Symptoms of Kundalini Awakening

Excerpts from the book Kundalini – Arousal of Inner Energy

The ascent of Kundalini as it pierces through the chakras is manifested in certain physical and psychic signs. Yogis have described the trembling of the body which precedes the arousal of Kundalini, and the explosion of heat which passes like a current through the Sushumna. During Kundalini’s ascent, inner sounds are heard, resembling a waterfall, the humming of bees, the sound of a bell, a flute, the tinkling of ornaments, and so on. The head may start to feel giddy and the mouth fill with saliva, but the yogi goes on until he can hear the innermost, the most subtle, the unstruck’ sound (anahata nad). In his closed-eye perception the yogi visualizes a variety of forms, such as dots of light, flames, geometrical shapes, that in the final state of illumination dissolve into an inner radiance of intensely bright, pure light.

Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas – Experience

Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas, a contemporary guru following the traditional methods of kundalini-yoga, enumerates the numerous signs and symptoms that may be experienced by the aspirant as:

• creeping sensations in the spinal cord;
• tingling sensations all over the body;
• heaviness in the head or sometimes giddiness;
• automatic and involuntary laughing or crying; hearing unusual noises;
• seeing visions of deities or saints.
• Dream-scenes of all kinds may appear, from the heavenly to the demonic.
• Physically, the abdomen wall may become flat and be drawn towards the spine;
• there may be diarrhea or constipation;
• the anus contracts and is drawn up; the chin may press down against the neck;
• the eyeballs roll upwards or rotate;
• the body may bend forward or back, or even roll around on the floor;
• Breathing may be constricted, seeming sometimes to cease altogether, although in fact it does not, but merely becomes extremely slight;
• The mind becomes empty and there is an experience of being a witness in the body.
• There may be a feeling of Prana flowing in the brain or spinal cord.
• Sometimes there is a spontaneous chanting of mantras or songs, or simply vocal noises.
• The eyes may not open in spite of one’s efforts to open them.
• The body may revolve or twist in all directions.
• Sometimes it bounds up and down with crossed legs, or creeps about, snake-like, on the floor.
• Some perform asanas (yogic postures) both known and unknown;
• Sometimes the hands move in classic, formal dance-patterns, even though the meditator knows nothing of dance.
• Some speak in tongues.
• Sometimes the body feels as if it is floating upwards, and sometimes as if it is being pressed down into the earth. It may feel as if it has grown hugely large, or extremely small. It may shake and tremble and become limp, or turn as rigid as stone.
• Sometimes the brows knit, and the face wrinkles up tightly, closing the eyes.
• Some get more appetite, some feel aversion to food.
• Even when engaged in activities other than meditation, the aspirant who concentrates his mind experiences movements of prana-Sakti all over the body, or slight tremors.
• There may be aches in the body, or a rise or drop in temperature.
• Some people become lethargic and averse to work.
• Sometimes the meditator hears buzzing sounds as of blowing conches, or bird-song or ringing bells.
• Questions may arise in the mind and be spontaneously answered during meditation.
• Sometimes the tongue sticks to the palate or is drawn back towards the throat, or protrudes from the mouth.
• Salivation increases or decreases. The throat may get dry or parched.
• The jaws may become clenched, but after a time they reopen.
• One may start yawning when one sits for meditation.
• There may be a feeling of the head becoming separated from the body, and one may experience ‘headlessness’.
• Sometimes one may be able to see things around one even with the eyes closed.
• Various types of intuitive knowledge may begin.
• One may see one’s own image.
• One may even see one’s own body lying dead.

From all these signs, one may know that Kundalini Sakti has become active.

Not everyone will experience all or even most of these signs. The Sakti produces whatever experiences are necessary for the disciple’s spiritual progress, according to his samskaras, or habit-pattern formed by past action.

