Good or bad, here's why the practice highlights a feature of brain function which is suggestive of our human potential. This is that despite all evidence in the human condition to the contrary, every man, woman and child on the planet, by virtue of birthright, is actually built for bliss.
Exhibit A: Serotonin
Serotonin is a major neurotransmitter, or chemical messenger that, amongst other functions, plays a large part in how happy we feel. Low levels of serotonin has been linked with depression, although the direction of causality has not been confirmed.
LSD has been found to activate the serotonin pathways in the brain and central nervous system. Also,in some recent research using imaging techniques to track the effect of LSD on the brain, Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris and his team at Imperial College, London, have shown that LSD 'lights up' what were thought to be unrelated areas of the brain, possibly accounting for the synesthetic 'psychedelic' experience of a 'trip'.
This relaxation of brain 'rigidity' induced by LSD is reminiscent of our brains as infants. Robin Carhart-Harris says, "Our brains become more constrained and compartmentalised as we develop from infancy into adulthood, and we may become more focused and rigid in our thinking as we mature. In many ways, the brain in the LSD state resembles the state our brains were in when we were infants: free and unconstrained. This also makes sense when we consider the hyper-emotional and imaginative nature of an infant's mind."
So that's where the boost in creativity may be coming from: an enhanced ability to make novel connections between unrelated things.
What the research might also explain, according to Carhart-Harris, is the sense of 'ego-dissolution' or 'being one with the universe' that is sometimes experienced: "Our results suggest that this effect underlies the profound altered state of consciousness that people often describe during an LSD experience. It is also related to what people sometimes call 'ego-dissolution', which means the normal sense of self is broken down and replaced by a sense of reconnection with themselves, others and the natural world. This experience is sometimes framed in a religious or spiritual way - and seems to be associated with improvements in well-being after the drug's effects have subsided."
The insights gained from this research, it is said, can be added to the arsenal of treatments for the increasing mental health problem of depression.
Some indication of the size of the problem is given by the World Health Organisation, which is leading a 2017, one-year global campaign on depression. According to the WHO website:
- There are more than 300million people of all ages worldwide, suffering from depression.
- This represents an 18% increase between 2005 and 2015.
- It's a leading cause of suicide in 15-29year olds.
- It's the leading cause of disability worldwide
- 80% of disease burden falls mainly on people in low and middle-income countries.
So depression is a large and growing global problem. The main treatments are with 'talking therapies', such as cognitive behavioural therapy(CBT) or medication, such as with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors(SSRIs). It is based on the success with SSRIs that LSD offers hope for a similar treatment path.
However, this may be limiting the scope of what LSD is telling us about how we work. Set in the context of pointers about our human potential, the effects of LSD on the brain could be the equivalent of shining a torchlight into a dark room. Not to make out the contours of the room; but to locate where the light switch is.
The light switch - your kundalini.
Recalling the capacity of LSD to lead to what has been described as a mystical sense of 'ego-dissolution', here's the description of just such a state by Yang Lili, a young Chinese yogi on a tour of India : "So strong feeling here (indicating top of head). It's like a hole. It's like we're all in the universe. It's like we really melt into the universe.."
Being interviewed alongside Yang Lili, is her friend Zhang Yi who adds about the experience: " ..felt full of love. All is love. No other words. Just love..."(translated from mandarin).
What Yang Lili and Zhang Yi are both describing, is not a shared LSD trip but the pill-free, clear-headed experience of a kundalini meditation based on a genuine kundalini awakening.
But what is the kundalini and what is 'genuine awakening' ? According to one of the most influential texts on hatha yoga, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika written in the fifteenth century, the kundalini is the means of human 'liberation'/'self-realisation'. A definition from an online source gives this:
“Kuṇḍalī Sakti[feminine energy] sleeps on the bulb[base of spine], for the purpose of giving moksa[liberation] to Yogīs and bondage to the ignorant. He who knows it, knows Yoga.” (śl. 107) and “Kuṇḍalī is of a bent shape, and has been described to be like a serpent. He who has moved that Śakti is no doubt Mukta (released from bondage).” (śl. 108)
Although the concept of kundalini and it's function does not exist in western medical science, anatomical naming (see Grey's Anatomy) may hint at some esoteric understanding of the human body in the distant past.
