In 1937 Gopi Krishna had what he calls his first Kundalini experience.
He states:
''Suddenly, with a roar like that of a waterful, I felt a stream of liquid light entering my brain through the spinal cord.
Entirely unprepared for such a development, I was completely taken by suprise; but regaining my self-control, keeping my mind on the point of Concentration.
The illumination grew brighter and brighter, the roaring louder, I experienced a rocking sensation and then felt myself slipping out of my body, entirely enveloped in a halo of light.
It is impossible to describe the experience accurately.
I felt the point of Consciousness that was myself growing wider surrounded by waves of light!
It grew wider and wider, spreading outward while the body, normally the immediate object of perception, appeared to have receeded into the distance until I became entirely unconscious of it.
I was now all consciousness without any outline, without any idea of corporeal appendage, without any feeling or sensation coming from the senses, immersed in a sea of light simultaneously conscious and aware at every point, spread out as it were, in all directions without any barrier or material obstruction.
I was no longer myself, or to be more accurate, no longer as I knew myself to be, a small point of awareness confined to a body, but instead was a vast circle of consciousness in which the body was but a point, bathed in light and in a state of exultation and happiness impossible to describe.''
Tuesday, 19 February 2008
An experience of Kundalini awakening
Posted by avatars-unite at 09:41
Labels: Gopi Krishna, Kundalini, Meditation, Samadhi, yogananda
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3 comments:
I find this experience of great interest. Having read many accounts of similar experiences by the Yogis of India I recount a passage from AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI by Paramahansa Yogananda when at his Masters Ashram, Swami Sri Yukteswar struck Yogananda gently on his chest above the heart inducing by Initiation an experience of Samadhi.
''A swelling glory within me began to envelop towns, continents, the earth, solar and stellar systems, tenuous nebulae, and floating universes.
The entire cosmos, gently luminous, like a city seen afar at night, glimmered within the infinitude of my being.
The dazzling light beyond the sharply etched global outlines faded slightly at the farthest edges; there I saw a mellow radiance, ever undiminished.
It was indescribably subtle; the planetary pictures were formed of a grosser light.''
Many yogis have heard this roar, like a waterful in Meditation.
Paramahansa Yogananda states, ''Through the Divine Eye in the forehead, the yogi sails his consciousness into Omnipresence, hearing the Word or AUM, divine sound of 'many waters', the vibrations of light that that constitute the sole reality of Creation.''
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THE LAST INTERVIEW WITH GOPI KRISHNA - Video
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xwrgp_the-last-interview-with-gopi-krishn
THE LAST INTERVIEW WITH GOPI KRISHNA A Conversation about Higher Consciousness and the Evolution of the Human Brain
TK: Mr Krishna, you have had a Kundalini experience. I wish you could explain what a Kundalini experience is and what its ramifications are.
GK: Before I start to describe my own experience, perhaps it would be better to give a little detail about what Kundalini means. We are not using the totality of the human brain. According to various estimates, most of us use only ten percent of the brain and according to some only eight percent. That means 90 percent of the brain is unutilized, that there is still a large margin in the brain which could be used for other purposes, and nature has provided it for certain purposes which are not yet known to science. According to Indian tradition, there is a region in the brain below the crown and about the pallette which is called Brahmarendra or the cavity of Brahman. This region can be activated by certain disciplines and when activated it can give to the individual the same vision of the universe which all great mystics of the Earth have described. When it is awakened the normal energy of the body or the blood is not able to fuel the center. It needs a more powerful and constrained psychic fuel. This fuel comes from the reproductive system, which is transformed into a kind of radiation and that radiation awakens and makes the center function.
In my case, the awakening occurred at the age of 34, in 1937. I had been meditating for 17 years and then all of a sudden during Christmas, while I was sitting cross-legged in a state of meditation, a strange thing happened. Something exploded in my brain and a current of silvery light rising from my spine radiated throughout my whole brain, and I felt myself expanding in all directions. This expansion was so incredible, so amazing that I thought that something unusual had happened in my inner ear. After this I had two other experiences of the same kind, at short intervals apart, and it then succeeded.
But something was changing in me and I could perceive this change for many, many years, day and night. In fact, I passed through grave crises during that period. Finally, I became stabilized in that condition of consciousness in my 49th year. Since that time I have been living in that condition. That is to say, before my 34th year I was living in this world thinking, seeing, perceiving in the same way as other people do, but since my 49th year I have been living in two different worlds. One is the normal world of senses and reason, and the other is the world which is much higher, much more happy and which is totally apart from anything that we can know of the earth. It is the world of consciousness.
TK: How do you see the world?
GK: We know what all people perceive of this world. I can understand what you perceive of it, you can understand what I perceive of it. That is, this perception is uniform. Everyone has the same perception. But this other perception is different. In this other perception you do not see the world as a solid, real, objective creation. The real objective creation is consciousness. You see consciousness everywhere. You see the ocean as if it is consciousness everywhere. You see the ocean as if it is living; you see a mountain as if it is living; you see the sky as if it is living; you see the Earth as if it is living; you see life or consciousness everywhere. And this life or consciousness is not something which is really dead or which is something you can understand. It is unfathomable. It is wonder and everytime you see it, you perceive it. The wonder grows deeper. I am never tired of sitting in quiet and reflecting on myself. I am never tired of looking at the sky. The sky, to me, does not appear as it appeared before my 34th year; it is so fascinating. It is such a beautiful vision that I would like to look at it for days and months on end. In other words, in the air a fountain of happiness, a new kingdom, I should say, is opened. This is probably what Christ meant when he said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." This is the Nirvana of Buddha; and this is the state of Vada mentioned by the Suffi mystics. In fact, in this inactive state what we perceive is consciousness in its most magic form, in its glorious form, and not consciousness as a point looking through the eyes or hearing through the ears, but a consciousness which has its own channels and which knows that it is the master and not the slave of the material forces which knows it is the creator. It is infinite: it is deathless. In this state one feels himself to be a king, he feels himself to be the master of what he sees. It is not the ego. I should say it is not the ego; it is the very condition of this consciousness. That is the reason why it is said that no mystic would change his state even for a kingdom. It is somehing so unique, so glorious, so elevating that I have no words to describe this state.
TK: What type of life must a person live to awaken their Kundalini?
GK: In order to make this clear, I would like to say that it is not Kundalini per se, Kundalini is the power, the mechanism. But actually, what we do is awaken to activity a certain region in the brain. This means that nature has already provided a potential in the brain which has to be awakened. This means that the brain can still organically evolve to a higher performance. This is my experience, that the human brain is still organically evolving in the direction of the great mystics, in the same direction as the great geniuses. For this evolution a certain type of life is necessary.
For instance, throughout our life this evolution is relentlessly going on and we have to cooperate with it. When we do not cooperate with the inner evolution we create problems for ourselves. For that purpose, for the last 5,000 years at least great prophets have been born. Beginning with the Vedas, then Buddha, then Christ, then Mohammed, then Guru Nanak, and all the ancient prophets of the Bible, they have been born time after time, and they have given some 'teaching to mankind', which was a direction for how to live while the brain is still evolving. Their Sermon on the Mount, the Ten Commandments, the Discourses of Buddha, The Bhagavad-Gita, and all those directions contained in the religious scriptures of the Earth -- they are all meant to regulate our life so that we may live in harmony with the law of evolution which governs our life.
The revolutionaries have come to regulate the lives of human beings so that they may work in harmony with the law of evolution that is at work day and night within their brains. When they depart from this law of evolution, they always bring calamities or problems upon themselves. The present time is one such occasion when we have digressed from the laws of evolution and the result is that we are threatened from many directions.
The life to be lived is just as you see in the sermon on the Mountain - a life of humility, a life of love, a life of purity, a life in which you wish for others what you wish for yourself, a life in wich you are pure, you are not sophisticated, you are not overly clever, you are not smart, you do not use your cleverness or smartness to take what belongs to others, a life of extreme purity and a life of simplicity, that you do not waste the resources of the Earth.
As you know, every animal satisfies his basic needs from the recycled resources of the Earth. Man is the only creature who is wasting the basic resources -- the minerals -- for his own luxury and pleasure. That is what the Sermon on the Mount is meant to teach, that humanity should live simply, beautiful, pure, compassionate lives. That is the type of life necessary for the awakening of Kundalini.
TK: And this is what all religions of the world say?
GK: Every prophet, every great mystic, even every philosopher, for instance, Socrates or Plato. We will find that this life is okay: purity, compassion, love, service is the ideal life which human beings have to live.
TK: Is there no change in consciousness in birth or in death? Would you explain that?
GK: Here we come to metaphysics. We see the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening. Actually, is there any change in the sun? The same is true of consciousness.
Consciousness is eternal: our souls. They are eternal, immutable, omissive, omni-present, omnipotent, and our spark partakes of the same nature as the divine, so there can be no death for this, no change for this. The change occurs in our shells, mind, intellect, the senses. But not in the essence, the principles which is consciousness.
TK: The more we use our mind, the greater our development of our evolution takes place.
