual, constantly worried about the future.

The cleansing process ripped through my self-esteem and false rationalizations, but left the part of my mind that was  stress-prone and scared unchanged, making things worse. To cope with this aspect of myself, I understood I would need to find methods that utilized my conscious mind.

By this time, I had begun using guided chakra meditation CDs as well as Indian classical music, electronic music with soothing pulsating rhythms that caused the energy to move to its rhythm. The practice of meditation helped a lot. So did reading about the personal experiences of others who had gone through this before me. Overtime, even through the stages of depression, a constant state of mental agitation and mental misery, I started seeing a few patterns.

First and foremost, our brains are like recording mechanisms, like a cassette tape. They record data gathered by the senses from birth, which ultimately becomes the mind, our operating system. Usually a repetitive pattern of set routines, limited assumptions of the world outside and enough independence to operate within the system.

In my case, this tape was being erased at a fast pace. To instill constructive habits, I realized it was important to replace the erased patterns with newer, radically different ideas.

Mindful awareness and affirmations became very useful tools for me and so did learning new skills to re-program the brain. Using an activity that uses both hands, like playing the guitar, helps overcome left-brain dominance and creates new pathways in brain just as the energy is changing its entire structure. The energy makes you aware of the potential you possess and the gifts that can be channeled towards improving not only your skills, but your self-worth as well.

Mindful awareness is the practice of observing each action, each thought, every interaction we have with others and witness the do-er from a higher state — the observer separate from the person doing the action. As one goes into deeper meditative states and practices meditation longer, it becomes easier to use mindful awareness in your daily practice. The mind becomes a very powerful device during a Kundalini awakening.

During a period of a few months, I was able to bring people and events into my life just by thinking about them. This proved to be a problem for my old stress-filled mind, full of fears and worries as it compounded the problems and made my life worse. Our thoughts and ideas, repeated over time, influence our actions and create our future reality. This was a powerful revelation. The use of positive affirmations became a very useful tool. I taped positive affirmations in my own voice and played them on my iPod at night as I went to sleep, allowing the sub-conscious to pick up those suggestions. At other times, I would listen to them using headphones and repeat the words, visualizing the desired outcome.

These tools can be used by anyone. In fact, it is a great idea to use positive affirmations and mindfulness to bring about a change in your life for good rather than allow society and programming from commercials decide your destiny.

Another useful technique was the practice of cathartic writing. Waking up each morning after the energy had churned up some traumatic material, I would then write it down, stream of consciousness style, paying no heed to grammar or coherence. Once the rubbish was on paper, I was free of it, able to move to the next phase. Using the cassette tape analogy again, effectively, cathartic writing helped me discard the programming in my brain that was identified by the Kundalini energy.

Mindful awareness helped me stay in this new state without reverting back to old habits. Using affirmations and doing totally new things, learning new skills, singing, playing the guitar, learning Spanish helped me guide the nascent force inside me to create a new me, writing my own program this time. As a bonus, I was able to make very fast progress in all my chosen pursuits now that the "doors of perception" were open.

Kundalini and Pop Culture

Yoda, the Matrix, Spiderman, and Batman. Why has our popular culture become so permeated with the quest for super powerful heroes? Do our subconscious imaginations know something our conscious minds don’t? The Dark Side and the Light. Can Pop Culture predict the future? Does the truth about the future of humanity lie hidden in the epic struggles of comic book heroes or in Super Hero Movie blockbusters? Is there a Secret to Life?

I ask because its essence has infused our culture, producing a yearning for something more powerful, more liberating. Since the 1940s, Hollywood has featured movies in which people:

Come back from the dead to instruct the living (Ghost, Heaven Can Wait);

Have guardian angels (It’s a Wonderful Life, Topper, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, The Bishop’s Wife);

Acquire super magical powers (Star Wars, Superman, The Matrix, X-Men).

Ghost (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg, Demi Moore, Patrick Swayze

If they do it in the movies, if it’s seeped into our consciousness to such an extent, surely there must be something to it. Doesn’t fiction usually foretell reality? Is not actuality rooted in dreams? If there’s nothing to it, then why has so much time and money been spent stimulating our imagination? Why do we spend so much time on stories and fables about the acquisition of extraordinary faculties? Quite simply, because there’s a large body of experience in fact and fiction built up around the acquisition of such faculties.

We shouldn’t be indignant with Hollywood. The purveyors of dreams — pop culture trendsetters and advertising wags, writers and storytellers — are merely channeling the phenomenon of unconscious or collective yearning. What is unconscious yearning?

Unconsciously, we have always yearned for higher states. Our Popular Culture has given us Avatars to aspire to: Batman, Superman, The Hulk, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Daredevil, Spiderman. Heck, Robert Louis Stevenson's best-selling work, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), was little more than a veiled Kundalini awakening gone awry.

