Kualini The Hindu Tenets of The Serpen PDF

KUṆḌALINĪ
The Hindu Tenets of the Serpentine Energy

in Theory and Practice
Kenn Døngart
Kuṇḍalinī
THE HINDU TENETS OF THE SERPENTINE ENERGY
IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
Kenn Døngart
A thesis submitted for a degree in

Master of Arts in Indology
University of Copenhagen
Faculty of Humanities
Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
Academic advisor
Peter Birkelund Andersen
Cover image
A Tantra scroll-drawing which depicts the
kuṇḍalinī-śakti coiled like a sleeping serpent.
(Drawing courtesy of www.shaivayoga.com)
June 2016
Contents
Resumé ....................................................................................................................... iii

Preface .......................................................................................................................... v
Introduction to the Thesis .......................................................................1

1. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1
2. Purpose and overall structure .......................................................................... 2
3. Methodological considerations ....................................................................... 4
The study material ............................................................................................... 6
4. Origin and etymology of the term kuṇḍalinī ................................................... 8
PART I
Hindu Cosmogonic Theories .................................................................13
1. The aggregate of cosmos............................................................................... 13
2. The cosmic evolutionary cycle ..................................................................... 14
3. The cosmic emanation .................................................................................. 15
The emanation of the life-force and vital breath................................................ 16
The emanation through sound ........................................................................... 18
The emanation of consciousness ........................................................................ 21
4. Cosmological diagrammatic: The śrīcakra ................................................... 22
5. The micro-macrocosmic tenets in Nāth and haṭhayoga texts ....................... 24
PART II
The Subtle Physiology ...........................................................................28
1. The nāḍīs ....................................................................................................... 28
2. The system of the cakras .............................................................................. 30
Origin and etymology of the term cakra ............................................................ 30
The system of the Trika school ........................................................................... 31
The system of the Kubjikā cult ........................................................................... 32
The cakras in manifestation: Applications of the subtle sound and phonemes .. 34
ii Contents
PART III
The Kuṇḍalinī Rituals and Practices.................................................... 38
1. The sexual rituals .......................................................................................... 38
Sexual union: Rituals of the Trika school .......................................................... 39
Sexual fluids: Rituals of Kaulism ....................................................................... 40
The pañcamakāra ritual...................................................................................... 41
The kāmakalā diagram....................................................................................... 42
2. The pneumatic practices................................................................................ 45
The practice of prāṇa ......................................................................................... 45
The practice of uccāra ........................................................................................ 46
The practice of the prāṇa-vāyus ......................................................................... 47
3. The practice of laya....................................................................................... 49
4. The kuṇḍalinī awakening as a remedy for disease ........................................ 51
5. The kuṇḍalinī withdrawal: Transmutation and effect ................................... 52
PART IV
Discursive Analysis and Discussion ..................................................... 54
1. The epistemological discourse ...................................................................... 54
2. The phenomenological discourse .................................................................. 59
3. Modern interpretations of the kuṇḍalinī........................................................ 61
Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 66
Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 69
Resumé
Denne specialeafhandling er resultatet af et studie og en analyse af forskelligartede