GK: The human brain is evolving rapidly because from morning until evening we are applying our brain to some task, we are reading, we are looking through the newspapers, we are watching the television or we are working in the office.
Most of the people are applying their brain throughout the day, this was not the case before when people hunted or when they were tilling the soil; they had no need to apply their brain in such a constrained way.
We are now applying our brain in a very constrained way, from morning until night. In other words we are meditating, though on material objects. The result is a rapid state of evolution.
Our way of life must change, but we have not changed, on the other hand. We have made our living and our life more and more complex and intricate, so that all day we are working and working and working to feed our belly, to live. We are giving no time to the mind, no time to the spirit. We are not giving any thought to it. The results is that there is a disproportionate evolution. We have developed a very powerful intellect as seen by the scientific discoveries that have been made and the changes that have occurred in our life, but on the other hand our spiritual and moral growth has been negligible.
So what we have in mordern times is a disproportionate human being, a giant of the intellect, on the one hand, and a pygmy of moral or spiritual growth. This disproportion is at the base of the present threatening situation of the world.
TK: What can we do to remedy that?
GK: What we can do is to make a thorough research of all the religious scriptures of mankind, of all the occult traditions of the past, and to make experiments on the brain. In fact, yoga was devised in India to make experiments on the brain. The very word "yoga" means to yoke, to join the individual soul with the over-soul, with moderation, with temperance. It is this type of life that has to be led, not a luxury life of wasting the Earth's resources, of pollutants polluting the planet, so that nature's forces are now creating a situation in which either calamity occurs which will change the direction of human life, or by their own sensible reaction they will change themselves. Change has to occur in any way.
TK: The research of this force is the most urgent task of our time.
GK: It is the most urgent. I have been saying it, after observing my own state for at least 30 years. For 30 years I said nothing because I wanted to confirm that my experience was real experience, and not a delusion and that it is corroborated by ancient tradition. I made a study of those traditions, and I found that my experience is in conformity to the ancient traditions. After that I wrote my first book, and now in my 80th year I solemnly say this and this alone is the answer to modern crises.
The answer is this: The brain is evolving and present science doesn't know how. There is complete darkness about it because you cannot see this evolution of the brain. By external observation can see only neurons and their connections. It has to be seen from internal observation by awakening this power. When this power is awakened, then you are able to observe the internal working of the brain and that shows you that you are still evolving.
TK: What do you propose? How do we investigate this?
GK: I think any sane government, any good government, should first make research on the brain, on the nervous system. The ancient religious traditions, the ancient occult traditions. After all, we have to understand that religion has always been a companion of man. We have evidence that man was religious even two hundred thousand years ago. The first relics found show that those people were performing religious rituals, so it means religion has always been a part of human life.
What research have we made on it? We have made research on psychic coma. But no research on religious tradition and religious experience. If we were to devote as much time and resources as we devote to other scientific experiments, the results would be a hundred-fold more precious.
TK: The results would prove...
GK: The results will show that the human brain is still organically evolving, that certain lifestyles, certain ways of behavior are necessary to live in conformity to the inner changes, and that religion came in time to guide mankind on this path.
TK: And it is the path that will lead us to the stars, if it is our purpose to.
GK: It will lead humanity to this new dimension of consciousness. It will lead to the goal which nature has assigned for her. It will lead humanity to a peaceful co-existence, to happiness, to long life, to much greater achievement than she has done, even now. It will lead her to the exploration of the universe.
TK: How will this affect the political structure?
GK: I need not say, for the experiments will show what kind of life and what kind of environment a human being must have to evolve completely in harmony with the law of evolution, there will be more freedom.
TK: I believe that things happpen not by chance but by purpose to our life, that there is a purpose to our existence.
GK: Now, please tell me, can such a vast creation be purposeless? Can such a vast creation come out of nothing? Can such a vast creation ruled by laws be all composed of dead, insensitive matter? The very idea of being - existence - - comes from the mind. A rock or a mountain or an ocean has no idea of existence, this existence comes from intelligence, and the author of the universe must be intelligent. If we didn't have an intelligent creator, there would be no purpose to this existence. There must be a purpose. If there was no purpose, how have we then come to have a purpose in ourselves? We do everything with a purpose. How has this purpose come if there is no purpose in creation? How do we act on purpose? So it means that purpose and plan is a part of consciousness.
TK: The very fact that we build nuclear weapons is spiting nature's wrath. You said that nature is very merciful, and that nature will use the least amount of force to put us back on the proper path.
GK: Unless nature were merciful, how would we be here? You see this Earth, inside the Earth, fire, it is a volcano, inside inferno and outside the Earth fire. You have cosmic rays coming, for which you have an umbrella. Known as the "hemisphere layer" this umbrella is 50 miles from the earth. If you didn't have this layer there would be total destruction of all life in a short time. We are so protected that even on single slip or error can destroy all of life on Earth. If nature were not merciful, how could we live? The very fact that we are alive and that all these hazards around us are controlled by other powers means that nature is merciful and kind.
TK: And even though we are building nuclear weapons, spiting nature's wrath, nature will be merciful.
GK: It gives us chance after chance. Just as we overeat and go on overeating, many times nature forgives us. But when we indulge too much in this bad habit we have a serious pain in our digestive organs. When we overdo a thing then naturally disaster overtakes us, so we cannot blame nature. But ourselves, we have an intelligence, we have reason, we have learning. But if by having everything we ignore it, then of course nature has no alternative except to teach us by suffering. For instance, 16 civilizations have perished so far, and we are not even aware of what reasons prevailed that made those civilizations at the height of power mingle with dust. The reason is that at every stage of progress, life of man has to change.
For instance, a child grows up and he lives one type of life when is an infant. Another kind of child, has tastes, his activities change when he is an adolescent, then further when he is an adult. Then when he is mature and at last when he is old. At every stage he has different tastes, different activities, different ways of life. The same is the case of nations and people. They have to change at every stage in their development. For instance, there were once feudal systems: before that, clans, tribes, or monarchies. But now we have democracy, so even the systems of our governments are changing. Why? Because our brain is evolving. But when we stop living according to the laws of our evolution, we degenerate indignantly. This is also happening at present.
TK: If a man wants to go into his room and hang himself, no one can stop him. This is what we are doing with nuclear weapons.
GK: When we deviate from the path we invite suffering and disaster for us. There are devices in our brain, in consciousness, which when we digress we invite a calamity or disaster. We are devising nuclear weapons: there is no sense in that. War can be fought without nuclear weapons but we are devising weapons to punish ourselves.
TK: So what is the hope? Where does the hope come from?
GK: Heaven is always merciful. If we analyze the course of our present dilemma -- crisis -- and try to change that, try to live more in harmony with the laws of evolution, this threat will be averted. But if we continue like this there is no chance. We must suffer.
TK: What would you tell the leaders of the world?
GK: The leaders of the world have to be convinced and for that convincing the experiment is necessary.
TK: The analyzing of Kundalini energy?
GK: We have to show that the brain is evolving, and that this evolution needs a certain kind of harmonious life. If this life is denied, man degenerates and brings calamity upon himself.
TK: You have the Kundalini Research Foundation in Canada and in Switzerland. Please explain to the public what this is.
GK: It can be started anywhere. If it is good, it is started in many places. The United States can provide a beautiful environment for this experiment.
TK: You propose taking a hundred people and...
GK: For the experiment a hundred people will be needed but for running the organization we can have any number of people who have a deep passion for spiritual matters and who are prepared to mold their lives in consort with the spiritual laws. They would be more than welcome in this organization.
TK: And these hundred people will lead a life prescribed and hopefully out of this hundred, one or two will awaken.
GK: Out of the hundred to whom the disciplines are given, maybe three or four will show the symptoms, some time after which scientists can observe them.
TK: What would examples of this be? What will happen to these people?
GK: What will happen is that the brain activity will be increased and its effect will be found all over the body. There will be metabolic processes which can be measured. There will be physiological changes which can be measured.
TK: And the effects of this on the world?
GK: They will convince the biologist that this change of the mind, of the brain, has physiological systems. Those into whom these processes start may bloom into geniuses. By blooming into a mystic, both sides will be confirmed. For it is the evolution of the brain that creates a mystic or a genius.
TK: And these are the same mystics and geniuses all throughout time, that we would study in the past?
GK: For the first time we will study the religions and the occult literature of the world with an aim to finding how the brain evolves, and what methods are needed to make it more active so that the evolutionary processes become faster.
TK: So in effect this will be the spearhead of a new race of human beings to prove all human begins have this ability.
GK: It will be a spearhead for many things. It will be the spearhead of changes in the social and political systems. It will be a spearhead for the first time bringing to the notice of the race that there is the potential in every human being which is the most precious asset that he has, and which can transform him from a mortal into an immortal and eternal source of happiness.
TK: Is this what evolution has meant of human destiny and it is inevitable for this to take place?
