Editor’s Introduction:
This anonymous scientist has a B.S. and M.S. in Science and received a Ph.D. in astrophysics at a major US university. He is currently a senior researcher in the Division of Neurology at another major US university. He has won prizes for his work from the Mathematical Association of America. Also a student of Kundalini yoga, he had this unexpected experience in 1999.
Ed. note – Kundalini yoga is a branch of yoga that states that there is a latent, intelligent energy that can be activated by yoga exercises. When activated, it courses through the body, especially through various energy centers, altering and purifying them.
Experience
Kundalini is True!
Anonymous
Between AUGUST 4, Night (circa 10 PM) and AUGUST 5, Morning (8.30 AM), 1999}
Here is reported my personal, direct experience with the reality of Kundalini. This account is an attempt to give an accurate description of the experience. Some interpretation is given to the happenings but mostly what happened (from the subjective point of view of an internal observer) is reported almost in a scientific fashion (and I strongly believe a good science report of an observation or experiment is never completely detached from emotion and personal involvement).
After I go to bed, I’m so exhausted, my entire body is shaking for tension and tiredness. I want to rest, to relax, to let go. This seems to be the magic word: Let go!
I feel more relaxed; my hand starts to shake; my fingers one by one vibrate by themselves, like they were moved by invisible springs or as a little puppet wire was inserted inside the fingers and a puppeteer was performing his act on them. The fingers beat so fast and strongly against the mattress. One by one the fingers vibrate in this way. I feel with these movements some stress is relieved, some tension melts away. Then the entire hand is opening and closing by itself. It stretches, turns around the wrist, closes in a fist and opens fully, all by itself. I don’t see it yet as strange; I feel that just some tension is being released creating involuntary movements in my hands. I say to myself: “Be more relaxed, even more deeply than this, let go, let go of everything.”
The mind is becoming a little bit more calm and peaceful. Then the experience starts in its fullness. It becomes very fast, and weird. The entire arm now is beating back and forth, twisting, releasing stress. The movement goes spontaneously to the shoulder that starts to rotate.
The lower part of the legs are lifted by an invisible force, up to form a right angle with the thighs; then they suddenly dropped down. My head is stretching with a round, continuous motion. I start to recognize with surprise that this is a Kundalini experience. I’m excited and frightened at the same time. Now “waves” go up and down trough the back, from the base of the spine up to the neck, making the bones in the spine snap. The head rotates at the same time. The feeling is like a “chiropractor” is working on you, not from outside, but from within, adjusting every bone, straightening every nerve. The sensation is both painful and pleasurable at the same time. Together with this chiropractic work there is also a “massage” as if done by an invisible hand that operates at the level of internal tissues, organs, the skin, and releases stress and tension moving every little muscle. The massage moves also up and down the body.
Then all of the sudden the body is turned as by a giant hand. I’m pushed in the same way in the seated position. The arms start to rotate fast with a twisting motion. The feeling is similar to having a body that is twisted as a rubber band and then let free, so that the band “untwists” and returns to its natural, unperturbed state “according to one of the most fundamental physical principles, every system tends to move to a state of minimum energy, once released of constraints…”
This untwisting goes up from the forearms to the arms to the shoulder. The arms start to rotate very fast. At the same time the “massage” continues in other parts of the body, especially the spine. You realize that at every instant of your life some little stress is “accumulated” in some area of the body, stored as a kind of “memory’ of that event or situation, above all, painful or stressful situations. Even too much joy or happiness gets stored as a kind of stress.
There is a kind of pattern to this “massage.” It starts from a particular region of the body and moves as a “snake” motion up and down through the body. The mind connects these “memories” to some kind of sequence of events in your lifetime. No images are particularly associated with these sequences, but a feeling of having lived that experience, and when it happened, in which order.
At some time a voice pops out, in particular my voice as a child, or my mother calling my name, as if looking for me, and a particular traumatic experience, that was not well identified.
Now the body goes back to the reclined position. The leg starts to get the same “treatment.” Sometimes it is very fast and general, as moving together the entire leg. Other times it’s meticulous and precise, working on every little bone of the toes and foot. Actually it is possible to see the toes rotate in small circles, one by one.
The right leg, which was seriously injured a few years before because of a car accident, receives special attention because a lot of stress and pain is stored there. Much more time is spent on this leg than the other, as the “chiropractor” and the “masseur” knew exactly about the history of my body. I can feel the places where pins and plates are, and pain and uncomfortable feelings associated with these areas are dissolved. The legs are spread apart and pushed back towards the groin.
The massage goes to the inner thighs and up and down through the thighs to the hips, and the lower back. I feel waves of energy move through the spine. More work is done in other areas of the body, in continuous sequences as a chain reaction, or a ”line of dominos” falling one after the other. After some more of this work and stress release, the body goes again into the seated position.