materialer, som omhandler både de bagvedliggende teoretiske principper og de
anvendte metoder inden for det omfattende hinduistiske koncept, som involverer den
feminine, slangelignende energi kaldt kuṇḍalinī. Afhandlingen tager udgangspunkt i
en undersøgelse af hypotesen, at der under videreførelsen og videreudviklingen af
kuṇḍalinī-begrebet fra dets første omtale i de tidlige tantra’er til dets inkludering i de
yogiske teknikker beskrevet i haṭhayoga-manualerne blev lagt mindre vægt på de
teoretiske bestanddele – f.eks. det holistiske verdensbillede, at menneskets subtile
energier er afspejlinger af komponenter af det kosmiske univers – der ligger til grund
for de tantriske ritualer, hvor kuṇḍalinī-processen sker som en direkte parallel til den
kosmiske evolution, til fordel for de fysiologiske aspekter af den yogiske metodik.
Efter en indledende diskussion af ordet kuṇḍalinīs terminologiske og
etymologiske oprindelse fortsættes i specialets Del I en undersøgelse af den
føromtalte holistiske teori med særligt fokus på de komponenter, som indgår i den
anvendte praksis, der har til formål at vække kuṇḍalinī-energien. Anden del redegør
for den hinduistiske fremstilling af de bestanddele, som udgør mennesket subtile
krop, og forsøger at sætte den ind i dens teoretiske sammenhæng, den holistiske
verdensopfattelse. Dette leder således op til tredje del, hvori der fokuseres på de
praksisser, der anvendes i henholdsvis tantriske ritualer og haṭhayoga. Her
illustreres, hvorledes det teoretiske udgangspunkt for kuṇḍalinī-praksissen til dels
skal findes i de kosmogonetiske principper, og til dels i nyudviklede sex-orienteret
ritualer. Fjerde og sidste del behandler emnet fra to diskursanalytiske perspektiver:
det erkendelsesteoretiske og det fænomenologiske. Ydermere perspektiveres emnet
til forskellige moderne (særligt de occidentale) fortolkninger af kuṇḍalinī-
fænomenet. I de afsluttende bemærkninger reflekteres over holdbarheden af den
fremsatte hypotese, og der peges på mulige områder inden for emnet, som yderligere
kan belyses af fremtidige studier.
iii
Preface
Enthralled by the rich Indian religious and yogic tradition during the entire time of
my academic studies – and even prior to the commencement of these – I felt it
natural to dive deeply into the world of spectacular mystics and comprehensive
rituals and philosophies that imbue the religious culture of tantric Śaivism. I, thus,
consider this thesis to pertain to the first of the following two diverse realms,
coalescing into that which forms the core fundament of my exploration of the
“religious-spiritual world”: one rooted in intellectual claims of objectivity, the other
in personal belief and phenomenological experience.
Nevertheless this study is the result of a scholarly treatment and, therefore, aimed
at further topic-related inquiring in that direction, there should be abundance of
opportunities for those who wish to approach these pages from more of an “emic”-
oriented perspective. Besides the immense satisfaction, to unravel the kuṇḍalinī
throughout all these pages has gifted me with more understanding of some of the
deep mystic peculiarities of the Indian wisdom-tradition in terms of attaining a
perspective of more profundity and authenticity. I, therefore, wish to share this
investigation into a considerable small portion of the comprehensive yogic tradition
with whomsoever will find interest in it whether it be for scholarly or personal
reasons.
v
Introduction to the Thesis
1. Introduction
The concept of the sleeping serpentine nexus of female energy (śakti), the kuṇḍalinī,
who, when awaken from her slumber at the base of the spine, pierces the various
energetic centers (cakras) located on the spinal column on her arousal up along the
central axis (suṣumṇā) within the subtle body to the location at the cranial vault, from
where she produces the blissful nectar (amṛta) which floats downwards in a
nourishing stream that pours into the corporeal body, is today commonly known not
only in that vast preserved bulk of original tantric and haṭhayogic scriptures
produced in medieval India, but also in the global spiritual community as well as by
Western scientists considering it to be a psychosomatic phenomenon.
The basic tenets of a mystical subtle energy within the body is as ancient as the
Hindu culture itself, but the articulation of to the actual termination, kuṇḍalinī, and
the development of all the esoteric concepts, rituals and practices that are associated
with her awakening originated in early medieval Śaiva-Śākta tantric literature and
were later appropriated by the haṭhayoga tradition.
There are subtle, internal distinctions between schools that exist under the aegis of
Tantrism: Śaivism, Śāktism, Kaulism, and so forth. Historical research into the
formative period of haṭhayoga presents a rather complex and juxtaposed picture with
several emerging sub-branches that venerated as their linage-holders masters of pre-
existing schools. In a general sense, it is justifiable to distinguish between teachings
of an early and of the classical type of haṭhayoga. The former was a reformation of
tantric yoga by two promoters of the Śāktic cult of Kaula Śaivism, Matsyendranātha
(c. 9th to 10th centuries) and his alleged disciple, Gorakṣanātha (probably 12th
century), although presumably living three centuries later. The transgressive
teachings of early Kaulism anchored in bodily practices and sexual householder-
rituals, which constituted a sub-branch of the non-dual Kashmir Śaiva tradition, were
later appropriated by the ascetic Nāths in the post-classical period of late Tantrism
(roughly 1300 onward).1 Gorakṣanātha is believed to be founder of the ascetic Nāth
sampradāya (tradition) and, moreover, the first teacher of (an early form of)
haṭhayoga. The classical haṭhayoga system was formulated in the
Haṭhayogapradīpikā of Svātmārāma (15th century) and subsequent scriptures. Much
scholarship, however, has not applied this minute distinction and uses ‘Nāth yoga’
and ‘haṭhayoga’ interchangeably.2 The “Śāktisation”3 of haṭhayoga was entirely
1
Christopher D. Wallis, Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless
Tradition. 2nd edn. (Petaluma, USA: Mattamayūra Press, 2013), 305-11.
2
James Mallinson, “Śāktism and Haṭhayoga,” (paper presented at a conference on Śākta traditions
in Oxford in Sep. 2011, accessed March 19, 2016, https://soas.academia.edu/JamesMallinson), 1.
3
This term is applied by Mallinson, “Śāktism and Haṭhayoga,” 26.
1
2 Introduction to the Thesis
successful to the extent that even the celibate traditions were made more Śākta
through incorporating the kuṇḍalinī into their practice.
The kuṇḍalinī was appropriated in Buddhist and Vaiṣṇava tantric systems of yoga
as the fiery energy called caṇḍālī (consort). Later kuṇḍalinī featured widely in the
Yoga-Upaniṣads, which were compiled in the 17th and 18th centuries. The title
encapsulating this text corpus particularly alludes to a system that combined
haṭhayoga techniques with the ancient Upaniṣadic philosophy.4 Furthermore, she is
introduced in modern forms of Sikhism as a new dimension. The establisher of the
Sikh orders in the Western hemisphere, Yogi Bhajan (b. Harbhajan Singh Puri 1929-
2004), taught the so-called “kuṇḍalinī-yoga,” in which kuṇḍalinī is considered to be
a person’s creative potential.5 However, unlike the modern Western postural yoga-
system propounded by Yogi Bhajan, the original forms of kuṇḍalinī-yoga were not
concerned with physical postures or movements at all but rather with visualizations
and energy practices of the subtle body, utilizing secret tantric mantras and
prāṇāyāmas.
Thanks to occidental pioneers, such as Sir John Woodroffe (alias Arthur Avalon)
and early leading figures within the Theosophical Society who brought the esoteric
perspectives and practices taught in the Tantras and haṭhayoga manuals to a Western
audience, however flawed and in corrupted forms these were presented, the term
kuṇḍalinī – often in association with the cakra-oriented yoga style – became
mainstream in Western New Age movements. The number of publications on the
kuṇḍalinī has exploded over the past thirty years or so, particularly as the tradition of
haṭhayoga has become popularized in the West. The abundance of kuṇḍalinī-yoga
classes now being offered at yoga studios around the world are, however, morphed
into a practice that hardly resembles, nor could possibly represent, medieval practices
implemented to awaken the serpentine energy.
2. Purpose and overall structure

