Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Gopi Krishna's Last Interview
I received the following recently from Tom Zatar Kay. It is the last interview with Gopi Krishna, who is in many ways the "granddaddy" of kundalini. His classic work, "Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man", first published in 1975, laid the foundation for our understanding of kundalini thereafter. In this work, he described his own awakening experience and proposed the revolutionary concept that kundalini was in fact the primary engine for the evolution of human consciousness into a higher state of awareness.
I do not agree with all of Gopi Krishna's assertions in this interview, but his is a voice which deserves to be taken seriously.
From: "EcoMall"
THE LAST INTERVIEW WITH GOPI KRISHNA VIDEO - Length:00:50:35
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=d094a80583d668b9b7c5acc2b1482660.826312
TK: Mr Krishna, you have had a Kundalini experience. I wish you could
explain what a Kundalini experience is and what its ramifications are.
GK: Before I start to describe my own experience, perhaps it would be
better to give a little detail about what Kundalini means. We are not using
the totality of the human brain. According to various estimates, most of us
use only ten percent of the brain and according to some only eight percent.
That means 90 percent of the brain is unutilized, that there is still a
large margin in the brain which could be used for other purposes, and
nature has provided it for certain purposes which are not yet known to
science. According to Indian tradition, there is a region in the brain
below the crown and about the pallette which is called Brahmarendra or the
cavity of Brahman. This region can be activated by certain disciplines and
when activated it can give to the individual the same vision of the
universe which all great mystics of the Earth have described. When it is
awakened the normal energy of the body or the blood is not able to fuel the
center. It needs a more powerful and constrained psychic fuel. This fuel
comes from the reproductive system, which is transformed into a kind of
radiation and that radiation awakens and makes the center function.
In my case, the awakening occurred at the age of 34, in 1937. I had been
meditating for 17 years and then all of a sudden during Christmas, while I
was sitting cross-legged in a state of meditation, a strange thing
happened. Something exploded in my brain and a current of silvery light
rising from my spine radiated throughout my whole brain, and I felt myself
expanding in all directions. This expansion was so incredible, so amazing
that I thought that something unusual had happened in my inner ear. After
this I had two other experiences of the same kind, at short intervals
apart, and it then succeeded.
But something was changing in me and I could perceive this change for many,
many years, day and night. In fact, I passed through grave crises during
that period. Finally, I became stabilized in that condition of
consciousness in my 49th year. Since that time I have been living in that
condition. That is to say, before my 34th year I was living in this world
thinking, seeing, perceiving in the same way as other people do, but since
my 49th year I have been living in two different worlds. One is the normal
world of senses and reason, and the other is the world which is much
higher, much more happy and which is totally apart from anything that we
can know of the earth. It is the world of consciousness.
TK: How do you see the world?
GK: We know what all people perceive of this world. I can understand what
you perceive of it, you can understand what I perceive of it. That is, this
perception is uniform. Everyone has the same perception. But this other
perception is different. In this other perception you do not see the world
as a solid, real, objective creation. The real objective creation is
consciousness. You see consciousness everywhere. You see the ocean as if it
is consciousness everywhere. You see the ocean as if it is living; you see a
mountain as if it is living; you see the sky as if it is living; you see the
Earth as if it is living; you see life or consciousness everywhere. And this
life or consciousness is not something which is really dead or which is
something you can understand. It is unfathomable. It is wonder and
everytime you see it, you perceive it. The wonder grows deeper. I am never
tired of sitting in quiet and reflecting on myself. I am never tired of
looking at the sky. The sky, to me, does not appear as it appeared before
my 34th year; it is so fascinating. It is such a beautiful vision that I
would like to look at it for days and months on end. In other words, in the
air a fountain of happiness, a new kingdom, I should say, is opened. This is
probably what Christ meant when he said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within
you." This is the Nirvana of Buddha; and this is the state of Vada
mentioned by the Suffi mystics. In fact, in this inactive state what we
perceive is consciousness in its most magic form, in its glorious form, and
not consciousness as a point looking through the eyes or hearing through the
ears, but a consciousness which has its own channels and which knows that it
is the master and not the slave of the material forces which knows it is the
creator. It is infinite: it is deathless. In this state one feels himself to
be a king, he feels himself to be the master of what he sees. It is not the
ego. I should say it is not the ego; it is the very condition of this
consciousness. That is the reason why it is said that no mystic would
change his state even for a kingdom. It is somehing so unique, so glorious,
so elevating that I have no words to describe this state.