GK: Man has come for this purpose. Otherwise please consider this for a moment: one whole planet -- the Earth -- and all its kingdom -- mineral, animal, everything -- is placed at his disposal. Why? Because man has to attain to other states of consciousness for which all these recourses are needed by him. Otherwise, if it is not a planned creation it would be useless to put all this at his disposal. If he has nothing to do, only to live like animals. It is because he has to reach to higher dimensions of consciousness that all this Earth and its resources have been placed at his disposal, and he has been granted an intelligence to make the best use of it.
TK: A strong love from birth, a strong mother and father, a strong, loving environment will help develop this.
GK: I can't say strong, but I can say that a more harmonious, more peaceful, more happy, more contented humanity will come out of this, and then in every generation there will be some people who have reached the higher dimensions. They will be the rulers, political leaders, scientists, and educators. They will guide the race to rise higher and higher and higher.
TK: And we don't have a spiritual leader of that magnitude today?
GK: At this time we do not but they will come. They will be born when experiments are made and what I say is confirmed.
TK: What is your wish for the children of the future?
GK: Children should be brought up with the ideal cultivated in them that the universe is ruled by an intelligent power, that they must cultivate purity, honesty, truth, compassion and live ideal lives. In that way they will conform to the evolutionary needs. That is the best thing we can do for the children.
TK: How can we help the people today who have been lost to drugs or have killed people? What do they need to know?
GK: When you place before them an alternative that in their own entirety there is a mind of happiness, an ocean of eternal life, and prove it they will take that path. You must show them a better incentive.
TK: What do we need to evolve moderate lifestyles? How can we effect our evolutionary process the best?
GK: We need healthy food, simple dress, a clean shelter, a wholesome occupation, education for our children, to have the highest happiness on the earth. Happiness comes from the mind, not from the world. A man may have all the luxuries but his mind might be depressed. He will never be happy. It is the mind that gives us happiness. A peasant, a poor farmer eating just a bread with a little salt, sometimes has a better appetite and eats with more relish, than a rich man who eats all his delicious food. Nature is very, very wise in this. I have seen people who live hardy lives who eat with such an appetite, simple foods that one would like to eat with them.
TK: Are the biological bases of manic depression, schizophrenia, and genius all manifestations of the same thing?
GK: Yes, they are interrelated. You see, if you do not live a disciplined life, then the awakening of this center can be unhealthy. We know that many of the geniuses perhaps have been most mentally unhealthy, had on mental disorder or the other. This is due to the fact that they did not know how they had to live. Similarly, we have this schizophrenia. Many people who think they are poets, some who think they are spiritual geniuses, some who think they are in touch with God. That means a distorted vision of the same power.
TK: It means that their Kundalini --if that's the right word -- is off balance.
GK: Yes, it means that the system is not pure and that the energy is not working in a healthy way.
TK: Do you feel that there are other life forms beyond our life?
GK: There can be in the universe different species of life more intelligent than we. It is a vast place and there can be thousands of species different and more intelligent than we.
***
PROPOSAL FOR A SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION INTO THE BIOLOGICAL MECHANISM BEHIND HUMAN EVOLUTION
OVERVIEW
It has been said that Gopi Krishna’s greatest fault was that he had only one message and that all of his writings - more than a dozen books, scores of articles, interviews and lectures, and voluminous unpublished writings and correspondence - dealt with that message in one way or another.
The reason why he never varied this one message was because he took his directions from the Source from which he drew his inspiration. What the world stands most urgently in need of, he said, is knowledge of the Law of Evolution. The drama that is being enacted all over the earth at this moment is staged to bring about drastic changes in the thinking and behavior of the race. Nature is screaming warning after warning. This is what Gopi Krishna said when he first proposed that science should do its utmost to discover the Law of Evolution. He made this appeal to scientists, scholars and world leaders in "The Biological Basis of Religion and Genius", a landmark book published by Harper & Row in 1972. The noted scientist, Prof. C. F. von Weizsacker, director of the Max Planck Institute of Life Sciences, wrote the introduction.
In that book, Gopi Krishna pointed out that the mounting tensions in the world, increase in crime and violence, the trend towards more and more destructive machines of war, revolutions, terrorism and massacres, were the red-light signals of Nature foreboding disaster. If the leading minds of the world fail to interpret these red lights in the right way, a catastrophe is inevitable.
A VERITABLE TOWER OF BABEL
But the political leaders of almost all countries are entirely occupied with their own problems, and the leading scholars are lost in the labyrinth of their own learning. The result is that in spite of all the progress made, the earth has become a veritable Tower of Babel where the essentials needed for human survival, peace and happiness are lost in the hunt for faster cars, planes, computers or other extravagant additions to the existing flood of technologies and luxuries.
This is the reason why there is a virtual avalanche of interest in the study of consciousness at this time. The number of conferences, Web Sites, books, and other publications on consciousness is growing month by month. There is even talk about a new "science of consciousness", but it is not clear what this term means.
"The recent surge of interest in consciousness studies has left many commentators scratching their heads and looking for an explanation," says the publisher of the Journal of Consciousness Studies. "Seeing as science has effectively ignored the problem for most of this century, then why the sudden change? This used to be the province of religion, but we now look to science to provide a more authentic description of what it is to be a conscious agent."
When once the experiments proposed here are confirmed, there will be no subject that will receive as much sustained attention from scholars and scientists as this. The evolution of consciousness will shortly be taken up by scholars in all its different aspects - spiritual, psychological, sociological and biological. But the most colossal task will be to explain the evolution of the mind in terms of the organic evolution of the brain.
MYSTICAL CONSCIOUSNESS DEFINED BIOLOGICALLY
This would mean, for example, that the transcendental state of consciousness, experienced in the form of ecstasy by prophets and mystics, does not signify a special favor from God but only a more extended dimension of the perceptual faculty towards which mankind is irresistibly evolving.
As far as we know, this is the first time that Mystical Consciousness, or the organic mechanism leading to it, namely Kundalini, have been defined in this way. Credit for this monumental discovery must be given to the illuminated sages of ancient India. We are only presenting their discoveries and knowledge in the language of science.
BEYOND ANYTHING CURRENTLY PROPOSED
We are not saying that the human mind is evolving towards an undefined summit, as Teilhard de Chardin and others have said. What we are suggesting is that human consciousness is evolving towards a predetermined target and that this target is the mystical or illuminated state attained by thousands of mystics and enlightened human beings in the past. The religious scriptures of the world are a harvest of the revelations received from a higher Intelligence in this state of exalted being.
Investigation into Kundalini, therefore, goes far beyond anything currently under way or proposed by scholars in other fields of consciousness research. By penetrating to the very roots of consciousness, the research will attempt to unravel the mysterious world of intuition, creativity and evolution, and by doing so seek to uncover the source from which all knowledge, science, art and philosophy has sprung, namely genius.
A GREAT NEED FOR GENIUSES
The world at this time stands in desperate need of geniuses, especially political geniuses who could bring in line the existing systems of politics with the needs of millions of fast-evolving human beings.
In jurisprudence, geniuses are needed to revise the outmoded, cumbersome systems dating from the Romans. In science, in healing, and in social science, geniuses are needed to remedy the present imbalances and plant society firmly on the path to the sublime state which is its destined evolutionary goal. Kundalini research would be based on the premise that there is a potentiality in the human brain, not merely a spiritual but an organic potentiality as well which, when actualized, can alter the state of the mirror through which average men and women perceive the image of the universe. With this alteration, the whole aspect of creation is changed and a new horizon opens.
It is only in this state of transformed consciousness that the real nature of the mind stands revealed, and the conclusion becomes clear that the cosmic image, presented by our senses, is not a reality in itself, but a reflection of the mind. And this reflection can vary with alterations in the state or dimension of the mind itself.
KUNDALINI, THE EVOLUTIONARY ENERGY IN MAN
For thousands of years, mystics have been unanimous in their avowals that the physical universe is the creation or projection of a Divine Immanence, but they never succeeded in imparting the vision to their compatriots or convincing the learned that such a transformation of the world image and the observing mind is possible. Or that it is only in this state of enhanced perception that the real nature of the Cosmos is exposed.
They did not succeed because all human beings, except these few specially gifted ones, view the universe through the same sensory channels and the same mirror of the mind without ever having a chance, except rarely in dreams, to transcend this state of confinement.
What we are saying about creativity, genius, and evolution, is not intellectual or theoretical but born of the experience gained by Gopi Krishna over a period of nearly fifty years. He observed himself as meticulously and dispassionately as an empiricist would observe an object under study in his own laboratory. He never allowed his feelings to influence his judgment in the least.
His experience was so extraordinary that it is hard to imagine another recorded narrative anywhere of similar happenings. Even so, he purposely refrained from narrating some of the more bizarre incidents, even in his autobiography, "Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man", because he felt they would be unacceptable to a rational mind.
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW OF KUNDALINI
From the time of the Vedas to the present day, there has existed a tradition in India that there is a force in the human body, residing at the base of the spine, known as Kundalini, which means "the coiled," that can be aroused to activity, with certain mental and physical disciplines, including meditation and a righteous way of life. When aroused, this force rises to a certain region in the brain, known as Brahmarendra or the cavity of Brahman, which, also, is simultaneously awakened to activity.