Depictions of the subtle body through which the kuṇḍalinī becomes active, its subtle
channels (nāḍīs), cakras and even hints at the presence of kuṇḍalinī itself are extant
in Indian philosophical literature as early as the first Hindu Upaniṣads. However, it is
not until the advent of the cults of medieval Śaiva Tantrism that we find the doctrine
of kuṇḍalinī developing as an integral tenet of speculations on both cosmic
emanation and spiritual liberation. Indeed, we find in the source literature – tantric as
well as haṭhayogic – that rituals and practices and the interpretations of these vary
between the religious sects or traditions. It is, therefore, interesting to question
whether we are presented with the original intended meaning of the term kuṇḍalinī
preserved in a continual form throughout its various applications, or if it is rather the
case that kuṇḍalinī hand in hand, to various extent, with its inherent characteristics
4
Mallinson, “Śāktism and Haṭhayoga,” 26-27.
5
Georg Feuerstein, The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice (Prescott,
Arizona: Hohm Press, 2001), 336-37.
Purpose and overall structure 3
was adopted as an appropriate symbolic term, which supported the advocacy for each
of the religious traditions’ soteriological ideas and practices. To answer this question
it is necessary to trace kuṇḍalinī’s original meaning and notifications as far back and
exactly as possible.
Textual material which teaches yogas or rituals that involve raising the kuṇḍalinī
has been examined not only by Indologists – whose philological studies tent to come
closest to the authentic meanings presented in the Sanskrit sources – but also by a
wide range of fields within the academic establishment. The perspectives or
methodological and theoretical approaches to these sources, therefore, differs
significantly between the individual studies that in some cases (and not in others)
contain overlap in regard to contextual meaning, terminological match, and so forth.
Instances of discrepancy are presumably due to the much incoherency and
diversification in the presentations of kuṇḍalinī to be found within the tantric and
haṭhayogic scriptures themselves. We are thus not only presented with a large bulk of
scriptures describing the kuṇḍalinī in various contextual frameworks, but the
scholarly approaches from which these Indian religious doctrines and practices are
examined also differ significantly. Most scholarship has focused separately either on
the kuṇḍalinī’s role in terms of Śaiva tantric exegesis or in terms of classical
haṭhayoga practices. Indeed, the degree of diversity by which this topic has been
treated by various scholars is evidence of the fact that over the course of time the
idea of kuṇḍalinī has gradually infused various areas of religious practice in India,
such as sacred symbolism, metaphysical speculation and, later, haṭhayogic practice,
and that a fully comprehensive research into the kuṇḍalinī’s application, which is
currently not existing, is much needed.
With the present thesis I, therefore, wish to test the hypothesis that the original
esoteric and cosmogonic perspectives on kuṇḍalinī embedded in the Tantras were, to
a certain extent, replaced or, at least, less emphasized in classical haṭhayoga favoring
a predominance of the physiological aspects in its kuṇḍalinī practices. Hand in hand
with this transformation is the fact that elements of the rituals employed to raise
kuṇḍalinī were appropriately adjusted to suit the austerities of the haṭhayogins.
Hopefully by analyzing, comparing and contrasting more of the many soteriological-
based rituals that are integral to the Śaiva Tantras with the haṭhayoga techniques, we
can create a much clearer and comprehensive picture of the functions of kuṇḍalinī.
Thus, the primary concerns of this study are threefold: to examine (1) the degree to
which kuṇḍalinī practices have been influenced by the Hindu theoretical principles of
emanation and reabsorption and a microcosmic parallel of the universe’s evolution;
(2) how the practitioner awakens the slumbering kuṇḍalinī to reverse the order of
nature on a microcosmic level; and, finally, (3) any explicit commonalities and
differences that may occur in the tenets of the kuṇḍalinī among various traditions,
particularly those between tantric devotees and haṭhayogic practitioners.
In the following pages, I will critically scrutinize the tenets constituting the
concept of the kuṇḍalinī, which in numerous ways during the transition from the
tantric metaphysical rites – such as those related to the Kubjikā sect – and the later
series of physical exercises forming the major part of haṭhayoga became the focal
point of a particular type of yogic practice. The study is presented in four distinct yet
closely related parts. Proceeding from the final section of the introduction that traces
the etymological meaning and origination of the term kuṇḍalinī, the first part
examines basic concepts of the Hindu cosmogonic doctrines with particular focus on
the segments in which we find early notions of the principles that became the
theoretical fundament for the kuṇḍalinī practices.
The second part accounts for the Hindu ideas that human beings contain a so-
called subtle physiology. Here is argued that these ideas are presented in the tantric
sources as a conceptual extension of the early cosmogonic theories, combining the
cosmic unfoldment of the divine with the individual’s spiritual development in a
perfect evolutionary unity. With these inaugurating parameters in mind, I turn in the
third part to an elaborate delineation of the various rituals and practices that are
applied by yogic practitioners in order to raise kuṇḍalinī. This part is broadly divided
between rituals that were explicitly sexual orientated and pneumatic- and
phonematic-based practices within Tantrism and haṭhayoga. In the fourth and final
part I put the study of kuṇḍalinī into perspective by examining the kuṇḍalinī
teachings from an analytical perspective by introducing and discussing two
discursive approaches borrowed from a Western philosophical framework, namely,
epistemology and phenomenology. Furthermore, I expound on the manner in which
Hindu kuṇḍalinī teachings have been received, approached and, eventually,
appropriated in various modern interpretations.
In my closing remarks I attempt to answer the hypothesis, from where the
exploration of the present thesis has its point of departure, by concluding that the
original tantric kuṇḍalinī-teachings pertained to a type of rituals and yogic practices
that were grounded in elaborate cosmogonic theories. Hence, by incorporating the
cosmogonic theories as the fundamental principles of the different tantric practices,
the practitioner would approach the attainment of cosmic consciousness by raising
the serpentine energy through an alignment with the various elements and
components, which constitute the divine universe. Although the haṭhayogins
generally did not dismiss tantric doctrines completely, they nevertheless increasingly
emphasized the physical methodology and remedial results of raising the kuṇḍalinī,
meanwhile turning their back on the original theoretical foundation of cosmogony
which, it seems, was deserted as a common doctrinal prerequisite taken for granted.
3. Methodological considerations
A study such as this into the doctrinal principles and ritual and yogic methods
involved in the conceptual model of the kuṇḍalinī evokes several methodological
considerations. First, there are the presentational concerns in regard to clearly and
appropriately structure descriptions and analyses of the subject-matter. This study
will pursue to follow terminological and thematic structures of the kuṇḍalinī
teachings with the general attempt of presenting developments and variations in
Methodological considerations 5
terms of the individual religious traditions to be distinguished and the overall

