On kundalini and spiritual awakening for skeptics
Kundalini is poorly understood but could definitely be measured by biomedical science. It’s the bioenergy of spiritual awakening, but not the only way to achieve higher consciousness.
This is a basic blog to introduce the concept of kundalini to people who don’t know anything about it. If you’re looking for advanced material — or are having a kundalini awakening I have full topic page with advanced blog posts and resources.
Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash
“Gopi Krishna has written a series of books about kundalini. He very correctly says that it is the evolutionary force in consciousness and that is full development results in a spiritual and brilliant person.“
— MSS Gurucharan Singh Khalsa & Yogi Bhajan, Kundalini Evolution & Enlightenment
Most people don’t know anything about kundalini. That includes almost everyone who claims to have experienced it. While lots of people feel it twinge, a full-blown awakening is pretty rare. It cannot be marketed, so don’t bother trying to aquire it. There are less disruptive ways to wake up.
The basic metaphor for a kundalini awakening is that of spiritual puberty. Most people are spiritual children, a few people are spiritual adults, and no one gets from childhood to adulthood without some spiritual acne so to speak.
By observation, experience, and hypothesis I currently believe kundalini is a state-change in the body’s bioelectric field that allows for higher-order cognitive functions (increased health, increased IQ, psi or psychic perceptions independent of space-time, and expanded emotional processing).
Unfortunately, the fact that it is a physical state change, occurring rapidly in a binary quantum fashion, means the entire body needs to rewire. People can fry electronics like laptops and phones. Nerves fire in uncoordinated fashion creating muscle spasms, automatisms, pain, and hypersensitivity. Fatigue often develops with intense organic changes, and shedding symptoms. New perceptual and cognitive abilities can cause severe dysfunction in relationships, work, and social function. Basically, it really sucks.
With kundalini as compared to disease and mental illness all these difficulties diminish over time. It’s a good thing, a natural change, like puberty and evolution. Like puberty what appeared disruptive becomes a stable, higher functioning state when it completes.
Managing my kundalini awakening with… panache… is my main focus and has been for the last 10 years.
Kundalini and skeptics
I am always torn whether or not to talk about my kundalini awakening. The symptoms are so physical and so disruptive that I feel like people, and especially medical scientists, need to at least be familiar with the concept.
But the odds that a true kundalini awakening will happen to someone are really low. Most people only have a twinge (a kundalini rising experience), or transmitted experience (also known as shaktipat). For the rare person who has a real awakening, it can be devastating not to have the right information at the right time.
For a skeptic, or someone who is merely curious, all they need to know is:
Kundalini is a physical manifestation of one type of spiritual awakening.
That usually halts most people. If they don’t believe in spiritual awakening or don’t believe that spirituality can be physical there is no point in trying to explain kundalini further. If they are only being polite this little sound-bite leaves someone feeling informed without challenging their beliefs. If they remember it, and repeat it, the clip is enough to save the life of a person with a real kundalini awakening.
For those who are scientifically minded, Gopi Krishna had a real kundalini awakening and was ever-hopeful science would be able to measure the activated energy eventually. I definitely agree, my symptoms were so physical and obvious there is definitely something that could be measured in biomedical science. We would definitely need to use instruments that measure the bioelectric field in the human body as there is so much interference with electronic devices during active kundalini bursts.
The problem with research lies in recruitment. Most people who talk about kundalini are… full of shit. I was going to say something nice but I’ve just lost patience with it. The experience is rare and there is a ton of bullshit out there on the interweb. From people who think kundalini is something that could be bought or sold or will solve all their problems or give them superpowers.
So you could probably measure an activated kundalini it in one of several biomarkers available today, but the majority of people who show up claiming to have it won’t, so your data is shit and you’d find nothing.
The best science on the topic of kundalini is qualitative. You can read anything by Bonnie Greenwell who compiled over 1000 personal accounts of kundalini awakening for her Ph.D. thesis and that’s a good starting point to sort out who you should actually recruit for a quantitative study.
I’ve written a few reputable neuroscientists studying consciousness over the years to see if they wanted to investigate kundalini but no bites yet. If you’re a neuroscientist and you want a real recruit who can help you do good research on kundalini I’m interested. But only if the study is well designed by Western medical standards.
Kundalini and spiritual awakening
Most people know that taking acid can give you a samadhi experience (if its a good trip) or that ayahuasca gives you spiritual insights. People flock to these quick-fix spiritual tourism events. But when someone around them experiences the real thing in a spontaneous fashion they have no context for it.
Acid and ayahuasca are like kids playing dress-up in adult clothes. The clothes give the impression of adulthood, then the play ends, the experience fades and everyone is entertained. In contrast, a real kundalini awakening is a spiritual puberty. It is uncomfortable, often unsightly, and a permanent evolution in the soul.
A kundalini awakening is one form of a spiritual awakening. You can think of it as a particularly rapid form of spiritual puberty — one that often leaves the initiate disoriented. Kundalini can be triggered by genetics, childbirth, extreme emotion, a Reiki attunement, and a hell of a lot of yoga. It can be given as a gift that then fades, a twinge that then resolves, suppressed, fail to progress, or cause madness.
Rarely it completes, usually over a period of 5-20 years and with consistent, informed discipline and conscious engagement on the part of the initiate.
I cannot emphasize this enough, a real kundalini awakening is no joke. It can drive you mad, or kill you. Only people who are physically healthy, aggressively sane and pragmatic, and emotionally stable can complete it. It is not something you can buy, it is not a party trick, and it is NOT well understood. Anyone who tells you they know all about it is lying. It’s something, and its worth studying, but we haven’t harnessed it yet for sure.
Anyone who has a true experience of kundalini will be very, very humble about the experience. It’s like seeing a forest fire, a volcano, or a true ocean storm up close. It makes you feel very small, and very grateful to be alive. Its just bigger than the human psyche. If it ever flows through you, you will know this more intimately than you would prefer.
Kundalini and spiritual awakening for skeptics conclusion
Kundalini can be considered spiritual puberty, because most people are spiritual children, most people don’t know about it. It would probably be better if people knew a little bit about kundalini. At least that it was possible to have physical manifestations of a spiritual awakening.
There is definitely potential for the biomedical science on kundalini to advance but the problem is recruitment because most claimants are completely full of shit. Bonnie Greenwell and Gopi Krishna are good scientific starting points.
Someone cannot give you a kundalini awakening any more than they can give you puberty. No child really wants to go through puberty, no matter how much they want to be considered an adult. Forcing a child into early puberty is unhealthy, and unethical. A real master can tell you that puberty is normal and help you with some of the symptoms but they don’t own puberty any more than any biological organism does.
