From Chapter Four of FROM THE BOOK: Happy For No Good Reason
By Swami Shankarananda

“Contemplate Kundalini, who is supreme Consciousness,
who plays from the muladhara to the sahasrara,
who shines like a flash of lightning,
who is as fine as a fiber of a lotus stalk,
Who has the brilliant radiance of countless suns and
is a shaft of light as cool as hundreds of nectarean moonbeams.”

Swami Muktananda

ALL MEDITATIVE PATHS define energy centers within the body, and the findings of all of the systems are remarkably similar. The system of yoga defines seven chakras, each one governing particular areas of life.

I have found that one of the most effective ways to unblock tension is to begin by examining four of the energy centers. This investigation provides a vast amount of information and puts one in a position to become empowered. Self-inquiry confirms again and again that the areas of life listed relate to the chakras indicated. You can verify this in your own practice. Although no heart surgeon has ever found a heart chakra, you probably will agree that when you say: “I love you” to your beloved you feel the love in your heart area, not in your earlobe or elbow.

If you read widely in the field of yoga, you will find elaborate descriptions of the chakras. They will include colors, sacred syllables, images and so on, for each one. Most of these are traditional descriptions that were arrived at clairvoyantly by early meditators. Some of these details are debatable, so I have kept it simple.

Yoga and Chinese medicine both affirm that there is a “subtle body” and that it has its own energy system. This takes a form similar to nerve channels except they are not physically visible. Chinese medicine calls them meridians, and an acupuncturist places needles at certain key points in the energy system to open blocks. Yoga calls them nadis and some texts say there are 72,000 nadis, others 720,000. Whatever the number, when the energy (or prana) flows nicely in these channels, there is health, well-being, and happiness.

Among the nadis, three are particularly significant. They are the ida, pingala and sushumna. The sushumna is the central canal in the center of the body along which the chakras are arranged. The energy that moves along the sushumna is called Kundalini — divine spiritual energy. When this energy is awakened, a person begins to evolve spiritually. Most of humanity at the present state of human history is not very evolved in an inner sense — their Kundalini Shakti is unawakened. Gurdjieff said: “Man is a machine”; the Hindu sages say: “Man is asleep”. Listening to the evening news verifies this judgment.

Hence it follows that many disciplines, including Zen, yoga and Vedanta, talk about an awakening. In my tradition it is called Shaktipat, the descent of grace.

My teacher was famous for the awakening people received from him. He would hold meditation intensives (weekend workshops) and at the start of meditation he would walk among the meditators (often more than a thousand people) and bless each person with a wand of peacock feathers and touch them between the eyes at the third eye. The Kundalini energy became thick in the air and people would manifest it in dramatic ways. Some shook with energy, some had physical movements, some spoke in tongues. It sometimes seemed like a primeval swamp full of strange creatures.

In my early years in India, there was an Indian man who visited the ashram every weekend. When there was a program of chanting, the Shakti would hit him. He would begin while sitting, by shaking all over, and his body would gyrate in a wave-like manner. Suddenly his head was thrown back and he was flat on his back. He would move backwards (head first) on his back at great speed through the chanters. Because of his unique motion we called him “the snake”. Many understood this was a manifestation of Kundalini, but some new people were terrified.

I was hall monitor at the time, and my colleagues and I made a plan. The next weekend we were on the alert. As he started to gyrate we sprang into action. When he hit the ground four of us were on him. We each grabbed a limb and lifted him neatly up and out into the courtyard where he continued to slither harmlessly. Strangely enough we had caught some of his energy and were quite ecstatic as a result.

Years later I was leading my own intensive in Sydney, Australia. I gave the touch and though I was aware that there was a lot of Kundalini activity going on, I settled down for a nice meditation. After a while a hall monitor tapped me on the shoulder. He was worried and wanted me to make sure everything was all right. He took me to the back of the hall where a row of meditators was creating an extraordinary commotion.

Earlier in the week I had met a gentle, middle-aged doctor. He was polite and soft-spoken. Now there he was in the center of the row, roaring like a lion. Each roar would send a shock wave of energy through his neighbors and they would react in various ways. I saw that none of them wanted to run away, but on the contrary, they all showed signs of enjoying the experience mightily. I could feel the floor shaking under them and I could feel waves of bliss coming from them. I stood there basking for a while, and then reassured the hall monitor and returned to my own meditation.

Shaktipat is not confined to my tradition, of course, but is found in all the paths. The experience recorded in the gospels of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit on the Pentecost after Jesus’ death is such an event, as is this one from the Jewish Hassidic tradition. The Bal Shem Tov was an inspired being, the founder of Hassidism. Martin Buber recounts a story from the Bal Shem Tov’s successor, the Maggid of Mezritch. One holiday the Bal Shem was praying in front of the altar with great fervour and in a very loud voice. The Maggid of Mezritch was ill that day and stayed in the small room to pray there alone. At one point the Bal Shem came into the room to put on his robe. The Maggid looked at him and could see that he was not in this world; the Bal Shem’s face was shining and he was transported. As the Bal Shem put on his robe, it wrinkled at the shoulders and the Maggid put his hand on it to smooth out the folds. As soon as he touched it, he himself began to tremble. The Bal Shem went on into the big hall but the Maggid remained standing there, trembling half in ecstasy and half in terror.

Of course, many people who receive the awakening manifest nothing externally but go deep within. My teacher wrote about seeing a series of inner lights: red, white, black and blue in that order. Each light represents a deeper layer of contact with the Self. Especially significant is the blue light. Even today many of my students report seeing this light in their meditations. Every meditator will awaken in some way. It may not be this dramatic, but it will be real. People feel energy running through them, others waves of love or deep peace. Two of the most useful forms of awakening are the awakening of true understanding and the awakening of the ability to act strongly in life.

Early in the book I wrote about two kinds of education, conventional education (the First Education) and wisdom education (the Second Education). The awakening belongs to the Second Education, but there is overlap. Andrew Delbanco, a professor of humanities at my old university, Columbia, finds the roots of literary studies in religion. He quotes Emerson, who, in the 19th Century said:

Delbanco calls this “education as illumination and deliverance”. I see it as an area in First Education where there is an intimation of awakening to Second Education. Unfortunately — or inevitably — literary studies have gone in a direction far from Second Education.

In 1976 Muktananda called me in and told me to awaken people by touch the way he did. He gave me his wand of peacock feathers, instructed me how to do it and recited some mantras for me to learn. As he sang the mantras I felt them enter my brain as the worst headache I had ever experienced. The headache lasted all that day and I spent a sleepless night in agony. Early the next morning I went to his house and told him of my headache. He said: “Take an aspirin.”

Later in the day he was more sympathetic and told me to put clarified butter (ghee) in my nose and lie briefly in the sun. Eventually the headache went away and the realization came that my wiring had been somehow changed for the work ahead of me. I still use those feathers at meditation intensives.

KEY IDEAS OF CHAPTER FOUR: KUNDALINI - THE INNER POWER