Capitalism & Kundalini

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

As a high school student, this was one of my favorite poems in my literature book. I’m not sure that today’s student has a literature book, much less the same reverence for English poetry that we had. Nevertheless, this poem stood out for three very good reasons:

1. It was short.
2. It was easy to understand.
3. There was a certain majesty to the language, which, after all, is the point of poetry.

We are at a juncture. We are approaching an Ozymandias moment in our living history. A moment when science and logic give way to emotion, xenophobia, and irrational forces. Facing challenges in every area — health, economy, social, political, environmental, educational — the greatest challenges mankind has ever faced, we seem destined to retreat into a parochial and narrow-minded mindset.

Ask yourself:
    • Are we healthy?
    • Are we economical?
    • Do we perform our civic duties?
    • Do we care for the environment?
    • Do we educate our children well?

The Answer Is NO!

So, even in the face of dwindling resources, shrinking markets, and worldwide health and environmental crises, we do not have the will power to turn our lives and our destiny around. Even though in each instance, we have the knowledge and technology to fix these conditions.

First thing we have to do is admit that we have done a bad job and accept that it no longer matters who’s the greatest country in the world. This is a holdover emotion that keeps us tied to the past. We no longer need a greatest country, yet we continue to heap praise on the “greatest generation.” Why? Quite simply, not much has gone right since then. The “greatest generation” and nostalgia for it are devices to keep us rooted in the past instead of preparing for the future. Right now, the future is upon us.

How Do We Prepare For It?

The problem with capitalism is it’s largely based on psychology, on creating an atmosphere where people feel good about investing. If they feel good about investing, they will feel good about accepting and extending credit, and the wheels continue to turn.

Once, however, there’s a psychological meltdown so that those self-same investors no longer feel like investing or extending credit, everything freezes. That’s what we have today. We’re on the brink of an Ozymandias moment.

Try to picture such a moment. Contrary to popular belief, they are not produced by some sort of conflagration, but by slow collapse, the kind of collapse Pulitzer Prize winning author, Jared Diamond, describes in his book of the same name, Collapse. Diamond studied a series of ancient civilizations  — the Norse in Greenland, the Easter Islanders — and came up with a set of common causes:

• an insistence on sticking to a way of life that had become no longer viable,
• the man-made destruction of the environment.

In the case of Easter Island, it meant cutting down all the trees on the island in order to have wooden tracks and sleds for transporting monolithic statues of their ancestral Gods (Moai) to other locations on the island. Diamond's UCLA students wondered, “What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say as he was doing it?"

He goes on to provide reasons for these types of disastrous decisions:
       1. Failure to anticipate the problem because they have no prior experience to refer to
            a. Failure to anticipate on account of false analogy
       2.  Failure to anticipate the problem before it arrives.
            a. Some problems are imperceptible
            b. Distant managers not aware of problem
            c. Slow trend, concealed by up-and-down fluctuations
      3.  Failure to attempt to solve a problem once it has been perceived.

Today we have Easter Island and Greenland on a worldwide scale. Imagine Easter Island after the trees have been chopped down. We still have the Moai. Our way of life is safe. Everything’s the same; those naysayers are bad for bizness. Yes, everything is the same…until it turns to dust. When Captain Cook sailed into Easter Island in 1774, he found the last remnants of a dying civilization.

... Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
When it happens to us on a much larger scale, all the government buildings in Washington will continue to stand upright. Everything will look the same, only it won’t be the same. 

That’s Day One: the day after the last tree is cut down, after the credit machine goes dry, after the sons of Ozymandias, king of kings, or the generals of Alexander quarrel and divide the empire. You walk outside one day and there’s rampant inflation, currency devaluation, foreign ownership, no credit, no liquidity, no jobs, roaming packs of looters, martial law — the invisible signs of imminent collapse, all of which begin not to matter as the world economy and civil society crumbles.

Deserted Pennsylvania Incinerator

The important buildings, the monuments, the statues are still there. But after a while, they, too, will begin to crumble. The only difference between us today and the ancient civilization of Shelley’s poem is that there are no new spaces to conquer; we are stretched to the limit — economically and geopolitically.

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What’s more, given the perilous state of our environment, we will run out of resources, so it won’t be only a matter of the Chinese Empire replacing the American. Why? Because world empires need resources to maintain their hegemony, and there won’t be any resources left. As soon as we run out of carbon-based energy, we’ll start chopping trees with a vengeance. The entire world will resemble the barren wasteland of Easter Island.

Think I’m exaggerating? Check out the History Channel’s Life After People series. But before you do, I’ll go out on a limb and predict your reaction: You won’t like this series. In fact, you’ll probably agree with the prevailing wisdom on various message boards that "This is a Silly Show." The conventional wisdom says it is, so it must be. Besides, we don’t like the way it makes us feel. Uncomfortable. Inadequate. Irrelevant. Obsolete. Impotent. Helpless. Weak. Incapable. Vulnerable. Well, if we let things get to that point — no trees, nature completely destroyed, economy in ruins — we will be all these things.

To avoid this, we must act — for the Ozymandias moment is avoidable. At least one critic on the message board got it right:
“The show is not about why or how people are gone or have been removed. Degradation of cities and civilizations can be observed directly.

“But this show is fantasy. They don't know any of this will happen. All these buildings could fall and decay long before the last man standing is born. It has happened before to the Egyptians, the Mayans, Carthage, Chernobyl. But it is only interesting because we can see it in the past. It can guide us in the future.

“This show has nothing to do with science or history. This show makes wild speculations. It's only justification is to make us feel guilty for existing, and to look to a brighter, supposedly more natural, future without the species which is most offensive to nature; Humans. You. Everyone you know.”

Well, he/she sorta got it right.