For example, the kundalini, which has been described as the 'feminine divine', is said to exist in a dormant (potential ) state in the tail bone in the human spine. This bone is also known as the 'Sacrum' - etymologically related to 'sacred' .
Also, the kundalini, on awakening, rises upwards and passes through the top of the skull and can be felt as a rising cascade(fountain) of a cool breeze sensation (pneuma). The name of the bone at the top of the skull is : 'Fontanel' , which derives from 'fontaine' , French for 'fountain'.
The actual effect of kundalini's rising can also be correlated with a recognised cognitive state. This state is given in the second line of the quote above from the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, which says : "He who knows it, knows Yoga".
The authoritative definition of yoga contained in the original source book of yoga, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, defines yoga in sutra 1.2 as : "Yogas chitta vritti nirodha." . This is translated from the sanskrit as : " Yoga is a stilling of the flactuations of the mind/attention". This is technically known as nirvichar samadhi or 'thoughtless awareness'.
This thoughtless awareness state is one we have all habitually experienced but have forgotten about. It is the mental state of our childhood; before we acquired language and which corresponds to the 'sensorimotor' stage in Jean Piaget's cognitive development.
In a child, the state of nirvichar samadhi is more commonly called 'pratyaksha' , which is a sanskrit word meaning: 'just seeing without any accompanying mental activity' or 'just witnessing'. This shines new light on Robin Carhart-Harris's observation above about how LSD puts the brain in a state it was in during infancy: free from the rigidity of thinking.
So genuine kundalini awakening can be gauged from these two features: 1. A fountain-like sensation (of coolness) above the head and 2. An accompanying spontaneous inducement to a mental stillness/silence/ absence of thoughts/ inner peace.
The thousand-petalled lotus
Apart from feelings of mental quietude, the kundalini is also said to produce a feeling of 'bliss'. From an ancient text the Lalita Sahasranama, the following descriptions have been given of the kundalini:
Param-ananda-mayi - source of supreme bliss; Nirvana-sukha-dayini - giver of the enjoyment of nirvana; Sahasrara-ambuja-arudha - mounted in the 'thousand- petalled lotus' (at crown of head); Sudha-sarabhi-varshini - sending down a shower of nectar.
The 'thousand-petalled lotus' appears to be a poetic rendition of the brain limbic system. Studies have shown the activation of the limbic during meditation. In a 1993 paper entitled, Plasma beta endorphins in humans: effect of sahaja yoga, Dr. Ram Mishra of McMaster's University, Toronto and others, reported an observed increase in beta endorphin production of up to 70% with kundalini meditation (sahaja yoga).
Other studies based on EEG measures of sahaja yoga subjects, found brain activation patterns consistent with subjective feelings of thoughtless awareness (nirvichar samadhi) and happiness.
To highlight other positive effects seen, a 2001 study by Dr Adam Morgan : Sahaja Yoga: An ancient path to modern mental health? showed significant improvement in the symptoms of anxiety and depression compared to use of cognitive behavioural therapy.
For all the millennials out there in silicon valley who have considered going the LSD microdosing route to enhance their creative edge, there's also a 2016 study that shows boost to grey matter from sahaja yoga meditation .
Philosopher's stone.
Could the awakening of kundalini have been the secret 'holy grail' in alchemy, the forerunner of modern chemistry and the scientific method, via Robert Boyle (1627 - 1691), whose Boyle's Law is still in use today? Ostensibly, the goal of alchemy was the transmutation of base metal into gold but this may have been coded language for the pursuit of human perfectibility by discovery of the philosopher's stone. The philosopher's stone was also known as the elixir of life or the elixir of youth.
