‘The study of philosophy without a longing for liberation is like dressing up a corpse.’
—Tripura Rahasya

Whether you’ve experienced spontaneous awakenings, are actively cultivating this sacred energy, or find yourself in the midst of what feels like a spiritual crisis, this blog will serve as a source of nourishment, direction, and as a sanctuary of understanding, where the extraordinary becomes normalized through shared experience and collective wisdom.

Below this note follows an excerpt of essential reading from Dr. Robert Svoboda’s work on Kundalini, drawn from his direct teachings with the Aghori Vimalananda—a transmission of authentic Tantrik wisdom through the lived reality of master and disciple. This isn’t theoretical psychology, but the distilled essence of centuries-old knowledge passed down through direct experience. Svoboda’s words carry the authority of genuine lineage, offering profound insight into the nature of Kundalini as the root of all spiritual experience and crucial understanding about why approaching this path requires proper context and guidance. As you’ll discover, awakening this evolutionary power demands respect, preparation, and ideally, connection to authentic tradition—which is precisely why this blog exists—to provide support grounded in real wisdom rather than modern speculation.

I enjoy Dr. Svoboda’s work in Ayurveda, too, but he really grabbed me with his Aghora series as his descriptions of Vimalananda and the Aghora very much mirror my own experience with this lineage under the mentorship of Vinayagananda. I felt an immediate kinship, and as a writer myself, doubly appreciated his proficiency in telling the story. Kudos to Robert Svoboda.

From the Aghora Series, Vol. II: Kundalini

“In earlier times, when esoteric knowledge was under jealous guard, a spiritual aspirant usually had to endure years of patient waiting before being taught. Now that information has become an article of commerce, all manner of secrets would seem to have become available to anyone who has the price of a book or tape; however, simply because secret doctrines can now be purchased and thus easily possessed does not mean they can be easily comprehended. Though words can be bought and sold, that living wisdom which cannot be confined within words must still be earned.

Among the long-hidden arcana now being packaged for sale is the lore of Kundalini, the root from which all spiritual experiences sprout, and most of the writers who have tried to present to the world this living knowledge, which is the source of all knowledge, produce only dead words. As Heinrich Zimmer observed, ‘The best things can’t be told; the second best are misunderstood.’

Carl Jung, who many decades ago delivered a series of lectures on Kundalini, explains why:

“Therefore the Yoga way or the Yoga philosophy has always been a secret, but not because people have kept it secret…The real secrets are secrets because no one understands them. One cannot even talk about them, and of such a kind are the experiences of Kundalini Yoga. That tendency to keep things secret is  merely a natural consequence when the experience is of such a peculiar kind that you had better not talk about it, for you would expose yourself to misunderstanding and misinterpretation.” (Jung P-20)

The experiences of Kundalini Yoga are peculiar because Kundalini is the source of all your experiences. Kundalini is that in-dwelling energy which by self-identifying with your opinions and character traits accretes and preserves your identity. In Jung’s words,

“…according to the Tantrik teaching, there is an urge to produce a personality, something that is centered, and divided from other beings… It is what one would describe in Western philosophical terms as an urge or instinct toward individuation. The instinct of individuation is found everywhere in life, for there is no life on earth that is not individual. Individuation takes place only when you are conscious of it, but individuality is always there from the beginning of your existence.” (Jung, p 2)

So long as the urge toward individuation is mainly directed toward benefitting your own limited temporary individual self it is called ahamkara, or egoism, the force which makes it possible for you to unquestioningly accept the world as it is on the surface. This same force is called Kundalini when it turns away from the mundane and toward the spiritual, the permanent and eternal. After Kundalini awakes it becomes impossible to continue believing that external reality is the sole reality. Ahamkara makes you who you are now; Kundalini makes you into what you will become.

Kundalini has remained secret for so long because, as Jung notes, it cannot be understood; it can only be experienced. The process of spiritual evolution cannot be objectified and separated from the subject who evolves, for Kundalini functions simultaneously as descriptive consciousness, as the thing described, and as its description. Since human language is made up of subjects and objects, descriptions of Kundalini tend to be skewed, either toward objective comment on the experience, which devitalizes it, or toward description of the raw subjective experience itself, which is usually distorted by the experiencer’s mental imbalances, stresses and fantasies.

Among the writers who have made valuable contributions to the literature on Kundalini are Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon), an Englishman who was initiated into Tantra while serving as a judge in India; and Gopi Krishna, a Kashmiri Pandit who suffered terrifying consequences when his own Kundalini was awakened before he knew how to deal with it. While neither perfectly conveys Kundalini’s incomprehensible secrets, since their words get in the way, here and there in inspired passages Kundalini’s radiance flashes momentarily through, like lightning through a somber sky.