chronologic order.
Next, there are the general concerns that face any academic study, namely those
regarding proper terminological and categorical clarifications. In order to stabilize a
somewhat simplified overview of the diversification that existed among the religious
traditions flourishing in medieval India, I choose mainly to make the generalizing
distinction between tantric, Nāth and haṭhayogic texts. However, this is not only with
the intention to make a comparative study of the different traditions’ contribution to
the development of the kuṇḍalinī, but rather to illustrate general tendencies of the
kuṇḍalinī as an important shared concept, since in order to properly understand the
classical haṭhayogic system of the kuṇḍalinī awakening and its appropriation of
elements from Tantrism, it necessitates studying the doctrinal theories explicated in
the tantric sources. A thorough research must study the available textual material in
its religious and traditional contexts.
Another serious methodological consideration is, therefore, to define an approach
that avoids a hard dichotomization between the traditional religious presentations.
Two approaches are possible and valid when studying the sources that speak of the
kuṇḍalinī: One is to consider the individual teaching as part of a whole; this is
possible since the various expositions rarely conflict directly with each other. The
other possibility is to discern in the teachings different schools or systems. Thus, on
the one hand we can study each system in the process of its development within the
context of kuṇḍalinī, while on the other hand we can study the kuṇḍalinī templates as
a collective development of the various religious traditions.
There are, of course, various limitations and difficulties that face any academic
investigation into religious phenomenology as is the case of the kuṇḍalinī practices.
Perhaps the most crucial barrier for scholarly research, for which there is no easy
solution, is that the teachings of the kuṇḍalinī form an undeniably esoteric tradition.
This attribute of esotericism not alone means the teachings are difficult to grasp
intellectually. Indeed, in order to interpret the teachings of the kuṇḍalinī properly,
one would have to be initiated into the yogic tradition. However, even if it was
possible to receive such an initiation, one could not really be certain to understand
the meanings and interpretations derived from the initiation and if it would even
correspond to the tradition as it was in the medieval centuries.
Hence, if we in our study into these esoteric teachings wish to employ the term
understand in its commonly accepted denotation: ‘to have a thorough technical
acquaintance with something,’ we immediately encounter an important and central
cross-cultural perplexity. I will in this context refer to the great Kashmirian
philosopher, Abhinavagupta, who distinguishes between an understanding that is
purely intellectual, and one gained from experiential knowledge.6 A scholarly study,
however, cannot insist on such a radical form of understanding. Therefore, this thesis
6
Paul Eduardo Muller-Ortega, The Triadic Heart of Śiva: Kaula Tantricism of Abhinavagupta in
the Non-Dual Shaivism of Kashmir (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), 2.
will retain a similar approach to the one that Paul Muller-Ortega adopted for his
doctoral thesis entitled The Triadic Heart of Śiva, in which he writes:
As a consequence we must here limit the notion of understanding to a form of sympathetic

perception through which we attempt to see and feel our way into the still alien universe of
tantric sādhana (spiritual practice).7
Nevertheless, it would not be appropriate to approach the tantric and haṭhayogic

formulations as one would approach a rational system. Rather, in approaching these
traditions, we will encounter an intuitional and symbolic method that is the direct
outgrowth of the phenomenology of tantric ritualism and yoga. In that regard, this
study is an examination of what is a method itself of the attainment of enlightenment
experiences.
In this regard I am influenced by the observation of Ninian Smart that
metaphysical assertions are often disguised spiritual claims, and that therefore one
may not understand a doctrinal scheme without attending to the sometimes complex
religious activities, which give it life and point. Smart directly puts the matter thusly:
It involves too the assumption that the determination of metaphysics by forms of religious
experience and practice occurs that way round and not conversely. Now it is of course
perfectly true that individuals are much influenced by the doctrines which they are taught
and in this sense it is certainly true that theology and metaphysics are in some degree
determinative of religious experience. …it would be indeed odd if metaphysics, considered
as sets of propositions to be entertained and believed by people, should have the enormous
effect of creating out of nothing the powerful religious experience of both great teachers
and ordinary folk.8
We are thus looking for the description of those experiences occurring in kuṇḍalinī
insofar as these have been reconstructed through the sources. Our search should
therefore lead to the practical-experiential context of the tantric and haṭhayogic
corpuses, which is precisely the kuṇḍalinī portion.
The study material

