The Serpent's Tale: Kundalini | Sravana Borkataky-Varma and Anya Foxen

Welcome everybody. My name is Uric Paragle. I'm chairing today's event, the second in the 2526 series of our Center for Yoga Studies seminars. I would like very warmly today to welcome not only the audience but of course also our two speakers, Professor Ana Foxen from the West Coast Santa Barbara and Professor Bokeatia Varmman from the University of Houston, Texas. Both have together written a very important, very, very interesting book and a book that has been long, long overdue, I dare say, and that is mapping the history of the cult, the development, evolution of kundalini in yoga studies. I'm very keenly aware as a teacher on the MA Yoga Studies here at SOAS because every year I get inquiries from students wanting to write dissertations on kundalini, and every year I have to battle with misunderstandings. I've been long waiting for a publication of the kind that you produce that will finally make it so much easier for students but also for the general public, of course, to gain a much better understanding of kundalini as a technique, in its manifestation, the cult, its history, and so forth. So, I'm sure many of our listeners today will join me in welcoming this publication very warmly indeed. And ever so grateful that we have both of you today in the room to introduce your work and to take questions from our audience. So without much great delay, I would like therefore you to commence with your introductions of the publication. Anna, I understand you go first. So, I'm happy to hand over the mic to you and say a little bit more about the publication, what it triggered, and so forth.

the audience but of course also our two speakers um um Professor Ana Foxen from uh the West Coast Santa Barbara and Professor uh Bokeatia Varmman from the University of Houston Texas. um both have together written a a very important

Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jackie, for organizing all of this and to all of you for coming and listening. Yeah, so I'm going to sort of start us off today with just a really general overview of what's going on in this book and how it came about. And then Shrevana and I are going to sort of hand off to one another as we go through the talk today.

the MA yoga studies here at source because every year I get inquiries students wanting to write dissitations on kundalini and every year I have to um battle with misunderstandings and uh I've been long waiting for a publication of the kind that you produce that will

So yeah, I mean, as Luk said, there's really been sort of a dearth of material on this topic. And what we sort of aim to do in this book is really to provide a really broad overview of the transmission history in particular of kundalini as a phenomenon because of course, as Shrevana will talk about in a moment here, this is something that originates in South Asia, but as we see it today, it really goes much beyond that. So let me go ahead and share my screen. It looks like actually somebody needs to allow me to share.

so forth. So, um I'm sure many of of our um listeners today will will join me in in welcoming this publication very warmly indeed. And um ever so grateful that we have both of you today um um in

Okay. Wonderful. Okay, here we go. So, the title of our book is The Serpent's Tale: Kundalini Yoga and the History of an Experience. And so there's a couple of things that are maybe worth mentioning right off the bat about this. And one is the experience aspect of what we're addressing here. So, of course, we are talking about the history of an idea. We're talking about concepts. We're talking about practices.

first. So um um I'm happy to hand over the mic to you and say a little bit more about the publication, what it triggered and so forth.

But the thing that's actually most interesting about this perhaps is the way that there is an experience at the core of all of these phenomena that we're talking about, which are sometimes very diverse phenomena. Actually, if there's a thesis to this book, it's that there's not really one single kundalini or at least one single thing that registers as kundalini. This is really sort of a very, very diverse, very multifold experience. And then the other thing worth talking about right off the bat is the comma between kundalini and yoga because as we find kundalini out there in the wild today, maybe the first thing that comes up when you google the thing is kundalini yoga as one phrase, and often this is kundalini yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan, which is almost sort of a trademark unto itself at this point. And so very early on in the book, we were sort of forced to establish that this is not what the book is about, even though it's of course part of what the book is about, in so far as of course this type of kundalini practice, kundalini experience is one amongst a field of many. At the same time, if we go a little bit further, if we dig just a little bit deeper in terms of how kundalini shows up for us today, and we get past the kundalini yoga part of it, then we really quickly arrive at another set of misconceptions which are sort of captured by this slide here. On the one hand, we find kundalini as a feature of what we would maybe call neo-tantra, which of course is very different from those original South Asian instantiations of tantric traditions. And here kundalini is primarily associated with eroticism, with sexuality, and often with sexual liberation in ways that are maybe very powerful but again represent sort of only a very small sliver of what this phenomenon has been throughout its history. And then of course, we find this other idea that we'll talk about a little bit later in today's discussion that maybe is best summed up as spiritual emergency. So kundalini as of course a very powerful experience, but one that can also read as sort of negative in its own ways. This idea of kundalini awakening as some kind of spiritual crisis that completely upends your life, that really sort of explodes your world in these ways that sometimes maybe you don't want it to be exploded. And there's a history to this sort of panic about it as well because of course even though it has always, I think, shown up as a very powerful experience, the kind of anxiety that we see about it today is a little bit of a novel phenomenon all things considered. So just to very quickly give again a broad overview of what we're looking at here. This is the basic structure of the book. These are essentially the chapters that you'll see. And this is how we traced the transmission history as we began kind of untangling all these various threads of what this thing has been and how it has shown up throughout history. So you'll notice that there's actually sort of a back and forth mirroring that we're trying to represent here. Of course, we begin with the South Asian roots of the phenomenon, and Shrevana again will talk about that in just a moment here. But it's also worth highlighting that there's a Western component here that maybe historically is kind of an accident, right? That these things become important. But because we encounter this phenomenon today in this kind of hybridized, in this blended form, there is some stuff on the other side of the Atlantic that's really sort of worth highlighting there because it's ultimately impossible to understand what kundalini looks like today without considering these kind of parallel sources. And then once we get into the 19th century, so this is around chapters three and four, we begin with this kind of encounter that begins to sort of really blend these two streams. And then as we get closer to the 20th century, we see the emergence of what really becomes for us the standard model, right? I mean, this thing that we kind of very quickly encounter if we start digging into those sources that are ubiquitous now on the internet but are also ubiquitous in the 20th century literature that becomes its own kind of canon. This idea that kundalini is located at the bottom of the spine. It is the serpent power in particular. It has this particular kind of profile to it. It rises through what are usually seven chakras. Often the chakras are rainbow colored, which of course you don't really find in the original South Asian material. And again, it has a sort of very specific profile. It often looks like a caduceus, which of course you also don't really find in the South Asian material. And so that's really what's going on in tha

on in this book and how it came about. Um, and then Shrevana and I are going to sort of hand off to one each other one another as we go through the talk today.

Um, so yeah, I mean, as as Luk said, there's really been sort of a a der of material uh on this topic. And what we sort of aim to do in this book is really to provide a really broad overview of

the transmission history in particular uh of kundalini as a phenomenon because of course as shrevana will talk about in a moment here uh this is something that originates in South Asia uh but as we see it today it really goes much beyond

that. So let me go ahead and share my screen. Um it looks like actually somebody needs to allow me to share.

Okay. Wonderful. Um, okay. Here we go. So, the title of our book is The Serpent's Tale, Kundalini Yoga and the History of an Experience. Um, and so there's a couple of things that are maybe worth mentioning right off the bat

about this. And one is the experience aspect uh of what we're addressing here. So, of course, we are talking about the history of an idea. We're talking about concepts. for talking about practices.