TK: What type of life must a person live to awaken their Kundalini/
GK: In order to make this clear, I would like to say that it is not
Kundalini per se, Kundalini is the power, the mechanism. But actually, what
we do is awaken to activity a certain region in the brain. This means that
nature has already provided a potential in the brain which has to be
awakened. This means that the brain can still organically evolve to a
higher performance. This is my experience, that the human brain is still
organically evolving in the direction of the great mystics, in the same
direction as the great geniuses. For this evolution a certain type of life
is necessary.
For instance, throughout our life this evolution is relentlessly going on
and we have to cooperate with it. When we do not cooperate with the inner
evolution we create problems for ourselves. For that purpose, for the last
5,000 years at least great prophets have been born. Beginning with the
Vedas, then Buddha, then Christ, then Mohammed, then Guru Nanak, and all
the ancient prophets of the Bible, they have been born time after time, and
they have given some 'teaching to mankind', which was a direction for how to
live while the brain is still evolving. Their Sermon on the Mount, the Ten
Commandments, the Discourses of Buddha, The Bhagavad-Gita, and all those
directions contained in the religious scriptures of the Earth -- they are
all meant to regulate our life so that we may live in harmony with the law
of evolution which governs our life.
The revolutionaries have come to regulate the lives of human beings so that
they may work in harmony with the law of evolution that is at work day and
night within their brains. When they depart from this law of evolution,
they always bring calamities or problems upon themselves. The present time
is one such occasion when we have digressed from the laws of evolution and
the result is that we are threatened from many directions.
The life to be lived is just as you see in the sermon on the Mountain - a
life of humility, a life of love, a life of purity, a life in which you
wish for others what you wish for yourself, a life in wich you are pure,
you are not sophisticated, you are not overly clever, you are not smart,
you do not use your cleverness or smartness to take what belongs to others,
a life of extreme purity and a life of simplicity, that you do not waste the
resources of the Earth.
As you know, every animal satisfies his basic needs from the recycled
resources of the Earth. Man is the only creature who is wasting the basic
resources -- the minerals -- for his own luxury and pleasure. That is what
the Sermon on the Mount is meant to teach, that humanity should live
simply, beautiful, pure, compassionate lives. That is the type of life
necessary for the awakening of Kundalini.
TK: And this is what all religions of the world say?
GK: Every prophet, every great mystic, even every philosopher, for
instance, Socrates or Plato. We will find that this life is okay: purity,
compassion, love, service is the ideal life which human beings have to
live.
TK: Is there no change in consciousness in birth or in death? Would you
explain that?
GK: Here we come to metaphysics. We see the sun rising in the morning and
setting in the evening. Actually, is there any change in the sun? The same
is true of consciousness.
Consciousness is eternal: our souls. They are eternal, immutable, omissive,
omni-present, omnipotent, and our spark partakes of the same nature as the
divine, so there can be no death for this, no change for this. The change
occurs in our shells, mind, intellect, the senses. But not in the essence,
the principles which is consciousness.
TK: The more we use our mind, the greater our development of our evolution
takes place.
GK: The human brain is evolving rapidly because from morning until evening
we are applying our brain to some task, we are reading, we are looking
through the newspapers, we are watching the television or we are working in
the office.
Most of the people are applying their brain throughout the day, this was
not the case before when people hunted or when they were tilling the soil;
they had no need to apply their brain in such a constrained way.
We are now applying our brain in a very constrained way, from morning until
night. In other words we are meditating, though on material objects. The
result is a rapid state of evolution.
Our way of life must change, but we have not changed, on the other hand. We
have made our living and our life more and more complex and intricate, so
that all day we are working and working and working to feed our belly, to
live. We are giving no time to the mind, no time to the spirit. We are not
giving any thought to it. The results is that there is a disproportionate
evolution. We have developed a very powerful intellect as seen by the
scientific discoveries that have been made and the changes that have
occurred in our life, but on the other hand our spiritual and moral growth
has been negligible.
So what we have in modern times is a disproportionate human being, a giant
of the intellect, on the one hand, and a pygmy of moral or spiritual growth.
This disproportion is at the base of the present threatening situation of
the world.
TK: What can we do to remedy that?
GK: What we can do is to make a thorough research of all the religious
scriptures of mankind, of all the occult traditions of the past, and to
make experiments on the brain. In fact, yoga was devised in India to make
experiments on the brain. The very word "yoga" means to yoke, to join the
individual soul with the over-soul, with moderation, with temperance. It is
this type of life that has to be led, not a luxury life of wasting the
Earth's resources, of pollutants polluting the planet, so that nature's
forces are now creating a situation in which either calamity occurs which
will change the direction of human life, or by their own sensible reaction
they will change themselves. Change has to occur in any way.
