Kundalini Rising and Science

Psychopathology and kundalini. Starting from a critique of the concepts of psychopathology and (ab)normality, and the assumptions that underpin diagnosticism in the mental health field, the author argues that what is commonly called 'psychotic' experience may typically constitute (1) a struggle towards meaning-making; (2) a meaningful process, typically operating at many levels, rather than some kind of 'abnormal malfunction' of the physical brain; or (3) a harbinger, albeit often a highly distressing one, of qualitative advances in human consciousness which, as yet, the 'ordinary' Cartesian ego consciousness of modernity finds it difficult if not impossible to make sense of. The author draws extensively on the 'kundalini awakening experience' to illustrate these arguments. It is suggested that the distinctions between 'psychotic', 'unusual' and 'mystical/transpersonal' experience are not only far from clear-cut, but might well be fundamentally misguided and philosophically unsustainable. It is maintained that a radical shift in world view, from naive technocratic scientism and towards a postmodern, more spiritually informed 'new paradigm' perspective opens up creative, liberating and potentially healing avenues for thinking about and understanding the widest spectrum of human subjective experience.[3]

Sexual abuse and kundalini. This dissertation looks at altered states of consciousness and aberrant somatic phenomena as an expression of trauma in adult victims of sexual abuse when they later fall in love. It looks at whether the early experience of sexual abuse affects the capacity to experience love in an embodied manner, and ponders the question of what the experience of falling in love is to someone who was traumatized sexually in childhood. Is it an opportunity for healing, or merely a re-traumatization? Sexual abuse and its healing can both be understood through the concept of kundalini, consciousness that first lies trapped in its dormant state within the body. In the early stages it manifests merely as sexual energy, or libido. Sexual abuse, as an energetic penetration, causes a premature arousal of kundalini, a fragmentation of consciousness, and the creation of a complex, an energetic blockage, which manifests in emotional distortions, altered states, and unusual somatic phenomena. As consciousness develops, the complex goes through its own transformation in the healing of trauma. This study finds that where consciousness develops to the point where the adult survivor falls in love, this signals a stage of both healing and development, which if worked with consciously, can result in the transcendence of the trauma, and the healing of the split between spirit and matter, which underlies the phenomenon of sexual abuse. Once this occurs the adult victim is ready to return to embodied and instinctual life consciously.[4]