Uh but the thing that's actually most interesting about this perhaps is the way that there is an experience at the core of all of these phenomena uh that we're talking about which are sometimes very diverse phenomena. Um actually if

there's a thesis to this book it's that there's not really one single condolini um or at least one single thing that registers as condundalini. Uh this is really sort of a very very diverse very multiffold experience. And then the

other thing worth talking about right off the bat is that comma uh between condundalini and yoga because as we find kundalini out there in the wild today uh maybe the first thing that comes up when you google the thing is kundalini yoga

uh as one phrase and often this is kundalini yoga as taught by yogi pajan which is almost sort of a trademark onto itself at this point. Um and so very early on in the book we were sort of

forced to establish that this is not what the book is about. Um even though it's of course part of what the book is about. Um in so far as of course this type of condalini uh condundalini practice condundalini experience is one

amongst a field of many. At the same time, uh if we go if we go a little bit further, if we dig just a little bit deeper in terms of how condundalini shows up for us today, uh and we get past the the condundalini

yoga part of it, uh then we really quickly arrive at another set of misconceptions which are sort of captured by this slide here. Um on the one hand we find kundalini as a feature of um what we would maybe call

neotundantra uh which of course is very different from those original south Asian instantiations of tantric traditions. Um and here condundalini is primarily associated with eroticism with sexuality and often with sexual liberation in ways that are maybe very powerful. um but again represent sort of

only a very small sliver uh of what this phenomenon has been throughout its history. And then of course we find this other idea uh that we'll talk about a little bit later in today's discussion that maybe is best summed up as

spiritual emergency. Um so condundalini as of course a very powerful experience uh but one that can also read as sort of negative in its own ways. um this idea of condundalini awakening as some kind of spiritual crisis that completely

upends your life that really sort of explodes your world in these ways that sometimes maybe you don't want it to be exploded. Um and there's a history to this sort of panic about it as well because of course even though it has

always I think shown up as a again a very powerful experience. Um the kind of anxiety that we see about it today is a little bit of a no novel phenomenon all things considered. So just to very quickly give again like a broad overview

at what we're looking at here. This is the basic structure of the book. These are essentially the chapters that you'll see. Um, and this is how we traced the transmission history uh as we began kind of untangling all these various uh

threads of of what this thing has been and how it has shown up throughout history. Um, so you'll notice that there's actually sort of a back and forth mirroring uh that we're trying to represent here. Of course, we begin with

the South Asian roots of the phenomenon. Um, and Shrevana again will talk about that in just a moment here. Um but it's also worth highlighting that there's a western component here. Um that maybe historically is kind of an accident,

right? That these things become important. Um but because we encounter this phenomenon today in this kind of hybridized in this blended form um there is some stuff on the other side of the Atlantic that's really sort of worth

highlighting there because it's ultimately impossible to understand what Kundalini looks like today without considering these kind of parallel sources. Um and then once we get into the 19th century, so this is around chapters three and four, we begin with

this kind of um encounter, right, that begins to sort of really blend these two streams. Um and then as we get closer to the 20th century, we see the emergence of what really becomes for us the standard model, right? I mean this thing

that we kind of very quickly encounter if we start digging into those sources that are ubiquitous now on the internet um but are also ubiquitous in the 20th century literature uh that becomes its own kind of canon. This idea that

kundalini is located at the bottom of the spine. It is the serpent power in particular. Uh it has this particular kind of profile to it. It rises through what are usually seven chakras. often the chakras are rainbow colored which of

course you don't really find in the original South Asian material. Um and again it has a sort of very specific profile. It often looks like a kaducius which of course you also don't really find in the South Asian material. Um and

so that's really what's going on in that second half of the book with Gopi Krishna and his publication. Uh which is really where the uh the sort of idea of this book blossomed out of which I think Shrevana will also maybe talk about a

little bit later. uh it came out of the kind of vast popularity um of this source that appears around the 1960s.

Um and so you can see that we're painting in broad strokes here, but at the same time what we've tried to do is really pay a lot of attention to some of the details of this experience. Again, how does show how does it show up and

how does it show up in all these very different and all these very multiffold ways? And so having said all of that uh I will now pass it over to Shravana to get us started on the history.

Thank you Ana and thank you to all of you at SOASS for inviting us and for all of you who are joining. Um so before I go on to answering this question really the question uh when does the term condalini start to appear

in the text? Um I want to first pause and just kind of um take a moment to talk about serpents and uh serpents at large. Uh this is primarily coming from I identify myself as a scholar practitioner.

If you have uh read my work before, you you would have known how I kind of situate myself uh in the academy and in public facing roles. Now, as a scholar practitioner, there were two things that really stood out to me with this

project. One was the relationship of the serpent. Now, if you're coming from a South Asian background, chances are there is some degree of familiarity or comfort with the serpent.

I'm not for one saying that the suddenly a snake comes into my house and I will not freak out. But what I call the socioultural DNA allows for the serpent to kind of live.

If you look at Vishnu, there is Vasuki. Vishnu uh the lord who is understood to be the um the the uh preserver of the world. He's laying on a serpent. If we think about Shiva, there is a serpent.

If we think about other religions, even if we think about South Asian religions like Buddhism and Janism, in other words, religions that kind of came from this broader geographical region, we will find the serpent. So the serpent has a very different kind of a space of

in the world of the sacred in this larger narrative the serpent remains. But then what happens to the serpent in the western root does it have that kind of um a social cultural DNA so to speak and Anna will speak to that in the next

section. uh so we need to keep serpents in mind. The second one is rather even more fascinating. Uh this whole project started as part of my PhD dissertation and as a practitioner I became a scholar later I was a practitioner first and 40

years of being in the practice kalini never really was mentioned. It was never part of the training. It was it was actually a term I never heard and this term becomes so prominent and the minute if I were to

talk about goddess tantra or shakta or shakta tantra the next breath in the modern west and in this case I would say in the United States it comes up as condundalini tantra condundalini goddess condundalini yoga goddess tantra condundalini

none of this existed for me. So what comes down to is what are we looking for? So while there are texts where um Ana if you could take me to the next slide please there are texts where we

find the term coming it really comes down to the term and what is it that we are looking now if you're looking at the term per se we do find it in a small subset it is not like a very large uh

volume of text but in a small kind a rather small subset of texts that come out of the shaba and the shakta tantra tradition. We know that this this period uh of these texts are sometime between the 700 800 common era. But this is

where in the first chapter Ana and I as authors pause and we take a bit of a you know the serpent turn and we're like hold on what are we looking for? If we look for practices, if we look for narratives, if we look

for um certain set of experiences because experience is so front and center of this project, we then get to the Vashnava text and with the Vashna text, we are happily and very easily another 150 or 100 years prior. So we're

already now at about 600 common era where we find condundalini as not necessarily as a term but as a set of practices as a set of experience as a set of um narrative very very present and in these texts condundalini

is more in this space of it being an obstruction she has she's not as a goddess or she's not as a shy. She's not in this kind of a propelling energetic form. It is more in in the space of

obstruction. And it is much later by the time we come to about 1100,300 common era in the hata yoga space when the body has further developed and the upanishad and the upanes body gets integrated into the practice we definitely find a lot

more mention of kundalini. So it's it's kind of this trajectory that we um we have gone so far and found evidence. If you can take to the next slide.

So we're not going to look at too many uh texts because you know it's just impossible in a short uh talk like this.

