Gopi Krishna and Kundalini
In his latter years, the Kashmiri poet and mystic Pandit Gopi Krishna struggled to initiate a scientific investigation into the phenomenon of kundalini. Kundalini is the Indian name for the legendary activity at the base of the human spine that, according to the ancient holy books of India, is responsible for genius, prophecy, and psychic powers. He devoted the last two decades of his life to advocate for this scientific inquiry.
His motivation was personal: he had inadvertently activated his own kundalini through many years of meditation. The subsequent fifteen years of his life were spent trying to find psychological and neurological balance as the energy unleashed inside him buffeted his psyche like an internal hurricane. ?After a tumultuous fifteen years, the first phase of his transformation completed and he entered a state of expanded perception such that he sensed luminosity in everything.
Gopi Krishna wrote many books making his case for the scientific investigation of this phenomenon, cited numerous arguments in favor of the research, and gave many examples of individuals down through history who exemplified the life of those with activated kundalinis. ?He also wrote poetry that he ascribed to a mysterious source, making no conscious attempt to compose it other than to listen as the words came to his inner ear. His thinking on the subject of kundalini went something like this:
1. There are certain rare individuals who differ markedly from other humans due to a hidden bio-energy source.
2. There are three broad types of such people:
a. Mystics
b. Geniuses
c. Prophets
3. The experiences of these three types were described in oral and written accounts across cultures and going back thousands of years.
4. These individuals have had a great impact on human civilization and culture.
5. The only explanation for this physiological activity in any literature is from the Indian Vedas, which speak of the ?kundalini?, a serpent coiled three and a half times around the base of the spine.
6. The activated kundalini is depicted as an ascending or ascended serpent, often with feathers or wings, alluding to the rising of the energy of the kundalini up the spine and into the brain.
7. This rising serpent image is found in nearly all ancient civilizations:
a. As a Dragon in China,
b. As Kundalini in India,
c. As the Serpent of Wisdom in Egypt
d. As Quetzalcoatl in Meso-America
e. As a Dragon in ancient Europe
f. As the medical symbol from Ancient Greece
g. As the healing dragon on a staff in the Old Testament (Book of Numbers)
8. The ancient Vedas of India describe kundalini as the basis for ?siddhis? or powers that come from the activation of the otherwise dormant kundalini. Among those powers are mental prowess, psychic power, and revelation.
9. Western allopathic medicine does not recognize the existence of the kundalini.
10. Western allopathic medicine also does not recognize the existence of prana or chi, the energies of Indian and Chinese medicine, respectively.
11. Nor does Western allopathic medicine recognize the existence of spirit, or spiritual energy as an aspect of physiology
12. Prana, Chi, and spirit all come from the word for ?breath?
Gopi Krishna believed that the phenomenon of kundalini is deserved of investigation by modern science in an attempt to integrate and explain scientifically this phenomenon that is found across cultures and throughout history. He believed that a study of biophysics, biochemistry, physiology, neurology, and psychology needs to be undertaken to comprehend this phenomenon.
The Evolution of Mind
Added to the basic understanding of kundalini above is the concept of Mind Evolution, suggested by Gopi Krishna in his book, Brain Evolution (First published in 1977 as The True Nature of Mystical Experience). ?He advanced the hypothesis that the activated kundalini and the concomitant flow of more potent prana up the spine cause the evolution of the brain within the lifetime of the individual. This evolution is similar to the concept from the ancient world of a ?path?, a subjective concept describing the psychological and philosophical growth pattern that people experience in their lives.
PD Ouspensky?s book, The Psychology of the Possible Evolution of Man is another treatise on the concept of Mind Evolution, and there are many others. The idea that the human mind can evolve within the lifetime of an individual is a basic tenet of virtually all spiritual traditions. ?It is the goal of monastic traditions that seek personal evolution through self-discipline and self-denial.
So what is meant by this evolution? Is it common brand self-improvement or something more? Gopi Krishna thought that it has to do with knowledge of the self.
His final book was a single poem called The Way To Self-Knowledge. In it he expresses the idea that the path to spiritual liberation can only be achieved through the expansion of internal awareness. The way to achieve this self-knowledge according to Gopi Krishna is through service, prayer, meditation, and compassion for others.
Through practice these activities awaken perception of the interior of the self. But awakening the kundalini accelerates this process by intensely increasing the power of the mind and spirit while empowering the unconscious, putting the poor subject into a seeming internal laboratory for the study of the unleashed mind transforming the self through mysterious means. The individual learns about their self through the transformation of their brain and emotions, their body and mind, and awakening an awareness of energy or spirit.
The result is to make the ability to perceive moral qualms, intellectual conflicts, physical imbalances, and spiritual poverties much more acute. One?s individual behavior adapts as quickly as possible to the changed and changing inner environment. In essence, while ordinary concentration on self-improvement is a basic teaching of nearly all religions and other spiritual practices and traditions, the activated kundalini greatly accelerates the pace of self-improvement.
This is not however a complete explanation. The dynamic of evolutionary self-improvement is an effect of kundalini activation, but the energy of kundalini is still much more. ?The energy unleashed, a seeming qualitatively different form of energy, begins to transform the inner world through a process that appears to the subject to be completely intrinsically self-directed, as if the new energy had innate intelligence.
