Kundalini

The system of the seven main chakras of man. The kundalini power rests coiled up in a snake-like form in the lowest chakra, the four-petalled root chakra.

Kundalini (Sanskrit: f., कुण्डलिनी kuṇḍalinī, from kundala "coiled, wound") also Kundalini serpent, serpent power or Shakti, after the goddess Shakti, who is worshipped in Hinduism and Shaktism and stands for the primordial female power of the universe as a manifestation of the goddess Devi (Sanskrit: f., देवी devī „goddess“). Occasionally she is also called Ishvari (Sanskrit: ईश्वरी īśvarī "mistress"). Kundalini is, according to Tantric teachings, the divine force in its individual incarnation in man, the dormant life force or prana in its potential, dormant form, the energy and essence of life alike, and is closely related to the (maternal) reproductive forces. It is the force in the human being that is closest to matter (derived from Latin: mater "mother"), and forms the bridge between the physical and astral substance. At the same time, it is the inwardly excited astral light that illuminates the outer soul world and makes it visible to the clairvoyant gaze.

The Kundalini Power

The Serpent Power

The Kundalini force rests at the lower end of the spine, symbolised by the snake coiled in three and a half coils, sleeping unconscious in the root chakra, the four-petalled lotus flower. Once awakened, it can become the highest power of love or pure desire heightened to the highest degree. In Goethe's fairy tale of the green serpent and the beautiful lily, this deeply unconscious power is represented by the green serpent. Note also the two serpents of the staff of Mercury, which also represent, among other things, the unconscious (black) and the conscious (white) side of the kundalini force.

Kundalini Fire and Kundalini Light

Kundalini fire is the bond that connects the physical body with the astral body throughout earthly life, the so-called silver cord. When the upper parts of the astral body are lifted out of the body during sleep, the silver cord appears to the clairvoyant as a fine silvery shining ribbon which joins the body in the spleen region. At death, this silver string of pearls breaks and the astral body can no longer return to the body.

„I have often said that at night the astral body leaves the physical body. During sleep the astral body is only connected with the physical body through an astral cord in the region of the spleen, which can be perceived by the clairvoyant. The spleen has not only a physical task, but it is also its function to mediate the connection between the physical and the spiritual part of the human being. The spleen is the point of connection of the physical body with the astral body. That is why you can read in every textbook of anatomy that nothing is really known about the spleen. The spleen is one of those organs which stand at the boundary of the physical organs. The astral body, which during sleep is only connected to the physical body through the spleen, works to remove the fatiguing substances from the physical body. To the clairvoyant, the sleeping human being appears as if enveloped in a strange cloud which is continually working on the physical body.“ (Lit.:GA 96, p. 238)

„When man is in the ordinary state of sleep, as a rule, the astral body is outside the physical body. The more highly developed the human being is, the further away the astral body can be. Complete psychic development consists in leaving the body behind and walking freely in the astral. There are other stages. The astral body can make the strangest wanderings while you are asleep, only you do not remember these nocturnal wanderings. You can have an awareness of it during the night but not bring it with you into the day. The highest stage is when you are conscious of the astral consciousness both in sleep and in the physical body. You can visit familiar people during the night, but you will not be able to have experiences of a similar kind as in the physical. For example, you will not know what a person in Asia is doing now - you cannot know that. But if you want to learn something from him, you can, if you take it over completely into your daily consciousness. The chela could not learn whether a master in Asia writes or does not write, or whether and what he eats and drinks. But he can be taught in the astral realm and consciously take this over into his daily consciousness.

If you look at such an astral body, you have in one place the physical body with its nerve centres, which looks to the physical eye as it looks during the day, and you have somewhere the astral body with its sense organs, so that you can see: to this centre [of the astral body] belongs the optic nerve and to this the auditory nerve. Now the question arises: what is the connection between the astral body and the physical body, what chains the astral ear to the physical ear? And why does the astral body, [which is separated from the physical body during sleep], return? Interesting questions could be raised. For example, suppose a person felt terribly unhappy. Now he is in his astral body during the night. The suffering has its origin in the physical. He could now make the decision not to return [with his astral body], then what one would call an astral suicide would be carried out.