Straight-lining in Capitalism is Impossible

Another hallmark of capitalism: there’s no such thing as a “status quo;” there’s only up or down. A company, an economy are either in the black or in the red. Why? Because it’s impossible to hold costs the same from year to year. It’s impossible to maintain sales from year to year. Costs go up or down (usually up). Sales go up or down, and in this economy as markets reach their saturation point and there are fewer new markets to replace them. We will see a dampening in sales and profits, and therefore a continuing slowdown in investment. Declining employment. Lower tax revenues. Fewer social and community services. Yet, with the inevitable rise in paranoia, an increase in military spending.
How were we able to maintain such an advanced, abundant lifestyle? How did it get to the point of near collapse so quickly?

In his book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, author John Perkins laid out the reasons we have maintained economic hegemony over most of the world for the last 65 years. Using a three-tiered strategy of Economic Hitmen (EHM), CIA subversion, and military power successive postwar governments, Republican and Democrat, were able to create and maintain markets. As he points out, most of the time we never had to use the CIA (jackals) or the military because our economic strangulation techniques totally destabilized the countries we controlled. According to Perkins, “The most common approach for EHMs is to identify a third world country with resources our corporations covet, like oil, water, wood, construction. Then arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or a sister organization. But the money does not go to the people in that country. Instead, the target country’s government uses the loan to hire US corporations to build power plants, industrial parks, and other infrastructure projects that benefit a few wealthy local families, as well as the US corporations, but do not help the majority of the people who are too poor to use electricity, not skilled enough to work in industrial parks, and basically live outside the economic system. The country ends up owing a huge debt that it cannot repay. So we EHM go back to the country and say 'since you can’t pay your debts, give us a pound of flesh: sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies, or vote with us on the next UN vote, or send troops to support ours in someplace like Iraq.'

“On the few occasions when we fail, the jackals are sent in to overthrow the government or assassinate the leaders we EHM were unable to corrupt. This happened with me in Panama and Ecuador where Omar Torrijos and Jaime Roldos were assassinated as a result. If the jackals fail too, then the US military goes in — as they did in Iraq.”

Preserve the way of life at all costs. Play golf and keep going to the mall. And keep looking backward. The greatest generation. The good old days. Keep repeating the mantra: We’re the greatest country in the world. Keep repeating it, and we won’t be. We’ll have lulled ourselves so completely to sleep, we may never recover. We must start telling the truth; we must start turning things around. Think in terms of: this is the greatest world in the galaxy, and take steps to make it so.

Pundits Suggests The Following

Paul Krugman, NYT
If Mr. Bernanke is reappointed, he and his colleagues need to realize that what they consider a policy success is actually a policy failure. We have avoided a second Great Depression, but we are facing mass unemployment — unemployment that will blight the lives of millions of Americans — for years to come. And it’s the Fed’s responsibility to do all it can to end that blight.

Sandy B. Lewis and William D. Cohan, NYT
We are in one of those “generational revolutions” that Jefferson said were as important as anything else to the proper functioning of our democracy. We can no longer pretend that our collective behavior as a nation for the past 25 years has been worthy of us as a people. Many of us hoped that Barack Obama’s election would redress the dire decline in our collective ethic. We are 139 days into his presidency, and while there is still plenty of hope that Mr. Obama will fulfill his mandate, his record on searching out the causes of the financial crisis has not been reassuring. He must do what is necessary to restore the American people’s — and the world’s — faith in American capitalism and in our nation. But time is wasting.

Thomas Friedman, NYT
Obama should make the centerpiece of his presidency mobilizing a million new start-up companies that won’t just give us temporary highway jobs, but lasting good jobs that keep America on the cutting edge. The best way to counter the Tea Party movement, which is all about stopping things, is with an Innovation Movement, which is all about starting things. Without inventing more new products and services that make people more productive, healthier or entertained — that we can sell around the world — we’ll never be able to afford the health care our people need, let alone pay off our debts.

Obama should bring together the country’s leading innovators and ask them: “What legislation, what tax incentives, do we need right now to replicate you all a million times over” — and make that his No. 1 priority. Inspiring, reviving and empowering Start-up America is his moon shot.

Frank Rich, NYT
There’s a reason why the otherwise antithetical Leno and Conan camps are united in their derision of NBC’s titans. A TV network has become a handy proxy for every mismanaged, greedy, disloyal and unaccountable corporation in our dysfunctional economy. It’s a business culture where the rich and well-connected get richer while the employees, shareholders and customers get the shaft. And the conviction that the game is fixed is nonpartisan. If the tea party right and populist left agree on anything, it’s that big bailed-out banks have and will get away with murder while we pay the bill on credit cards — with ever-rising fees.

Rush Limbaugh doesn’t agree...
Stating: “This guy from The New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on Earth — Andrew Revkin. Mr. Revkin, why don't you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?”

Rush believes human beings are living a natural existence? Wouldn’t that be some sort of Jean-Jacques Rousseau existence? A self-sufficient, in tune with nature, consume-only-what-you-need, AVATAR existence?

Funny. I don’t see a generalized espousal of this lifestyle on our planet. I see a beginning. I see interest. I see lip service. But no wholesale rejection of consumerism. No, I’m-doing-my-part-to-overhaul the very basis of expansionist capitalism, even as we face the end of expansionism.

There’s Nowhere Left to Establish Markets

South America? Africa? Well, we went through China in a decade. And now look what’s happened. They turned the tables on us. We’re the debtors. And it’s not like when we owed the Arabs. They loaned us oil money to get a foothold in our markets. The Chinese can keep the cash flowing until they own us, our markets, our technology, our resources, our amusement parks, our media — everything.

So how do we remedy our situation? We change the nature of the capitalist model. Money, after all, is energy. We need to refine the way this energy flows. How do we do this?

It's a two-pronged effort. First, we have to implement the suggestions put forth in the September 2005 issue of Scientific American. And second, while there's a lot to do on the scientific and economic fronts, there's even more to do on the humanist front. In other words, we are not capable of making the economic, political, ecological, and social changes detailed in the Scientific American article if we apply the same limiting analyses and negative emotions that got us into this mess in the first place. We see the results of this every day on Cable TV.

