Surrender emphasized in Bhakti. Where is the Kundalini connection?

Introduction

Recently, I started studying about Kundalini and its awakening. There are many blogs about people's experiences. Make no mistake, I saw more non-Indian origin western or christian born practicioners whose kundalini awakened sharing their experience with the outside world.  Sure enough, during this process, they reached out to be one with the universe.

 

Why did I not know about it, even though...

 

I was raised in a traditional hindu iyer brahmin family - conservative and whose grandparents were the guardian of vedic traditions.   Growing up,  yoga was not an objective, let alone kundalini yoga. Bhakti or devotion was more stressed along with righteousness. This is true for most of the folks with whom I grew up with in the 70s in Madras (currently known as Chennai).  Stress on Bhakti was emphasized in multitude of ways: movies, songs, concerts, plays, school curiculum, photo essays in magazine, and religious discourses.

 

After coming to the US, I have listened to many Bhakti oriented discourses - heard some of them over and over again.  In all these discourses, the exponents of hinduism (sanatana dharma or vedic religion) have stressed on bhakti and never have spoken about yoga or kundalini yoga, let alone practising it.

 

These exponents have explained in great detail and have stressed many times to train ourselves to accept every event, incident, and every breath to be His blessing. They stress on slowly decimating our ideas, wishes, and fancies and train our minds to accept every event in our life as HIS wish.  Nothing is good or bad, they are just HIS wishes unfolding in our lives.

 

In these discourses, it is also said that when god "blesses" HIS ardent devotees, he bestows them with some Ashta maha siddhis (extra human powers) -  different types of magical powers. In these discourses, it is also indicated that when the devotee is blessed with these powers, the devotee should not fall for these powers (material benefits and glory associated with these power) and should strive for uniting with the SUPREME SELF.

 

When a devotees is sincere,  the devotee elevates a person from the position of an ordinary man to godhood. Along the way, the person becomes a subject of God's grace, gets magical powers, and reaches the state of union with god. 

 

Questions I could not answer myself and searched for a missing link. 
1. How does this devotee suddenly become a superhuman - are there any physiological changes?
Current medical research has found that when a person meditates and practices yoga, the person derives health benefits such as lower blood pressure, healthy heart rate and the like comared to a similar set of patients who do not practise.

2. How does a sincere devotee suddenly give you special powers?  Will God transfer 'this power' as we have seen it in Indian movies from God's hand as special light from his palm to the devotee's head?
If something goes from omnipotent God's hand, how does it stick to the devotees bodies.  After a contemplating about it, I strongly felt, it was Kundalini awakening was responsible for providing these extra human powers. 

There are N sites on the internet that talk about kundalini is and what all happens when kundalini energy crosses each chakra.  This kundalini is the infinite energy stored in every human body to experience and enjoy their non-dualistic, infinite, and supreme identity.  The readers can find many sites that explain it greater detail.

 

3. Did not these learned men who gave (are giving) lectures on Bhakti not know about Kundalini? Why was this energy not spoken about in the lectures?
They definitely know about Kundalini energy - They knew well about it but did not mention about it.  They have advised bhakti (instead of Kundalini Yoga) for the following reasons:

 

• When a person surrenders to god by prayers, chants, meditation, and other effort, the acts of surrender start 'cleaning' the chakras. What does chakra hold? Chakras in our body essentially hold our 'vasanas' or lessons learnt from the experiences of many previous lives,  coupled with the likes and dislikes or in simplest terms our reactions and propensities to external stimuli. It is not my interpretation: I found it here .

• Surrendering our likes and dislikes is a difficult thing.  When we do our work and accept every result of our work as a divine gift without our projection, expectation, and eagerness, we 'slowly' remove the 'dirt/problem/issues' in our chakras. 

• Placing our wishes and place HIS (for shaktam devotees - HER) wishes ahead of our wishes will help us remove the concept of our dislikes and learn to understand and accept HIS (HER) dislikes.  This takes many years (lives?) to implement.  This slowly but surely cleans the chakra.

