Adaptation and Productive Tension: Kuṇḍalinī Reconsidered

This paper diachronically charts conceptions of tantric bodies in the Kaula traditions of Kāmeśvarī and Tripurasundarī, drawing on tantras, stotras, and commentaries in Sanskrit from the first half of the second millennium CE. Correlating techniques for internalized practices for specific results and for realization of non-dual awareness, this paper charts how tantric constructions of the body reflected changes in doctrine and aspirations of practitioners. Analysis of textual evidence uncovers increasingly complex blueprints of the body, including padmas (lotuses), ādhāras (supports), cakras (wheels), kūṭas (peaks), granthis (knots), and kuṇḍala (coil) or Kuṇḍalinī. Visualizations of the Goddess and the dynamic process of her cosmic emanation were transposed and meditated upon within the body of the ritualist. Thus, an embodied realization of Tripurasundarī in the later texts rested upon the identity of the Goddess, yantra (ritual diagram), vidyā (mantra of a feminine divinity), universe, and ritually and doctrinally constructed models of tantric bodies.

This paper outlines the unique kuṇḍalinī doctrine of the mid-10th C Mokṣopāya. The depiction of kuṇḍalinī in the MU differs from any other known Śaiva Tantric or Yoga framework. In the Mokṣopāya, kuṇḍalinī is introduced in the story of Queen Cūḍālā’s enlightenment. After having achieved the highest knowledge, the queen decides that she wants to fly, just for fun, and she harnesses the power of kuṇḍalinī to achieve this goal. The explanation of how Cūḍālā is able to fly leads Vasiṣṭha to explain the nature of consciousness, the nature of unconsciousness, and the bridge between the two. The kuṇḍalinī is the jīva itself, she is fragment of consciousness that is both imagined and possessing the power imagining. When consciousness imagines herself to be unconscious, she exists in a body as kuṇḍalinī; when consciousness awakens in a body, kuṇḍalinī rises, the jīva is liberated and the cycle of rebirth ceases.   

Kuṇḍalinī has a key explanatory role in the technique of haṭha yoga in Sanskrit textual sources from the first half of the second millennium. This role increases throughout the corpus: unnamed in the c. 11th century CE Amṛtasiddhi, 'she' (grammatically feminine though perhaps not essentially so) is the foundation of all yoga teachings by the c. 15th century Haṭhapradīpikā. Genealogically-derived from a tantric śaiva context kuṇḍalinī retains sonic and cosmogonic features, creatively reworked within the embodied, 'forceful' rationale of haṭha yoga. Kuṇḍalinī is adapted as the 'key of force' (kuñcika haṭha) while retaining features of sonic and material dissolution. As such kuṇḍalinī is a nexus for haṭha (forceful) yoga and laya (dissolution) yoga. This paper sets out the mantric and sonic nature and practice of kuṇḍalinī in premodern yoga to highlight the tensions and possibilities of kuṇḍalinī as force and dissolution.

This paper focuses on references to kuṇḍalinī in the songs of Bengali Bāul-Fakirs, an early modern tantric and contemporary global esoteric movement that has its origins in an interconnected society of male, female, and androgynous sadhus (“renunciates”) in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. The paper begins by claiming that the presence of kuṇḍalinī in Bāul-Fakir songs deserves more specific consideration within the semantic range of the term sādhana "practice" as understood by Bāul-Fakirs The next part analyzes one such song on sādhana that contains a key word: prāṇ (vital breath, life), and explicitly describes the practice of transforming kuṇḍalinī into a life-giving boat through techniques of breath-work. The final part of the paper extends the scope to cosmology in general to show these songs' expansion of themes out of Sanskrit and Middle Bengali texts is equally important to consider in the context of what the author calls "musical language worlds." 

This paper examines some of the earliest complex engagement with the South Asian phenomenon of Kuṇḍaliṇi by European and North American authors, specifically the hybrid models of three early twentieth-century Theosophists: James Pryce, Charles Leadbeater, and George Arundale. Though such models have been at times critiqued for their appropriation of Sanskrit terminology to represent what may seem like unrelated concepts, they are best approached not as scholarly attempts to faithfully represent South Asian Kuṇḍalinī traditions and practices, but rather as novel spiritual explorations. A contemporary emerging consensus within the anglophone literature depicted Kuṇḍalinī as a "power," articulated in quasi-scientific language as a natural force akin but not exactly identical to electromagnetism. This language can also found among contemporary Indian popularizers writing for a global audience. However, a deeper examination of the Theosophical accounts reveals diverging cosmological assumptions that draw primarily on Gnostic and Hermetic rather than Tantric logics.

This paper explores a key episode in the modern re-transformation of kundalini, focusing on the San Francisco-based Kundalini Clinic and the interpretation of kundalini as a physiological mechanism. By analysing previously unexplored data, it positions the Kundalini Clinic as a pivotal site of empirical kundalini research and treatment during the late twentieth century period. The historical significance of the Clinic lies particularly in its integration of kundalini into clinical settings and its classification as a disease pattern, the so-called “kundalini syndrome”. This paper pursues two primary objectives: First, to shed light on the San Francisco-based Kundalini Clinic, emphasising its far-reaching impact and enduring legacy in the clinical examination of rare psycho-physiological processes; and second, to investigate efforts to demystify kundalini through scientistic methodologies, framing it as a tangible physiological process rather than a subtle force.