It is said, that when this happens, the human mind is transformed and attains to a state known as mystical ecstasy or samadhi. This mystical ecstasy has been a repeated feature of history and is confirmed by the self-written narratives of mystics and saints, both of the East and the West, in different cultures of the world.
The basic features of the phenomenon tally with each other, which shows the uniformity of the experience and its objective nature. This very same force is said to be the source of inspiration and genius in numerous treatises on the subject from the Vedas to our day.
Inasmuch as Gopi Krishna’s own experience coincided in almost all respects with the ancient Kundalini traditions, concerning its transformative effects on the human brain, he considered it his solemn duty to make it known to the world for investigation and confirmation.
THOUSANDS OF TEXTS ON KUNDALINI
The volume of literature on Kundalini (or the Serpent power) is enormous. In India alone there are thousands of books, including the Tantras, dealing with this holy subject in Sanskrit and other regional languages of the country. Kundalini has also been known for thousands of years among occultists, alchemists and esoteric brotherhoods in Europe.
The serpent symbol on the forehead of the pharaohs, the hermetic doctrines and the mystery cults of Greece and Rome are all related to the knowledge of the Serpent power. The caduceus or the rod of mercury, which serves now as an academic emblem, is a symbolic representation of this power as clear as the diagrammatic symbols used in India.
There is conclusive evidence to show that Kundalini has been known throughout the past, both in the old and new worlds as a jealously guarded secret of a few. The only period in history when the subject has been delegated to the dustbin of superstition and myth is the present rationalistic era of the last two hundred years.
GOPI KRISHNA’S OWN EXPERIENCE
A few months before his death in 1984, Gopi Krishna was asked to write an article on creativity for "Impact of Science on Society", a journal published by the United Nations. Although he was unable to submit the article before he died, he had completed about 6,000 words. The following is an excerpt from that article:
"After my first experience [with Kundalini], I oscillated between life and death, sanity and insanity, for nearly twelve years and experienced the indescribable ecstasies of the mystics on the one hand and the agonies of the mentally afflicted on the other. For part of this period my mental state became so acute that, when retiring to my bed at night, I was never sure whether or not I would rise alive or sane in the morning.
"But almost by a miracle my reason and judgment remained unimpaired, which allowed me always to evaluate my mental condition day and night. I clearly saw my whole organism battling with a new situation in my interior, as if a new and powerful psychic energy was operating in my brain and the nerves in place of the former, much weaker, current whose passage I could not feel at all.
"But the powerful energy now circulating in my system filled my head with a silvery luster and darted through my nerves and organs in flashes of light. At the same time, I started to hear an inner cadence, varying in tone and pitch, from time to time, which has lasted to this day. This play of sound is known as unstruck melody in all the books on Kundalini or yoga in India and is an unmistakable sign of the awakening of this power.
BATHED IN A HEAVENLY LUSTER
"Inner light is an invariable feature of mystical experience and has been variously described by the mystics of all ages and climes. In the mystical trance the subject finds his visionary experiences bathed in a heavenly luster and, sometimes, hears voices or sounds coming out of empty space around. After nearly twelve years of uncertainty and suspense I found myself well established in a new state of perception, resulting from a continued biological transformation that had occurred during this long period.
"In my ignorance, I could not make the head or the tail, however, because the whole province of this extraordinary potential in the human body is shrouded in mystery. There is no knowledge or record of it except in obscure language or veiled hints in the occult or mystical literature of mankind.
AN IRRESISTIBLE URGE TO WRITE
"I now came to realize that every panorama of nature had a beauty for me that I had never noticed before. Every landscape or scene which I observed and every object which I saw was bathed in a milky luster which enchanted me and I could hardly take off my eyes from it so fascinating was the spectacle at times.
"My ears were always listening to a melody which enraptured me except at times when I had some health problem when the sounds became somewhat discordant and harsh, as if to warn me that something was amiss in my interior.
"This helped me times without number to assess the condition of my health and to take precautions in time. This was not all. About the end of this period I felt an irresistible urge to write in verse. This urge finally culminated in a small booklet of poetry, written in nine languages, out of which four were unknown to me.
"I had never written a line of poetry in my life, and in normal conditions was incapable of writing even a few lines in rhyme and meter even if I tried for days. But now I found that finished lines of poetry, whole paragraphs, or even entire poems came to me in a flash as if emerging from the surrounding emptiness and, sometimes, I found it difficult to put them on paper so rapid was the flow.
A VERITABLE PARADISE IN MY INTERIOR
"The rapture experienced in the mystical state is said to be beyond anything experienced in normal awareness. The mystics of both the East and the West are unanimous in their avowals about this aspect of mystical ecstasy. From the day I found myself established in this state of transport I never went back to the chaotic experiences of the past.
"The new awareness which invested every object and every scene I witnessed with a beauty and a glory I had never perceived before, instead of ceasing after a time became a more and more stable and a lasting feature of my consciousness.
"Today I live in a veritable paradise in my interior. The colors I see, as for instance the blue of the sky, are so lovely and bathed in a silvery radiance and the music I hear is so melodious, at times, that if I did not restrain myself I might swoon with the sheer rapture of it.
"I know that what I say might appear incredible but there is ample material in the Upanishads, and in the writings of great mystics, like Abhinaba Gupta and Shankaracharya and others in India, also in some of the Sufis, Christian mystics and Taoists, which shows that such a condition of perennial beatitude is possible.
"Not only this, but soon after my attempts at writing in verse, I felt an irresistible urge to learn other languages. Unfortunately, utter lack of resources and the unsettled state of my physical health made it impossible for me to satisfy this desire and to engage the services of teachers for this purpose. I did not have even the means to educate my children properly or to provide myself with some of the articles of diet I needed.
"This aggravated my health problems and it was not until I was sixty-four years of age that I could command the means to meet my needs and to settle down to a peaceful and creative life. My first book was published in 1967 and since then fifteen more volumes have been printed and about a dozen more unfinished tomes await publication in the immediate future.
WRITING FOR IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON SOCIETY
"I at first hesitated to write for the "Impact of Science on Society", under the impression that what I had to say did not fall in the province of modern science, but, reflecting on the fact that the phenomena investigated by parapsychology are now accepted as possible by a large section of scientists, and also that the chance-born nature of life and mind advocated by Darwin and his successors which influenced scientific thinking for nearly a century is now under fire, I feel that the time is opportune to present my experience as a factor to be considered in a scientific discussion of creativity and innovation.
"I do not claim that my poetry or my prose possess that excellence which is the hallmark of genius but for one who had never been a poet or a writer all his life the sudden acquisition of the gifts, at an advanced age, as it happened in my case, is not an ordinary occurrence and I view it in the same way as Newton viewed the fall of an apple as an indication of the universal law of gravity.
"I have presented these few facts about my experience not for any personal reasons, but on account of the tremendous scientific potential which they possess. Briefly summarized the conclusions that emerge from this experience are as follows:
"1. That the gift of creativity was exhibited when the turmoil caused in the system on the arousal of Kundalini had subsided nearly twelve years after the first experience, during which the bodily changes experienced were meticulously observed.
"2. That the poetry and even prose is inspired, which is borne out by the rapidity with which it is written and the swiftness with which the ideas crowd in the mind, a phenomenon experienced by a number of gifted writers and poets even during recent times.
"3. The paranormal nature of some of the writings, especially in verse, about the future a clear case of precognition and prophecy. To be more precise I call it prognostication and not prediction though, all the same, it falls into the category of the paranormal. The experience related meets all three categories of creativity, namely the normal, paranormal and the prophetic.
FUELED BY A MORE POTENT PSYCHIC ENERGY
"By suggesting the activity of a specific area of the brain and its fueling by a more potent psychic energy, as the true source of creativity, psychic gifts and mystical experience, the riddle of the extraordinary achievements of child prodigies is also solved.
"What I have stated covers the entire field of creativity and paranormal phenomena. The abnormality of genius and, to some extent, of the mystics and mediums, also is explained by my traumatic experiences for nearly twelve years after the experience.
"Abnormal conditions arise when the body as a whole or any organ or organs are not able to adapt themselves to the flow of the new psychic energy or when the lifestyle followed or the mode of behavior is not in harmony with the inner processes of the creative mind. “
"It is not that genius is closely allied to or a form of madness or the result of degeneration but that it is attended by abnormal states of the mind or body, because there is a complete lack of knowledge of the psychosomatic mechanism responsible for it and of the pattern of life to be followed by those in whom this Promethean fire is burning bright.
NOW KUNDALINI HAS BECOME WELL KNOWN
"When my autobiography, "Kundalini, The Evolutionary Energy in Man", was published in 1967, I expected trenchant criticism from the skeptics and a barrage of questions from the learned but, although the work has been translated and published in many languages of the world, it has not excited even a fragment of the incredulity I had expected.
"On the contrary, other books on the subject have been published, a few by scientists and, what is more surprising, even Kundalini clinics have been opened to treat patients with ill effects from the arousal of this power brought about by the practice of yoga or other forms of spiritual discipline. The phenomenon has more or less been accepted, perhaps on account of the prevalence of occult traditions concerning this power in many parts of the earth.
