Gopi Krishna
The phenomenon of kundalini energy run amok in the absence of expert guidance first gained popular and academic attention with the case of Gopi Krishna. On his own, Krishna had practised an arduous routine of pre-dawn meditation from the age of seventeen years. In 1937, at the age of thirty-four, Gopi Krishna began to experience dramatic and distressing changes in his body and consciousness. Knowing very little about kundalini, he began to read as much as he could with his altered consciousness. Gradually, with the little helpful information he was able to glean and with the passage of twelve years, Gopi Krishna's kundalini awakening led to the development of new, inspired creativity. Gopi Krishna founded the Kundalini Research Institute and set out to learn more about and to teach others about kundalini. He is the author of several books.
Based on his traumatic experiences, Gopi Krishna conveyed a twofold message of immense dread and great hopefulness around the awakening of Kundalini.
The power, when aroused in a body not attuned to it with the help of various disciplines or not genetically mature for it, can lead to awful mental states, to almost every form of mental disorder, from hardly noticeable aberrations to the most horrible forms of insanity, to neurotic and paranoid states, to megalomania and, by causing tormenting pressure on reproductive organs, to an all-consuming thirst that is never assuaged. — I am confident that when the laws about Kundalini are known, the life span of man will increase to as much as 150 years, out of which the greater part will be for his enjoyment and for the exercise of all his faculties. These supermen will be prodigies of the highest order. They will have command of all the premier languages of the world and will be able to write in prose and verse in all of them. They will have command of all the sciences, and in that condition will be able to guide even the highest specialists. —Gopi Krishna was influential as the first widely published author on the subject of kundalini. He attracted Yvonne Kason, a transpersonal psychologist who helped to further popularize his story and integrated his lessons into her practice. Together with a few collaborators, she established the Kundalini Research Network.
According to Stuart Sovatsky: "the use in the West of Gopi Krishna's problematic kundalini experiences as a standard gives the awakening a reputation as more dangerous than it is."
Gopi Krishna described the symptoms of what he thought was kundalini awakening based on his own experiences. From his early years of turmoil, he described a stream of light and a roaring sound in his head, a rocking sensation, a sense of slipping out of his body, followed by a sense of detachment and disinterest, weakness in his arms and legs, fatigue and uneasiness. After many years of effort to understand and master the mysterious kundalini, Krishna was able to report a much happier syndrome:
...in the place of a roaring noise in my ears, there was now a cadence like the humming of a swarm of bees, enchanting and melodious, and the encircling glow was replaced by a penetrating silvery radiance, already a feature of my being within and without. The marvellous aspect of the condition, lay in the sudden realization that although linked to the body and surroundings I had expanded in an indescribable manner into a titanic personality, conscious from within of an immediate and direct contact with and intensely conscious universe, a wonderful inexpressible immanence all around me. —From his vantage, Bentov catalogued his own list of indications:
Over the years of my involvement with this area, I have seen many cases of spontaneous and systematic evolution of the nervous system. There are some physiological changes occurring in the body associated with the attainment of these different levels of evolution. These changes may come about slowly, over a period of years, and go unnoticed, or they may occur suddenly. Some of the symptoms resulting from these changes may be very mild and some very powerful, depending on the amount of stress accumulated in the body. ...the stresses in the system are actually energy patterns, and they have to be converted and eliminated from the body. One of the most common forms into which these stresses are converted is body movement. It is not unusual to see people who are meditating go through different involuntary body movements, such as moving the arms, head, shaking of the whole body, etc. The heavier the stresses that are given off, the stronger the movements may become. There are other ways in which these stresses may come out. These are a direct release of emotions, which may take the form of depressions, crying, and general emotionalism. Other ways may manifest simply as temporary pain in different areas of the body. —Read more about this topic: Kundalini Syndrome