The sources treated in this thesis basically fall into three categories: (1) primary
sources, i.e. translations of Sanskrit normative scriptures whether they be the Vedas,
Upaniṣads, Tantras, Nāths and haṭhayoga manuals, or any other of the original
sources to the development of the kuṇḍalinī doctrines; (2) academic secondary
literature, for example of great scholars such as André Padoux (1990), David G.
White (1996), Lilian Silburn (1988), etc., which mainly contains descriptive analyses
and discussions of both primary and other secondary sources; and (3) “non-
7
Muller-Ortega, Triadic Heart, 3.
8
Ninian Smart, Doctrine and Argument in Indian Philosophy (London: George Allen and Unwin
Ltd, 1964), 144.
Methodological considerations 7
scholarly” publications which is the rummage box of all the remaining literature that
does not fall into the first two categories.
The primary sources, which are mainly composed in Sanskrit, can broadly be
distinguished between approximately five types of texts: Chronologically wise, there
are first of all scriptures pertaining to the Vedic period (c. 1500-500 BC). These are
the Vedas and early Upaniṣads, which provide us the basic, original tenets of later
Tantric cosmology. Then, there is the enormous bulk of tantric ritual and exegetical
scriptures of various lineages or sub-traditions that primarily span, at least in the
context of this thesis, from approximately the 6th to 12th centuries. The tantric corpus
includes especially the Trika exegesis, to which the most prominent contributors are
Abhinavagupta’s (fl. c. 975-1025) and his pupil Kṣemarāja (fl. c. 10th-11th centuries).
Moreover, this study also treats in some depth the tantric doctrines of the Kubjikā
sect and the Śrīvidyā tradition.9
Next in the chronological line are the sources which, in a general sense, pertain to
the corpus of the Nāths. This includes the Kaulajñānanirṇaya of Matsyendranātha
and the Gorakṣasaṃhitā and Siddhasiddhāntapaddhati among other works of
Gorakṣanātha.10 These texts illustrate teachings that partly departure from early
medieval Tantrism anchoring in householder ritualism into an ascetic movement of
wandering sādhus (ascetics). In the 12th to 13th centuries, a lineage of the Śaiva
Tantrism, the South Indian Śāmbhavānanda, taught a yogic practice where the
kuṇḍalinī ascended through six cakras.11 Presumably, these instructions bridge into
the early haṭhayoga teachings of that period, which includes the Śivasaṃhitā of the
13th century and the Khecarīvidyā (composed between 13th and 14th centuries), two
among at least twenty texts from which Svātmārāma borrowed to compile the 15th-
century haṭhayoga anthology, the Haṭhayogapradīpikā. However, not all early
haṭhayoga texts had incorporated the concept of raising the kuṇḍalinī as a pursued
object of yogic practice.12
Many of the early haṭhayogic practices of the texts mentioned above and of
numerous other texts of the ascetic tradition that emerges contemporaneously were
combined with tantric metaphysical elements, meditative techniques, and
terminologies in the Haṭhayogapradīpikā, which was the first scripture that explicitly
set out to teach haṭhayoga prior to the other types of yoga.13 Other considerable texts
recognized to be teaching haṭhayoga are the Haṭharatnāvalī (17th century),
Gheraṇḍasaṃhitā (18th century), etc.
Finally, we need to considerate the kuṇḍalinī teachings found in texts such as the
Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa of Pūrṇānanda (mid 16th century) and the Pādukāpañcaka
(unknown date), both of which, synthetic in nature, delineate a type of layayoga that
contains Śāktic elements incorporated into Kaula teachings, although there exist
9
Wallis, Tantra Illuminated, 452-62.
10
Introduction to Siddhasiddhāntapaddhati, pp. 1-11.
11
Wallis, Tantra Illuminated, 309.
12
Mallinson, “Śāktism and Haṭhayoga,” 10.
13
Mallinson, “Śāktism and Haṭhayoga,” 15.
layayoga teachings in earlier texts than these. The picture presented here of the
primary sources is by no means complete or unambiguous, but this scriptural outline
can enable us, to some degree at least, to collect the puzzle of the kuṇḍalinī teachings
in terms of categorical structures and chronological developments.
The third category implies literature that has a pseudo- or quasi-academic
approach to sources of all types. Sources of the third category, for instance, include
publications by Georg Feuerstein (2001) and Christopher Wallis (2013), the
biographical reports by Gopi Krishna (1971, 1972), contemporary research of the
humanities into the kuṇḍalinī awakening by Lee Sannella (1987) and Sonu
Shamdasani (1996), the latter of whom wrote about C.G. Jung’s kuṇḍalinī-studies.
The contemporary non-scholarly works, including The Mysterious Kundalini by
Vasant Rele (1960) and Kundalini, Evolution, and Enlightenment by John White
(1979), depicting the classical haṭhayoga schematic of the kuṇḍalinī and cakras with
few or no references to the original sources are too numerous to be discussed in
detail in this thesis. Since the focus is on the tantric and haṭhayogic sources and
scholarship pointing to these original and exegetical expositions of the kuṇḍalinī,
there is necessarily left out a thorough examination of the publications that present a
contemporary appropriation of the yogic kuṇḍalinī system.
4. Origin and etymology of the term kuṇḍalinī