Perhaps this sounds a bit teleological; perhaps what appears to be intrinsic intelligence governing internal activities is rather an effect of the way the energy activation operates on the nervous system. This is an as yet unexplored area of inquiry. Yet there is a definite sense in the subject that this Superintelligence begins to cause the evolution of the self such that continuous psychological transformation, the experience of periodic destruction and then recreation of the self, becomes a recurring part of everyday life.
In a healthy, balanced, and knowledgeable individual the activated kundalini is a tidal wave that one tries as best as one can to ride, and ride one may for years, until one becomes accustomed to the new state of energy. Imagine what happens to an unhealthy, imbalanced, and unknowledgeable person. Krishna believed that an activated kundalini under these conditions can become the source of much psychopathology.
The Nirvana Impulse
It was suggested by Gopi Krishna that the spiritual impulse is an instinctive, inborn characteristic. ?He believed that Freud?s libido concept was in fact, though related to sexuality, not a purely sexual impulse. ?Rather, he maintained, it is also the spiritual impulse.
The ultimate destination of this impulse is the experience of nirvana. This idea is comparable to the statement by Jesus in the New Testament that ?The kingdom of Heaven is within you.? Therein lies the statement that differentiates the old world of mythological belief from the modern existential world.
Not Mount Olympus, or Asgard, or some other mythological dwelling of gods, but rather an experience to be achieved, the Christ said. ?Heaven as an inner experience, and the Eastern concept of Nirvana are indistinguishable. Freud?s libidinal impulse, and Krishna?s kundalini concept have an interesting implication. ?Is it possible that the sudden and complete awakening of kundalini (known in India as Nirvikalpa-Samadhi) is a sort of nervous system orgasm, using the same fuel to direct the human mind towards this goal that the body uses for sexual orgasm?
Sexual orgasm is a goal of nature not for its own sake, but rather as a motivating factor to the human animal to seek to reproduce, not through reason but through impulse. Nirvana may play the same role. ?Just as the sexual impulse pushes us to behave sexually, the spiritual impulse pushes us to behave spiritually.
Following this line of reasoning, the transformation of Nirvana bears the same relationship to the spiritual impulse that sexual orgasm bears to the sexual impulse. ?It is a climax of sorts. ?It is a nonlinear change that comes from the buildup of spiritual energy until it reaches a critical threshold and the subject feels the awakening of kundalini, and the resulting expansion and elation that comes as the energy moves up the spine and into the brain.
But just as climax is for the purpose of reproduction, Nirvana, the experience of Heaven, is for another purpose. That purpose is the elevation of human consciousness physically, mentally emotionally, and spiritually. One result is that the evolution of the mind when accelerated by an activated kundalini has the byproduct of accelerating the evolution of human culture.
We see the prophets, the geniuses, and the mystics all as exemplary of the highest aspirations of human beings. This then is the purpose of the very spiritual impulse that is as common in humans as is the sexual impulse. The downside is that we commonly find the spiritual impulse replaced by hedonistic practices ? drugs, sex, gambling, and other inebriating forms of addiction.
These senses of pleasure are the merest shadows of the true enjoyment of the spiritual climax of Nirvikalpa-Samadhi. Modern atheism, cynicism, and Nihilism have suppressed the spiritual impulse, following in the wake of corruption in the churches that devolved over centuries into self-perpetuating power structures. ?Thus often we see moral depravity replacing sincere spirituality.
Civilization?s Encounter with Nature
Perhaps the more abstract of Gopi Krishna?s ideas is how he saw the response of Nature to the misbehavior of humanity. He believed that there are laws of nature and laws of human behavior. He felt that the violation of any of these laws leads to consequences to humanity that are like the corrections of a parent ? merciful and loving but nevertheless of a very serious nature.
His chief critique was of intellectuals and scientists who have dismissed religiosity as superstition rather than studying it as a phenomenon for inquiry. ?He felt that modern science was arrogant in its narrow view of itself as the fountain of Knowledge, ignoring the same lessons of the past that have always humbled civilizations that became wealthy, powerful, and corrupt, ignoring Moral Law. His greatest concern was in the area of nuclear weapons where he believed, rather undeniably, that civilization could be threatened by a single mad dictator with a nuclear bomb.
It is interesting to note that the current saber rattling in Iran, and both recent wars with Iraq, were justified by the threat of nuclear weapons in the hands of a dictator. Gopi Krishna couldn?t have been more accurate in putting his finger on the most sensitive issue of our time in global diplomacy. He believed that it is a law of Nature that unless we successfully resolve the issue of nuclear weapons in our time, that Nature would teach us a terrible lesson, that a nuclear war would be the correcting event that our ignorance of the laws of nature would visit upon us.
Gopi Krishna believed that an investigation into kundalini would help us to understand the laws that govern its appearance throughout history. If kundalini is the catalyst for individual moral evolution, and thereby cultural evolution, then perhaps there is a great benefit to such an investigation: the understanding of human religion as the result of an innate human experience that comes from a universal physiological root. For this reason he believed that an understanding of kundalini, creating virtually a new science, would lend insight into human behavior and human civilization that in the long run would prevent a most disastrous nuclear war and preserve our civilization for future generations.
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