Kindling the kundalini

A log on a low flame is likely to blaze up suddenly on its own, even after the original fire goes out. A threshold point is reached and internal reactions take over spontaneously. The same mechanisms are thought to occur in the nervous system to lead up to a series of events analogous to the kindling of wood. Scientists are using this model to explain such diverse phenomena as everyday learning memory, epilepsy, the radical mood swings of manic depression and kundalini.

The kindling phenomenon was first identified by C. V. Goddard and his associates at Waterloo University in Canada in 1969. (8) They observed that repeated, periodic, low- intensity electrical stimulation of animal brains leads to stronger brain activity, particularly in the limbic system, the part of the brain that handles emotions. For example, stimulating the amygdala (part of the limbic system) once daily, for half a second, has no effect at first, but after two or three weeks, produces convulsions. Goddard also observed that kindling can cause relatively permanent changes in brain excitability. Animals can have seizures for as long as a year after the initial kindling period.

According to John Gaito of York University, over a period of time the bursts of electrical activity kindle similar patterns in adjacent brain regions. (9) Also the threshold is progressively lowered so that smaller doses of electricity trigger convulsions. It should be understood that mild continuous electrical stimulation does not cause kindling, rather it causes adaptation and tolerance. The stimulation must be intermittent, preferably every 24 hours, to be effective. Robert Post found that kindling can also be induced by drugs such as cocaine or other anesthetics which stimulate the limbic system. (10) He found that using these stimulants led to changes of behavior such as increased aggression.

Apart from providing a model for epilepsy, which we know is sometimes associated with mystical insight, and psychosis, which can be thought of as prematurely awakened kundalini activity in one of the chakras, kindling can explain how meditation exerts its effects on our brain and psyche. According to Marilyn Ferguson, “Analogies of the kindling effect and meditation effects - especially of the dramatic kundalini phenomena - are interesting. Obviously, most human subjects don’t percieve their experiences as pathological, although they may be somewhat unnerving. The effects typically occur after a history of regular meditation and in an unthreatening setting. There is no onset of seizures in the classic sense, and the nervous system effects appear to be positive over the long run.” (11)

Bernard Gluek of the Hartford Institute of Living speculates that mantra meditation might set off a resonance effect in the limbic brain. (12) Mantra repetition is the most obvious form of meditation to be analogous to kindling, however, if we look at Bentov’s model, any form which involves sitting absolutely motionless and developing introspection will do the same.

According to Bentov, the loop circuit in the sensory cortex set up by sitting immobile in meditation may stimulate the pleasure centers in the amygdala, the part of the brain most amenable to kindling. This would, over a period of time, lead to permanent changes within the nervous system in an ongoing and progressive manner. This is the aim of meditation and all masters of yoga and the inner arts and sciences tell us that for success, the most important ingredient is regularity of practice and persistence. Whether our experiences in meditation are good or bad is of no consequence. They are all just steps on the way to higher experience, part of the process of preparation for kundalini awakening. Two important points should be noted about kindling. The first is that it induces relatively permanent changes and the second is that it increases activity in the brain. It steps up the energy processes. This fits in with the theory that meditation can energize the nadis so as to send energy to various centers to awaken higher functions within those centers in order to take them to a higher octave of activity by supplying them with a better energy source.

Meditation and the brain

When studying kundalini we must remember that there are as many methods to awaken it as there are people practising, in fact there may be more methods than people. The four basic methods studied by modern research are raja yoga, kriya yoga, zazen and transcendental meditation. Basically these techniques involve one or more of the following: sitting, breath awareness, and mantra. Yogis normally divide meditation into either the relaxation type or concentration type of practice. However, we also know that whichever technique we choose we will have to first develop relaxation and then allow the internal process to unfold.

Most of the brain research into meditation has focused on brain waves, which are divided into four main groups and which can be generalized as follows :

1. beta: extroversion, concentration, logic-orientated thought, worry and tension.
2. alpha: relaxation, drowsiness.
3. theta: dreaming, creativity.
4. delta: deep sleep.