Dhyanyogi observes that: ‘We do not all have identical experiences in meditation. In our path of meditation, one should not aim at such uniformity. Everyone’s experiences are conditioned by his previous impressions or samskaras. It sometimes happens in the knowledge of the sadhaka that, after Saktipat [energy-moving], all the six chakras or lotuses are pierced by the uprising Kundalini and he goes into samadhi. Sometimes he remains unaware of the piercing of the six chakras, possibly because the kriyas [involuntary movements occasioned in the human body under the effect of yoga] caused by it are perfunctory and minimal. During non-meditative Kundalini arousal, all the chakras may be experienced simultaneously, since the highest state embraces all former experience.

Few more experiences mentioned on Kundalini Yoga website

https://www.thekundaliniyoga.org/Kundalini/divine_experiences_of_siddha_yoga_kundalini_yoga_god.aspx

Muktananda Experience

Swami Muktananda, initiated by his spiritual preceptor, describes in his autobiographical account his heaviness of head, his sensations of heat, of pain at the base of the spine, the involuntary movements, flows of energy through the body, unusual breathing-patterns, inner lights and sounds, visions and voices, and many other extraordinary experiences.

In the process of the arousal of Kundalini, Muktananda went through an experience of extreme sexual excitement: ‘Every day brought new kriyas and new experiences. One day, my body and senses became possessed by sexual desire…. I was meditating in my hut at Suki, and in meditation I was seeing the red light. I was happy. Then, in the middle of my meditation, came a kriya that was utterly humiliating…. All the love and intoxication I had felt in meditation left me…. Instead, in their place came a powerful sexual desire…. I could think of nothing but sex! My whole body boiled with lust, and I cannot describe the agony of my sexual organ…. I decided to make my body weaker and thinner, so I stopped drinking milk and reduced my intake of water. I could not sleep at night because of the turmoil in my mind….

Without saying anything to anyone, I set out toward the east… Then, heading in the direction of the holy place called Ghrishneshvara, near Ellora, I came upon the village of Nagad…. As I was looking around outside, my eye fell on a small sadhana [ritual worship] hut. There had been a yogi doing sadhana there before…. When I sat down inside the hut, my legs immediately folded into the lotus posture, and I started meditating. My beloved red aura came and stood before me, and then I heard a voice from within me, “Open that cupboard and read the book you find there”… I took it out and opened it. It opened at a page describing the very kriyas that had been happening to me. When I read it, I was supremely happy; in a moment, all my anguish, confusion and worry disappeared… I stayed in Nagad for some time, doing my sadhana. Now I understood that the onset of sexual desire was connected with the process of becoming an urdhvareta, from which one gets the power to give Shaktipat. When the Svadhisthana chakra is pierced, sexual desire becomes very strong, but this happens so that the flow of sexual fluid may be turned upward and the sadhaka’s lust destroyed forever

GopiKrishna – Experience

In another recent autobiographical record, Gopi Krishna describes his experiences when Kundalini was aroused spontaneously, without spiritual preparation or the guidance of a guru. Seated quietly in meditation one day he became aware of a strange and pleasing sensation below the base of the spine. The sensation came and went, until, with a ‘roar like a waterfall’, a stream of liquid light entered his brain through the spine and he became ‘all consciousness’ and ‘immersed in a sea of light’.

There followed restlessness and sufferings, however, and over the years Gopi Krishna continued to experience both visions of light and agonies of mind and body. He writes of one occasion that: ‘The heat grew every moment, causing such unbearable pain that I writhed and twisted from side to side while streams of cold perspiration poured down my face and limbs. But still the heat increased and soon it seemed as if innumerable red-hot pins were coursing through my body, scorching and blistering the organs and tissues like flying sparks.

Suffering the most excruciating torture, I clenched my hands and bit my lips to stop myself from leaping out of bed and crying at the top of my voice. The throbbing of my heart grew more and more terrific, acquiring such a spasmodic violence that I thought it must either stop beating or burst. Flesh and blood could not stand such strain, giving way any moment. It was easy to see that the body was valiantly trying to fight the virulent poison speeding across the nerves and pouring into the brain. But the fight was so unequal and the fury let loose in my system so lethal that there could not be the least doubt about the outcome. There was dreadful disturbance in all the organs, each so alarming and painful that I wonder how I managed to retain my self-possession under the onslaught.