Then the ”mudras,” the Hindu yoga positions start. The body assumes these traditional gestures spontaneously, almost as if using a secret language spoken to itself. These movements organize themselves in a perfectly choreographed ”Indian dance” (The dance of Shiva), with a sequence of precise movements of the hands and the head. A more often repeated movement consists in the fingers touching the thumb and the hand rotating in small circles, and the arms swinging slowly from one side to the other of the body.
There is a ”rhythm” to this dance, almost as if following a beating drum as accompaniment. The dance goes fast, then slow, then fast again. The mudra of ”namaskar” is done with almost a ritualistic accuracy and attention, and then little lights are going through invisible channels inside the body, along the spine, up to the brain. Lights spread into the brain, releasing pleasurable experiences, the light then reaches the top of head. The ”mudra” goes to the belly and becomes the ” lotus” position. There is finally some rest.
This experience is beautiful and pleasurable but also exhausting. The lights, riding waves in the back, continue to come to the brain. This is extremely pleasurable. The lips start to vibrate releasing stresses accumulated there. The eyelids and a thousand muscles in the face and forehead, and then the scalp. The mind becomes more and more ”expansive.”
One of the fingers goes to the forehead, then moves in an arch and touches the ground (mattress). This movement is repeated several times. These ”ritual” movements seem to have a meaning for the body, that is just barely perceived by the mind. Different thoughts come spontaneously, effortlessly to me as kinds of ”messages” or a ”learning advice.” First, these movements are ”encoded” in the body, almost at a level more profound than the DNA. Another thought is that all the knowledge in sacred texts, as the Vedic Literature, is not myth, or legend, or wishful thinking. They are precise descriptions of ”lived experiences,” like “reports” to eventual seers to recognize them when they will meet them. Also these are ”rituals” or ”sacrifices.” This term is used to refer to the Rig-Veda type of ritual based on sacrifice, which have both symbolic meaning, almost like a prayer, and practical uses as one way to ”channel energy” or ”release and guide flows of pleasure” through the body.
The rituals are not a reminder or model or indicator of dynamics and ways that the universe and the body work, but the essence of the dynamics, of the laws of nature themselves. The rituals allow the universe to unfold. The unfolding is a ritual. This again is not a philosophical or intellectual idea or thought, but a direct realization, a revealed truth (that can be felt by the mind (and even more by the body). A ”taste of truth” comes with this experience.
The dance continues with ”massage” and ”chiropractor work” alternating with each other, and at other times, together. Now the ”massage” becomes more organized. Traditional body postures, ”asanas,” are assumed, and enormous blocks of stress are released.
Now I start to vocalize as in making love with myself. Asanas are repeated in a precise order. Some of them are unknown to me, especially that one I call the “Egyptian” position.
Then the dance starts again. I kind of sing with it, following its particular rhythm The body shakes back and forth, sometime very wildly, producing a lot of noise as banging over the mattress. Then the hopping starts. I’m in the sitting position with crossed legs, and after feeling an enormous thrusting push at the bottom, I jump up from the mattress. These jumps are sometime repeated very frequently.
Laughs and waves of joy are coming up. Then waves through the spine that emphasize different ”chakras.” In particular the chakra of the heart.
The wave goes down to the groin in the sexual organs. It becomes very sexual, at the same time maintaining an essence of purity and spirituality. When the wave reaches the sexual organs, I feel a push to the lower back, that is pressed towards the sky and I reach some sort of very intense “orgasm.” The penis is not erected and no semen is ejaculated. But the pleasure is a thousand times more intense than a normal sexual experience.
The energy moves fast to the heart. The heart needs a lot of healing. This is a very intense experience, almost painful. Feelings are worked out now. Past loves, desires, hopes, attachments, fears and anxieties, things of all sorts that are grasped from the world and stored in the heart, that looks like a huge cave. The cave is filled with round, drop-shaped blocks of blackness, almost of the texture and color of obsidian. These are the ”solid” manifestations of the trash kept in the heart. One by one they start to fly away, almost as if they were knives, or thorns being extracted from the chest.
The torso is pushed up. My arms are spread apart. It looks almost as if I was put on a cross. When these black blobs leave it is very painful, but there is a great sense of relief at the same time. The heart is letting go of its holdings, a difficult task. A crucial moment is reached when a particular huge blob is lifted. It comes out of the body with the effort and intensity of a birth labor.
I didn’t usually associate these black thorns with a particular desire or attachment, but I have a strong feeling that this last block is the love for Margit and the child, our family. The pain is so strong that I almost scream with all the air in my lungs, then a big sigh of relief as the last task is finally achieved.
The body sits; there is some peace. Open mind, and a vast, empty clean space in the heart. I stay in this position for a while. I think this is it; I’m enlightened. But then the dance starts again and the massage and chiropractic work. Last efforts are in my shoulder: an enormous, internal push of all the muscles and bones, above all through the right shoulder where I had the car accident injury, exactly on the blade. The massage goes to the stomach, all the tension on the many muscles there is released. I sit in the lotus position, I repeat many times the namaskar mudra and the third eye mudra.