Uh but I think we're doing two or three texts. um one of them is Padma Samar sometime between the 600 1,000 common era and this 400 year period and here we are looking at the term you know kundali

is mentioned it is here that you know she's mentioned in this in this context of a block and a block that blocks the breath and in these texts it says during yoga she has risen Because of the breath

together with fire, she bursts forth into the void of the heart in form of a snake blazing brightly. And this heart is very very important for us to remember because as this transmission history goes on, condundalini either entering the heart or being present in

the heart or operating from the heart kind of somehow gets pushed away and we don't necessarily see the heart being mentioned. We see a very atypical form of condundalini that rises from the muladhara from the root chakra up the

curve so on and so forth and this concept of condundalini rising from the heart or being in the heart kind of does not find a very prominent space. The next text that we will uh look at is the

tantra sava. And in this again the heart is mentioned. Her aspect is that of a snake lying in deep sleep. And again I do want to emphasize this analogy of a snake right this kind of snake if what

we have come to understand from our research and having spoken to people it's it's not that ferocious serpent in these texts necessarily. It is not necessarily uh serpent as we have come to understand serpent today. It's more of an energetic

kind of a flow and because she has this flow she kind of gets explained in this um you know terms of snake and this is what we find in Tantra Satpava. The next text and that's the last one that we

will look at for this talk today is Ganadav's Ganeshwari. Now it is this 1,300 common era text where for the first time we find like a step by step by step kind of almost a manual of how to raise the condalini from starting

from as basic as how do we sit what kind of grass mat we use to sit and it is from here that ghana is going going to give us in beautiful poetry absolutely powerful powerful poetry um this whole

manual which is from raising the condalini to what is to be experienced to where she goes and then what happens after that. So it is in this text that we kind of go through this very very structured um way of what much much much later uh

almost 600 years later will will become kundalini yoga uh but ghanadev is again coming from the vashnava bhaki tradition he's integrating vashnava and shava so there is a lot in there that he is resting his understanding standing on

this is not the global world. This is very the container is very clearly in the container of Vashnava Shava Bakti.

This text this is the container. This is the container in which he's he's writing. This is the container in which he is is expected the the person who wants to engage with Kundalini is expected to engage with. So just to

summarize this this big first chapter what we realize is not much reference is made to condundalini in south Asian texts. I know this kind of feels a little downer and disappointing and we like hold on I was expecting this to be

mentioned in before common era. Well we haven't found it so far. Maybe we do in the future. Uh locations of kundalini are not consistent. They can be like Ghana like going in a very particular from the base going up to the uh to the

top of the head or it can be from the heart it bro breaks forth and so the models that place condalini in root chakra becomes most prominent and is identified with the goddess and the de divine feminine energy much later which

is by the time we come to 1100 1200 1300 common era. So that's kind of where we are uh with the South Asian texts. Um I will now let Anna talk about the western roots.

Thanks Shana. So I'm going to go through this pretty quickly even though it is I mean a chapter or two um if we're if we're counting some of this later western material that I'll also review uh within the book. And I think it's

it's worth emphasizing even if we don't dwell on all the images today uh how rich this tradition actually is in parallel. I mean there's a reason that this concept becomes so compelling uh once it kind of migrates into quote

unquote the west right into Europe into North America in the 19th century. And so if we if we turn to the Mediterranean basin, I mean, here we are talking about at least the very early common era, if not even before the common era,

depending on how far we want to take these images. Um, we can already see kind of parallel experiences and parallel themes, parallel symbols in particular. um especially if we're talking about the serpent emerging in these traditions like narcissism, like

hermitism, um that evolve and and really integrate themselves into Christianity. Um and so in this way, they're able to persist through medieval, through Renaissance Europe, uh even though this is maybe, you know, kind of like not the mainline understanding of the church or

something like that. Um and especially powerfully, we see some of this imagery and some of these themes coming up in the alchemical tradition. Uh so the image that you see on the slide uh is taken from uh an alchemical manuscript

and or not manuscript but uh text. And of course here we see Mercury um both as uh still being pictured obviously as an anthropomorphic deity uh but also very clearly again surrounded by this alchemical symbolism. Um we see the sun

and the moon. uh we see the kaduciius of course which becomes such a standard image for kundalini uh as we get into the 19th and into the 20th century um and then continuing into today. Um but of course a lot of the associations here

are are quite different than they would have been in the south Asian material. Uh sometimes they're flipped. Uh for instance here the moon is always the feminine principle and that's the thing that rests lower in the torso whereas

the sun is the masculine. um in South Asian alchemy you'll often see these two reversed and so this becomes really messy right as we proceed into the later uh into the later sources where these two systems always kind of like not only

entangle but almost like battle for dominance um and so there's a couple of just points that I want to mention along this history uh the first are the kind of the initial hybrid models that we encounter once we get into the late 19th

and early 20th centuries that come out of primarily authors that are working within the theosophical society. Um and then the second big point is Carl Jung where a lot of this kind of symbolism is really going to is going to be very

prominent. So, if we look at what's going on in the texts that are coming out of the Theosophical Society, um there's there's a number of sources that we could look at here, but just to highlight a couple, uh we find things

like this example uh from the chakras by Charles Lebeater where what we're really looking at is a Christian esoteric model. Um, Lead Better talks about Kundalini as an outpouring of the first logos. The language of God very much

again in this kind of esoteric Christian sense is all over the place. Uh obviously again there are parallels to what we would found what we would that what we would have found uh in the South Asian material but he's really imposing

the term onto a network whose socioultural DNA is is coming out of this kind of western esoteric tradition.

Um and so what we what we find within lead beater which also translates to for instance his understanding of the chakras is this common experience that he's also seeing within kundalini of energy traveling through and rising within the

body. Um and here we begin to see this idea of the potential dangers of this experience also becoming quite prominent uh for lead beater and for his contemporaries. This is something that really should only be undertaken once one is kind of morally prepared enough

and you see all the typical Victorian anxieties about sexuality um and all that kind of baggage that of course is very emblematic of this era in general.

But generally speaking, this serpent, which in other places, especially within the Christian tradition, of course, would have had some very negative connotations associated with it, here becomes a powerful but ultimately positive symbol. You see on this slide here, one of the images from Lebeater's

book where he's paralleling this kind of way that Kundalini travels through the nadis and up the sushimna to the kaducius of Mercury. This is a very very typical thing that we find in almost every western theosophical author. Um

and so here the two serpents that are making their way through the body are these positive forces that are ultimately leading to human evolution uh to human enlightenment.