"Whatever the reason, the phenomenon of Kundalini has become well known. And because of its implications as a major factor in creativity and mental disorder, it stands in urgent need of a thorough scientific investigation which has not been conducted so far.
THE MATERIAL COMES EFFORTLESSLY
"I have been led to the conclusion that Kundalini is the source of inspiration by comparing the creative process in myself with that reported or narrated by other writers, poets, painters, musicians and the rest. I often write in full consciousness, weighing every word which flashes across my mind before putting it down on paper.
"But the material comes effortlessly, sentence after sentence, passage after passage or line after line of poetry, usually rhymed. It seems as if completed sentences, couplets, or quatrains already formed are floating before my mind to be recorded.
"Sometimes I am filled with awe at the way in which the creative process works. Whole pages or even chapters flash before my inner eye so rapidly that I am not able to write them down however hard I may try to do so. The gaps left are filled later.
"As I have already stated, my whole inner being is now like a brilliantly lighted chamber of immeasurable dimensions. The moment I try to measure its limits, it expands further and further until I feel myself floating in a measureless void. In deeper moods it is from this unbounded emptiness that the words and the ideas seem to arise and vanish again after imprinting themselves upon my memory.
POINCARE AND COLERIDGE AS CASES IN POINT
"The mathematician Henri Poincare mentions that one evening, after having drunk black coffee, he lay awake unable to sleep and became a spectator of an ordinarily hidden aspect of his own spontaneous creative activity. Ideas rose in crowds: I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination. By the next morning I had established the existence of a class of Fuchsian functions, those which come from the hypergeometric series. I had only to write out the results, which took but a few hours. It is clear Poincare was not really asleep but a spectator of the process occurring in his interior, which went on beyond his control.
"Coleridge describes a somewhat similar experience in writing Kubla Khan. He continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines, if that can indeed be called composition, in which all the images rose up before him as things with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking, he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines."
GENIUS AND MADNESS NOTICED
FROM ANCIENT TIMES
- By Gopi Krishna -
Genius is inspiration. It is very true that nothing so much resembles a person attacked by madness as a man of genius when meditating and molding his conceptions. When the moment of inspiration is over the man of genius becomes an ordinary man, if he does not descend lower.
This resemblance of an inspired personality to madness has been noticed from ancient times. In the words of Aristotle, famous poets, artists, and statesmen, frequently suffer from melancholia or madness, as did Ajax. In recent times such a disposition occurred in Socrates, Empedocles, Plato and many others, but especially in our poets.
GOETHE, NIETZSCHE AND SCHOPENHAUER
The French philosopher Diderot has said, I have often thought that these reserved and melancholy men owe their extraordinary, almost godlike, acuteness of insight to a temporary disturbance of their whole mechanism. One may notice how it brings them now to sublime, now to insane thoughts. ‘They themselves fancy that some godlike being uses up within them, seeks them out and uses them. How near is genius to madness. Yet one is locked up and bound with chains whilst to the other we raise monuments.’
In recent times, men of genius, like Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, themselves avow how near genius is to madness. Looking the other way round, we find that many schizophrenics show a marked resemblance to geniuses but of a twisted and distorted kind. It has been remarked that whoever has had the opportunity of observing with a sympathetic and understanding eye, a considerable number of acute cases of schizophrenia in the early stages of the affliction, cannot but be astonished at times, at the inconceivable power, richness and cosmic breadth of the experiences that suddenly break upon these individuals, even when they have the most commonplace minds.
Such experiences, so quickly to be extinguished, may occasionally lift even the most banal natures right out of themselves. In certain circumstances, abnormal ecstatic conditions of this kind, which are milder and do not lead to complete mental collapse, show a great similarity to the inspired experiences of genius, especially in the religious field.
A SUMMARY AND SOME CONCLUSIONS
The basal energy of the universe is the Energy of Consciousness. How it is transformed into material, organic, gravitational, electromagnetic or atomic energy, scientific investigations will show. We are at the very beginning of a radical change in the thinking of the race. This change will not be brought about so much by our efforts as by the force of circumstances, created by the racial Prana-Shakti, to draw out mankind from the present groove which is inimical to her spiritual evolution.
That there must be some variation in the brain or some other factor responsible for genius, extraordinary talent or paranormal faculties in human beings no one can deny. If it were not so, every average human being who tried hard for it could become a Plato, a Kalidas, a Shakespeare or a Newton. But such a transformation has never been possible to this day with any methods of education known to us.
SO MUCH VARIATION, ONE IS LOST IN CONFUSION
The actual position is that there is so much variation and such a prolificity of individual views in the books on Yoga and Tantra that one is lost in confusion. This has led to such a multiplicity of opinions and ideas that, strange as it may appear, one can support any point of view with a citation from one authority or the other.
Success in Yoga and other spiritual disciplines, whether achieved slowly and imperceptibly through the practice of Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga and Bhakti Yoga, or spontaneously, as the accumulated harvest of previous Karma, or suddenly with agonizing experiences, as the result of Hatha Yoga exercises, must be due to the same organic mechanism that has eluded detection so far. Prana-Shakti or the bio-electricity which is behind the organic activity of the body and the mental activity of the brain, can undergo a transformation either as the result of hereditary factors, as in the case of the examples cited above, or with the practices of Yoga, or as the harvest of any other religious discipline, as has happened throughout the past.
It is this alteration in the pranic energy or bio-electricity, with a corresponding transformation in certain areas of the brain, which is responsible for all cases of Illumination, whether brought about by voluntary methods or spontaneous, also for all cases of genius, paranormal faculties and, where the body or the brain is not adaptable to the change, for certain intractable forms of insanity.
THERE IS ONLY ONE LIVING ELECTRICITY
The association of Prana with every form of yoga is common knowledge in India and the United States. There is only one living electricity in the body and that is Prana. The popular image of a Yogi often depicts him as one who has drawn the entire Prana of his body into his head. It is immaterial whether this concentration of prana is achieved with the gentle methods of Raja-Yoga or the arduous ones of Hatha Yoga, but the medium affected is the same, namely prana. There is no other rival force in the body to which we could point as the one that comes into operation by Raja Yoga methods in contrast to the other activated by the techniques of Hatha Yoga.
Seals with the figure of a deity, like Shiva, sitting in asana, with phallus erectus, a symbolic depiction of the arousal of Kundalini, have been found in the excavations made at some sites of the Indus Valley civilization. There is also evidence to show the secret of Kundalini was known to the Egyptians, Sumerians, Persians, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, centuries and even thousands of years before the birth of Christ.
THERE MUST BE A NATURAL PROCESS
Kundalini was known to the Mayas and is mentioned in the traditions of the Hopi Indians in America. There is no other spiritual discipline, religious observance, esoteric practice or occult ritual even half as widely known with as many ramifications and as extended to the remotest periods of time as the cult of Kundalini. It has been a universal method for gaining mystical vision, oracular gifts and occult powers for the past thousands of years.
Kundalini is the profound secret behind all spiritual and cultural achievements in India. It is this all-important secret which drew and still draws crowds of seekers after spiritual illumination from all parts of the earth to India, the land of sages, from the Vedic period to this age. It is now admitted that even ancient Egypt borrowed occult knowledge from this land. Can it be imagined for a moment that commonplace disciplines and cheap practices, which are the stock in trade of not a few teachers of our day, could form the secret teaching which distant seekers traversed thousands of miles on foot to learn, risking their life and limb in the hazardous expedition in olden times? Why to suit our own preferences do we try to belittle a still-hidden knowledge that was valued beyond all the treasures of the earth by the greatest sons of India in the past?
There must be a natural process for liberation as there is an inexorable organic process for incarnation, conception, embryo, birth, childhood, prime, old age, death, etc., repeated time after time. It cannot be that while the process of internment spreads over ages that of release should occur in a day, through a magically potent sadhana or a glance of favor from a guru.
THERE IS NO ONE METHOD
There is no one way to reach the Eternal. There is no one method that would suit everyone. The illuminated men and women born in different parts of the earth have been divergent in their philosophy, metaphysics, methods of attainment, the nature of the reality, the nature of the Soul, ideas about the Hereafter and the state of the Soul after disembodiment. But all this divergence does not mean that there is a chaos in the spiritual world or that the illuminated of the past knew all that is to be known of this profound Ocean of Knowledge of the Self. How few really succeed in the enterprise we know only too well. The reason for this extreme poverty of results in the spiritual quest lies in the ignorance about the real nature of the mechanism Kundalini responsible for success. The research project proposed here is designed to greatly add to this knowledge.
SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESIS
Introduction
Our science-oriented culture has created a peculiar social environment ideally suited for highly sophisticated minds with a strongly marked polarity that makes them talk in one way and act in another. In other words, the evolution of political thought has not kept pace with the speed at which knowledge has expanded. We now need a much more balanced and penetrating intellect than that which is operating at present in order to adjust the society to it.