Deadlock, gridlock, bickering, name calling, stonewalling, obstructionism, double-talk. No common ground in spite of the fact that we are up against Jared Diamond's Rule 3 for Disasterous Decisions: Failure to attempt to solve a problem once it has been perceived. It's not like we can't identify the problems we face; we can. We simply choose to ignore them. Extricating ourselves from this state of being requires a wholesale refashioning of human nature, which can only be induced by a mass change of consciousness.

According to Bruce Lipton these changes involve recreating ourselves as a less needy, more connected species:

“Our planet is facing what scientists are calling the Sixth Great Mass Extinction. The previous five were apparently caused by objects from outer space, such as comets or asteroids, hitting the Earth. This time, the cause comes from 'inner space' — our own invisible beliefs that have spun us outside the web of life. Beginning with monotheistic religion telling us that we humans are superior and apart from other creatures on the planet, exacerbated by scientific materialism insisting human technology has the power to 'conquer' nature, we have focused so heavily on our fitness as individuals, we have failed to recognize that our fitness as a species is up for examination.”
How do we change the negative aspects of our human nature? How do we overthrow the “invisible beliefs” and negative emotions that hold us prisoner? We cannot change human nature by any traditional or orthodox means. Not by prayer, not by good works, not by psychology, education, philosophy, law, medicine, science, politics is human nature changed.

If we could change our nature merely by prayer, or one of the other means cited above, we would have already done so for people have been trying these approaches for thousands of years. We need a new approach, something that’s never been done before. We need to change our consciousness.

How Do we Change our Consciousness?

That’s the role of energy cultivation techniques, such as kundalini — a powerful, yet dormant biological mechanism in the body that allows us to realize our full potential. According to Sri Ramakrishna, “A man's spiritual consciousness is not awakened unless his Kundalini is aroused.” Kundalini stimulates neuroplastic activity in the brain, and consequently, the ability to see and experience life beyond the physical dimension.

Because kundalini effects a complete overhaul of the being, it produces a change in our reasoning and decision making processes, and our nature as a whole. That’s what happens with a change of consciousness. The old individual is reborn in a bio-natural sense, as if his DNA had been modified during his present lifetime…and it has been. We will be able to see and understand, sometimes for the first time, the moral and logical implications of every decision. Gone, one by one, are the old addictions, the old habits, the old beliefs, the old emotional prisons. This new state of consciousness effects an overhaul of human nature. Over time our negative emotions vanish. We are no longer cogs in the machine. We are no longer mere consumers. We are active participants in our own future.
In effect, a mass kundalini awakening can change the very nature of our capitalistic economic system, because, once transformed, we will no longer be a “me first” species. We will be more self-sufficient, more in tune with our resources, more adept in creating new ones, more sharing and more loving.

Be well, be one, be clear!

Detecting Kundalini

The most difficult stumbling block to overcome in the scientific acceptance of kundalini as a real phenomenon is the ability to separate it from other phenomena and identify, not only what it is, but also have some consistent means of observing it under laboratory conditions that perform the same way in each instance.

"Some of the manifestations of Kundalini overlap with prana, matrika shakti, illnesses, nervous system disorders, dreams, visions, etc. and other energies which can also impact the body/mind/consciousness. If one can't identify the presence of awakened Kundalini and what makes it unique, then it gets folded in with all kinds of transpersonal experiences and phenomenon which aren't Kundalini Shakti in the classic sense."

~ Lawrence Edwards, PhD, BCN Senior Fellow, LMHC
Author of The Soul's Journey: Guidance From The Divine Within, Awakening Kundalini: The Path to Radical Freedom, and Kali's Bazaar penned by Kalidas

This is true in that there are many conflicting descriptions of kundalini as described above by Dr. Edwards. It is also true that these various manifestations do not my fit my case.

JJ Semple - Kashmir (1977)

What happened in my case was the result of meditation practice, a collection of physical exercises, that opened up a reservoir of energy, which, in turn, flooded said energy through a hidden network to my brain and to other points of my body, which then immediately started to re-engineer my body — up to that point, a purely physical process, visible to me, but not to medical science or to any known energy detecting instrument.

I won't go into greater detail; I've already done so in all my books, especially in Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time. Why rephrase something when my best efforts already exists?

That this physical process would eventually have metaphysical consequences I intuited at the time, perhaps not enlightenment, another yet to be proven condition, but something more like illumination, which I perceived to be a gradual increase in understanding all aspects of life. In any case, the physical led to the metaphysical, much as I envisioned in 1971 when kundalini activated.

Am I alone as to the process described in my books? As a matter of fact, no. Gopi Krishna's book, Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man, describes the same sort of eruption: the prelude, the moment, and the aftermath. When I met him in Kashmir in 1977, we discussed the similarities of our experiences and the fact that they began as a result physical exercise and metaphysics did not figure in at the beginning. 

So what's the next step in detecting kundalini? Michael Molina of The Emerging Sciences Foundation is pursuing scientific measurement, which I believe will eventually be vindicated. Whether sooner or later, I do not know, but the following statement of purpose foreshadows hispredicted enthusiasm.

"The Emerging Sciences Foundation is in the early stages of a partnering with PSY-TEK labs in a large-scale research study to take measurements of people undergoing a Kundalini awakening."

Nevertheless, I recently learned that what Dr. Lawrence calls "co-occurring" conditions do exist, a phenomenon that can only be observed in laboratory of your own body.

"To further compound the issues with research on Kundalini is the fact that Kundalini phenomenon can be co-occurring with other things such as PTSD, CFS, psychosis and numerous other conditions and disorders. To be able to discriminate whether something is solely Kundalini or partially Kundalini again requires a valid and reliable way of detecting its active presence."

Why had I not observed this before? Probably, because I hadn't been sick for 60 years. But when I had a heart attack in July 2018, I noticed that after the blockages in my heart arteries were cleared, there was an immediate surge in kundalini energy circulating through my body. Correspondingly, when further relief became necessary, there occurred an immediate decline in kundalini.