And we find this same interesting back and forth uh in another text that actually features Kundalini much more prominently uh coming from George Arendelle uh who was actually a student of leaders where you see once again on the cover of course this image of the

kaduciius um but Arendelle because he's very sensitive to the experience of this thing actually really emphasizes already the potential diversity of what these symbols could be pointing to. So in the passage on this slide, uh what you actually see him sort of trying to sort

out is the potential difference or divergence perhaps between what he calls the condalini fire versus the kaducius fire. Um and you'll notice towards the end of the quoted passage. He's he's sort of I mean he equivocates a little

bit right about what is the relationship between these two? Are they actually the same? Are they different? All we can say ultimately is that quote there's some very close relationship between these two fires. Um and of course for him

they're operating within the same body ultimately. Uh these are aspects of the same phenomenon. Um but there's already some understanding that perhaps not all these symbols kind of mash up with one another. Um, and even if we kind of make

the symbols accord, the experience of the thing just by virtue of human bodies and human psyches being this diverse thing might actually become sort of very multiffold if we're looking on the granular level. And what's interesting here is that you do get the sense that

people are practicing things um even within this again kind of turn of the century theosophical con uh context where a lot of it is of course about kind of you know publishing these esoteric treatises and trying to dissect

um the minutiae of the subtle body and all these various layers. I mean Blabotsky really sort of gets this going um by publishing thousands and thousands of pages on the topic. Um but there's but there's something underneath here.

people are doing stuff even if it's not really clear from the text what it is that they're doing. Um, and so that's where some of the language is coming from as well as of course these uh these kind of traditional symbols that would

have been coming out of the historical literature. And so the one last thing that I want to kind of hit on here uh is Carl Jung um whose treatment of kundalini is actually quite brief. uh he has these lectures on kundalini that he

gives um where even though he clearly is familiar to some extent with the um you know kind of the the south Asian material such as it is of his era um he's not so concerned with it's not as

though he's doing sort of a historical excavation right of the traditional ways that kundalini shows up in this context um for for him this really becomes another way of talking about his specific theory of the human psyche. Um,

in particular, this process of individuation that he sees as being sort of central to human development. Uh, but at the same time, we shouldn't dismiss the fact that he sees resonances with this model of Kundalini. In this uh,

particular passage here, you see that again, he's making that parallel um, with the savior serpent of the gnostics.

Um, and for him that is a tradition that he knows much better. Um and that again the majority of kind of his images and his associations derive from um because for instance he associates condundalini with the uh unconscious. Um it's good

for him that you know we can kind of locate uh her in the in the bottom of the torso. Um so that part of the model works but he is very resistant to talking about the bottom chakras as

being associated with anything other than the moon for instance. Whereas of course in the south Asian tradition the moon is something that's usually located closer to to the crown of the head. This is where the nectar of immortality drips

down from. Um so again you see this kind of struggle right this wrangling between these two competing models of symbols.

Um but at the same time for Jung uh as for the theosophical authors there's still something about uh the kind of the core parallels of this imagery and of the process that they're trying to uh depict that there's something about the

way that this energy or this concept works within the body um that ultimately is understood within this idea of transformation within this idea of evolution or individuation as he would call it. So just to sum up um what we

see here again is uh in these early 20th century sources this idea that condundalini is ultimately something that's kind of applied to concepts that historically have a very different genealogy. We see a lot of narcissism.

We see a lot of hermitism. We see alchemical imagery but it's usually not South Asian alchemy that they're referencing to that they're making their their references to. And we see a lot of this kind of psycho psychologization that emerges with Jung. This idea that

this is really an internal process that happens somehow with the human psyche rather than on the level of the body which is going to be contradictory to some of the other sources that we'll see later on in the 20th century. And so at

this point I will pass it back over to Shrevan. So before we speak about Gopic Krishna um like I said the serpent has this kind of a very different experience similarly what Anna said and she said it in the passing but I do want to really

emphasize if you're a practitioner and if the sun is on the head and or the moon is on the on top of your head Or if if it's a flip model that can significantly change your experience possibly that can

significantly make how you are operating in this vessel of our body very differently. So this again becomes another uh thing to consider as we will be continuing with this transmission history. Now if you have uh looked at condundalini yoga or

google kundalini as we said you would have landed up in kundalini yoga. chances are if you if you said texts or books on kundalini chances are that you have uh you know seen go krishna or possibly read gop krishna because he

like what published some 17 books uh on this larger topic. Now one of the things that doesn't really come up much in Gopi Krishna's work is his first first first experience and luckily for us just when he experienced this intense

intense experience which truly deeply changed his life. He wrote to Shri Orurabindo. He sent two very long letters and he sent several telegrams and we did not know that this existed.

And it was as part of my dissitation research that I found out that the original letters and telegrams are in fact very much kept in the archives in Pondicherry. And so if you look at the image on the left, you see this type

letter and what you see the scribbles on the margins is Surrien though writing his response to Gopic Krishna and of course subsequently his secretary would type it and send it. But here what happens is Gopi Krishna yes has a

immense experience. He look he turns to Sirio and he does not get the response or the guidance or the guru uh that he's looking for. At this time he goes into meaning making.

This is a beautiful case study of when we have this intense unex inexplicable experience. At some point as human beings, we will look to find words to explain uh and sometimes go so far as to find meaning to this experience. And so

the the meaning comes with the international institute I think it is called the institute of consciousness international institute of consciousness I I keep u making um I keep forgetting the term um but if you can go to the

next slide for go krishna what would happen is he for him as he went through this period after his experience he is going to read a lot uh from you know the western sources. He would he will work

with western scientists. He will he will work in this uh in this engage with people who are working in the space of consciousness. And what we find here is that for Gopic Krishna as part of the meaning making process as part of

finding language a lot will shift. His experience finally will fall in this category of evolution category of bioenergy.

Um he will uh get into this this um this understanding that condundalini is this bofuel of sorts that kind of propels us in this evolutionary biology evolution of the body and so on and so forth. It is here that we he will

shift significantly his language from how he ex explains the energy rising in his body to Oruroindu to subsequently this roaring of the serpent, the energy burst forth and you know uh the darkness and so on and so forth. All of this

would not be there in his immediate account, immediate letter where he's describing what was happening. So we have to again as scholars as practitioners as scholar practitioners we have to pause and think what happened who were the other texts thought leaders

that Gopi Krishna uh kind of borrowed and integrated and presented Kundalini in this a particular sense of the way and from here on we will have a explosion of teachers and I will put uh send it back to Anna and she would speak uh more

to these teachers who would then make kundalini kundalini yoga. Awesome. Yeah. So the reason that gopi krishna is so fascinating and the reason that he really sits at the heart of our book um is that it's such a potent

example of exactly how messy this whole thing is. Right? As Shrevana just emphasized, he has this very striking experience. I mean, it's so clear from those original letters and then the subsequent telegrams that he sends that something really, really serious is

happening to him. It does change his life as he emphasizes in the passage from the book here. Um, but the fact that he identifies it as Kundalini first of all does not happen right away. Um, and secondly, as Shrevana uh also just

emphasized, this is a narrative that really evolves. Now what's interesting is that uh even though Gopi Krishna's narrative does become sort of the standard narrative uh that you'll often see within our kind of modern global understanding of Kundalini today uh

there's a couple of things about how it's framed um that are a little bit funky just from a historical perspective um especially in the earlier editions of this book uh you have some of these um there's an introduction for instance by

Frederick Spiegelberg who was a Stanford professor um who really frames go Krishna as this kind of anjenu almost right that this is an unlettered man who you know had no idea what was happening to him and here is this sort of raw experience that he

presents um and so we know it's authentic because this guy couldn't have sort of made it up in the elaborateness that it's presented it um now I mean this is a marketing tactic right but it's also um it's both true and false in

very crucial ways days. Uh Gopi Krishna of course as Shrevvena said does read a lot more subsequently to the experience.