This anomaly has a marked subconscious effect on every man and woman, each experiencing the effect without awareness of the cause behind it. The main reason why there is discontentment in almost every country, including the most advanced, is not because the leaders are less competent than before but because the human mind has attained a degree of sensitivity, and the environment a state of complexity, where a more evolved type of men and women are needed to create confidence and enlist the cooperation of the general public.
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS WITHIN YOU.
According to various estimates, most of us use only ten percent of the brain. That means 90 percent of the brain is unutilized, that there is still a large margin in the brain which could be used for other purposes and that nature has provided it for certain purposes which have not yet been discovered.
Among the adepts in ancient India, this untapped region of the brain was called the Brahma-rendra, or cave of God. This region can be activated by certain disciplines, and when activated it can give to the individual the same vision of the universe which all great mystics have described.
But when it is awakened, the normal energy of the body or the blood is not able to fuel the center. It needs a more powerful and concentrated psychic fuel. This fuel comes from the reproductive system, which is transformed into a kind of radiation, and that radiation awakens and makes the center function. A current of silvery light rises from the spine and radiates through the whole brain, causing a tremendous expansion of consciousness.
When this occurs, one does not continue to see the world as a solid, real, objective creation but as consciousness. The real objective creation is then seen as consciousness everywhere. For example, the ocean, the sky, the earth, the mountains, are seen as if they are living. This life or consciousness is not something which is dead or which can be understood. It is infinite, deathless. It is something so unique, so elevating, that there are no words to describe this extraordinary state of being.
But those who have experienced it have become geniuses of the highest order, and it is repeatedly said in the ancient manuals that they would not change this state of consciousness for any treasure, not even a kingdom. This is probably what Christ meant when he said that the kingdom of heaven is within you.
From a scientific point of view, it can be said that a certain region in the brain has been awakened to activity. It means that nature has already provided a potential in the brain which has to be awakened in order for it to evolve to a higher level of performance. It also means that the human brain is still organically evolving in the direction of the great mystics and prophets, in the same direction of the great geniuses.
For this evolution a certain type of life is necessary. For instance, throughout our life evolution is going on and we have to cooperate with it. When we do not cooperate with the inner evolution we create problems for ourselves.
All of the religious teachings of mankind, beginning with the Vedas, then the Buddha, the Old Testament and New Testaments, the teachings of Moses, Christ, Mohammed, Guru Nanak, and all the ancient prophets of the Bible, were meant to give directions for how to live, how to regulate our lives, while the brain is still evolving.
At the present time, the human brain is evolving much more rapidly because from morning until evening we are applying our brain to some task, reading, watching television, working in an office, solving problems, etc. This was not the case when people hunted or tilled the soil. They had not need to apply their brain in such a concentrated way as we do today. In other words, we are meditating almost continually, although on material objects, and this is accelerating the evolutionary processes at work in the brain and nervous system. This has resulted in many thousands of partial awakenings of the Power, especially in the industrialized countries, albeit in a haphazard and often unhealthy manner. Often in the case of such awakenings, the benefits can be quite fruitful, transforming such individuals into more productive, creative, loving and more compassionate personalities.
A great many of the patients now crowding our mental institutions, whether for schizophrenia or manic-depressive states, could be correctly placed in this category. Psychiatrists and psychologists are at a lost to explain why. Because of the limited extent of our current knowledge about this phenomenon, it is extremely rare far more rare than genius itself that the Kundalini raises to the highest center in the brain in a healthy way, resulting in Illumination or Enlightenment. This is one more reason why research such as proposed herein is of such vital importance at this time.
In order to bring about a harmonious change in society, the leaders of the world have to be convinced of the existence of Kundalini and its effect on our everyday lives, and for that to happen a scientific experiment is necessary. We have to demonstrate that the brain is evolving, and that this evolution needs a certain kind of harmonious way of life.
In the experiment, a number of healthy young men and women will practice mental and physical disciplines designed to greatly increase the brain’s activity, and its effect will be found all over the body. There will be metabolic processes and other physiological changes which can be measured. The goal will be to awaken the dormant center in the brain responsible for mystical experience and genius. Once the evolutionary mechanism, called Kundalini by the ancient adepts, has been activated, there are definite biological changes in the blood, the nervous system, the cerebrospinal fluid, and in the composition of the brain itself.
The experiment is designed to prove that there is the potential in every human being which can transform him or her from a mortal into an immortal and that in within each of us there is an eternal source of happiness. A more harmonious, more peaceful, happy, more contented humanity can be expected to result from this research. More importantly, it will show the way for every generation to produce people who have reached the higher dimensions, and they will become the political leaders, scientists, and educators, who will help to guide the race higher and higher and higher.
For this evolution a certain type of life is necessary. For instance, throughout our life evolution is going on and we have to cooperate with it. When we do not cooperate with the inner evolution we create problems for ourselves.
All of the religious teachings of mankind, beginning with the Vedas, then the Buddha, the Old Testament and New Testaments, the teachings of Moses, Christ, Mohammed, Guru Nanak, and all the ancient prophets of the Bible, were meant to give directions for how to live, how to regulate our lives, while the brain is still evolving.
At the present time, the human brain is evolving much more rapidly because from morning until evening we are applying our brain to some task, reading, watching television, working in an office, solving problems, etc. This was not the case when people hunted or tilled the soil. They had not need to apply their brain in such a concentrated way as we do today. In other words, we are meditating almost continually, although on material objects, and this is accelerating the evolutionary processes at work in the brain and nervous system. This has resulted in many thousands of partial awakenings of the Power, especially in the industrialized countries, albeit in a haphazard and often unhealthy manner. Often in the case of such awakenings, the benefits can be quite fruitful, transforming such individuals into more productive, creative, loving and more compassionate personalities.
A great many of the patients now crowding our mental institutions, whether for schizophrenia or manic-depressive states, could be correctly placed in this category. Psychiatrists and psychologists are at a lost to explain why. Because of the limited extent of our current knowledge about this phenomenon, it is extremely rare far more rare than genius itself that the Kundalini raises to the highest center in the brain in a healthy way, resulting in Illumination or Enlightenment. This is one more reason why research such as proposed herein is of such vital importance at this time.
In order to bring about a harmonious change in society, the leaders of the world have to be convinced of the existence of Kundalini and its effect on our everyday lives, and for that to happen a scientific experiment is necessary. We have to demonstrate that the brain is evolving, and that this evolution needs a certain kind of harmonious way of life.
In the experiment, a number of healthy young men and women will practice mental and physical disciplines designed to greatly increase the brain’s activity, and its effect will be found all over the body. There will be metabolic processes and other physiological changes which can be measured. The goal will be to awaken the dormant center in the brain responsible for mystical experience and genius. Once the evolutionary mechanism, called Kundalini by the ancient adepts, has been activated, there are definite biological changes in the blood, the nervous system, the cerebrospinal fluid, and in the composition of the brain itself.
The experiment is designed to prove that there is the potential in every human being which can transform him or her from a mortal into an immortal and that in within each of us there is an eternal source of happiness. A more harmonious, more peaceful, happy, more contented humanity can be expected to result from this research. More importantly, it will show the way for every generation to produce people who have reached the higher dimensions, and they will become the political leaders, scientists, and educators, who will help to guide the race higher and higher and higher.
SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIVES
The goal of this research project is to demonstrate what happens upon the awaking of Kundalini psychologically, mentally, psychically, and physically. So long as genius and mystical experience continue to be regarded as subjective phenomena, without any relation to the organic frame of man, it will always be difficult if not impossible to show their common factors and design methods to cultivate either one.
The mechanism of Kundalini can be understood in the following way: Upon activation, two different activities start in the body. First, the whole network of nerves begins to manufacture a more potent form of psychic energy, called prana or nerve energy and to pour it into the brain through the spinal duct. This altered form of prana is distinguished by its appearance as a luminous cloud in the brain.
Operating in average men and women, the energy does not have this property. But for the mystic, the visionary experience is almost always bathed in light. This is one of the most important points on which the research will be focused, and it is the reason why virtually all of the ancient texts refer to Kundalini as the sun or moon, or to lightning or fire. The flashes of light or other forms of luminosity experienced by many people during the course of meditation are often due to a sudden, brief upsurge of the more potent prana into the brain.
At the same time or shortly afterwards, another activity begins in the genital region. Upon the awakening, the reproductive fluid is drawn up in an unknown way, in a form of radiation, into the spinal canal. Exactly how this suction is applied will have to be determined by research. This stream rising through the spine represents the nectar or ambrosia repeatedly mentioned in the texts on Kundalini. Its entry into the spinal cord, and then into the brain, is marked by exquisitely pleasurable sensations far exceeding those of an orgasm. This phenomenon is referred to as Urdhavaretas in the yoga manuals.
During the course of its ascent into the brain it is ramified into smaller streams which irrigate the visceral organs through the nerve plexuses or the chakras, and this can be distinctly felt moving into the various organs; the stomach, liver, intestines, heart, lungs, etc., thus preparing the body and the brain for a higher manifestation of consciousness. The flow of a more potent prana, and this stream of secretions into nerve centers and the brain, is what is implied by the phrase "penetration of Kundalini."