When we investigate the etymological meaning of the term kuṇḍalinī, the literal
meaning of the name of goddess Kubjikā (“the Crooked One”), an explicated epithet
for goddess Kuṇḍalinī, becomes obvious. However, the synonymous name Kubjikā
is merely one among numerous epithets that are attributed to Kuṇḍalinī.14 A
reasonable assumption is put forward by Gudrun Bühnemann, who suggests that the
word kuṇḍalī or kuṇḍalinī derives from the word kuṇḍala, “a ring” or “coil.”15 In this
context, we should also consider the word kuṇḍa, which means “pit” (for fire) or
“well” (for water). In the sense of the former, kuṇḍalinī probably alludes to where
the spark is generated with the stick that turns before the ritual consecration
ceremony, which was superimposed within the subtle body, while in the sense of the
latter, kuṇḍalinī has a particular reference to the energy centers (cakras), which,
especially in early yogic scriptures, were metaphorically identified as wells
(kūpas).16 Boiled down to their rudimental verb-forms, these various suggestions, I
14
See, for instance, the Haṭhayogapradīpikā 3.104 and the Haṭharatnāvalī 2.125-27 for wide
accounts of Kuṇḍalinī-epithets.
15
Gudrun Bühnemann, “The Śāradātilakatantra on Yoga: A New Edition and Translation of
Chapter 25,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 74 (2011): 228 n. 236, accessed
March 25, 2016, doi:10.1017/S0041977X11000036.
16
See, for example, Patañjali’s Yogasūtra 3.30, where the viṣuddhacakra is identified as the
“throat well” (kaṇṭha-kūpa).
Origin and etymology of kuṇḍalinī 9
would argue, etymologically draw from the roots kuj (“to be crooked”), kuc and kuñc
(“bend” or “curl”), and perhaps even from kūṇ (“shrink”).17
The various attempts made by Western scholars to trace the origin of the term
kuṇḍalinī or kuṇḍalī have not, so far, provided answers that are definite or
completely fulfilling. Tracing the origins of the term kuṇḍalinī into the Śaiva canon,
Gavin Flood cites White, who suggests that the earliest occurrence of the “indwelling
serpent” appears in an 8th-century Trika text called the Tantrasadbhāva, which
describes this power as kuṇḍalī (“she who is coiled/curved/ring-shaped”).18 This is
also the term encountered in the Kaulajñānanirṇaya, which evokes the following
goddesses in succession as the mothers (mātṛkās) who are identified with the
“aggregate of sound” (śabdarāśi) located in “all of the knots” (sarva-grantheṣu) of
the subtle body: Vāmā, Kuṇḍalī, Jyeṣṭhā, Manonmanī, Rudra-śakti, Kāmākhyā, and
Ugraṇī.19 Presenting the imagery of the kuṇḍalinī serpent in everything but in exact
name, the same source (17.23) thus describes the goddess named Vāmā as having a
circular or serpentine form (kuṇḍalākṛti) and extending from the feet to the crown of
the head. In this respect the Tantrasadbhāva more straightforward equates Kuṇḍalinī
with Vāmā and, furthermore, in the same token with Māyā, the veil of illusion that
covers the reality of the world.20 In fact, the identification of the latter with kuṇḍalinī
is not exceptional to the Tantrasadbhāva, since, for instance, later in a discussion of
the origin of mantras the 10th-century Jayadrathayāmala (3rd hexad) thus related the
kuṇḍalinī to the goddess Māyā, the phonemes as well as the kalās, the body parts of
God:21
Māyā is the mother of the phonemes and is known as the fire stick of the mantras. She is
the kuṇḍalinī-śakti, and is to be known as the supreme kalā. From that spring forth the
mantras as well as the separate clans, and likewise the Tantras….22
When tracing her origin, we discover the kuṇḍalinī, in fact, appears prior to the
Tantrasadbhāva already in the 7th-century Svacchandatantra (7.19-20), the core text
of the ḍākiṇī-cult of Bhairava (lit., “terrible”) and a source-text for the
17
Accordingly Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (London: Oxford
University Press, 1899; reprint Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2005), 287,3; 287,3; 299,3.
18
Gavin D. Flood, The Tantric Body: The Secret Tradition of Hindu Religion (London and New
York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 160.
19
Kaulajñānanirṇaya 20.11-12. When these goddesses are respectively identified with the five
lower cakras from bottom up, Kuṇḍalī is located between the svādhiṣṭhāna and mūlādhāra. For a
schematic overview, see table 8.1 in David Gordon White, “Yoga in Early Hindu Tantra,” in Yoga:
The Indian Tradition ed. Ian Whicher and David Carpenter (London and New York: Routledge
Curzon, 2003), 156.
20
Tantrasadbhāva 1.59a; in Dory Heilijgers-Seelen, The System of Five Cakras in
Kubjikāmatatantra 14-16 (Groningen, Netherlands: Egbert Forsten, 1994), 169 n. 60.
21
In Śaiva rituals, these body parts are superimposed by the devotee upon his own body through
the recitation of mantras.
22
In White, “Early Hindu Tantra,” 151-52.
Tantrasadbhāva.23 Furthermore, recent research carried out by Christopher

Tompkins into some of the earliest Śaiva Siddhānta texts of the Śaivāgama corpus
even reveals that the term kuṇḍalinī, in fact, already appeared in a single verse of a
6th to 7th-century Tantra called Sārdhatriśatikāllotara, in which kuṇḍalinī is
visualized in the region of the heart, after being summoned there from her abode in
the crown of the head, where she dwells eternally with Śiva.24 However, attributing
the origin of the term kuṇḍalinī to this particular scripture necessitate some
precautions, since many of its contemporaneous texts have been lost and,
furthermore, the context and the elaborate ways in which the term kuṇḍalinī or its
characteristics are applied throughout the verses suggest that it was not a new
innovative denomination. However, the pertinent verse reads:
The primordial power is kuṇḍalinī [when] fused with the sun (piṅgalā channel), moon (iḍā
channel), and fire (suṣumṇā). She is to be visualized and experienced in the region of the
heart, abiding there in the form of a tongue of flame. 25
Nevertheless the verse significantly recalls the later haṭhayogic symbolical

