What is Kundalini?

All Sadhanas in the form of Japa, meditation, Kirtan and prayer as well as all development of virtues, and observance of austerities like truth, non-violence and continence are at best calculated only to awaken this serpent-power and make it to pass through all the succeeding Chakras beginning from Svadhishthana to Sahasrara, the latter otherwise called as the thousand-petalled lotus, the seat of Sadasiva or the Absolute separated from whom the Kundalini or the Shakti lies at the Muladhara, and to unite with whom the Kundalini passes through all the Chakras, as explained above, conferring liberation on the aspirant who assiduously practices Yoga or the technique of uniting her with her Lord and gets success also in his effort.

– Swami Sivananda Saraswati

Among those of us who are involved in yoga practice the concept of kundalini may be very familiar, so familiar, in fact that we rarely pause to consider what it is we mean by this term.  On the other hand, some readers might be new to the term and wondering what we are talking about, sometimes I wonder if anyone knows.  Some of us have had a certain experience of this energy but still it remains mysterious.  Kundalini is intricately related to the mystery of consciousness it seems; a mystery which challenges scientific categorization.

Recently a friend noticed my body shaking at points during meditation practice.  I assured her, “It’s just kundalini.”  In one sense this is sufficient – it is enough to know that these symptoms are normal.  At the same time we don’t have any precise understanding as to what this is all about.  My particular symptoms may seem insignificant, but what we are really talking about is the evolutionary potential itself.  We are particular aspects of an unfolding process which started 13.7 billion years ago according to the most recent calculations.  In fact, we are the advancing edge of this process, as far as we know on this planet.

Kundalini challenges us to extend our thinking beyond the ordinary categories of mind/matter, consciousness/energy, emptiness/form.  According to Tantric science, we are more than our bodies, more than our rational ego-minds.  We are vehicles of the unfolding energy of a universal consciousness.  We are microcosmic aspects of a macrocosmic process and potential.  The universal process of evolution is happening in and through us.  At the same time we have the choice to temporarily resist this process, to hide in our static world-models and cling to the past.

I think one of our biggest problems is the tendency to reduce kundalini to some kind of measurable something; in other words, an attempt at spiritual materialism.  According to the tradition this energetic potential resides within the causal domain.  The causal domain, or anandamaya kosha, is a proto-material, proto-mental dimension of reality.  It manifests itself within our material and mental realities but it originates beyond both.  Kundalini is at the core of our beings as conscious entities. 

The causal domain relates to what physicist David Bohm called the “implicate order.”  He created this term to describe a hidden order of reality from which our apparent reality “explicates.”  It is a unseen order of being.  The kundalini tradition assures us that we are intimately connected with this deeper dimension.  In fact we are vehicles through which it is expressed.  This not a predetermined, mechanical process however, the way that it is expressed is up to each of us as individuals.  It is not a predetermined but a stochastic, or interactive process.

In Kundalini Tantra, Swami Satyananda Saraswati states, “All life is evolving and man is no exception. Human evolution, the evolution which we are undergoing relentlessly, both as individuals and as a race, is a journey through the different chakras.”  We tend to think of the chakras as kinds of invisible organs inside our bodies.  Instead we might think of them as quantum fields of potential which are both actualized and waiting to be actualized.  We and our worlds of experience are held within our chakras as well.  Swami Satyananda states, “As we evolve towards sahasrara, outer experiences come our way in life, and inner experiences come to us in meditation, as different capacities and centers awaken progressively within the nervous system. This occurs as energy flows at higher voltages and rates of vibration through the different nadis in the psychic body.” 

We can say that everything we experience is an aspect of our state and level of consciousness, and that state and level is based on the chakra in which kundalini is activated.  The inner and outer dimensions of our experience are correlated.  This is an essential feature of integral theory as formulated by Ken Wilber.  As consciousness evolves through the agency of kundalini our outer world of experience evolves accordingly. 

We cannot divorce kundalini from any and all spiritual practices.  Whether we are practicing prayer and meditation, ecstatic song and dance, dedicated works, compassionate intent, or kriya yoga; everything is both a means of awakening and an expression of where we’re at.  Within the Christian tradition kundalini has been equated with the Holy Spirit, albeit controversially.  However, the comparison is valid.  Kundalini, like the Holy Spirit, can come to us with intuitive wisdom and guidance and open us to new fields of perception through our prayer and devotion to God. 

    Ultimately, there is no resisting the force of universal evolution.  Some writers have equated the chakras with the various levels of developmental psychology.  To some extant this seems to be valid.  One writer associated the chakras with the Ericksonian stages of psychological development.  Ordinary development however seems to represent micro-stages within the first three chakras.  The kundalini tradition tells us that we have untapped and unsuspected potentials within us.  We are capable of siddhis, i.e. psychic superpowers.  Before we awaken these though, we need to discover our own deepest humanity; our innate wisdom and compassion.  Without them we have no future.