In 2009, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and others published research identifying the part played by telomeres, which are DNA caps at the ends of chromosomes, in the cellular aging proces. The shortening of telomere length is a marker for aging and meditation was shown to affect the telomeres in a way that led to an anti-aging effect.
If vanilla meditation or mindfulness practice has been demonstrated to have an anti-aging effect, then what even greater effect might a meditation juiced with kundalini awakening have? The effect of kundalini in this regard is suggested by the line above from Lalita Sahasranama: Sudha-sarabhi-varshini - 'sending down a shower of nectar'.
'Sudha' (nectar) is a synonym for the more commonly-used sanskrit word 'Amrita' which is cognate with Ambrosia , the food of the gods in Greek mythology. In Indian mythology, Amrita, also has divine origin which resonates to the present day.
According to the Guiness Book of Records, the largest gathering of people on earth is at the Kumbha Mela festival held every 12 years in India. At the 2013 kumbha mela , an estimated 40 million people squeezed into an area a third of the size of Manhatten, which has a population of just 2 million and feels packed.
The Kumbha ('pot') festival is a remembrance of the divine origin of Amrita. It is said that as Lord Vishnu, the power of sustenance, preservation and the evolutionary urge, was travelling airborne over earth, four drops of Amrita fell from the pot he was carrying and landed at four locations in India. These locations are where the Kumbha festival is held in periodic rotation.
The story of the origin of Amrita may symbolise the yogic process of Khechari Mudra , which occurs when the kundalini touches the crown of the head and engenders a downward flow of 'nectar' into the thoat.
This action of the kundalini has been described by one of the earliest writer-practitioners of kundalini yoga, Sant Dnyaneshwar(1275–1296) , who, in chapter 6 of one of his most prominent works, Dnyaneshwari, says of khechari mudra:
"Body
gets rejuvenated The
skin which covers the lustre of this nectar and is brightened by it
is shed and all the organs show their bright aura. (6:250, 252-253).
Now even Death is afraid of it (the body) and the aging process gets
reversed and the yogi gets back his bygone childhood and he looks
like a boy."
Evolutionary growing pains?
All this may seem far removed from the ordinary man or women on the street going about their daily business, but what if the stresses of modern living that is producing such a worrying uptick in the global incidence of depression is simultaneously acting as a push in the other direction?
And is that other direction showing up as more and more people globally having an interest in meditation as a coping mechanism for stress?
While a coincidence of two things does not necessarily imply a causal link, the graph below taken from google trends and showing where in the world keyword searches for 'meditation' were coming from does make interesting viewing.
In his book, Your Inner Fish, paleontologist and evolutionary biologist, Neil Shubin describes his expedition to find the missing link between marine life and land mammals. His expeditionary team discover the fossil of a 'fish with hands', Tiktaalik.
It may be fair to assume that fish don't mass in shallow water and then develop limbs to crawl onto land without some evolutionary pressure on them.
Similarly, the increasing stress in modern human society and indicated by the growing problem of depression, may in fact be evolutionary growing pains. When there is a problem the species are bound to seek out the lowest threshold solution.
And this is probably how an evolutionary mass phenomenon spreads through a population. The google trends graph above can be viewed in that light.
Tipping-point
Are we on the cusp of a transformation in human awareness? If the experiences of a few statistical outliers - the Yang Lili's and the Zhang Hi's are scaled up to a critical mass of the population, might we see an overall improved mental health across the globe and therefore a better society?
In 2011, the snapshot below of web traffic to an email-link accessed sahaja yoga website, showed that sahaja yoga meditation was being practised in 993 cities around the world.
Today, the number of sahaja yoga practitioners has significantly increased thanks to programs of global outreach, such as the one shown below.
If we are, as human beings, indeed built for bliss then we may gradually begin to see the evidence of that