Kundalini — It's Complicated

Every week I receive comments/queries asking me to help the writer activate kundalini. Right off the bat, whether between the lines or explicitly stated, I sense that very little forethought about post-kundalini effects and consequences has been done, which augers poorly for the seeker because kundalini always complicates your life.

Not saying such complications are necessarily negative or harmful; they aren't. They are, however, complications, the nature of which are discussed in detail in my book, The Biology of Consciousness: Case Studies in Kundalini.

For whatever reasons, be they karmic, physical, or psychological, some outcomes are not only not wanted, they are harmful to the initiate. Unfortunately, eager seekers either ignore accounts of harmful kundalini awakenings or they don't do the necessary due diligence. This is especially true of younger seekers, who, like young people in any cultural or social setting, believe they are immune to the ill effects and tribulations of life...until something untoward happens. 

For instance today...I read that a 24-year-old man died when his e-cigarette device exploded, something he surely never expected to happen. Young people take risks. That's what they do. You can't expect this to change. Nevertheless, if you can't eliminate all risks you can eliminate the unnecessary ones — those risks whose "complicated" nature are well documented, i.e., kundalini awakenings!

If you only read two accounts of kundalini awakenings, mine and Gopi Krishna's, do yourself a favor if you're on an obsessive kundalini quest and read these two books.

That our experiences turned out to be 'net positive' in the end is not the point; the point is that our lives became infinitely more complicated and difficult to manage. There were years of struggle and discomfort.

Avoid complicating your life. You may not be predestined to awaken kundalini. Don't undergo years of exertion and torment, only to find out it wasn't for you. Don't be fanatical about it. Let it come to you...

A Reminder: Kundalini Is Science, Not Religion

Since the dawn of civilization, religion has been part of human life. To a certain extent so has science, for example, the discovery and use of fire and tools. Prehistoric humans accomplished amazing feats under difficult conditions.

Northern Communities feel climate change impact

The big difference between science and religion was that, in Europe, at least, from prehistoric times to the 17th century, inexplicable phenomena were passed on to religious entities — the Church, etc. Up to that time, religion was science and science was religion:

By the end of the 17th century, Europeans were aware of logarithms, electricity, the telescope and microscope, calculus, universal gravitation, Newton's Laws of Motion, air pressure and calculating machines due to the work of the first scientists of the Scientific Revolution, including Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Pierre Fermat, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Christiaan Huygens, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. It was also a period of development of culture in general (especially theater, music, visual arts and philosophy).
~ Wikipedia 

Anything that smacked of magic was suspect, and there were many natural phenomena that could not be explained until science found respectability. Even then, many scientists were condemned as heretics until much later on.

Science was never concurrently recognized in all corners of the Earth. A scientific tradition was underway, but it took centuries for everyone to get on the same page. Even now, as illustrated by the struggle to establish universal acceptance of climate change, some refuse to acknowledge the science behind it — much to our general detriment.

CDC - Climate Change and Public Health

What does this have to do with kundalini? Simply that, until Gopi Krishna, no one described this phenomenon as "the evolutionary energy in man." Not even Darwin recognized this essential part of human biology.

Kundalini is older than the hills. It's been part of our beings forever, driving our evolution forward, the engine behind what Gopi Krishna called "the evolutionary impulse." Without it we'd still be one-celled entities.

Way back when, it was only normal that kundalini events were handed over to religion. That when monks and other religious pathfinders began to experiment with meditation and other practices, metanormal results followed — kundalini, prescience, ecstatic states, shamanic powers, stigmata.

These phenomenon were not ascribed to biology; biology didn't exist. Religion took them over, ascribing them to God. The problem that still haunts kundalini is critical mass. Even though kundalini events occur all over the world, irrespective of language, culture, religious preferences, geography, the fact that these events differ as to triggers and effects, makes it difficult for biologists and other scientists to investigate. Kundalini just doesn't awaken in the same way in each individual every time it occurs. No two kundalini events are the same, giving scientists little "critical mass" on which to base meaningful hypotheses.



If you've experienced, or are aiming to investigate kundalini, you cannot rely on the various claims, either those that insist kundalini doesn't exist or the anecdotal accounts that insist it does. Continued research will undoubtedly shed more light on this important phenomenon. For the time being you must rely on your ability to distinguish real from unreal, actual from imagined.

An important irony to consider, however, is the fact that to reach the metaphysical, you depend on the biological (the physical) resources of the body. Notice I use the term metaphysical, not spiritual or religious. That's an important distinction in that metaphysical simply means "beyond the physical." What spiritual actually means no one knows.

The biological, physical (kundalini) opens the door to the metaphysical, and that other great mystery scientists have yet to fully and ably explore — consciousness. Whether you develop your physical resources through practices like yoga or meditation or your resources develop naturally, the physical YOU plays an important role in shaping the metaphysical YOU. In other words, illumination and increased consciousness depend on your biological configuration.

As Gopi Krishna stated:

"Can we deny the fact that whether a fortuitous gift, divine grace, or the fruit of Karma, in every case there is a close link between the talent or beauty exhibited and the oragnic structure of the individual."
~ The Awakening of Kundalini

Kundalini And Food

One way of telling whether kundalini is active is your body's response to intercourse. When I read Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man, it settled any remaining uncertainties about what had happened to me. No further doubts remained, not after I read about Gopi Krishna's somatic reaction to an unavoidable ejaculation. No questions, no doubts. I'd had the same reaction after ejaculating for the first time since my kundalini became active, an event described in Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time:

My head is imploding and the elixir is being summoned to my brain for life support. I curl up in a fetal position. To no avail, my nerves are like an electrical fire searing the very conduits that enclose them and there isn’t enough elixir to cool them. I sit up, unable to slip from dozing into sleep. I am wide awake. Certainly, if I try to lead a normal sex life, I’ll simply exhaust my resources. Every factory runs on power; this one manufactures its own. And the conduits, which convey the energy to the replenishment points, are burning up. For one thing, they need nourishment. I can feel the elixir waning and, as Gopi Krishna put it, ‘a tongue of golden flame searching my stomach for food.’”