The majority of meditation techniques have shown that meditators, however, usually develop relaxation in meditation, with alpha waves being predominant and occasional runs of theta waves, which are different to those seen in sleep, occurring in more advanced meditators. (13-15) This result, the basis of meditation’s use in such psychosomatic diseases as high blood pressure and in anxiety, has probably arisen because of either the use of relaxing techniques or because the meditators were mainly novices.

Occasionally, in the laboratory, a researcher stumbles on findings which seem to run contrary to the claims of meditation as a relaxation method. In this situation the meditator moves through the usual relaxation process, sinking into alpha and theta. However, at this point something startling happens. He again develops beta waves, despite the fact that he is introverted, and these are usually big, rhythmic, synchronized high amplitude waves, unlike the normal small amplitude found in the random chaotic brain waves of normal subjects. This occurrence was first seen in 1955 by Das and Gastant who studied kriya yoga. (16) It was later seen and confirmed by Banquet, who studied transcendental meditation and found that after the theta waves, rhythmic beta waves were produced, present over the whole scalp and “the most striking topographical alteration was the synchronization of anterior and posterior channels.” (17) The whole brain was pulsating synchronously, rhythmically and in an integrated fashion. This was subjectively experienced as deep meditation or transcendence.

Banquet states that, “We must deduce, therefore, that the EEG changes of meditation are independent of the interaction between the subject and the outer world but produced by the specific mental activity of the practice. The initiation of the loop between cortex, thalamo-cortical coordinating system and subcortical generators… could account for the different alterations.” (18) This agrees with Bentov’s theory of a loop circuit being responsible for the kundalini experience.

Levine, studying transcendental meditation, confirmed Banquet’s findings of coherence and synchronization of brain waves, both within each cerebral hemisphere from front to back and between both hemispheres. (19) Corby and his associates found that using tantric meditation there was arousal of the nervous system rather than relaxation. (20) The episode of sudden autonomic nervous system activation was characterized by the meditator as approaching the yogic ecstatic state of intense concentration. Corby’s subjects experienced: rushes of energy; chills, laughter, changing and varied emotions; early life flashes; total energy absorption; yearning to be one with the object of ideation; a great sense of merger and understanding of experience and its meaning. (21i) Corby’s meditators meditated, on the average, for more than three hours per day and used more advanced techniques than usually studied in the laboratory. Kundalini in the laboratory

Though it may be difficult, if not impossible, to record the actual kundalini experience in the laboratory (either because such advanced meditators do not usually talk about their experiences, or because the laboratory setting and environment is not correct, or because our machinery might interfere with or explode under the force of the actual experience), the research findings do tend to support Bentov’s and the kindling model for kundalini.

In the studies of meditation in which activation of the nervous system was found, there was generalized coherence and integration of the brain and/or blissful, ecstatic experiences. The experiences of awakening of shakti recorded within the laboratory setting and their physiological correlates agree with the yogic theory that awakening takes place in mooladhara chakra and travels up to ajna chakra, affecting the deep, primitive, animalistic and energizing circuits within the R-complex and limbic system of the brain, near the medulla oblongata. Energy flows from here to the thalamus to stimulate all the areas of the cerebral cortex simultaneously and thereby creates a loop circuit which gradually awakens latent and unused activity within other areas of the brain. The whole brain begins to pulse as a single unit as energy pours into the central controlling area of ajna chakra.

As we progress in meditation, we set the stage for the eventual awakening of shakti within the nadis, chakras and brain. An explosion occurs as we reach the threshold required for kindling to take place. Once we reach this concentrated, integrated state, neurological circuits take over and spontaneously begin to stimulate themselves so that the energy liberated awakens new centers in the brain, creating a transformed state of awareness and being at a new and higher level of energy. The process of awakening of shakti has begun. From this point on, as long as we continue our practice, the process of unfoldment continues because once kindling has taken place the effects are relatively permanent. We develop more and more purity and strength, so that we can handle the internal experiences as they arise for longer and longer periods of time, until final awakening of kundalini takes place.