Eventually, we will morph into more spirit-based beings. What will this entail? Well, in the first place let’s look at where we’ve come from. Only in this way can we understand where we’re going. Evolution has allowed us to dominate our planet. To do this, we needed raw emotional power, a type of behavioral nature that could not be deterred by any threat to our survival. Immediate survival was the role of the Reptilian brain that psychologists and anthropologists often talk about. Once on the road to dominance, a Mammalian brain was added. This evolutionary adjustment added an emotional component — a capability that allowed our species to develop a strong sense of identity based on simple emotions such as, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, joy and more developed emotions like, remorse, awe, pride, optimism, shame, guilt, love.

Now, to evolve to the next stage of being do we need such powerful emotions? Can we survive in world with less need for aggression and less space per individual owning, as part of our being, emotional states that frequently lead to trouble: wars, family breakdown, addiction, crime, greed, hate crimes? Emotions that many times — more often than not — lead us to make the wrong decision.

Perhaps pop culture, as it relates to the eventual metamorphosis of our species, can shed some light on the subject. I say eventual because it’s not for today. But, if and when it comes, what form will it take?

To illustrate the form this new human being might take, I’ll break down a Pop Culture icon and show how, beneath its many layers of metaphor it contains hidden patterns of unconscious yearning. This icon is none other than Don Siegel’s 1956 masterpiece, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, starring Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

This review from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) by Brandt Sponseller sums up several of the film’s allegorical levels. “Much has been said about the parallels between Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the ‘communist paranoia’ in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, especially as it was directed against Hollywood by the House Un-American Activities Committee. However, there is another very interesting subtext present that isn't often mentioned. The film can also be looked at as a philosophical exploration of personal identity. Just what does it take for people to be themselves? Is it how they look, act, the things they say? Is it not the case that people are constantly transformed into something they weren't just hours ago, or even moments ago? Among the many ways that these kinds of ideas are worked into the script is that sleep is a metaphor for unconscious physical change over time. It would be easy to analyze each scene in the film in this manner, going into detail about the various implications each plot development has on the matter of personal identity.”

 

Reading this review, I couldn’t help thinking about the common phrase: “He wasn’t himself.” A phrase often applied to persons who are losing emotional control. I don’t know if that’s the direction the author of this review was going in, but control of emotion is really the underlying theme of this movie. Except for human emotion, the original being and its Pod counterpart are alike in every way. Unbeknownst to the screenwriters, who may have thought they were making some sort of statement about Communist witch hunting, the real and hidden theme of the film is a change in being based on mass Kundalini awakening. The next great leap forward in human evolution.

 

I know this goes against everything you’ve ever heard of or thought about this film. It goes against our revulsion and fear of the Pod People, and our inherent tendency to side with the good guys, who in this case, are us, even though there are no superficial differences between the characters in their Original or Pod avatars. To us, our emotions, our ability to feel love especially, is the single attribute that sets us apart from them, that makes us “right” and them “wrong”. At least, that’s what the authors would have the characters believe, and through them, us. In one scene, the doctor, played by Larry Gates, explains this to Miles and Becky, who are so terrified at the thought of being stripped of their humanity, they can’t even listen. They don’t know Kundalini from nothing. That’s because the authors didn’t either. But unconsciously they took us far beyond Communist conspiracy and McCarthyism. They didn’t know it but they were describing the next stage of human evolution, one where humans, if we are to survive, will no longer need to express emotion in the wanton, destructive ways we do.

 

Let’s step back for a moment and reflect on the psychology of the screenwriter’s creative process. Since the inspiration comes from the author’s subconscious, it’s reasonable to believe that he had no conscious awareness of the deeper layers of meaning. In the case of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it’s probable that the author wasn’t knowingly aware of the symbolism of a Kundalini awakening, especially if he was preoccupied with the subtextual theme of McCarthyism. Yet, the story has all the earmarks of this experience, at least in allegorical terms. People who fall asleep, only to awaken as new beings that are superior to the old. New beings that threaten the old order because of their superiority. Their superior emotional control, capacity to cooperate, to communicate, to get along, resistance to illness, longevity. The Pod represents the awakening process, the slow formation of the more perfect being, and the results are clearly superior beings.

 

Resistance, however, is hysterical, even illogical. The author is saying that in spite of the fact that the transformation process is painless and produces a superior being, we should be afraid of it. Why? Because our emotions make us “human.” No mention is made of the destructive power of our emotions. In spite of the fact that today our emotions get in the way of just about everything we need to accomplish.

 

So, am I saying that we will not succeed as a species unless we can learn to govern our emotions? Up to the industrial revolution we needed powerful emotions to extend our "perceived" dominance over nature. Now we are moving in another direction. In the film, one of the characters talks about emotion as one of the elements that makes us human, that without it, we would not be human. Who knows what it is to be human? We don’t even know when we became human. That we came from the mud, evolved from lower forms is certain, but when did we become human and who’s to say that human being of today shall not evolve into further avatars with even greater powers of awareness? Is our evolution finished? Is our brain incapable of adding entirely new nodes — as it did long ago when it added the neocortex?