Peace. Lights up through channels. Infinite expansion of the mind. The end result of the work on the body is that no stress, no tension is there. The body, now, is like that of a new born baby: soft, white, pure. It is so sensitive to the touch, I can feel even the presence of the air around me. An incredible pleasure is associated with being with this body, not grasping it, not owning it, but being with it. The mind is clear and thoughtless. A beyond words knowingness is present.
The heart, the other strong center of awareness, is without feelings, no fear, no joy, no sadness, just a calm, peaceful, blissful sense of being. All the wild movements, the massage, the dance subsides and, as evidence of the physical intensity of the experience, there are the sweat-drenched bed sheets. It is almost as if my body went through an exhausting workout, but I feel full of energy and completely rested.
I know I should sit still for a long time, doing nothing, to stabilize this state of mind, to not fall back in the traps of the ego. But for some reason I move, I try first to rest, laying down on the mattress. But even the pressure of my body is too much for my muscles. It is like the body is made of butter, soft to the touch. I decide to get down from the bed. I tell myself to take it easy, to be gentle with myself. I take a shower and it is much too intense of an experience for my new body… Every drop of water feels like little needles, it is pleasurable and not, simultaneously. I eat breakfast and again every bite is so full of zest, even water has fine levels of texture and different shadows of taste. I cannot take more than few bites.
There is a sense of festivity in the air, as if this day is a Holiday not just for me but for all beings. I decide to go outside to enjoy the sun and fresh air, to be in Nature, sitting in a grass field.
Once outside I feel the rays of the sun over my skin as almost too warm, the sensitivity of my skin makes even the common experience of exposure to the sun very intense. Another amazing things is the presence of all these lights, moving in the street. I come closer to one of them and I realize they are human beings! Every being (not just humans but also dogs and other animals) has a halo around it! I don’t see colors but a shining light that varies in intensities. I go to visit my friend L. and her dogs come to the door. Their enthusiasm and liveliness is made visible by their proper light. They are two bouncing balls of light. L.’s house seems so amazing; every object shines and is so clear, like every thing has just come out of the factory. They seem much more three-dimensional, almost like you can see them from all sides at once. Plato’s myth of the cave comes to mind: it seems that during our normal awake state of consciousness we see just the shadows of objects; now I see them in all their glory, full of color and complex texture. The red color of the wallpaper, its intricate patterns, can entertain my attention forever. Everything is so beautiful, magnificent, radiant. Towards L. I feel such warm love and sympathy, as she is just an extension of the same being that is inside me. This feeling is sensed as a soft pulsation of the heart. It is the heart beating itself. I am mostly silent, but slowly I explain to L. what happened. Very slowly, as I try to put in words the experience, as I put labels, nouns and adjectives to the indescribable, some strange tingling of the skin is appearing seemingly at random over my entire body. The sensation is comparable to that of having immersed yourself, for some time, in a cool pool of water, on a summer day, and now, after coming out of it, the skin is still wet, but little by little, it becomes dry as the water vaporizes.
The beautiful state of high consciousness, in which I was immersed for many hours, brought me a sense of blissful freshness, but now, exposed to the heat of the external existence, my body and spirit dry up. Another analogy is to think about the new consciousness as mobile and dynamical, flowing continuously, not holding. A process of crystallization is happening, bringing immobility and stagnation in the perception and appreciation of life. A bright circle of light becomes smaller and smaller as it lifts out of my head. It becomes a point on top of the head and disappears. I realize I’m back to normal dull reality. My higher state of consciousness is gone.
At first an incredible sense of disgust is present. I don’t want to be back. I thought I was enlightened, free forever. I’m disappointed, even upset with God. Why this game? Why make me experience such bliss to then take it away from me? Quickly I realize there has to be a reason, that this way of thinking is contaminated by the ego, now back in its full strength. So I relax and my heart fills with gratitude and amazement for what happened. In the next few days I remain in a subtle, elated state. I desire very strongly final liberation and my mind goes all the time towards God. I see Him in everything. Towards people, there is a sense of compassion and understanding. I can see their bondage by the heavy chains of Karma.
I believe that the meaning of my experience was to have a taste of the bliss brought by full realization, I was given the grace of a bite of Nirvana.
Some weeks later I woke up in the middle of the night. My entire body was dancing spontaneously, twisting and vibrating. My hands were performing their beautiful sequence of Mudras. I recognized Kundalini coming back, actually realizing she never left, as an old time friend or intimate companion. Since then every time I close my eyes and relax, my hands and body dance the mystical dance of Shiva, and I go in ecstatic states of rapture in a very natural, spontaneous way.