There's a reason he reaches out to Arabindo right I mean he's genuinely seeking help um because he doesn't quite understand what's happening to him. Um and as he reads his narrative does transform. It begins to accord more closely with these tropes that we've

already reviewed. Um but at the same time it's not as though his experience is entirely spontaneous. um we find out in that original letter that it emerges as he's meditating. Um so the fact that this becomes kind of the quintessential

experience of Kundalini as spontaneous awakening um is again both true and false. Uh and so as I transition us into these um these sources where condundalini is really talked about in the context of kundalini yoga um it's important to point out the fact that

gopi krishna does not identify kundalini with yoga really at any point uh in his sources even as he's talking about his meditative practice yoga is not really a word that has a lot of meaning to him uh but as he begins to fill out his his

understanding uh he is reading some of these texts that already sort of preceded uh him on the stage of condundalini becoming this sort of globalized thing. Now some of those are the western sources including the theosophical sources that I talked

about previously. Um but some of these are also the literature that's coming out of these early global yogis these teachers um that really turn yoga into modern yoga in the sense that we know it today. And so what's really interesting

about what I'm going to call sort of the first wave uh of these gurus, we'll talk about the second wave in a moment here.

Uh is that condundalini is really viewed as being kind of the center thing that one should be concerned about within yoga. Kundalini is the goal of yoga.

Without condundalini, there is no um sort of realization in the sense that we're trying to achieve in these traditions. Uh but at the same time these are not synonymous things. Um and because it's not talked about as explicitly as we maybe see later on uh

we often sort of skate over how central Kundalini really was to some of these early figures. Uh Vivikananda is of course usually associated with vanta rather than tantra. Of course he named his organization the vdanta society uh when he instantiated it in the west. But

if you look at what he's talking about uh especially in Raja Yoga which is a sort of summation of all the lectures and all the teachings that he presented um Kundalini is so clearly at the center of the practice that he's advocating in

so far as he's advocating any kind of practice at all. Um for him uh this is a line of reasoning that we'll see repeated many many times but it really is is most prominent in his teachings.

There is no spiritual accomplishment, there is no enlightenment, there is no realization without the awakening of condundalini. And so any method that you apply uh whether it's a south Asian method, right, or a particular style of yoga, um or whether it's any of the

things that he's encountering that his western audiences would have been more familiar with um all of this is due to kundalini, right? Without it, none of these none of these things would be possible. Um and so this is something

that we see time and again showing up across these early teachers of um again kind of global modern yoga. Uh Pararmahanza Yogananda is another prominent example that we don't often associate with with Kundalini. Uh his legacy if anything is seen as being very

devotional but Korea yoga is a method of raising kundalini. Um this is clear as soon as you take a look at the at the details of it. And at the same time uh although these teachers of course are

not really associated with postural yoga in the way that that we see it today. Um we see a very similar kind of tendency within the figures that do fall closer to that tradition. Uh so Swami Kuananda is is a great example of this. uh he's

following up on something that Vivikananda actually really sort of starts off um although he's not the first uh South Asian teacher to do this in terms of associating kundalini specifically with the physiological functions of the body uh for Kulean of

course in his research institute this becomes central and so he spends quite a bit of time talking about uh how certain kinds of poses including dynamic poses do things within the body that are really targeted at raising kundalini. Uh

perhaps the most prominent um proponent of of this kind of understanding of condundalini as physiological is Vasant Rele who is not really famous as a yoga teacher so much um but he publishes a book that becomes very commonly quoted

uh within some of these other sources where he actually just very explicitly says look kundalini is basically the right vagus nerve within the body right that's that's what it is that is the concrete physical instantiation uh of this force and of course he's not about

his detractors. Um but he's embodying a tendency that's very common um amongst a lot of these other early teachers and that we see in Gopi Krishna in terms of how he really talks about even though this is of course a very sort of

psychological experience for him even though there is something happening spiritually it's also very much a transformation of his body um and it has to do with his organs and it has to do with his metabolism and it has to do

with his nerves and it has to do with all these other things. So what we really see postgopy Krishna is this kind of double stream of condundalini as experience one that can potentially be very spontaneous um as it was understood

in his case and then really a continuation of something that's already starting in these earlier sources on global yoga uh which is yoga as condundalini yoga in particular um and this becomes a big sticking point within the um kind of 1960s7s

countercultural guru movements uh where you see some of these global figures that we're still familiar with today through their societies um where really what they're kind of putting out there uh on the public stage are competing understandings of what kundalini is and

what is the proper way to deal with it. Um, of course, Yogi Budajan, um, as I mentioned at the very very beginning here is maybe like the most explicit one because Kundalini yoga is almost his brand. Um, but there are other figures

that are contemporaneous to him where they are all just very clearly in conversation with one another. Um and again kind of battling with one each other uh one another for dominance in terms of what is the best method uh in

order to not only raise kundalini but to raise kundalini safely um and therefore whose brand is the best brand. So, Yogi Budgeon of course becomes associated with this very specific method of poses of breathing exercises uh where he

really emphasizes that what you need is the method and he's the one to teach it to you. Uh on the other hand, you have uh gurus that are more in the sort of shaktiput tradition of whom uh Swami

Mktanandanda is maybe one of the more powerful examples where they're actually arguing the complete opposite. Um Mktananda in this particular quoted passage says well yes you can do the practices but what if you do them wrong what you really need is a teacher right

and if the teacher if the guru raises condundalini within you then no danger is possible right nothing bad can happen uh because of course this is ultimately kind of a benevolent energy this is the goddess um and so if you're experiencing

difficulties if you're experiencing the kind of things that are already kind of arising as potential dangers of kundalini within a lot of this western material. It can only be due to the fact that there you followed the wrong

method, right? You should have come to me and maybe not to Yogi Bajan or somebody like that. Um and then of course you have iconic class like Osho or Rajnish uh depending on what era you're encountering him in uh who are

almost selling the idea that the crisis is the point. Um and so for Osho there is no kind of one-standard method. uh what you want for what you want to strive for is kind of radical authenticity. But of course, he's still

the one to teach you how to achieve radical authenticity and how to get to that kind of personalized moment of crisis that's going to give you the purest instantiation um of all that condundalini represents.

So we see these kinds of again competing narratives, competing understandings of what the experience of condundalini should be. But more and more yoga is becoming the standard term that's associated uh with traditions that want to sort of foreground condundalini in a

purposeful manner. Um on the other hand of course there is still this understanding of condundalini that can arise spontaneously. Uh and so I'm going to um just very quickly talk about a couple of other sources before I pass it

over to shreva. Um following up on actually some of the things that Gopi Krishna already launched as part of his research initiatives that follow uh his book becoming this global success. We have figures who are kind of consciousness research adjacent um again

throughout the 60s and 70s responding to what's going on within a a public arena that's now saturated with these charismatic teachers that are essentially advocating for again ways of interacting uh with these spiritual energies. And so one uh one name that

may not necessarily be so prominent in people's minds uh but that leads to a model that very much is is Isaac Bentov uh who is an Israeli American. He's actually a biomechanical engineer but he kind of goes into consciousness studies

in his later career. Um and so he in a sense builds on these ideas of a physiological condundalini that already exists in the prior literature and he actually coins something that he calls more generically the sensory motor cortex syndrome that he also names the

physioundalini syndrome. Um for him this is a purely physiological phenomenon. It's actually based on the frequency within uh the sort of aorta how the blood is is um circulating through the um the veins and and arteries within the

body. Uh but he associates this with this kind of particular experience of condundalini that you see uh in the image on the right there. Uh for him kundalini actually starts in the feet which is very interesting. It follows