“Are you okay?” asks Martine.
“You think I’m a freak.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you have any yogurt?”
“I think so…in the fridge.”

Naked, I stumble to the fridge and grab a Yoplait. Four containers later, I feel somewhat calmed. Martine comes into the kitchen and stands by me, softly massaging my shoulders.

“How do you feel?” she asks.
“Better.”
“Do you think you can sleep?”

Back in bed together, after another episode of involuntary movements, Martine gets to witness the ultimate in CPR. I say this only figuratively, for how can she see the muscle walls of my solar plexus open and the Pranic energy stream forth enroute to the third eye? Yet, as we lie there, I sense her watching me, wondering if I am in the grip of some sort of fit. Nevertheless, she is fascinated, as if hoping to catch a glimpse of the power that is tossing me around her bed.

~ Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time (2008) - JJ Semple

Why is this relevant? I get many inquiries from persons trying to determine whether their kundalini is active — a determination I'm not always able to make, given the mostly meager information communicated to me. Sometimes, all I can muster is an un-educated guess, which, because of its shaky fundaments I rarely proffer to the person who's inquired. Better to not get involved if what I suggest turns out not to be; I don't want to steer anyone wrong.

Boy & Dog

A person has to be his or her own best detective and not assume that I, or anyone else, is capable of getting inside another human being in order to witness what is going on. I'm not able to, and I would distrust any claims to such powers, especially if money was involved. I'm not saying it's not possible, but all I can do, even with the best of information, is make an educated guess. There are, however, certain other commonalities, which, if experienced and described to me in detail, I feel able enough to offer a determination.

Nevertheless, if you've not had the type of reaction described above, two possibilities exist:

1. Not every kundalini awakening causes the type of reaction suffered by me and Gopi Krishna.
2. Your kundalini has not yet awakened.

One point Gopi Krishna made when I met him in Kashmir in the summer of 1977 was that once kundalini clears all blockages, the body can withstand ejaculation.

As far as other ways of determining whether kundalini is active, I have written about them previously — a post that includes some difficult to answer queries/comments.

Get Over Not Being Famous

"The hope of fame — what hours of speculation, what pulses of enthusiasm, what fevers of effort, are based on that peculiarly subtle illusion! It is yet the lure, the ignis fatuus of almost every breathing heart." 

The Genius - Theodore Dreiser

After every wanton mass-murder shooting comes the wringing of hands, the invocation of prayer, and a search for a deeply-buried motive, “Investigators are sifting through the evidence, on-line and in the assailant’s home, trying to ascertain why this shooting took place.” As if the current event is somehow not connected to similar events…

Sad, because the motive is woven into the fabric of our social norms and our collective consciousness and is not so deeply buried. So what is it? Simply that all violence is self-hate — a condition we should be aware of, but, due to the following tendencies, we like to keep buried.

First comes the psychological environment we live in, whether we’re deeply affected or just marginally. And that is the winner/loser paradigm which guides the very formation of our egos and how we perceive ourselves. Of course, we would be the last to admit that a thirst for recognition and its offshoot fame were part of the psychological elements that shape our egos.

Why do we base our self-image on these things? Because the winner/loser paradigm is all around us, manifested so perfectly by a president that dotes on the superficiality of image, dispensing and condemning, the latest being his erstwhile Attorney General, who he loved to humiliate publicly.

Some people play the game, excel at it, others give it a good try, but most fall by the wayside into different degrees of indifference and self-loathing, and it’s in that category we find the embittered ones who act out!

A friend of mine ventured that those to whom real fame comes are blessed with a combination of vision, charisma, and chops, in that they are very good at what they do. They excel because of talent; fame comes later. These people are rare — the ones whose talent is so great they don’t even think about fame.

His comments are illuminated in Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” in which Trigorin, a famous writer, foreshadows his destruction of Nina, at the same time his mistress, Arkadina, an actress, destroys her son’s confidence, ultimately driving him to suicide. 

NINA. That was my dead mother’s home. I was born there, and have lived all my life beside this lake. I know every little island in it.

TRIGORIN. This is a beautiful place to live. [He catches sight of the dead sea-gull] What is that?

NINA. A gull. Constantine shot it. 

TRIGORIN. What a lovely bird! Really, I can’t bear to go away. Can’t you persuade Irina to stay? [He writes something in his note-book.]

NINA. What are you writing?

TRIGORIN. Nothing much, only an idea that occurred to me. [He puts the book back in his pocket] An idea for a short story. A young girl grows up on the shores of a lake, as you have. She loves the lake as the gulls do, and is as happy and free as they. But a man sees her who chances to come that way, and he destroys her out of idleness, as this gull here has been destroyed.

Because they are secure in their talent, Trigorin and Arkadina, the two famous people are heedless of the hurt they inflict, even on friends and family members.

NINA. I knew we should meet again. [With emotion] I have come to an irrevocable decision, the die is cast: I am going on the stage. I am deserting my father and abandoning everything. I am beginning life anew. I am going, as you are, to Moscow. We shall meet there.

TRIGORIN. [Glancing about him] Go to the Hotel Slavianski Bazar. Let me know as soon as you get there. I shall be at the Grosholski House in Moltchanofka Street. I must go now. [A pause.]

NINA. Just one more minute!

TRIGORIN. [In a low voice] You are so beautiful! What bliss to think that I shall see you again so soon! [She sinks on his breast] I shall see those glorious eyes again, that wonderful, ineffably tender smile, those gentle features with their expression of angelic purity! My darling! [A prolonged kiss.]

The Act III curtain falls.

Two years elapse between the third and fourth acts.
Act IV takes place during the winter two years later, in the drawing room that has been converted to Konstantin's study.

Nina and Trigorin lived together in Moscow for a time, during which she had a child by him, who died, after which, he abandoned her and went back to Arkadina. Nina never achieved any real success as an actress, and is currently on a tour of the provinces with a small theatre group.