So, what connects the astral body with the physical body and its organs, and what leads it back again? There is a kind of bond, a connection that is an intermediate matter between physical and astral matter. And that is called the kundalini fire. If you have a sleeping person, you can always follow the astral body in the astral. You have a luminous streak to where the astral body is. You can always find the place. If the astral body moves away, then to the same extent the kundalini fire becomes thinner and thinner. A thinner and thinner trace it is; it becomes more and more like a thin mist. Now, if you look closely at this kundalini fire, it is not uniform. There will be certain places in it that are more luminous and denser, and these are the places that lead the astral back to the physical. The optic nerve is therefore connected with an astral nerve by a denser kundalini fire.

Leadbeater did not want to go into it [in his book "The Astral Plane"] to say whether such an astral suicide is possible. The Kundalini fire with the astral body cannot be lifted completely out of the physical body. If a man were to make up his mind not to return, the kundalini fire would continually draw him down, as if he still belonged to the physical body. It is the trace of the Kundalini fire that he follows. If the life force is not yet exhausted, it is very difficult to lift the astral body out of the physical body. It is very difficult when someone is attached to the physical body, which he can no longer use. In this respect, the fate of the suicide and that of the casualty are not to any considerable extent different from each other.

Now, in the case of the more highly developed man, on whom the chakrams move, another process takes place. He has the possibility of arbitrarily withdrawing the Kundalini fire from the organism; at the same time opposite currents open up from within: That which formerly merely flowed in from without, man can now arbitrarily regulate from within; the whole process can now be brought about arbitrarily.

Now man has attained a complete possibility of disposal over the astral body. Now I would ask you to note that this state is occurring more and more in human development. Today it is the psychically developed who have such an astral body, but man in general is hastening towards such a state. He will have the possibility of using his astral body in the sixth race. He will have a physical body and within it an astral body which he can use in this way. In the next round, however, people will not have a physical body, but only an astral body, which they can then use freely, just as we humans use the physical body today. The physical body will then no longer be there; the lowest body will then be the astral body.“ (Lit.:GA 88, p. 236ff)

As Kundalini light, Kundalini reveals itself as the astral light that comes from within and illuminates the spiritual world, thus awakening spiritual perception. In a notebook of Steiner's from 1906 it is said:

„One must distinguish in the astral body itself a second half: like the other pole in the magnet.

In man the second astral body is female; in woman the second astral body is male, that is, the astral body is hermaphroditic. The Kundalini fire is now the activity excited in the second astral body, which is first of all warmth and light.

As long as the kundalini fire is not excited, one gropes between the objects and beings of the higher world; as in the night between the physical objects. When the kundalini fire is there, one illuminates the objects oneself.“ (Lit.: Contributions 51/52, p. 21)

The fact that Kundalini reveals itself as Kundalini light and as Kundalini fire points to the polarity of light and love, which in the course of spiritual development must interpenetrate and unite into one force. This is also the main theme of Steiner's first mystery drama The Portal of Initiation. In the 11th picture, Theodosius, who represents the spirit of love, says to the Other Maria, whose archetype reveals itself in the course of the drama as the soul of love (Lit.:GA 14, p. 150f):

Your destiny was closely connected With your higher sister's life. I could give her the light of love, But not love's warmth, As long as thou wouldst persevere, To let your noble feelings Arise in you, And not in the full light of wisdom To see it clearly. In dark impulses The temple's influence does not reach, Even if they want to do good.

The Kundalini fire as the basis of a spiritual anatomy

„There is a description of man based on the external examination of the individual parts of his organism. But in ancient mystical and occult works one can also find man described. These descriptions, however, have come about in quite a different way from anatomical examinations. They are even far more exact and much more correct than what the anatomist of today describes, for the latter only describes the corpse. The old descriptions were obtained in such a way that the disciples became visible to themselves through meditation, through inner enlightenment. Through the so-called Kundalini fire, man can contemplate himself from within. There are different stages of this contemplation. The exact, correct contemplation first occurs symbolically. For example, when a person concentrates on his spinal cord, he always sees the snake. He may also dream of the snake, because it is the being that was externally put out into the world when the spinal cord was formed and stopped at that stage. The snake is the external spinal cord that has been transferred out into the world. This pictorial way of seeing things is astral vision (imagination). But it is only through mental seeing (inspiration) that the complete meaning arises.“ (Lit.:GA 93a, p. 19)

