Kuṇḍalinī awakenings are said to occur by a variety of methods. Many systems of yoga focus on awakening Kuṇḍalinī through: meditation; pranayama breathing; the practice of asana and chanting of mantras.[4] Kundalini Yoga is influenced by Shaktism and Tantra schools of Hinduism. It derives its name from its focus upon the awakening of kundalini energy through regular practice of Mantra, Tantra, Yantra, Asanas or Meditation.[4][5]
"As the ancient writers have said, it is the vital force or prana which is spread over both the macrocosm, the entire Universe, and the microcosm, the human body... The atom is contained in both of these. Prana is life-energy responsible for the phenomena of terrestrial life and for life on other planets in the universe. Prana in its universal aspect is immaterial. But in the human body, Prana creates a fine biochemical substance which works in the whole organism and is the main agent of activity in the nervous system and in the brain. The brain is alive only because of Prana... The most important psychological changes in the character of an enlightened person would be that he or she would be compassionate and more detached. There would be less ego, without any tendency toward violence or aggression or falsehood. The awakened life energy is the mother of morality, because all morality springs from this awakened energy. Since the very beginning, it has been this evolutionary energy that has created the concept of morals in human beings.[20]
Gopi Krishna Kundalini the evolutionary energy in man.23
Traditionally, people visited ashrams in India to awaken their dormant kundalini energy with regular meditation, mantra chanting, spiritual studies and physical asana practice such as kundalini yoga.[citation needed]
For Sannella, then, the KAE constitutes 'an aspect of psychospiritual unfolding' - 'part of an evolutionary mechanism, and... as such it must not be viewed as a pathological development' (p. 9, my emphasis). And Gopi Krishna viewed the KAE as that which 'enable[s] human consciousness to transcend the normal limits..., to transcend the limits of the highest intellect... - the final phase of the present evolutionary impulse in man' (quoted in ibid.: 12; cf. Krishna, 1974). For example, there is 'the ecstatic unification of subject and object' (p. 31), which transcends the dualistic split consciousness of the Cartesian ego, and which the epistemologies of the 'new science' are increasingly beginning to embrace (e.g. see Bortoft, 1996; House, 1999b). According to Sannella, once Gopi Krishna's active kundalini was stabilised, 'it formed the basis for the gradual development of extraordinary mental gifts, creativity and tranquillity - [and] to all kinds of mystical experiences' (p. 51). Gopi Krishna himself goes as far as arguing that the KAE is, inter alia, 'the real cause of all so-called spiritual and psychic phenomena [and] the master key to the unsolved mystery of creation' (quoted on p. 20; Krishna, 1974).
Concluding this discussion of the kundalini, it seems that the KAE is probably multiply determined, being simultaneously a 'purificatory process' (Sannella, 1992: 107), a process of healing deep unconscious psychic material, and a transmutative process into a higher, qualitatively new level of consciousness. On this view, all those USEs that are typically labelled 'psychotic' and treated biologically with psycho-active medication may well have a crucial transpersonal evolutionary aspect that conventional 'treatments', rooted in the old Cartesian paradigm, not only completely miss, but actually do a profound violence towards. However, the chances of alternative, supportive-facilitative modalities gaining ground are at present small, given the massively entrenched vested material interests in the modernist status quo, manifested by the burgeoning global pharmaceutical industry and its close relationship with the professional institution of Psychiatry (e.g. Breggin, 1993; Jenner et al., 1993; Newnes et al., 1999). As Newnes and Holmes (1999: 274) bluntly assert, 'capitalism [as an instance of modernity? - RH] rather than altruism seems to be the dominant force in the shaping of modern psychiatry'.
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