terminologies and practices, there are major differences between this teaching and
that of the haṭhayoga tradition: here, kuṇḍalinī does not lie dormant in the shape of a
coiled serpent at the base of the spine; rather, she must be summoned from her
natural home at the crown of the head in order to rescue the individual soul (jīva).26
In fact, according to Tompkins, the kuṇḍalinī is in none of the tantric sources
described as lying dormant at the base of the spine.27 This idea, so commonly found
in haṭhayoga sources, Wallis argues, would have been absurd to the tāntrikas, for “if
kuṇḍalinī was dormant you would be in a coma.”28 Hence, in tantric sources we
rather find that the kuṇḍalinī resides in the crown of the head, from where she is
invited to descend to the relevant center (often the heart, sometimes the kanda),
creating a rubber-band like tension that then can be used to catapult the soul or
individual consciousness up to the highest center.29 What counts for the early Tantras
these characteristics ascribed to the kuṇḍalinī may very well be valid, but certainly
not in respect to later tantric sources.
23
Christopher Tompkins, “The Origins of Kuṇḍalinī: A Review of Current Scholarship,” PhD
field statement (2008): 11, accessed April 26, 2016, http://shaivayoga.com/ct/downloads/history-and-
evolution-of-chakras-course/.
24
25
candrāgniravisaṃyuktā ādyā kuṇḍalinī tu yā / hṛtpradeśe tu sā jñeyā aṅkurākāravat-sthitā //
(Sārdhatriśatikālottara 12.1; Christopher Tompkins, “The Original Core Sequence (Vinyāsa) of Daily
Tantric Yoga (400 – 1300 A.D.),” unpublished paper (2014): 5, accessed April 27, 2016,
http://shaivayoga.com/ct/downloads/history-and-evolution-of-chakras-course/; tr. Wallis, Tantra
Illuminated, 221).
26
Wallis, Tantra Illuminated, 471 n. 77.
27
28
29
Origin and etymology of kuṇḍalinī 11
Nevertheless, the basic idea of raising the body’s energy through the various
subtle centers in order to attain an elevated state of consciousness seems a common
concept to all sources that ascribe to the notion of the kuṇḍalinī. Thus, by actually
using the term kuṇḍalinī, but in no case in the haṭhayogic sense of the female serpent
energy, the Kubjikāmata makes a number of statements that appear to betray the
familiarly notion of the serpentine energy. In Kubjikāmata 5.84, we read that the
“feminine energy (śakti) having the form of a sleeping serpent [is located] at the
dvādaśānta…. Nevertheless, she is also to be found dwelling in the navel.”30 These
characteristics are supposedly precursors of the dynamic role the kuṇḍalinī serpent
plays in later haṭhayogic sources. Presumably inspired by this text, Abhinavagupta
develops this principle in his discussion of the upper (ūrdhva-) and lower (adhaḥ-)
kuṇḍalinīs,31 which are for him two phases of the same energy in expansion and
contraction that affects both the descent of transcendent consciousness into the
human microcosm, and the ascent of human consciousness upwards its transcendent
source.
Returning to the Sārdhatriśatikāllotara stanza that precedes 12.1 cited above (see
p. 10), we discover some original applications ascribed to the kuṇḍalinī.
A lotus with eight petals dwells within the center of the space of the heart. Inside its
pericarp, there are four powers, shining with the radiance of the sun, the moon, fire, and
gold. The primordial power (kuṇḍalinī) of God moves above these four. The soul
(individuated consciousness) is concealed there, like a bee, in the heart-lotus with its
fourfold power.32
That is, the goddess-energy (here called “primordial power”) is summoned to the
heart center and fixed there by a fusion of the vital energies, breath, mantric
resonance, and concentration of mind. This description resembles haṭhayoga, where
the retained breath, in-breath (“moon”), and out-breath (“sun”) are energetically
fused (haṭha-yoga) through the various haṭhayogic techniques that aid to raise
kuṇḍalinī to the heart before reuniting with Śiva at the crown. The terminologies of
breath regulation that frequently appear in haṭhayoga instructions are also applied in
the Sārdhatriśatikāllotara, which explains that “the inhalation and exhalation are
held still in the heart (kumbhaka)” and that “this [phase of] breath regulation is
‘retention’.”33 These brief sample passages thus perfectly serve to demonstrate that
the yoga taught in the Siddhānta texts is integral to the Tantras as a whole, which
went on to influence, if not give rise to, the haṭhayoga tradition.
The role of the serpent as a symbol and figure in the Indian mindset has become
established through a long term process enduring since, and probably earlier than,
Vedic times, which included iconographies, mythological narratives and a
30
In White, “Early Hindu Tantra,” 150.
31
See below, Part IV, sec. 1, 57.
32
In Wallis, Tantra Illuminated, 221.
33
pidhāya sarvadvārāṇi niśvāsocchvāsavarjitaḥ / sampūrṇakumbhavat-tiṣṭhet-prāṇāyāmaḥ sa
kumbhakaḥ // (Sārdhatriśatikāllotara 11.13; tr. Tompkins, “Daily Tantric Yoga,” 4).
comprehensive development of ascribed attributions. These attributed characteristics

of the serpent as well as other symbolic figures and items were employed in
medieval texts teaching the kuṇḍalinī-method, in fact, to the extent that the serpent
with all its attributes became the very emblem for this type of yogic practice.
Indubiously, the symbolic means along with commonly acknowledged characteristics
and values applied in kuṇḍalinī-teachings were appealing to the practitioner’s
imaginative and conceptual understanding of the transformation he/she attempted to
attain.
PART I
Hindu Cosmogonic Theories
1. The aggregate of cosmos

In order to enter further into an examination of the kuṇḍalinī we must explore the
wider context of the doctrines that were the principle foundation for kuṇḍalinī
practices and rituals. The kuṇḍalinī practices as complex and as powerful as those
utilized by the Śaivas neither developed nor were applied in a conceptual void. Here
we encounter one of the earliest most explicit and sophisticated theoretical
formulations, namely that of the cosmic evolution. Probably the most pervasive and
persistent of all the conceptual constructs by far is that which treats of the
multivalent relationship between the individual and the world, the microcosm and the
macrocosm. In regard to cosmology, which was a major doctrinal constituent of
Kashmir Śaivism, Wallis summarizes the vision of the universe by Abhinavagupta in
this way:
All that exists and has ever existed is one infinite divine consciousness, free and blissful,
which projects within the field of its awareness a vast multiplicity of apparently
differentiated subjects and objects, each object and actualization of a potential inherent in
the divine light of consciousness (prakāśa = Śiva) and each subject a contracted locus of
self-awareness (vimarśa = śakti). This projection, a divine play (krīḍā), is the result of the
impulse (icchā) within the divine to express the totality of its self-knowledge (jñāna) in
action (kriyā).34
That is, the three powers (śaktis) – icchā (will), jñāna (knowledge) and kriyā (act or
action) – constitute the threefold dynamic that inhere Śiva’s projection. The universal
unfoldment, in this context, can be analyzed into three stages: Existence emerges
through an act of will, with action as its immediate instrumental cause and
knowledge of its application as the intermediary between the will to create and the
act itself. The power of action, furthermore, coincides with the withdrawal of self-
awareness into the divine light. Hence, the cosmic evolution is not considered to be
linear but a cyclic process of an ever flow of creation and destruction occurring
simultaneously. Thus, the intent on making an object manifest, the actual act of
manifestation and the manifest state are the results of these three types of śakti,
which represents the beginning, middle and end of all things, held together as aspects
of the cyclic universal flow of divine Śiva-consciousness.35
34
Christopher D. Wallis, “The Descent of Power: Possession, Mysticism, and Initiation in the
Śaiva Theology of Abhinavagupta,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 36(2) (2008): 248-49.
35
Dyczkowski, Doctrine of Vibration, 84-98.
13
14 Part I
According to the tantric ontology, the threefold power by which the universe
emerges becomes limited when embodying a human being. The emanation of the
three śaktis is alluded to in the Brahmayāmalatantra, highlighting kuṇḍalinī as the
supreme goddess power to be recognized as the creative force within the subtle body.
She is of a pale white light; she is like crystalline rays in form. She is the śakti that has
come forth through his (Śiva’s) desire. Her form is knowledge; she is beyond the mind; she
is said to be vibrating. Her existence is without [a definable] appearance…she, being
endless, causes to awake (within the human being) in an instant bindu (consciousness; lit.,
“spot”) and nāda (sound-energy). She exists in a coiled shape (kuṇḍalākṛti). She exists
within the 16 vowels…thus she (the supreme goddess in this aspect) is kuṇḍalinī-śakti (the
coiled energy).36
The tāntrikas held that through various ritual means, the worshipper could
permanently encompass the constituent principles of the universe. According to
White’s termination, from the threefold configuration of human + mediating
structure + divine the microcosm, mesocosm, and macrocosm are thus respectively
distinguished.37 This aggregate of microcosm-mesocosm-macrocosm is interesting
and useful due to the interrelation between and the possibility of exchange among the
three levels, which furthers the human potential to elevate mundane perception upto
the state of cosmic consciousness and, accordingly, to realize the true self. The
metaphysical principals of the kuṇḍalinī practice that followed this system of
thought, indeed, aim at connecting and balancing the discrete aspects of the
individual in order for him to recognize his universal affiliation.
2. The cosmic evolutionary cycle