Secret yearnings for recognition, daydreams of command performances keep us motivated through our twenties, that is, if we haven’t already dropped out or ruined our lives because we couldn’t face the truth or couldn't accept the fact that we would never be famous. 

Of course, it would be simplistic to assign complete blame for violent incidents to lack of recognition and validation, but like John Waters, I believe there is both smoke and fire in the way a society writes off individuals as losers.

So when an individual realizes that fame isn't happening, he/she feels cheated and finds refuge in our cultural orthodoxies: television, Internet, gambling, porn, fundamentalism, and materialism. And what symbolizes material prominence more than possessing a gun?


In their deep subconscious, many people accept not being famous and get over it. Others desperately wanting a recognition that isn’t forthcoming, begin to doubt and hate themselves, and as a result, act out a mass-murder event as the means and the end to 15 minutes of fame and the solution to their self-loathing. Imagine being a person who's just mass murdered. What does he tell himself? "Wow, I just murdered X number of people so I could be famous for 15 minutes." The feeling, and the lack thereof!


Again, blaming lack of recognition may sound simplistic, but when you examine more primitive cultures, you wonder if they even have a word in their language for “fame?” Not so much nowadays because primitive cultures have also been infected by the ruling orthodoxies of the day.

When people spend most of their day toiling the soil, hunting for food, or pounding out tortillas, they have less time for self-examination. Nevertheless, demographics show a greater incidence of mass-murder events in developed countries than in less developed societies. What’s more, if a mass murder were to occur in a less developed society, I warrant they’d have both a logical and swift way of dealing with it. Unlike the USA whose ruling class trots out the same platitudes each time a lethal incident takes place.

Everything’s changed. And yet, hark back to the 1940s, to societies that had never seen a white man. Their codes of ethics regulated life for centuries without members going postal… How do we get back to a state of such grace, where self-worth becomes a societal absolute?

You may never be famous, but you are not a loser. If you need 365 reasons to validate this postulate, check out Kundalini Musings.

Alone And Unloved

I wonder if it's possible to feel un-alone and loved without undergoing a change of consciousness? I remember a period in my life — after boarding school and military service — when, for the first time, I was turned loose to my own devices, i.e., I was "free" to come and go as I pleased.




No longer was my daily schedule regulated from above by parents, teachers, or sergeants. No longer was my room, board, travel, and entertainment paid for.

Disaffected Youth - JJ Semple, 1960s something

If I didn't have a job, I wouldn't eat. If I didn't get out of bed and go to work, they'd evict me. If I didn't go out in search of friendship and sex, I would remain friendless and unrelieved. Of course, there was always the people at work, but at my first two jobs in photography labs, I spent six hours a day in a darkroom. Lots of time for fantasizing and daydreaming about why I was miserable and what I might do to turn my life around, but not much for pursuing relationships or expanding my social life.

It's that way for many. Witness the following:

"I'm very good at being chatty, I can talk to anyone, but that doesn't mean I'm able to have those lasting relationships with people," says Michelle. "You can be in a group and it can be intimidating because you're conscious of not letting people get to know the 'real you'.

"I would say I've always had an element of feeling lonely. Ever since I was a teenager, I've always felt a little bit different and separate from large groups of friends, but in the last five years it's crept in more."

Michelle has experienced anxiety and depression which she finds can amplify her loneliness because she finds it hard to articulate negative emotions.

"If I'm in a group I often find myself saying 'I'm great' when people ask how I am. It's almost like an out-of-body experience because I can hear myself saying these positive things, when I'm thinking about how I struggled to get out bed yesterday. It's the loneliness of knowing how you feel in your own head and never being able to tell people."

 ~ "Surrounded by people - but I feel so unloved" - The Loneliness Experiment - BBC

 So I enrolled in George Washington University. And instead of nothing and no one, there was suddenly too much. I became even more frantic. If I wasn't seeing someone or going somewhere, I felt alone and unloved. 

Close to the university at 25th. Street and Pennsylvania Ave. across the street from St. Stephen-Martyr Church, I had a great one-bedroom apartment for $90/mo. (now, 50 years later, it's the Avenue Suites, Georgetown). Another classic Washington row house bites the dust.



Parties and a series of girl friends; minimalist, yet tasteful, furniture, the apartment was equidistant from my two favorite Pennsylvania Avenue bars: Brownley's to the right and the One Step Down to the left, hot spots I'd repair to for a round, or several rounds of drinks, if I wasn't seeing someone. At last call, I'd lurch my way home from Brownley's in the snow through a messy construction site (the Washington Circle underpass was being built at the time).

I was feuding with St. Stephen's. Their noisy bells waking me at early hours...so I'd put a large speaker on my window that blared Thelonious Monk at the ringing bells. At one party I suddenly had the thought that all the guests were having more fun than I was, so I ordered everyone out. That was my life: too much to drink or smoke and a feeling that I was missing something, that somewhere people I knew were having more fun than I was.

And so it came to pass...getting tossed out on the street. I was having a bacon, egg, and English muffin brunchfast one morning when the door started being knocked on. I opened it and three burly men with moving equipment brushed by me and started packing everything up. I and my household and my tasty breakfast were out on the street in less than ten minutes.

It's not that I couldn't have raised the $90.00, I just didn't want to be bothered. By the time I came back with a borrowed truck, most my possessions had disappeared.

The story made the bar circuit with me for a week, until I grew sick of it and sick of my life.

Within five years, I had moved to Paris — practicing yoga and meditating. When kundalini awakened two years later, I immediately felt unbounded. It had always been me and everyone else, and why couldn't I be as happy everyone else seemed to be?

No anxiety; it had faded away. No why-was-I-so mixed up; I no longer was.

I didn't have to work at getting adjusted like so many of my contemporaries who'd spent fortunes on psychs. Kundalini had effected an organic change — the physical actions of yoga and meditation had opened up the metaphysical. My consciousness had changed, and along with it, my Being. Washing the dishes became the same as going to a party.

Sure there was a long adjustment: learning to live with kundalini is a long process, affecting the somatic, metabolic as well as the emotional and the cognitive. I was no longer spiraling downward.