this kind of almost spiral pattern around the front of the body. Um but this is something that occurs yes on an energetic level but also again is is prompted by purely physiological kind of vibrational phenomenon. um bent actually

insists that people who are engaging in practices might be better off in terms of handling um this phenomenon because when it ar arises uh spontaneously there's really like not much you can do about this right I mean you have no

framing you have no container you have no preparation for dealing with this uh and for him this can be triggered by just your body vibrating at a particular frequency so he says if your car seat is vibrating in a certain way like this

might lead you to a condalini awake ing. Um, and so it really kind of generalizes this experience, this phenomenon in a way that we really haven't seen previously to this. Um, and Bentov's research, although it subsequently appears in his own book, uh, Stalking

the Wild Pendulum, actually first appears in a different source, um, that maybe is far more recognizable actually within this kind of transmission history of literature. Uh, that source being Lisa Nella's lit uh, books. He issues this book actually in two editions and

the differences between them are fascinating but we won't have time to discuss them today. Um but essentially Lisa Nella the reason that he includes Bentov's writing within this book is that he takes Sella or he takes Bentov's understanding of this physioundalini

syndrome or cycle as he calls it uh and he applies a clinical psychological model to this. Um, so he's working with actual patients that are experiencing something that they've now identified as condundalini awakening. And sometimes, again, that's kind of spontaneous. Um,

and they come to him because they really don't know what's going on or or what's happening with them. Um, but sometimes they're coming out of these guru movements. They're coming out of these traditions that are already sort of

making their way uh through North American counterculture at this particular point in history. Um, and so Sinella begins to make this argument uh that um I'll pass it over to Shrevana to talk about in a moment here where this

really needs to be treated both as as a medical phenomenon but of course as a spiritual phenomenon. And so he splits it up into these different um ways that the phenomenon can kind of instantiate itself. But for him this is a matter of

what he calls spiritual emergence uh which is ultimately the thing that becomes spiritual emergency. um and we see this very prominently within uh this tradition that I'll now leave it.

So what happens by the time we come to 1970s um we have now between all these teachers there was this one wave in the 1800s where you know you had the Swami Viveananda and um so on and so

forth that Ana spoke about and then there is a second wave of teachers with Osho and um Yogi Bhajan and Mtananda Maharishi Mahish Yogi there are just so Many of them between these two periods and there is there is a a kind of a gap

in between but between these two per two periods where we find a prominence of teachers teaching kundalini too they're teaching especially when we come to the second wave we have now teachers who are kind of sort of um critiquing each other

and kind of saying my model is better than their model. And as Anna said, well, there can be a a wrong way of raising the condalini.

And so there's a wrong way to raise the condalini. Uh you know what's going to happen. Then there is going to be the experiencers there. The experiencers are going to go through this this kind of a collective global collective and and and in this

collective they would be the spiritual emergency network sometime and even today if you look at it then becomes spiritual emergence network but if you were to go onto the website this was started by Christina and Stannis Lro and

if you look at Their website even today the awakening of condundalini is number two in this SOS helpline in this whole where I'm having a spiritual emergency I'm having this experience where I'm really finding it challenging to make

meaning sometimes even just function through my everyday even you know I am unable to get out of my bed in all of this. And if you look at this list, they have possession states to past life experiences um to communication with spirit guides.

So it's a very long list and and in this we have condundalini. It is by this period of time when we are looking at the you know this condundalini and the experience of condundalini what we will find is for a large majority the

container has now significantly shift shifted from what Ghana and Ganeshwari container was like there is no no comparison comparison really like the way we started what are we looking for are we looking for the term condalini then here is what we find

similarly when the container has shift changed morphed into either a very different container or for another majority no container where they're they're um experiencing these experiences is either spontaneously or in smaller groups or they had a dream or

they had an experience. They want they are trying to figure out and have some kind of meaning to this extremely powerful experience.

They land up with Kundalini and with Kundalini again lo behold they will land up with this emergency network. And if if I if you look at the next slide, the way they describe the awakening of kundalin, this is from the website. One

can experience intense sensation of energy and heat streaming up the spine, violent shaking, spasm, twisting movements. Now, any one of this is kind of unsettling. But trying to put this all together and whatever happened to the heart, whatever happened to that

vibration like a gentle vibration that I may have experienced in the heart. But here they all become very tight cast and put in this box of strong extreme emotions. Words like anxiety, anger, ecstatic rapture. These are as I

said these just one by itself is can can really really shake your foundation. But when you start putting things together, it becomes a very it becomes an emergency. We are now looking at condundalini as a spiritual emergency.

Number one, by this time we are looking at a very significant amount of experiencers who are going to turn around and say, "I didn't ask for it. It just happened." And have not been able to eat or sleep or go about my day for

years together, for months together, right? And so there are others who would who who would experience it as this burning that does not end.

And all of this further gets complex by uh by how they're defining this awakening of kundalini as involuntary and often uncontrollable behavior complete the picture talking in tongues chanting unknown songs assuming yogic postures uh which would be mudras here

and making variety of animal sounds and movements. And so by this point of time we find for the reasons which are pretty much complex in terms of back and forth back and forth back and forth. We fall in this category where now condundalini

is understood as an energy that is destructive that is going to be consuming. It is going to burn. It is going to burn you to ashes. And as I said, the container is so so so different that it really becomes very

challenging at this point to map sources to transmission to text to the experiences because all of this is happening at a very very rapid pace.

Which then takes us to our last slide for today which is the internet, the social media, the Facebook groups, the Instagram res. So part of this research and this is our chapter 8 uh we join some of the uh Facebook groups to kind

of understand what is being said there and honestly we don't know we don't know how this condundalini energy or the understanding of condundalini and the transmission of kundalini and the experience of condundalini is going to change in the future because the social

media groups, social media, Instagram, Facebook, you name it. They're again starting to speak about Kundalini in this very emerg groups who are going to be very like Swami Muktananda like you know like you you need a guru don't do it without a

guru. If you don't have a guru this is going to really really mess you up. So we're starting to see another wave like we had this wave with Viveanandanda the the teachers then we had another wave with um Yogi Bhajan and so on and so

forth and now we are seeing this and we don't half the time we don't know who these people are who are in all likelihood sitting behind some dark web and spewing all of this and giving advice with so much of authority. uh no

clue uh but it is very very very scary. So where we conclude all this is that it really comes down to few things. One, the container. In what container, in which container, in what kind of container are we going and as an

experience of the experience is going to put that experience in. With that comes this ginormous exercise that we saw with Gopic Krishna.

A ginormous exercise of meaning making. How are we going to make sense of what happened with this? The third thing that is happening and this is particularly so in social media driven. This is false condalini. There is this almost this pride of saying oh I

had a genuine condundalini experience and what you are talking of is not condundalini experience. So there's also that narrative that is starting to spin and there is no way for us to know what is a genuine kundalini experience. Now

yes there was a question and I responded by um by typing the answer. Yes, Shrior told Copic Krishna I I'm not the person to uh talk about condundalini but did he have a condalini experience? Did he have an experience? In fact, we speak about

this in an upcoming podcast with Keen Keen on yoga where I believe yes if you look at his account there is this beautiful account where he's walking there it's a cloudy sky there are birds flying and Shriaruinda that time he was

he was not Shriaruinda yet he collapses and he has these experiences mystical experiences why is that not condundalini why does kundalini have to be fit into this kind of a narrative which is of that of spiritual emergency so on and so forth.