• For people who have an accidental awakening or planned awakening using external techniques such as yoga, kundalini yoga, and if their chakras are NOT fully devoid of vasanas (like, dislikes, or reaction codes) face immense difficulties.  

They are facing their fears and emotions to be used up in many lives ahead of them to be handled in one second or less than an hour.  It is like instantly lighting up fuel storage site that has fuel meant to be used slowly for many years.  Since the surrender is not yet a 'second' nature of the person at that instant of time (accidental awakening), their ability to let go of the emotions and fears is absent and it causes trauma. 

• Apart from the chakras, there are 3 chakra knots (three for the 3 gunas / characters of the world) that open up when chakras are clean by themselves - due to the prolonged surrendering effort (removal of personal likes and dislikes).

By conscious efforts such as meditation, prayers, and some yoga (physical fitness) - as a means to TOTAL devotion or bhakti, a devotee can initiate to clean the chakras and untie the 3 knots with time.  During this process of cleaning , the devotee will also let go all personal desires, likes, and dislikes.

 

 

So, when the chakras are cleaned, kundalini awakens without diffculty, the person gets special powers, vitality, and also sees god.  We have heard stories (again by those learned men) God 'blesses' them with material and spiritual gifts.   It is clear that these religous exponents were aware of the process and hence asked the listeners to be true devotee and the rest would fall in place.

 

Prahlada - Kundalini awakened?

To verify, I decided to use Prahalada, who is bhakta charvarthi (emperor among devotees), as claimed by the lord Himself,  to see whether phenomenon exhibited by kundalini awakening can be seen in his story:

1. Prahalada was always in 'unity' with god - he saw nothing different from god.  Everything was godhood and not different from god hood.  When there is a union with the supreme self, then there is NO duality (same as advaita).

 

From Kundalini perspective, this can happen  if (and only if) a person has a fully awakened kundalini all the way to sahasrara.  At sahasrara, the person is in 'union' with the supreme - at that instant, the person is a jivan mukta.

 

2. When he was offered poison, he looked at it, and probably thought that it could not harm him (not out of fear of life, but just a thought that everything is Lord Narayana and therefore is nothing to fear)  - it turned out NOT to be poisonous. 

 

Again from a kundalini perspective, if a person's kundalini crosses throat (vishuddi) chakra, whatever the person 'thinks' turns out to be true, even if it is contrary to fate or logic.

 

3. When Prahalada claimed that lord Narayana will be present in a stone 'column', it turned out to be true.

 It is explained in devotion fostering lectures, that his devotion to the god was so great, that god's (infinite) power protected him. 

I am inclinded to think it is the (infinite) power of kundalini was already given by god/mother nature to him and therefore it turned out to be true.
 
The idea presented here is: Prahalada was probably born with a fully awakened kundalini - if so, it was awakened by Sage Narada when Prahalada was in his mother's womb.   Narada was fully aware that this kid was born to rule the world - so decided to awaken the mother's and unborn kids' kundalini energy out of sheer grace for mankind.

 

 Conclusion

They (story tellers) do not say anything about Prahalada's fully awakened kundalini because:
1. They want people to have chakras free of problems and they do not want devotees to tackle all vasanas and fear at a single instance - even though it will not be fatal.  But definitely, handling all vasanas in a single instance of time could be very difficult on the devotee.

 

2. When the charkas are not cleaned, this energy could be potentially used for selfish or personal gains that could result in new fruits of karma to be expended in future lives.  The main purpose of this energy is to get rid of the cycles of birth and death and merge with supreme self and not create karma for one self again.

 

3. Knowledge about this energy to the selfish people could potentially be catastrophic for mankind and for the individual.  It is probably for these reasons, bhakti is stressed and kundalini is not all mentioned.

 

In summary, the easiest way to awaken kundalini is to choose a 'deity' for devotion and stick to it, surrender completely to the supreme.  Sooner or later (in this life or later life), TOTAL bhakti will clean the chakras, and lead to a smooth movement of kundalini to sahasrara and therefore total emancipation.

 

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this document.