GROSS: You know, early in your career, you said that your work is really about the sadness normal people feel because they're not involved in show business.
(LAUGHTER)
WATERS: Somebody said that was the snottiest thing I've ever said. I didn't mean it to be snotty. But I believe that - that most everybody secretly imagines himself in show business. And every day on their way to work, they're a little bit depressed because they're not. People are sad they're not famous in America.

~ Terry Gross Interview with John Waters - "Cult Icon John Waters On Breaking Taboos And Embracing Villains" - Fresh Air, NPR

The Role of Kundalini in Spiritual Awakening

Episode 11: Stupid Equals...Heart Attack

Living With Kundalini

One of the most neglected aspects of kundalini is not the mystical aspects associated with awakening it, but rather the aftermath and the challenges of living with an active kundalini. Each time I reread what I've written about my own tribulations and the accounts of others, I have to admit there's a lot I don't know. After 50 years of living with it, I still learn everyday.

Yes, there are synergies and similarities among adepts. The feeling of unboundedness is universal and immediate, on the other hand, there are so many health variants. Can any one person know all there is about kundalini? I doubt it; the topic is too vast. In fact, if someone claims they know it all, beware...

Still, I keep writing about the euphoria as well as the dangers. Here's a 2014 excerpt from my book The Biology of Consciousness: Case Studies in Kundalini.

How do you live with a Close Encounter of the Third Kind? Answer: You live differently. In the case of Kundalini, you may not build a giant mud castle in your living room, but it will change your perspective, your thinking, your temperament, your body, your outlook, your very soul — which mixed together constitute what I call your being.

In the first place, if you activate it, you will have to adjust to living with it, and that, sad to say, is something many don’t consider beforehand. Too bad, because once it arrives, you’re stuck with it.

Now I didn’t think Whoa, I’m stuck with this. I welcomed it! But I had to learn to live with it on its terms. And that takes time. Kundalini affects your being, your consciousness, your emotional compass, and perhaps, most immediate, your sexuality.

If you are already stable and mature, you stand to gain immediately. You will make better judgments and better decisions. If you are unstable and immature, it may take a while to clear old conditioning. Not the fault of Kundalini, you may simply need more time to recognize that you can’t control it because you haven't been able to control yourself.

You must listen to it and adapt to its dictates. What kind of dictates? Kundalini doesn’t like foreign substances, including alcohol, all kinds of drugs, prescription and otherwise. It doesn’t want you to “waste the seed.” It needs your vital energy for sublimation purposes, to nourish your brain. It doesn’t like heavy food and overeating. You might even experiment with a largely vegetable and fruit diet, just to see how you feel and then compare it to your previous diet. Yes, I had to learn this bit by bit, to live with it, to integrate it into my daily life (aka: on-the-job training).

It helped me improve my relations with others, helped me engage in mature interpersonal relationships, especially with a spouse or partner. It’s a long, tiring journey from the rim to the center; you need all the life skills you can muster — all the support systems available, which means acting and responding to others as the Golden Rule dictates: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Not all paths are for you. However, some are, especially the one that is yours. But others are not. In fact, you may be better off not taking any path rather than taking the wrong one. In the final reckoning, it’s not questions and answers or intellectual analysis that will guide you, but your heart — that little voice inside you. But that, too, may be changed — you may not recognize your emotional responses during the initial period. You may even feel hostility, paranoia, and detachment — before the force is able to break down your resistance and show that you are not a separate being, unconnected to the rest of creation.

The one thing about that little voice — the more reliable you are, the better the voice serves you. And that means life-skills mastery: knowing right from wrong, listening to your body, treating others as you would be treated.

If you're struggling with this, there's some timely help out there in the form of a self-paced course by kundalini adept, Corinne Lebrun.

Corinne is a great resource; she puts her heart and soul into this course.

The Laboratory of Your Own Body

What do you think of your body? I know, it's just there and you're stuck with it. Perhaps you admire it, perhaps you don't. Feelings about it run the gamut...from pride to shame to I've-gotta-do-something-about it! Ever hear of Dr. John Lilly?

Lilly was a physician and psychoanalyst. He made contributions in the fields of biophysics, neurophysiology, electronics, computer science, and neuroanatomy. He invented and promoted the use of an isolation tank as a means of sensory deprivation.
Lilly's eclectic career began as a conventional scientist doing research for universities and government. Gradually, however, he began researching unconventional topics.

In 1953, Lilly began a job studying neurophysiology with the US Public Health Service Commissioned Officers Corps. At the N.I.M.H. in 1954, with the aim of isolating a brain from external stimulation, he devised the first isolation tank, a dark soundproof tank of warm salt water in which subjects could float for long periods in sensory isolation. Lilly and a research colleague were the first subjects of this research.

 ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly

Lilly's research stepped outside the conventional gamut of idealizing one's body into the realm of using the body as a laboratory, something all of us do without realizing it. Only Dr. Lilly took it to the extreme, sometimes spending days and nights in his isolation tank after having ingested a hardy dose of LSD.

That the body is a laboratory is something I became aware of long ago. Once I started to meditate, this realization jumped to the front burner, becoming ever more salient as my kundalini activated.

August 3, 2018 -  JJ iPhone self-portrait

Everything I was exposed to — diet, temperature, altitude, energy sources, sleep changes, exercise — had an immediate effect on me. And unlike "normal" people, I could feel each effect in real time. All of which made me more aware that life is a living experiment in evolution, and you can choose to evolve or devolve. In one way or another, we are all guinea pigs for evolution.

So when I visited the hospital on July 16th, exactly two weeks after my cardiac incident for a stress test, I was ill-prepared for the experiment I was to take a part in.

When I got there, they first jammed an IV into my arm (they love having those things dangling so they can keep filling you up with chemicals).

Then I waited for an hour, which was followed by being sent to a machine that resembles an MRI bed, but larger. They shoved me in and started a large box above me rotating in small increments, taking pictures of my heart.