THE ROLE OF THE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM
The lingam-yoni symbol, which has been in India from the remote past, denotes the reversed action of the cerebrospinal system, utilizing evry spare ounce of the bio-energy normally used for amatory purposes, for the remodeling of the body and the brain under high pressure, in which all the organs of the body become inextricably involved. With the flow of the nectar, distilled by the nerves from all parts of the body into the brain, the area of rapture is transferred from the genitals to the cerebrum. The phonomenon is ancient and so widespread that it is amazing that modern science has no inkling of it even now.
It was because of the tremendous physiological effects on the body experienced on the awakening of Kundalini that the ancient yoga masters devoted so much attention to the enumeration of the signs and symptoms that occur at that time. For instance, they would not have made repeated mention in their writings of the phenomenon of lights and sounds even describing the nature of the sounds heard and the lights seen comparing the former to thunder, the humming of bees, roaring of waterfalls, or the pealing of bells; and the later to the luster of the moon, the radiance of the sun, the glow of fire or flash of lightning.
In their treatises, these authors provide precise descriptions of the chakras and specify their particular location on the cerebrospinal axis. In fact, the ancient masters took pains to pinpoint the exact location of the Kanda, i.e., the inverted triangle below the navel, on which Kundalini rests, leaving no doubt that it is the region intimately connected with the reproductive organs.
SCIENTIFIC PARAMETERS AND PROTOCOLS
The scientific models and protocols proposed will be designed to monitor the levels of transformational changes with emphasis on the following:
BIOLOGICAL METAMORPHOSIS OF THE BRAIN
To document accelerated activities in the brain.
To identify the reversal of the reproductive system.
Absorption of generative fluids and hormones into the visceral organs as they ascend into the brain
To establish that the brain is still in an organic state of evolution toward what could be the next plateau in human evolution.
Every major organ begins to function at new levels of activity.
Cells are charged with more potent bio-energy.
Metabolism is greatly amplified or enhanced.
Biochemistry of the organism is significantly altered.
Hormonal variances charted.
Accelerated activity of the entire nervous system.
Verify the transformation of the genes.
Identify the heart-mind-body connection.
Affects upon the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
PSYCHOLOGICAL
Emergence of a new, more refined personality.
Identify powerful new modes of cognition and perception.
Demonstrate greater mental abilities as natural byproducts of extended consciousness.
To demonstrate that genius can be cultivated.
To verify that noble traits of character are prerequisites to higher states of consciousness.
To identify what sort of lifestyle most ideally conforms to the laws ofevolution as they are hypothesized.
To build a database of individuals reporting higher states of consciousness and comparing their descriptions of these states and experiences with those recorded by saints, sages and prophets.
INTUITION AND PSYCHIC ABILITIES
To demonstrate that the same disciplines designed to awakening Kundalini can lead to the development of enhanced intuition and psychic abilities.
GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE RESEARCH
The Kundalini Research Foundation, together with its affiliated Foundations and Institutions, stand alone in the research we are proposing. There is every likelihood that eyebrows will be raised and open doubts expressed both from the sides of religion and science, inasmuch as every important discovery in knowledge invariably took the world by surprise. As Gopi Krishna writes in "The Biological Basis of Religion and Genius", once the possibility of spiritual rebirth with the arousal of Kundalini is accepted by science, the knowledge obtained through this research will point the way to the most sublime enterprise for the pure-minded and intelligent spirits of our age.
As we propose to demonstrate, the finished products of Kundalini must tran-scend the normal limits of the human brain. If this transcendence does not occur, the visionary experiences are either a delusion or myth. This raises another important question: If Kundalini is the source behind genius and extraordinary intellectual or artistic talents, as postulated, it must also be a factor behind the evil geniuses of history, the highly talented military commanders, dictators and demagogues, and also the human monsters who, dead to every moral sentiment, commit the dreadful acts reported almost daily in the media.
What we are suggesting, and intend to demonstrate through this proposed research project, is that one single law is at the base of all phenomena of the mind that science, at the present moment, finds inexplicable. Only one remarkable series of changes, caused in the psychic or nerve energy that serves as fuel for thought, is responsible. The greater incidence of insanity among the men and women of genius, for instance, and the seeds of eccentricity in many of them, clearly establishes the existence of a common link between the two.
The research will tend to show that the evolutionary impulse cannot be active only in the individuals but must be operative in a collective sense as well. The influence of evolutionary processes on the ecological development of a whole species or group is now clearly recognized by the biologists and that in order to meet the needs of the evolutionary growths, changes in the environment social, political and moral, would be necessary from time to time to meet the demands of the development of the psychomental fabric of the individuals and of the race too.
Where this adjustment is delayed, causing a retardation in growth, revolts, revolutions, and wars intervene to effect, with widespread suffering and bloodshed, what could have been achieved by peaceful means provided the underlying Law were known and its mode of operation understood. The ancient civilizations and cultures, after attaining a certain level of achievement, fell victims to decadence because the lives of the people did not conform to these standards. Actually, a revolution in the life of humanity should have occurred a century ago, when the theory of evolution was first propounded. But the evolutionists at that time, due mainly to prejudice against religion, and for a long time afterwards, held to a theory that cut at the roots of the idea of Intelligence and design in creation, effectively blocking any further discussion based on a spiritual point of view.
A single man or woman of the stature of a great prophet or scientist can have the power to change the world. Imagine what possibilities can be held forth if a crop of dozens of such geniuses were to be cultivated in each century or generation.
[In "The Secret of Yoga", Gopi Krishna summarizes the foregoing in these words:]
We live in an age of surprises. At the same time, we experience the horror of man-caused calamities. But no surprise has been so great as will take place when this Law is empirically demonstrated, and no calamity has been so devastating as might befall it, in the present stage of technological development, if the law is still ignored. The development of the human brain and the intellect is an unavoidable consequence of evolution, but without spiritual discipline and enlightenment the results can not only be unwholesome but also fatally poisonous.
In other words, it is essential in order to ensure smooth progress and safety on the hazardous path of evolution that humanity should not only be possessed of temporal knowledge but should also know the laws that rule her spiritual growth.
If you want to help the Kundalini Research Foundation (A NON-PROFIT GROUP), the essential first step is education and MONEY to pay for the scientific research project.
Anyone who has a desire to help humanity please write to:
Gopi Krishna Homepage
The Kundalini Research Foundation, Ltd.
Post Office Box 2248
Darien, CT 06820
***
EVOLUTIONARY-DYNAMICS
The confusion among scholars about the factor or factors responsible for the birth and the growth of the moral sense is due to the fact that there is no awareness about the evolutionary dynamics of the brain. The evolution of morals has not occurred either through the exercise of reason or through experience.
The crude struggle for existence draws into play those resources the body and properties of the mind which help one to overcome the other competitors and rivals in the race for survival. The emphasis of this struggle would therefore be on the strength of brain and muscle, on endurance and courage, on cleverness and wit, on strategy and cunning, on deceit and trickery, planning and plotting, falsehood and sham, or on violence and aggression, to achieve the dominating position in the battle.
These are the traits that we continually see at work in the animal kingdom everywhere on land, in the ocean or the air. But the moral virtues that have been highly regarded since the dawn of civilization and are admired even today are the very opposite of these traits.
Innocence has a greater appeal to the heart than cleverness, frankness than duplicity, truth than falsehood, simplicity than sophistication, humility than pride, honesty than deception, self denial than indulgence, pacifism than aggression, calmness than violence, artlessness than deceit and trickery and so on.
Some of these virtues are in direct opposition to the essential qualifications needed for the ruthless battle for self existence. But the learned have no awareness of the factors that have brought about this change in the instinctive armor necessary for survival. The theologian ascribes the emergence of morals to divine commandments transmitted through Revelation. Scholars ascribe their growth to mundane causes—for instance, the demands of civilization—but without convincing evidence.
The inference is obvious that for any kind of moral behavior which militates against the demands of the struggle for existence, there must occur changes in the depth of the human psyche and consequently in those intricate mechanisms of the cerebrospinal system that give rise to it. Ethics and reason represent the two branches of the same tree confused by the vicissitudes through which mankind has passed and the variances in the moral impulse displayed throughout.
We find it difficult to reconcile the erratic behavior of the ethical sense with the action of a consistent evolutionary principle in the human mind. But this is exactly where the error lies. Looking at the path we can easily find that the growth of reason has always been attended by absurd behavior, irrationality and superstition, as if two opposite forces were contending for supremacy through the human mind.
In the same way morality has been accompanied by immorality and even diabolic traits of character, deceit, untruth, ruthlessness and inhumanity to this day.
Pinholes in Other Planes of Infinity
We often do not give sufficient thought to the colossal task which evolution has to accomplish. It represents a rise from the earth to the sky. A clod of earth has to gain the power of thinking, of awakening to the knowledge of itself and then of the universe round it. A handful of insensitive matter has to win a state of awareness where it can mingle with a consciousness which pervades the universe, from a handful of dust to be one with the All. It is a stupendous transformation, a mighty drama which only an absolute power could design, stage and play.