NOTE: THIS WILL BE CONTINUED TOMORROW
I do not agree with all of Gopi Krishna's assertions in this interview, but his is a voice which deserves to be taken seriously.
From: "EcoMall"
THE LAST INTERVIEW WITH GOPI KRISHNA VIDEO - Length:00:50:35
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=d094a80583d668b9b7c5acc2b1482660.826312
TK: Mr Krishna, you have had a Kundalini experience. I wish you could
explain what a Kundalini experience is and what its ramifications are.
GK: Before I start to describe my own experience, perhaps it would be
better to give a little detail about what Kundalini means. We are not using
the totality of the human brain. According to various estimates, most of us
use only ten percent of the brain and according to some only eight percent.
That means 90 percent of the brain is unutilized, that there is still a
large margin in the brain which could be used for other purposes, and
nature has provided it for certain purposes which are not yet known to
science. According to Indian tradition, there is a region in the brain
below the crown and about the pallette which is called Brahmarendra or the
cavity of Brahman. This region can be activated by certain disciplines and
when activated it can give to the individual the same vision of the
universe which all great mystics of the Earth have described. When it is
awakened the normal energy of the body or the blood is not able to fuel the
center. It needs a more powerful and constrained psychic fuel. This fuel
comes from the reproductive system, which is transformed into a kind of
radiation and that radiation awakens and makes the center function.
In my case, the awakening occurred at the age of 34, in 1937. I had been
meditating for 17 years and then all of a sudden during Christmas, while I
was sitting cross-legged in a state of meditation, a strange thing
happened. Something exploded in my brain and a current of silvery light
rising from my spine radiated throughout my whole brain, and I felt myself
expanding in all directions. This expansion was so incredible, so amazing
that I thought that something unusual had happened in my inner ear. After
this I had two other experiences of the same kind, at short intervals
apart, and it then succeeded.
But something was changing in me and I could perceive this change for many,
many years, day and night. In fact, I passed through grave crises during
that period. Finally, I became stabilized in that condition of
consciousness in my 49th year. Since that time I have been living in that
condition. That is to say, before my 34th year I was living in this world
thinking, seeing, perceiving in the same way as other people do, but since
my 49th year I have been living in two different worlds. One is the normal
world of senses and reason, and the other is the world which is much
higher, much more happy and which is totally apart from anything that we
can know of the earth. It is the world of consciousness.
TK: How do you see the world?
GK: We know what all people perceive of this world. I can understand what
you perceive of it, you can understand what I perceive of it. That is, this
perception is uniform. Everyone has the same perception. But this other
perception is different. In this other perception you do not see the world
as a solid, real, objective creation. The real objective creation is
consciousness. You see consciousness everywhere. You see the ocean as if it
is consciousness everywhere. You see the ocean as if it is living; you see a
mountain as if it is living; you see the sky as if it is living; you see the
Earth as if it is living; you see life or consciousness everywhere. And this
life or consciousness is not something which is really dead or which is
something you can understand. It is unfathomable. It is wonder and
everytime you see it, you perceive it. The wonder grows deeper. I am never
tired of sitting in quiet and reflecting on myself. I am never tired of
looking at the sky. The sky, to me, does not appear as it appeared before
my 34th year; it is so fascinating. It is such a beautiful vision that I
would like to look at it for days and months on end. In other words, in the
air a fountain of happiness, a new kingdom, I should say, is opened. This is
probably what Christ meant when he said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within
you." This is the Nirvana of Buddha; and this is the state of Vada
mentioned by the Suffi mystics. In fact, in this inactive state what we
perceive is consciousness in its most magic form, in its glorious form, and
not consciousness as a point looking through the eyes or hearing through the
ears, but a consciousness which has its own channels and which knows that it
is the master and not the slave of the material forces which knows it is the
creator. It is infinite: it is deathless. In this state one feels himself to
be a king, he feels himself to be the master of what he sees. It is not the
ego. I should say it is not the ego; it is the very condition of this
consciousness. That is the reason why it is said that no mystic would
change his state even for a kingdom. It is somehing so unique, so glorious,
so elevating that I have no words to describe this state.
TK: What type of life must a person live to awaken their Kundalini/
GK: In order to make this clear, I would like to say that it is not
Kundalini per se, Kundalini is the power, the mechanism. But actually, what
we do is awaken to activity a certain region in the brain. This means that
nature has already provided a potential in the brain which has to be
awakened. This means that the brain can still organically evolve to a
higher performance. This is my experience, that the human brain is still
organically evolving in the direction of the great mystics, in the same
direction as the great geniuses. For this evolution a certain type of life
is necessary.