The whole delicate system was burning, withering away completely under the fiery blast racing through its interior.’ On a later occasion: ‘There was no diminution in the vital radiation which, emanating from the seat of Kundalini, sped across my nerves to every part of the body, filling my ears with strange sounds and my head with strange lights; but the current was now warm and pleasing instead of hot and burning, and it soothed and refreshed the tortured cells and tissues in a truly miraculous manner…. Whenever I turned my mental eye upon myself I invariably perceived a luminous glow within and outside my head in a state of constant vibration, as if a jet of an extremely subtle and brilliant substance rising through the spine spread itself out in the cranium, filling and surrounding it with an indescribable radiance.

This shining halo never remained constant in dimension or in the intensity of its brightness. It waxed and waned, brightened and grew dim, or changed its color from silver to gold and vice versa. When it increased in size or brilliance, the strange noise in my ears, now never absent, grew louder and more insistent, as if drawing my attention to something I could not understand. The halo was never stationary but in a state of perpetual motion, dancing and leaping, eddying and swirling, as if composed of innumerable, extremely subtle, brilliant particles of some immaterial substance, shooting up and down, this way and that, combining to present an appearance of a circling, shimmering pool of light

Ramakrishna Paramahansa – Experience

Ramakrishna, who followed the disciplines of kundalini-yoga under the guidance of a female guru, Brahmam, achieved in three days the result promised by each of the rituals. He described his experience as a hopping, pushing up, moving zig-zag. He directly perceived the ascent of the Kundalini, and later described to his disciples its various movements as fishlike, birdlike, monkeylike, and so on.

He spoke of the centres of energy from his own experience in this way: ‘In the Scriptures mention is made of the seven centres of consciousness. When the mind is attached to worldliness, consciousness dwells in the three lower centres, the plexus, sacrococcygeal, sacral, and solar. Then there are in it no high ideals or pure thoughts. It remains immersed in lust and greed.

The fourth centre of consciousness is the region of the heart. Spiritual awakening comes when the mind rises to this centre. At this stage man has a spiritual vision of the Divine Light and is struck with wonder at its beauty and glory. His mind then no longer runs after worldly pleasures.

The region of the throat is the fifth centre of consciousness. When mind rises to this centre, man becomes free from ignorance. He then talks only on subjects relating to God and grows impatient if any worldly topic is discussed. He avoids hearing about worldly subjects.

When mind rises to the sixth centre between the eyebrows, man becomes merged in divine consciousness. There is still left in him, however, the consciousness of a separate ego. Seeing the beatific vision of God he becomes mad with joy and longs to come closer to him and be united with him. But he cannot, for there is still the ego which stands between them. One may compare God to the light in a lantern. You seem to feel its warmth, yet though you wish to do so, you cannot touch it, on account of the glass intervening.

The centre in the brain is the seventh centre. When one rises to this plane, there is samadhi. That is the transcendental consciousness, in which one realizes his oneness with God.

If, however, anybody’s mind reaches the spot between the eyebrows he has no more fear of a fall. He then has the direct knowledge of the supreme Self and remains continually in Samadhi. There is only a screen, transparent like glass, separating this centre from the thousand-petalled lotus in the brain, the Sahasrara. The supreme Self is so near then that it seems as if one is merged in Him, identified with Him But the identification is yet to be. If the mind comes down from here it comes at the most down to the throat or the heart. It cannot come lower down. The Jivakotis never come down from this plane. After the experience of continuous Samadhi for twenty-one days the screen is pierced and the oneness of the self with Him becomes complete. To be completely merged in the supreme Self in the Sahasrara is what is called reaching the seventh plane.”

“The natural tendency of this mind is upwards towards the Nirvikalpa plane. Once in Samadhi, it does not feel inclined to come down. It has forcibly to be brought down for your sake. This force is moreover not sufficient for bringing me down, so I catch hold of some trifling desires of the lower plane, as ‘I will smoke tobacco’, ‘I will drink water’, ‘I will take this’, ‘I will see so-and-so’, ‘I will talk’; these also have to be retained in the mind by effective repetition. It is only then that the mind gradually comes down to the state of body-consciousness. Again, when coming down, it flies off in that (upward) direction. It has to be brought down again by means of such desires.”