 

These Avatars spring from the depths of our creative imagination, even to the point of laying out a blueprint, in storyboard form, for our transition to a new state of being. That the blueprint should be interpreted by the viewer’s subconscious as something fearful is only normal. Evolution does not come easy. As Mikhail Turovsky said, “The first ape who became a man thus committed treason against his own kind.”

 

In neuro-biological terms human potential is limitless and our subconscious mind knows it. Where does the subconscious mind get its information? From time to time, the Kundalini, dormant in most of us, nudges our subconscious. Some of these contents come to us in the form of dreams and inspirations of various sorts. In men of genius, it endows them with extraordinary creative powers. These contents are not mere figments, but the signs of a deeper reality, one constantly beckoning to us to push the boundaries of consciousness, what Gopi Krishna called the Evolutionary Impulse.

As Long as we Inhabit Bodies...

“Patriotism is the fond memory of food eaten in childhood.”
~ Lin Yu T’ang

This statement is very profound. Extended to its logical conclusion it means that our national identities — as symbolized by national flags — could actually be represented thusly:

• American - The Hot Dog
• French - The Baguette
• German - Sauerkraut
• Philippines - Chicken Adobo
• Spain - Paella
• Morocco - Couscous

and so on...

You don't have to agree with Lin Yu T'ang's statement, but you must admire his logic. He's saying that the foodstuffs we grew up with and cherish are really unifying cultural elements. They unite us — send us out as a group to do battle against the "other." They are the things that really bind us together. He's hinting it would actually be more honest to send us out under the banner of The Hot Dog or The Cheeseburger or The BLT than any arrangement of abstract symbols of stars, crescents, stripes in assorted colors.

We identify with our cravings; we form societies around them and, as long as we inhabit bodies, we never quite get over them, to the point where the images of our favorite foods are always foremost in our minds at times of stress, boredom, or respite.

For example, in the service and required to walk a 4-hour guard duty shift on shipboard or on land late at night, what did my thoughts eventually turn to? Not — was someone going to jump out of a tree or mow me down. I kept my eyes and ears open on duty; I was vigilant, but at the end of a long shift, I always seemed to conjure up the image of a bowl of cornflakes, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or a cheeseburger. I asked others what they thought about during their tour on guard duty. Always the same refrain: food fantasies, some special dish. We might not — each one of us — crave the exact same dish, but the choice always came from a common taste pool: the dishes Americans identify with.

That's why it's so difficult to be a traitor; most people cannot renounce the foods they grew up with. Think about the things that tie you to your roots and food comes up big. For most people, it's in first, second, and third place. Not only do we identify with foods, we become adept at justifying their consumption, in spite of the danger inherent in many of our favorites.

Over 40 years ago my awakened Kundalini displaced my exploratory relationship to drugs with something much more powerful, but it never completely purged my affection for the foods I loved as a child. For many and most, food is the final addiction.

Today, I eat completely differently. 90% raw. I haven't eaten a cheeseburger in 20 years; I couldn't digest one. Same goes for most of the foods I used to pine for on those long, lonely tours on guard duty. I no longer think about them, but I understand how dangerous they are and I do understand their attraction.

Each one of us inhabits a different body, with different tastes and different cravings. Imagine if we were bodiless beings of pure spirit. All of these cravings, all our longings would disappear. They will disappear as soon as we become pure spirit, which inevitably we will.

How do I know this? My Kundalini awakening revealed it to me. It's our evolutionary path. Without bodies there are no needs, no cravings, no addictions, no negative emotions. Today, we cannot envisage such an existence. That's fine. Before we traveled to the moon, many thought it impossible, or never thought about it at all.

Is it reasonable to believe our evolution is at an end, that no further evolutionary developments can ever occur, that the form our bodies take today will be the same in 10,000 years? And if we do evolve in form, will our immaterial and metaphysical aspects not evolve as well? 

So what form will future bodies assume? A second head, another arm? Or will future evolution concern mostly the brain and the up-to-now mostly esoteric capabilities associated with Kundalini. Given the current runaway interest in kundalini, I'd be surprised if kundalini didn't hold some surprises as to our future evolutionary development. 

Bodiless beings are not for next week or next month. We must survive centuries of challenges to our physical forms, but eventually we will shed those elements that bind us to our earthly limitations. Our bodies being one of them. The first step can be taken now.

“I didn’t arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind.”
~ Albert Einstein

Finally, if it’s any consolation, are not the growth and acceptance of ethnic foods already changing the visions we conjure up when famished. Fifty years ago when I walked guard duty, I had only standard American fare to excite my imagination. Today’s soldier has a panoply of ethnic cravings to draw from. As we begin to accept foods from other cultures — the cooking shows on TV offer an endless array of ethnic shows — will our interest in other cultures not increase? And, as a result, gradually allay the feelings of otherness we reserve for foreigners?

Will we still be doing battle under the banner of the Hot Dog in 2518? Or will Pizza or Moo Goo Gai Pan replace it?