We are wont to underestimate the inconceivably vast dimensions of creation and the stupendous proportions of the power of it because our mind and senses, like the brain and the eyes of an ant on a tree floating upon the surface of an ocean are not able to register our own insignificant position compared with the titanic forces by which we are encompassed.
We believe that the picture of the universe presented to us by the mind and intellect is all that there is, and we start to speculate how the entity we picture could have come into existence. We never expand our thinking to be conscious of the fact that we are staring at an infinity through a pinhole and that there are countless other pinholes in other planes of creation through which this infinity can be viewed.
In countless different ways each pinhole presents a different image of it. The colossal nature consciousness begins to dawn only when the human limit of perception is exceeded through the grace of the still partially hidden biological mechanism responsible for evolution. For the attainment of a transhuman dimension of consciousness, the evolution of morals is as much, if not more, necessary than the evolution of the intellect. A monkey who knows how to ignite the fuse leading to a store of gun powder cannot be expected to be nice about it when his instinct drives him to set fire to it.
Modern man, with the power to use the awful force of nuclear fusion for destructive purposes, is hesitant to employ it partly because of moral scruples and partly because of the equally terrible retaliatory action that would follow. But he has certainly not attained to the moral stature yet when the very idea of using such a weapon either for offense or for defense would be repugnant to him.
Wars can be fought even without the use of instruments that can annihilate the whole of mankind and even wipe off life from earth. He has also not attained to the moral height where the massacre of defenseless and innocent men, women and children, not involved in actual fighting, would be repellent to his mind. The fact that both these moral considerations were thrown to the winds in the wars fought during this century is a clear indication of the fact that moral evolution has not kept pace with the evolution of the intellect.
The Effect of the First Nuclear Blast
The effect of this disposition between the moral and intellectual evolution of humanity can be disastrous in the extreme. This is the real cause behind the highly explosive and dangerous situation of today. By creating these tensions and pressures, the aim of Nature is to teach this important lesson to mankind.
The overgrown intellect, denied true insight, exhausts itself in ferreting out the causes for- the crisis and proposes remedies without ever lighting upon the truth. All the academic hair-splitting and the noisy hubbub of the learned world will vanish with the first blast of nuclear weapons in the next World War. Until then, unable to see into the future, it will continue to thrust its opinions on a multitude already hopelessly lost in the confusion it has caused.
Entry to transhuman consciousness highly adds to the responsibilities of man. We have gained the awareness now of the potentialities of the intellect and the almost limitless power it can exercise both for destructive and constructive purposes.
Our forefathers only a century back had no awareness of the technological achievements possible to man with the exercise of his mental ability and skill. What undreamed of possibilities will open before man and what stupendous forces will come under his sway with the further evolution of his mind to the transhuman state is impossible to conceive of at present.
It might become possible for him then to extend his sovereignty over all the solar system as he now extends it over the earth. But how can Nature allow man to win this sovereign position unless he has also gained the capability to shoulder the highly increased responsibility in a befitting manner, and not to abuse the almost unlimited powers gained?
Dominating Supermundane Forces
This is the reason why in every case of the awakening of the evolutionary mechanism secret devices in the brain come into play to mold the individual towards a state of mind where the possibility of abuse of psychic power is eliminated. The desire for self reform is the first sign of the activity of this dormant psycho-physiological mechanism.
This is also the reason why almost all those who possess psychic talents are never able to control the power, or to exhibit them at their own will and choice, or often even to remain alert and conscious when the phenomena come to pass.
This is also the reason why through all the past, in spite of the great advances made in spiritual science, as for instance in India, the secret of domination over the super-intelligent forces of creation was never revealed.
It is also why discoveries, whether in the spiritual or the material realm, were made in a series of different minds and were not vouchsafed to but one individual, including Buddha and Christ, however high their spiritual stature might have been.
Unfortunately, our notions of immorality are still distorted. War is not considered to be an immoral act. If it were, then the armed forces of nations would not receive the approbation, the honor and the homage that they do.
But prostitution on the part of a woman who is driven to it by starvation, by reduction or by other pressures in her life is considered to be a grossly immoral act.
This disorientation and confusion in our ethical values and ideas about immorality is due to the fact that there is no awareness at all about the aim of evolution and the moral code of behavior that must be followed, by the individuals and the race, to achieve it.
Excess Erudition Damages the Brain
Excess of erudition can be as damaging to the evolutionary activity of the brain as excess of any other kind. If it were the aim of Nature to turn it into a computer then inspiration and the flash of discovery would have been denied and great writers and thinkers provided with the resources of the intellect to compose their great works or to initiate the laws of science.
But according to the affirmations of some of the greatest minds which mankind has produced, it is obvious that all really great works of literature, all great masterpieces of painting, music, sculpture, of philosophy, and all the discoveries of science were made by minds which, in addition to accumulated knowledge and intelligence, had the gift of intuitive insight or inspiration.
To say that inspiration or creativity comes from the subconscious is to make the confusion worse confounded. If the subconscious has access to new knowledge never gathered before, or to laws of the physical world never discovered in the past or has the capacity to create works of art never thought of previously, it then clearly means that it excels the surface consciousness in all that is original and creative.
In all our thinking about man, about his social, political, cultural behavior and dietetic needs, the factor of evolution has never been taken into consideration. But there can be no doubt that it will be necessary to revise our thinking and to overhaul all the existing systems to conform when once the reality is established beyond dispute.
The experience of life imparts a knowledge that cannot be gained in any other way. Even the study of the whole existing literature on human behavior cannot make us so wise about the complex nature of human life as experience can do. It is a great mistake to suppose that entry to the transcendental stale of consciousness can make one infallible, all wise and all knowing.
Attribution of infallibility and absolute wisdom to prophets and sages has been mainly responsible for the evils of religion. If the race is not to stagnate human knowledge must continue to grow to the end. The dogma of infallibility precludes further progress in knowledge and is, therefore, inimical to the evolution of the mind.
I do not feel myself to be superior in any way to my fellow human beings. There is no idea of purity or chastity, virtue or saintliness in my mind to inflate my ego. Our whole constitution stands on frailty. We live at the mercy of forces beyond our ken. I still continue to learn from my friends and associates.
There is hardly any man or woman who has not a beautiful trait of character or a small store of wisdom lying inside. It is through the inherent goodness in human beings that mankind is able to prosper and progress.
Religious Dogma Precludes Progress
Legions hesitate to speak an untruth, to sell dear, to adulterate, to be unjust, to deceive, to blackmail, to be mean or avaricious, not out of fear of the law but because of an impulse in their interior which keeps them on the side of right. The great importance of religions and their founders has lain in the fact that they sowed and nurtured this righteous impulse. The materialistic thinking of the last two centuries now poses a great threat to mankind because it tends to uproot and destroy this natural, still-developing sense.
The only exceptional knowledge I possess is the harvest of the extraordinary experience I have undergone. I still keep my intellect free and benefit immensely from the books I read. In my contact with the world, in my knowledge of it, I am no better than millions of my fellow beings and, maybe, at times display even less practical sense than many of them.
In my contact with the transcendental world to which I slowly gained entry, after the awakening, I am but a child, constantly wondering at what I perceive, trying to pick up the alphabet of a language more difficult than any knowledge of the physical universe ever gained. The supreme experience is staggering, enrapturing, blissful and inspiring but, at the same time, inexplicable and ungraspable by the intellect. The experience is illuminating, no doubt, because it reveals the grandeur, sublimity and eternal nature of the soul but beyond that what? All that is beyond lies out of the reach of the intellect and hence cannot be translated into any language devised by the mind.
The inscrutable and ineffable nature of mystical ecstasy cannot constitute a permanent barrier to the unraveling the Great Mystery. The evolution of man is a transition from darkness to light. But this transition has to occur in millions of years.
A New Concept of Religion
At the first dim dawn of reason the new processes of thought must have appeared strange and inexplicable to the evolving primate. He must have felt bewildered when the new-born faculty began to overrule the instinctive behavior of the mind.
Entry to another dimension of consciousness, where reason is superseded, must have the same perplexing and mystifying effect on the mind. When this area of study is accurately demarcated with painstaking research of the phenomenon, a new alphabet, a new language and new symbols will develop to understand and interpret the experience.
A time will shortly come when all the resources of science and the intellect will be mobilized to gain more and more insight into this extraordinary state expressible in terms of the intellect. The evolutionary concept puts a different complexion on religion. The myths of divine birth, miraculous transformations and special delegation are entirely ruled out.
It has to be conceded then that the whole race is evolving in the same direction followed by the great prophets, sages and mystics of the past and has to achieve the same goal. It has also to be admitted then that what we call miraculous, supernatural or paranormal might be the outcome of laws ruling the spiritual world or the forces compounding it of which we have no real awareness at present.
There can be no two opinions about the fact that all the great spiritual prodigies of the past had the same kind of body, the same physiognomy, the same brain, the same power of reasoning and the same emotions as other normal human beings. They were prone to hunger and thirst, to age and decay. They were vulnerable to disease and death; and even in the length of their life span they were like other human beings.
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