Ramakrishna tried to describe the details of his Kundalini experience to his close disciples: ‘I’ll tell you everything today and will not keep anything secret.’ Pointing to the spot between the eyebrows he said: ‘The Supreme Self is directly known and the individual experiences samadhi when the mind comes here. There remains then but a thin transparent screen separating the Supreme Self and the individual self. The sadhaka then experiences…’. Saying this, at the moment he started to describe in detail the realization of the Supreme Self, he was plunged in samadhi. When the samadhi came to an end, he tried again to describe the realization of the Supreme Self and was again in samadhi.

After several fruitless attempts, he broke down in tears. ‘Well, I sincerely wish to tell you everything… without concealing anything whatsoever,’ but he was unable to speak. ‘Who should speak? The very distinction between ‘I’ and ‘thou’ vanishes: Whenever I try to describe what kinds of visions I experience when it goes beyond this place [showing the throat] and think what kinds of visions I am witnessing, the mind rushes immediately up, and speaking becomes impossible.’

In the final centre, ‘the distinction between the subject of consciousness and the object of consciousness is destroyed. It is a state wherein self-identity and the field of consciousness are blended in one indissoluble whole. The whole world was revealed to Ramakrishna as the play of Siva-Sakti. The barrier between the matter and energy broke down for him, and he saw even a grain of sand and a blade of grass as vibrating with energy. The universe appeared to him as a lake of mercury or of silver, and he had a vision of the ultimate cause of the universe as a huge luminous triangle giving birth every moment to an infinite number of universes.

Ramakrishna relates how: ‘One day in June or July, when I was six or seven years old, I was walking along a narrow path separating the paddy fields, eating some of the puffed rice which I was carrying in a basket, and looking up at the sky I saw a beautiful, sombre thunder-cloud. As it spread, rapidly enveloping the whole sky, a flight of snow-white cranes flew overhead in front of it. It presented such a beautiful contrast that my mind wandered to far off regions. Lost to outward sense, I fell down, and the rice was scattered in all directions. Some people found me in that plight and carried me home in their arms. That was the first time I completely lost consciousness in ecstasy.’ Throughout his life ‘God-consciousness’ was easily awakened in him, and plunged him into samadhi. Later in his life, a glimpse of an English boy leaning against a tree with his body bent in three places like the traditional pictures of Krishna, sent him into ‘communion with God’.

On another occasion his mystical vision arose from despair. Ramakrishna became the priest of the Kali Temple, north of Calcutta, and when one day, after going through meditational spiritual practices, he could not achieve the desired goal, he prayed to the Divine Mother Kali: ‘Are you real or are you a delusion? Am I making a fool of myself imagining that I can ever know you?’ He began to suffer excruciating physical pain and great restlessness. ‘I could not bear the separation any longer; life did not seem worth living. Suddenly my eyes fell on the sword that was kept in the Mother’s temple.

Determined to put an end to my life, I jumped up like a madman and seized it, when suddenly the blessed Mother revealed herself to me and I fell unconscious on the floor. The buildings with their different parts, the temple, and everything else vanished from my sight, leaving no trace whatsoever. Instead I saw a limitless, infinite, effulgent Ocean of Bliss. As far as the eye could see, the shining billows were madly rushing towards me on all sides with a terrific noise to swallow me up. I was panting for breath. I was caught in the rush and collapsed, unconscious. What was happening in the outside world I did not know; but within me there was a steady flow of undiluted bliss, altogether new, and I felt the presence of the Divine Mother.’

Supernatural powers are one of the manifestations associated with the practice of kundalini-yoga, and they may also appear following spontaneous arousal of the Kundalini energy. Self-actualization may be manifested in such special attainments (siddhis) as living without food, duplicating one’s body, rising from the dead, gaining knowledge of the ‘heavenly worlds, of the planets, stars, universes and the whole cosmos’, weightlessness, levitation and travel through space.