So that's kind of where we end and we we conclude by saying we don't know that we don't know where what kundalini transmission would look like in another 10 20 years from now. We genuinely don't know that. And so we're going to stop

there and um I guess take some questions. Ravena Ana, thank you so much for this very engaging, fast-paced presentation.

Uh you managed to very eloquently provide us with a with a map of the development of Kundalini, highlighting some of the most important points, some of the landmark events and interpretations.

I see from our question and answer um box that we have a good number of questions coming up. So um I'd like to hand over now to Jaki to um um um manage those questions and uh um put them to

both of you Anya and Ravena. And thank you again very much. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you both very much for this um very uh elaborate continuum really that you've offered us uh of Kundalini over the ages and its evolution. Um there's lots of questions

and before we get to the moderation of the Q&A in the there I thought I might sneak in a question of my own uh which is when looking at the comparison between um medieval contemp uh sources and then those that you found of the

gurus of the 19th century if you like those that propagated the idea of kundalini. Um why do you think they emphasized it so much? Does it is there any sense that they were also drawing upon um um distant sources or do you think there

was some sort of continuum within tradition that they were using as their inspiration? Thank you.

Should I go first here? Sure. Yeah. Our understanding is it was the the need of the hour.

It was there was this turn if you look at United States there was the counterculture movement there was this kind of a dissonance in what was being offered and what was available. There was this turn towards the east and it is

in this in this kind of a social fabric of the counterculture movement that people were hungry. People wanted something. They needed like this this kind of a turn towards this east movement. It needed um answers and here were teachers. So like

look at Yogi Bajan. Did he come here as a guru? No. He came as a custom agent, came to Canada, then he comes to the United States, then he starts teaching yoga. But very soon and and then this is preceded with the

texts that come out because of the theosophus. There is suddenly English text that you can read. It's easily available. magazines and newspapers are publishing it. And then there are sectors we speak about SLN uh institute and we uh we also interviewed uh the

founder one of the founders Michael Murphy and so there are also these centers which have these um you know like ISIS Oasis there is um ISIS Oasis was called something else before that but uh the place exists and so there

were also these centers that that provided for people to come together. So it it is at this time it really becomes a product in the marketplace and once it becomes a product in the marketplace it's competition it's pure I have it

better I know it better I am genuine come to me and that's what we see um that happens at this time yeah and I suppose I would add to that I mean to just go back a little bit

earlier than the time period that Shrevna was talking about I mean I think it would be a little a little too much in the weeds here to kind of talk about the you know centuries of South Asian history that led to all of this. Um and

of course other people within kind of the field of yogic studies have already sort of trace this stuff right I mean the reason that kundalini becomes central in the way that it does is the same reason that we end up with this

kind of six plus one or the seven chakra model that becomes standard over of course the multitude of other ones um that have been available throughout the history of these texts. And it has to deal with which lineages survive um in

more prominent ways than others. Um and it also if we're talking about the global context and what leads to the guru movements that share was just mentioning um it's like who were those first teachers and where were they

coming from right I mean Vivikananda who knows what he actually practiced himself right I mean we actually don't have that rich of an understanding of his spiritual life but in so far as his teacher was Ramach Krishna um I mean

there's it's it's it's a very tantra lineage it's got it's got a lot of kala tantra in it um and kundalini is so central to vivikananda's understanding of what otherwise for him is ostensibly called vanta right and of course there's

again centuries of history behind that um same thing for a parahansi yogaanda I mean ka yoga is a tradition that is focused on raising kundalini that's what the practice is um and it's not a coincidence right that both of them are

coming from this sort of like very specific uh area right they're they're both Bengali um they're they're operating within a very very specific again kind of socioultural container Right. Um and then it be it grows from there. Uh so I think this is where we

kind of get to the period that's more um in the context of the counterculture where like condundalini is already assumed um because of all these various sources as being kind of the the core of what happens during yoga that then you

get these other teachers who are really again competing about like okay so now what is the best method?

Yeah thank you both a lot. Sorry am I do you mind? Yeah sure. I just want to say one little thing and with the with what what we're seeing in with social media I mean think about what's going on today

like it's a little different from 1950s 1960s '7s but today we see a lot of practitioners in this experience collectors right there was a time when people gathered coins and butterflies and flowers but now people want to gather experiences now if you're

gathering experiences what are we going to be playing with everything is now going to look very different.

Yeah, that's a very good observation. Thank you. Um there's lots of questions. So I might defer to the Q&A window so our audience has an opportunity to um reflect on your presentation. So one from Diane, it says, I'm interested to

know how deep you explore the western influences and their sources in alchemy. Which western traditions do you consider the key influence that affects Mundalini's interpretation?

So I can speak to that just very briefly. Um we tried to balance it as best that we could. I as I said at the beginning of of my comments on on the western sources like it's it's a little bit fuzzy and

it's maybe kind of teological in a way that I didn't mention. Um because of course we're not seeing of course the term kundalini right is nowhere to be found in these sources but we're not even seeing even necessarily the same

frameworks. What we're seeing are analogies and parallels. Um and so in so far as there are things that uh we're identifying in that western roots chapter that are like condundalini related. um these are only condundalini related in retrospective right because

these are the things that we see showing up once these hybrid models begin to kind of coalesce around the 19th century um at the same time I mean again as I sort of emphasized I think the parallels are genuine um there's very compelling

analogies that other scholars have argued for between for instance um you know various kind of tantric methods of manipulating these subtle energies and what's going on with the visualization and all these other techniques um and certain forms of neoplatonic the um so

that would be one big thing that uh that we kind of foreground in the chapter. Um as I mentioned these gnostic these hermetic traditions which by the time that we get to the 19th century like it's not even clear that there's any

kind of formal meaning to those terms or the difference between them. Um but in so far as people are still named dropping uh those things there are ways that we get from you know the narcissism and the hermitism of the 3rd century CE

um to what we see in the theosophical models. Um so that's another interesting place to look and actually Carl Jung um is like like a treasure trove of data on all this stuff because of course he sets about trying to reconstruct um this

whole Gnostic tradition and how he sees it influencing the kind of stuff that he's doing. Um but the problem with this stuff is like again it's so fuzzy um because it's never close to the kind of Christian you know especially the church

mainstream these are always traditions that are floating around the periphery um and so to the extent we that we try to give them form um it's kind of dictated by okay so what are the images that we see showing up later that are

being identified with kundalini um in these hybrid synthesis um as opposed to like I mean there's all sorts of stuff that could have become relevant that didn't, right? If we're just looking at at the Western tradition at large.