After leaving that room, I waited another hour before being told to go to the treadmill room, where I was greeted by an assortment of nurses and technicians who placed sensors all over my back and chest. There was a short wait for the doctor whose role was overseeing the whole test.

The point is: get on the treadmill and walk/run until attaining a target heart rate. Of course, there's a formula for this: 220-your age x 80%. In my case, 220-80 x 0.8 = 112. My starting heart rate was 49.

I got going. They raised the incline to 10% and sped it up after a minute or two. "Okay," they said, "we're taking up again now. You've got to get up to 112." But I couldn't get up higher than 82.

They decided to fix that. "We're going up to a 20% incline and speed up the treadmill."

"Hey," I said, "I'm practically running now. It hasn't been all that while since my attack. I don't feel up to running uphill."

"When was your heart attack?"

"Exactly two weeks ago."

"Well, it may be too soon after an attack for the treadmill. No matter. We have an alternate test. Stretch out on the table alongside."

With trepidation, I got up, laid down on it. The nurse attached a device to the IV hanging off my arm and squeezed off some liquid.

"This simulates the treadmill."

I started to say that, given my inability to raise my heart rate, it might be better to use MPH than heart rate to calculate meaningful results when all of a sudden, I froze up. My mouth tried to form words, but nothing came out. I felt a unendurable pressure over my whole body, like I'd been given a KGB death-simulation, confession serum. I couldn't speak or move. I was locked in death throes, no spasms or writhing, just locked stiff. 

Immobilized and suspended in pain, would I have confessed? Probably, if they'd been agents of  a totalitarian regime, instead of nurses. Had Dr. Lilly felt the terror I'd experienced?

"Don't worry, it only lasts two minutes." Unable to speak, I'm thinking, Lower me into the grave when it's over.

I couldn't tell them to stop, my mouth muscles wouldn't obey. Thankfully, it did start to wear off, not all at once, only gradually. They sent me to the cafeteria after a while, all the time mumbling among themselves about maybe (yes, the ever-present spoiler 'maybe') it had been too soon for such a test.

 I was still shaking in the cafeteria as I sat down to devour my chicken and broccoli, which helped to calm my stricken body. 

One thing certain, that stuff had immobilized my kundalini. It came back to operational strength only after two days.

You never stop using the body as a laboratory, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.

Stupid Equals...Heart Attack

This headline isn't an analogy, or some sort of quip. Heart attack isn't a term to be bandied about. The words, "You've had a heart attack" are some of the least welcome you'll ever want to hear.

In the Hospital

And I had one, July 2. Out of stupidity? Perhaps. All I know was I confused kundalini symptoms with those of a heart attack? How could this ever come about, you ask? Here's how... 

Over the last two years, kundalini has moved massive amounts of energy into and around my left shoulder in an attempt to widen the muscles of that shoulder. I can feel it at work. At the same time, an artery to my heart had evidently started to clog. 'Why' was never fully determined.



That Monday, I awoke, took a shower, started to work but began to feel the type of sensations I'd associated with the kundalini work underway, only this time it was really active, shooting around my arms and shoulders, until finally locking into an area covered by football shoulder pads and it was painful: chest and back, six inches down both arms.

Very painful. And unlike previous what-I'd-call flashes it didn't go away, didn't subside. At first, I tried to ride it out, didn't want to bother my wife if it was eventually going to go away. It still thought it was kundalini.

I jogged and stretched trying to make it go away. But the pressure was to much, like it was being applied from both sides at once — from the inside and from the outside.

The notion this can't be kundalini started to take shape and I woke my wife, who, quite predictably, freaked out, but, like so many heroic women, once she understood, knew exactly what to do.

We piled into the car, and off to the hospital. Only problem...they didn't have a cardiac unit at that hospital, but did in the other hospital, 15 minutes away. So they packed me into an ambulance and away we went. 

The drill — switching hospitals — was very efficient. The last thing I remember on the way to the operating room was the doctor telling me, "You've had a heart attack. We're going to place some stents in your arteries to restore blood flow." I had no idea what a stent was. 

When I woke up, I felt great. I even got up and walked around the ward with the nurse that afternoon.

So here's the stupid part. When I was able to recall some of the events of the past two years and think things over, I realized that two separate processes had been at work in the same area of my body for the last two years — kundalini and artery blockage. Only I didn't know about the latter because, at first, the sensations I was feeling were consistent with kundalini energy movements I'd become accustomed to for the last 50 years. 

The following day the doctor came in with test results, telling me that my heart was in good shape, that I should have a good recovery. I could go back to work the following Monday.

When something like this happens, it's too bad you can't mention kundalini and be understood, that medical science wants no part of the "evolutionary energy."

But Kundalini didn't cause the attack; it's not responsible for the condition of my arteries, or any other organ. That I let my arteries deteriorate is no one's fault but my own. Cholesterol? Perhaps. Genetics? Possibly. The wear and tear on a 80-year-old body? Maybe.

Since the incident, I have investigated the cause and determined that most attacks like mine are due to high cholesterol.

"The average cholesterol for people living in the United States is much higher than 150 mg/dL; it hovers around 200 mg/dL. If your blood test results came back with a total cholesterol of 200 mg/dL, your physician might reassure you that your cholesterol is normal. But in a society where it’s normal to die of heart disease, having a “normal” cholesterol level is probably not a good thing. To become virtually heart-attack proof, you need to get your LDL cholesterol at least under 70 mg/dL."

~ GREGER, MICHAEL - How Not To Die: Discover the foods scientifically proven to  prevent and reverse disease. Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

By using a combination of diet recommended in the book cited above and periodic blood tests, my LDL cholesterol level tumbled from 164 on 01/04/ 2017 to 46 by 06/26/2019. And by the way, if you think this experience is a rarity, take a look at The Advanced Yoga Practices website.

One thing that did register, not that heart attacks are not to be feared, but that there are degrees of intensity. And I'm thankful to have undergone one that, at least for the time being, appears to be less critical. I still have a lot of work to do.