These accounts succeed, albeit partially, because their information has not been lifted out of context. Kundalini can be understood solely within the context of Indian culture. But ever since the time of the early Theosophists most Western interpreters of Kundalini, unfortunately, in order to import into their own systems of psychology concepts which they believe to be Tantrik, have not hesitated to assign to Tantrik words denotations which often vary significantly from their original meanings.

Jung himself borrowed concepts from Kundalini Yoga, including the very concept of Kundalini, which he called the anima, and so he bears some of the blame for this situation. At least he was more forthright than are most distorters of Kundalini:

“One needs a great deal of psychology in order to make these ideas palatable to the Western mind, and unless we try hard and dare to commit many errors in assimilating it to our Western mentality, we simply get poisoned. For these symbols have a terribly clinging tendency. They catch the subconscious somehow and cling to us. But they are a foreign body in our system—corpus alienum—and they inhibit the natural growth and development of our own psychology. It is like a secondary growth or poison. Therefore one has to make really heroic attempts to master these things, to stand up against these symbols, in order to deprive them of their influence. Perhaps you cannot fully realize what I say, but take it as a hypothesis—though it is more than a hypothesis. It is a truth I have seen too often how dangerous their influence may be.” (Jung, p. 9)

Rejecting those concepts that ‘we do not need’ for a systematic psychological description of Western experiences with the unconscious, Jung rationalized:

“We can only understand their picture of the world in as much as we try to understand it in our own terms. Therefore I make the attempt to approach it from the psychological point of view. I am sorry to have bewildered you, but you will be more bewildered if you take these things literally (you had better not). If you think in these terms, you will build up an apparent Hindu system with the psychology of the Western mind, and you cannot do that. You simply poison yourself!” (Jung, p. 13)

Possibly those who try hard and dare to commit many errors in order to assimilate concepts from Kundalini Yoga into popular psychology do avoid the fate of many Westerners who have poisoned themselves by dressing their minds in Indian vestments. But while replicas of Kundalini Yoga may function well enough in the external world of consensus reality to be useful psychological tools, they cannot substitute for the real thing when it comes to spiritual development. This is particularly true for those people who, by design or by accident, have broken through some of the barriers which separate objective from subjective reality and live lives in which waking reality and symbolic reality compete with each other for attention. Such individuals risk being trapped on an unknown ocean in a leaky conceptual boat if they try to rely on psychology alone to carry them safely to shore.

An awakening into the reality of the nonphysical in a person who lacks adequate prior preparation usually precipitates a personal crisis; such people may seem crazy; are often thought to be crazy, and sometimes believe themselves to be going crazy, all because they can no longer unquestioningly accept our ‘standard’ reality. Most of those who lose touch with everyday reality are actually insane, of course, but in a sizeable number of cases the cause is spiritual crises.

The prophet Ezekiel once heard a divine voice command him to sleep on his right side for 390 nights and then to switch to his left side for 40 more (Ezekiel 4:4-6). Unless you know, as yogis do, that the position in which you sleep exerts a profound effect on your physiology, and so your consciousness, you will agree with Time magazine that Ezekiel and St. Teresa of Avila who like Ezekiel heard voices, were schizophrenic. When in fact they were most likely inspired by a reality of which the unawakened know nothing.

A spiritual awakening alters forever the way in which an individual experiences the world, for after the initial crisis abates one discovers that there is no way to return to one’s previously comfortable mindset. Once aroused and unboxed, Kundalini is not ‘derousable’; the genie will not fit back in the bottle. ‘After the awakening, the devotee lives always at the mercy of Kundalini,’ says Pandit Gopi Krishna, who experienced several crises during which the speed, insouciance, and authority of the power he had unleashed terrified him. That power which he had to face without the help of any guide, can terrify or incapacitate anyone who awakens Kundalini without proper guidance.

So long as Kundalini remains within the realm of psychology, our relative objectivity can shield us from the influence of symbolic existence. Once we enter subjective reality, however, that realm in which symbols ‘cling,’ we are at their mercy unless we have been taught how to deal with them. Those who ride Kundalini without knowing their destination risk losing their way. The result may be ‘ego inflation,’ which occurs when one’s limited personality survives the crisis intact and the individual then ‘claims the luster of the archetypal world for his or her own person,’ or ‘ego deflation,’ if the awakening thoroughly disrupts one’s self-integration and garbles one’s self-image.

The savants of India have for thousands of years worked to perfect user-friendly methods for spiritual advancement that when properly implemented prepare individuals for and guide them through the process of individuation without terrorizing them. Each of these methods arouses the evolutionary power inherent in every individual, but this power appears as Kundalini in one system alone: the Tantrik tradition. Anyone who wants to understand Kundalini as Kundalini must first come to grips with Tantra.”