Oh, Jackie, I think you're muted. Thank you for that. Very clear. Um, we have lots of questions. I might move quickly through some. So um Chris Miller who you who you know very well um says congratulations on this wonderful

presentation and can you say more about the class path and gender dimensions of Kundalini experience in perhaps different historical periods that you've covered who is having these experiences um and able to document them and are there categories of kundalini experience

that can and have been studied thank you so I want to speak to that first a little bit. Um we didn't go into cast um studies. We did not look at kundalini experience in the context of cast uh at

all. Um now gender is interesting though uh very very interesting. Uh in fact um Anna and I debated a lot and chapter nine is it chapter nine or chapter anyway whatever the last chapter is where I um I have shared my field notes

as is uh they're literally a large chunk of it is um literally tied from my field note diary and uh we've shared and we have not we have not going to make meaning we are not going to do a meaning

making exercise with those notes. We were very clear about that. Now what we find when we look at texts prior so say Ghana, Ganeshwari, uh yoga text so on and so forth it all it is very dominantly on the you know spoken by a

man for the men. uh it's it's kind of a male oriented narrative. Now I say this also because I'm overlaying my own training, my own um um initiation into the practice when I was at the age of eight and so on and so forth. It was a

very man's world and it was a lot of these texts talk about it from the male anatomy standpoint. But we see a huge shift. It's also kind of very interesting and one can draw parallel to the Shvidya tradition for example. There

are so many Shvida practitioners today and a lot of them are women. Um and we are seeing that with kundalini too.

There is this dominance in some way. I don't have data. We've not done a quantitative study uh sorry qualitative study to say okay this percentage is men on these percentage are women but when we look at it it appears that kundalini

seems to be or at least women are landing us speaking about kundalini far more and and documenting their experiences far more compared to what we saw in the past. There's there was in the past it was more men. Look at all

the references we made. There was like barely any women, right? But if we look at teachers today, if we look at experiences today, we find a greater majority to be um women and and that is uh that is a very interesting um I would

say shift between these two periods. Yes. Interesting. you think that runs in parallel with the um you know the changing demographic of practitioners. I just had one question before we go through the lots more in there and that

relates to um this question of gender. Do you think this makes it people more vulnerable uh to abuse because I noticed in the the um traditions that you all mentioned within uh your framing of contemporary kundalini yoga um there's abuse cases

right bajan osho um sachinandanda mktananda they're all um you know contemporary lineages which have faced um challenges in this way can you speak at all to I say abuse is abuse first, right? I would not I would not not say abuse is

more women or or men or someone who has who's identifying themselves with a different identity. But yes, when the majority becomes women and if your practitioners are majority women and we're working with energy that is that is encapsulated

in uh traumatic or trauma then yes we have seen um we we have we you know and And even in our in our social media uh research, we saw there was there's a lot of um space or scope

where abuse can take place and historically we've seen that it has taken place. Um yes, absolutely.

Thank you. Um one from Darl. Okay, I'm going to move to that one. It says can you frame the history of experience as you are understanding it. So you seem to begin with the earliest use of the term

which is reasonable but if that uh sorry but if this is the energy of transformation then the potential and perhaps the practice must predate the term. So I guess he's just asking where you're getting this terms of history of

experience or did you sort of define that in your research? Thank you. I can speak to that quickly because I think it also um sort of follows up on uh a dimension of the previous question that's maybe worth emphasizing. Um so

no, we don't really define history of an experience. Uh but for us experience is sort of like it's the one thing that you can hold on to, right? Like something is happening to all these people. Um and we

can't really say what, right? Because that's the crucial thing about experience. My experience is only ever my own and I have the tools that I have if I try to explain it to you, right?

And that's where like the history comes in, right? What are you Yeah. What's the history of these images? What's the history of of these symbols, these practices, these various ways that we try to like sort of grip onto that

container, right? To give meaning um as Shrevana has emphasized to what it is that's actually sort of happening in our body, which might be ambiguous even to us. I mean, that's kind of what's going on with Gopi Krishna, right? there's a

reason that the narrative changes in the ways that it does. Um, but I think to also speak to that and to sort of the other dimension of this question that I'm seeing, I'd also emphasize um, in addition to the fact that I mean

obviously right certain voices are always foreground above others. um the fact that we start where we do uh with these texts are I mean neither Shrevana or I as a Sanskritist um you know relying relying on all of y'all to sort

of like do the primary source work there for us um and we're very grateful for it um but it's it's it's a limitation of sources right which manuscripts are available who had the ability to write their experience down um I believe it

was something that uh our colleague Jason Schwarz pointed out as we were sort of, you know, developing this project and and talking about it. Um, you know, he was like, well, I mean, I know that you probably know this, but

there's a whole like vernacular tradition that maybe was never even recorded, right? Or just like we haven't accessed um that's floating around here.

And so, I mean, we acknowledge this in the book very very clearly, like the fact that we start with these sources from, you know, the seventh century or whatever, like it's an artificial starting point. uh we don't know when

the first mention of this term took place. Um and so I think that can be extended to the logic behind again what I'm seeing in this question. Um yeah there's there's all these concepts right which is the only lens that you can

really apply to the western material um that we can see feeding into uh the things that become called condundalini later on right that um in the south Asian context as well uh may not be going by those terms um and same goes

for anything right we could talk about yoga in this exact same way right at what point is it yoga or when is it just dana or something like that or tapas Um there there are things that are clearly

sort of adjacent uh because of their DNA that end up coalescing into condundalini uh that precede the first mention of the term by centuries if not millennia. Um and so we try to do the best that we can

to at least kind of again gesture towards what those themes are. Thank you. Yes. Um there's a question uh hopefully we can move through a couple of simple ones perhaps uh which say city yoga speaks of shaktip awakening

kundalini. So is there historical basis for linking kundalini with chaki? It goes back to the south Asian roots right it it goes back to kundalini being understood as a goddess being understood as a divine energy. So uh it this

lineage where you're talking of Shakipad and Kundalini as uh as a goddess as energy um that dotted line can be you know comfortably traced back to the South Asian understanding of Kundalini being a divine feminine goddess energy.

Thank you. We might um leave with the final questions uh because we're coming close to the end of our time together.

So it says um this is for from Marlene. Um so she says, "Thank you both Anna and Shrea for a wonderful presentation. I'm curious if you came across any modern texts where the heart as Kundin's resting point is discussed as

prominently as in the earlier sources mentioned. I don't think so if I'm not wrong. I did see her uh hi Marlene and I did see the question and uh I don't recall and that was that has always been my my slight

frustration and like my my heart breaks because you know the whole whole experience of kundalini can be very different I guess I assume if we were to come from the place of heart and you know love and compassion and kindness uh

and benefit benevolence it'll be a very different experience meaning make meaning making for the experiencer but I haven't in in recent times in modern text I haven't found found that yet I mean I think same like for me it's

interesting because including in the gopi Krishna material the heart always kind of shows up um just when when you're seeing the raw material of these experienc experiences, right? When people are describing literally what's happening happening to their bodies,

it's very common to see them mention the heart. Um, but I think because of the way that again we've kind of like standardized this model where it has to start from the root, right, and this particular thing happens and then that's

how we explain it. Yeah. I mean, I think shreva as you just said like I wonder how it would be different, right, if we would focus rather than on this thing rising, right? Like what if it's like abiding in the heart like how might

people's even their experience right be like directed differently by that because it is happening.

Yes, it's an interesting place to finish uh because we we're all out of time unfortunately there's lots more questions and if you have time please browse through those um Anna and Shraa but we have to I think close there and

thank you both very much for this very um important research but also an opportunity to discuss it directly with you uh and the complexity of the of the research really spanning such a long period of time and then also moving into

contemporary experience which seems to be evolving at a rapid rate. Um so yeah, it was a pleasure to host you both and we look forward uh to delving deep into the book itself if you haven't already.

It's available online and I'll post the link along with the recording on the uh so um University of London website. So thank you both very much.

Thank you so much Ken. Bye. Thank you.