For instance, throughout our life this evolution is relentlessly going on
and we have to cooperate with it. When we do not cooperate with the inner
evolution we create problems for ourselves. For that purpose, for the last
5,000 years at least great prophets have been born. Beginning with the
Vedas, then Buddha, then Christ, then Mohammed, then Guru Nanak, and all
the ancient prophets of the Bible, they have been born time after time, and
they have given some 'teaching to mankind', which was a direction for how to
live while the brain is still evolving. Their Sermon on the Mount, the Ten
Commandments, the Discourses of Buddha, The Bhagavad-Gita, and all those
directions contained in the religious scriptures of the Earth -- they are
all meant to regulate our life so that we may live in harmony with the law
of evolution which governs our life.
The revolutionaries have come to regulate the lives of human beings so that
they may work in harmony with the law of evolution that is at work day and
night within their brains. When they depart from this law of evolution,
they always bring calamities or problems upon themselves. The present time
is one such occasion when we have digressed from the laws of evolution and
the result is that we are threatened from many directions.
The life to be lived is just as you see in the sermon on the Mountain - a
life of humility, a life of love, a life of purity, a life in which you
wish for others what you wish for yourself, a life in wich you are pure,
you are not sophisticated, you are not overly clever, you are not smart,
you do not use your cleverness or smartness to take what belongs to others,
a life of extreme purity and a life of simplicity, that you do not waste the
resources of the Earth.
As you know, every animal satisfies his basic needs from the recycled
resources of the Earth. Man is the only creature who is wasting the basic
resources -- the minerals -- for his own luxury and pleasure. That is what
the Sermon on the Mount is meant to teach, that humanity should live
simply, beautiful, pure, compassionate lives. That is the type of life
necessary for the awakening of Kundalini.
TK: And this is what all religions of the world say?
GK: Every prophet, every great mystic, even every philosopher, for
instance, Socrates or Plato. We will find that this life is okay: purity,
compassion, love, service is the ideal life which human beings have to
live.
TK: Is there no change in consciousness in birth or in death? Would you
explain that?
GK: Here we come to metaphysics. We see the sun rising in the morning and
setting in the evening. Actually, is there any change in the sun? The same
is true of consciousness.
Consciousness is eternal: our souls. They are eternal, immutable, omissive,
omni-present, omnipotent, and our spark partakes of the same nature as the
divine, so there can be no death for this, no change for this. The change
occurs in our shells, mind, intellect, the senses. But not in the essence,
the principles which is consciousness.
TK: The more we use our mind, the greater our development of our evolution
takes place.
GK: The human brain is evolving rapidly because from morning until evening
we are applying our brain to some task, we are reading, we are looking
through the newspapers, we are watching the television or we are working in
the office.
Most of the people are applying their brain throughout the day, this was
not the case before when people hunted or when they were tilling the soil;
they had no need to apply their brain in such a constrained way.
We are now applying our brain in a very constrained way, from morning until
night. In other words we are meditating, though on material objects. The
result is a rapid state of evolution.
Our way of life must change, but we have not changed, on the other hand. We
have made our living and our life more and more complex and intricate, so
that all day we are working and working and working to feed our belly, to
live. We are giving no time to the mind, no time to the spirit. We are not
giving any thought to it. The results is that there is a disproportionate
evolution. We have developed a very powerful intellect as seen by the
scientific discoveries that have been made and the changes that have
occurred in our life, but on the other hand our spiritual and moral growth
has been negligible.
So what we have in modern times is a disproportionate human being, a giant
of the intellect, on the one hand, and a pygmy of moral or spiritual growth.
This disproportion is at the base of the present threatening situation of
the world.
TK: What can we do to remedy that?
GK: What we can do is to make a thorough research of all the religious
scriptures of mankind, of all the occult traditions of the past, and to
make experiments on the brain. In fact, yoga was devised in India to make
experiments on the brain. The very word "yoga" means to yoke, to join the
individual soul with the over-soul, with moderation, with temperance. It is
this type of life that has to be led, not a luxury life of wasting the
Earth's resources, of pollutants polluting the planet, so that nature's
forces are now creating a situation in which either calamity occurs which
will change the direction of human life, or by their own sensible reaction
they will change themselves. Change has to occur in any way.
NOTE: THIS WILL BE CONTINUED TOMORROW
