Shaktipat

Shaktipat

                 The spiritual teacher Meher Baba emphasized the need for a master when actively trying to awaken the kundalini: "Kundalini is a latent power in the higher body. When awakened it pierces through six chakras or functional centres and activates them. Without a master, awakening of the kundalini cannot take any one very far on the Path; and such indiscriminate or premature awakening is fraught with dangers of self-deception as well as misuse of powers. The kundalini enables man consciously to cross the lower planes and it ultimately merges into the universal cosmic power of which it is a part, and which also is at times described as kundalini....The important point is that the awakened kundalini is helpful only up to a certain degree, after which it cannot ensure further progress. It cannot dispense with the need for the grace of a Perfect Master."

Kundalini awakening while prepared or unprepared

The experience of kundalini awakening can happen when one is either prepared or unprepared.

Preparedness

              According to Hindu tradition, in order to be able to integrate this spiritual energy, a period of careful purification and strengthening of the body and nervous system is usually required beforehand. Yoga and Tantra propose that kundalini energy can be "awakened" by a guru (teacher), but body and spirit must be prepared by yogic austerities such as pranayama, or breath control, physical exercises, visualization, and chanting. Patañjali emphasised a firm ethical and moral foundation to ensure the aspirant is comfortable with a reasonable degree of discipline and has a serious intention to awaken their full potential. The student is advised to follow the path in an openhearted manner.

Unpreparedness

              The kundalini can also awaken spontaneously, for no obvious reason or triggered by intense personal experiences such as accidents, near death experiences, childbirth, emotional trauma, extreme mental stress, and so on. Some sources attribute spontaneous awakenings to the "grace of God", or possibly to spiritual practice in past lives.

                A spontaneous awakening in one who is unprepared or without the assistance of a good teacher can result in an experience which has been termed as "kundalini crisis", "spiritual emergency" or "kundalini syndrome". The symptoms are said to resemble those of kundalini awakening but are experienced as unpleasant, overwhelming or out of control. Unpleasant side effects are said to occur when the practitioner has not approached kundalini with due respect and in a narrow egotistical manner. Kundalini has been described as a highly creative intelligence which dwarfs our own. Kundalini awakening therefore requires surrender; it is not an energy which can be manipulated by the ego.

Hatha yoga

Different approaches

               The question arises: how is this awakening triggered? There are two broad approaches to kundalini awakening: active and passive. The active approach involves systematic physical exercises and techniques of concentration, visualization, pranayama and meditation under the guidance of a competent teacher. These techniques come from any of the four main branches of yoga but for this purpose could be termed kundalini yoga. The passive approach is instead a path of surrender where one lets go of all the impediments to the awakening rather than trying to actively awaken the kundalini. A chief part of the passive approach is shaktipat where one person's kundalini is awakened by another who already has the experience. Shaktipat only raises the kundalini temporarily but gives the student an experience to use as a basis.

Hatha yoga

             According to the hatha yoga text, the Goraksasataka, or "Hundred Verses of Goraksa", certain hatha yoga practices including mula bandha, uddiyana bandha, jalandhara bandha and kumbhaka can awaken the kundalini. Another hathayoga text, the Khecarīvidyā, states that kechari mudra enables one to raise Kundalini and access various stores of amrita in the head, which subsequently flood the body.

Kundalini awakening

Etymology

             According to well-known teacher and translator Eknath Easwaran, kundalini means "the coiled power," a force which ordinarily rests at the base of the spine, described as being coiled there like a serpent. The concept can be found under different names. For example the eighth century Tantrasadbhava Tantra uses the term kundali ('she who is ring-shaped').

Kundalini awakening

           Through meditation, and various esoteric practices, such as Kundalini Yoga, Sahaja Yoga, and Kriya Yoga, the kundalini is awakened, and can rise up from the muladhara chakra through the central nadi, called sushumna, inside or alongside the spine and reaches the top of the head. The progress of kundalini through the different chakras leads to different levels of awakening and mystical experience, until the kundalini finally reaches the top of the head, Sahasrara or crown chakra, producing an extremely profound mystical experience.

A number of descriptions exist that attempt to describe exactly what the kundalini experience is:

           Sri Ramana Maharshi mentioned that the kundalini energy is nothing but the natural energy of the Self, where Self is the universal consciousness (Paramatma) present in every being, and that the individual mind of thoughts cloaks this natural energy from unadulterated expression. Advaita teaches that Self-realization, enlightenment, God-consciousness, nirvana. But, initial kundalini awakening is just the beginning of actual spiritual experience. Self-inquiry meditation is considered a very natural and simple means of reaching this goal.

Swami Vivekananda described kundalini briefly in London during his lectures on Raja Yoga as follows:

According to the Yogis, there are two nerve currents in the spinal column, called Pingalâ and Idâ, and a hollow canal called Sushumnâ running through the spinal cord. At the lower end of the hollow canal is what the Yogis call the "Lotus of the Kundalini". They describe it as triangular in form in which, in the symbolical language of the Yogis, there is a power called the Kundalini, coiled up. When that Kundalini awakes, it tries to force a passage through this hollow canal, and as it rises step by step, as it were, layer after layer of the mind becomes open and all the different visions and wonderful powers come to the Yogi. When it reaches the brain, the Yogi is perfectly detached from the body and mind; the soul finds itself free. We know that the spinal cord is composed in a peculiar manner. If we take the figure eight horizontally (∞) there are two parts which are connected in the middle. Suppose you add eight after eight, piled one on top of the other, that will represent the spinal cord. The left is the Ida, the right Pingala, and that hollow canal which runs through the centre of the spinal cord is the Sushumna. Where the spinal cord ends in some of the lumbar vertebrae, a fine fibre issues downwards, and the canal runs up even within that fibre, only much finer. The canal is closed at the lower end, which is situated near what is called the sacral plexus, which, according to modern physiology, is triangular in form. The different plexuses that have their centres in the spinal canal can very well stand for the different "lotuses" of the Yogi.

               When kundalini Shakti is conceived as a goddess, then, when it rises to the head, it unites itself with the Supreme Being (Lord Shiva). Then the aspirant becomes engrossed in deep meditation and infinite bliss.

            In his article on Kundalini in the Yoga Journal, David Eastman narrates two personal experiences. One man said he felt an activity at the base of his spine starting to flow so he relaxed and allowed it to happen. A feeling of surging energy began traveling up his back, at each chakra he felt an orgasmic electric feeling like every nerve trunk on his spine beginning to fire. A second man describes a similar experience but accompanied by a wave of euphoria and happiness softly permeating his being. He described the surging energy as being like electricity but hot, traveling from the base of his spine to the top of his head. He said the more he analyzed the experience, the less it occurred.

         The arousing of kundalini is said by some to be the one and only way of attaining Divine Wisdom. Self-Realization is said to be equivalent to Divine Wisdom or Gnosis or what amounts to the same thing: self-knowledge. The awakening of the kundalini shows itself as "awakening of inner knowledge" and brings with itself "pure joy, pure knowledge and pure love."