„All things now known by anatomy alone were then known in quite a different way. The occult investigators investigated by means of the Kundalini light. A disciple was prepared in the following way. He came to a Master. If he was recognised by the Master as reliable, he was not taught a lesson - today that has changed, today man has to find his way through the intellect and the concepts - but the Master told him something like: You must spend several hours every day, initially for about six weeks, in meditation and devote yourself to one of the eternal sentences, immerse yourself completely in it. - Nowadays, people can't do that because life with today's culture makes too many demands on them. But in those days, the disciple meditated six to ten hours a day. He can't do that now without pulling himself out of the culture. At that time, the disciple needed almost no time for culture. He found his nourishment outside. He therefore used his time for meditation, perhaps ten hours continuously. Very soon he came to bring the body, which had not yet become so dense, to the point where the Kundalini light awoke within. This is for the inside what sunlight is for the outside world. In truth, we do not see objects outside either, but the reflected sunlight. At the moment when we are able to illuminate the soul with the help of the Kundalini light, the soul becomes as visible as an object illuminated by the sun. In this way, the whole inner body gradually illuminates itself for the student of yoga. All ancient anatomies are seen from within, through inner illumination. Thus the [Indian] monks, translating their experiences into legends, spoke of what they had beheld through the kundalini light.“ (Lit.:GA 93a, p. 91f)

The awakening of the Kundalini force

The awakening of the Kundalini force takes place on a corresponding training path, such as that of Kundalini yoga. In this process, the Kundalini force usually rises step by step from the bottom upwards, gradually "piercing" the lotus flowers lying above the root chakra in the process of Satchakrabedha (Sanskrit: six-chakra piercing). Only when the Kundalini force reaches the crown chakra does it unite with the cosmic-spiritual forces, the world soul, to which Kundalini owes its origin, and then the astral clairvoyance awakens. However, the crown chakra is difficult to reach, and often the kundalini force withdraws again before it reaches the ten-petalled navel chakra. Because of this, and because this path of rising directly from the root chakra is fraught with danger, as these deeply unconscious forces are difficult to control and can very easily have a destructive effect all the way into the physical, many schools therefore first develop the heart centre, from which the development can be guided much more consciously.

The awakening of the Kundalini leads to a non-feverish increase in body temperature, which can be felt mainly as a rising warmth along the spine. Sometimes the awakening of the Kundalini is also announced in dreams. Occasionally, the Kundalini can also awaken spontaneously without the corresponding training, which can often be accompanied by bouts of fever and the hearing of voices, intense visions or a euphoric feeling of happiness, which can easily be misinterpreted as signs of mental illness. The awakening of the kundalini force can be accompanied by flushes of heat, but also by bouts of cold. Involuntary twitching, spontaneous nodding movements of the head and strong trembling all over the body may also occur, a feeling of numbness in the extremities, fluctuations in the sex drive, sometimes temporary or even chronic, elusive stabbing pain sensations all over the body, as well as sudden vocalisations, spontaneous laughter and/or crying.

Some schools of Tibetan Buddhism give special meditation techniques through which intense bodily "heating" is specifically induced, for example through the classical method of Tummo, in which the conscious mastery of the bodily heat balance under extreme conditions is sought; for this purpose, the monks wrap their bodies in woollen blankets soaked in ice water in the depths of winter and increase the body temperature through meditation and breathing exercises until the damp blankets begin to steam.

The serpent as a symbol for the independent I

„In the development of the Earth there now came a point in time when a peculiarity occurred in the common life and weaving of the Earth-spirit. A part of it closed itself off, as if into a tube. Only when this point in time occurred was it at all possible for beings to come into being who could also become separate beings. The others are members of an earth soul. Only now does a special degree of specialisation begin. Only now does the possibility begin that something can say "I" to itself. This fact that there are two epochs on Earth, firstly the epoch in which there were no animals on Earth with a nervous system enclosed in a bone tube, and secondly the epoch in which such animals came into being, is particularly expressed in all religions. The serpent first encloses the unselfish, unseparated seeing of the Earth-spirit in a tube, and thus forms the basis of I-ness. The esoteric teachers impressed this on their pupils so that they could feel it: "When you look at the snake, you see the sign of your I." They had to feel it vividly. - At the same time they had to feel vividly that this belongs together, the independent I and the snake.“ (Lit.:GA 93a, p. 18f)

The future importance of the Kundalini force

The Kundalini force still works unconsciously in people today. However, it will become much more important in the future when we learn to control it consciously. There is a harmonising power in it that can lead the whole of humanity to brotherhood - and this development takes its starting point from music:

„When the fifth root-race will have reached its end and the sixth root-race will be in the ascendancy, an influence will have developed in the field of the conscious mind, which is now still very much in the background during the fifth sub-race, but which is already developing. It is something that emanates from the musical. The importance of music will be expressed more and more in the fifth sub-race. Music will not be merely art, but will become a means of expression for quite other things than the purely artistic. Here is something which points to the influence of a quite definite principle on the physical plane. In the field of music or music-like things, the most important impulses will be given by the initiates of the fifth root-race. What must flow into the fifth root-race, and that in the field of the conscious life of the mind, is what is called the Kundalini fire. This is a force which is still dormant in man, but which will become more and more important. Today it already has a great influence, a great significance in what is perceived through the sense of hearing. During the further development in the sixth sub-race of the fifth root-race, this Kundalini fire will gain great influence on what lives in the human heart. The human heart will really have that Kundalini fire within it. Man will then be permeated by a special power which will live in his heart, so that in the sixth root-race he will no longer distinguish his own good from the good of the whole. Man will be so permeated by the Kundalini light that he will have the principle of love as his very nature.

In the seventh sub-race the whole of humanity will be in true chaos, for the root race will then be close to extinction. But a small part of the people of the seventh sub-race will be the true sons of the Kundalini fire. They will be imbued with all the powers of the Kundalini fire; they will be the material for the next root race, for those who direct the further development of humanity. Thus the fifth root-race is heading for those heights where the divine fire, the Kundalini fire, will kindle with sacred pathos the divine principle within man, so that man will no longer be separated from man, but, as far as the thinking mind reaches, a brotherhood will be brought about. This fire will one day live in people. And in those human beings who are initiated in the course of the fifth root-race, there already lives a hint of this divine fire, in which is the power of brotherhood and which will abolish the separateness of man. But it is only beginning to work its way through, it is only just beginning to emerge, it is still veiled, veiled by what are the separating passions of men, the separating powers of the Kama. And where it appears in detail as the herald of a coming time, it takes on a different form, a quite different character. On the plane of delusion, the divine fire is the divine wrath. Only then, when brotherhood will flood the whole of humanity, will it be divine love. But as long as it asserts itself in the individual as zeal, it is divine wrath, and it asserts itself as strong force in the individual precisely because the rest of humanity is not yet ripe.“ (Lit.:GA 92, p. 101ff)

Literature

• Carl Gustav Jung: Die Psychologie des Kundalini-Yoga, Walter Verlag, Zürich 1998, ISBN 3-530-40684-8
• Sir John Woodroffe: The Serpent Power, Madras: Ganesh & Co., 1978
• Rudolf Steiner: Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?, GA 10 (1993), ISBN 3-7274-0100-1 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß, GA 13 (1989), ISBN 3-7274-0130-3; Tb 601, ISBN 978-3-7274-6011-1 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Vier Mysteriendramen, GA 14 (1998), ISBN 3-7274-0140-0 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Über die astrale Welt und das Devachan, GA 88 (1999), ISBN 3-7274-0880-4 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die okkulten Wahrheiten alter Mythen und Sagen, GA 92 (1999), ISBN 3-7274-0920-7 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Grundelemente der Esoterik, GA 93a (1987), ISBN 3-7274-0935-5 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Ursprungsimpulse der Geisteswissenschaft, GA 96 (1989), ISBN 3-7274-0961-4 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Beiträge zur Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe, Heft 51/52: Der Weg zur höheren Erkenntnis im Lebenswerk und Lebensgang Rudolf Steiners, Rudolf Steiner-Nachlaßverwaltung, Dornach 1975 Beiträge (Contributions) 51/52

References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated. Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com. Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English. Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA) Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.