A basic cosmogonic tenet for many Hindu schools is denoted by Richard Davis as
“the oscillating universe.”38 That is, the universe as we know it undergoes an endless
cycle of creations and destructions. A period of cessation or sleep follows, and then
the cosmos begins its evolution again in the next cycle. The fluctuating movement
between moments of creation and destruction, evolution and involution, activity and
quietude, expansion and contraction, etc. is the concept Davis alludes to by his
denotation. However, this pulsation does not confine itself to the cosmogonic
motion, rather, as Davis states, “it is a ubiquitous principle of a dynamic universe,
36
jyotsnārūpā svarūpeṇa sphaṭikasyeva raśmayaḥ / tasyecchānirgatā śaktir jñānarūpā
manonmanī // pravartate nirābhāsā avadhūteti sā smṛtā / prabodhayati sānantā bindunādau kṣaṇena
tu // kuṇḍalākṛtisaṃstānā svarādau saṃvyavsthitā / evaṃ kuṇḍalinīśaktiḥ svaraiḥ ṣoḍaśabhiḥ sthitāḥ /
catuṣkapathakopetā pañcavyomālankṛtā // (Brahmayāmala 1.127-30; tr. Tompkins, “Origins of
Kuṇḍalinī,” 24-25).
37
David Gordon White, The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India (Chicago and
London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 15.
38
Richard H. Davis, Rituals in an Oscillating Universe: Worshipping Śiva in Medieval India
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 42.
Cosmic emanation 15
governing all creation.”39 This description frames appropriately the tantric

ontological notion that characteristics of the subtle energy within man identified as
kuṇḍalinī mirror the creative, pulsating force of the cosmos.
In Śaiva terminologies the cosmic evolutionary dynamic (spanda) was described
in the paired concepts of “emission” (sṛṣṭi) and “reabsorption” (saṃhāra), which
were imbedded as the organizing logic in their patterning of worship. These
principles have several important ramifications. Emission indicates a general
movement from subtle and relatively intangible to gross and relatively tangible;
reabsorption the reverse. Emission moves from pure to impure, whereas reabsorption
moves from impure to pure. Emission and reabsorption relate as well to man’s
disposition in the universe. The path of emission is often represented visually as a
descending motion from high to low, or as a radiating movement proceeding outward
from a center toward peripheries. Reabsorption ascends or moves inwards towards a
center. These two terms of the evolutionary activity – emission and reabsorption –
are conjoined by the idea that manifestation in a course of time is subjected to
“preservation” or “maintenance” (sthiti), a term which denotes an activity of
stabilization or stasis.40 By comparing the two cosmic theories briefly outlined
above, we thus see that the microcosm-mesocosm-macrocosm aggregate addresses
the evolutionary process occurring in the infinite cosmic space, while the cyclic
model of emission-preservation-reabsorption rather points to the Hindu principals of
the cosmogonic evolutionary process, which occurs in the continuum of space-time.
3. The cosmic emanation

There is nothing directly tantric in Vedic and Vedāntic literature. However, a number
of Vedic elements (as will become clearer in the following pages) have survived and
were even sometimes innovated intensely in tantric texts. Explaining the principal
elements which the earliest Tantras adapted from Vedic literature, Padoux thus
writes:
It appears somehow as preserving and reviving that which was most alive in Vedism. Such
is the case, for instance, with regard to the relationship between macrocosm and
microcosm, to the correlations – which are actually identifications – that Tantrism
establishes between man and the cosmos, gods and rites. These ancient correspondences are
further elaborated and organized into a system where all is interconnected, where there is an
interplay between the different levels in each field, where energy is both cosmic and
human, and therefore where microcosm, reenacting macrocosm, becomes identified with it
and, by means of symbolic efficacy, is able to influence it.… The cosmic manifestation and
39
Davis, Oscillating Universe, 42.
40
16 Part I
man’s bondage in the world, cosmic resorption and deliverance from the cycle of
births…are two movements of the same energy.41
The Vedic cosmogonic concept of an energetic parallel within man of the universal,
creative pulsation is adapted by the tāntrikas as an underlying doctrinal principle
partially in their rites, yogic practices and speculative systems, which involve the
notion of the kuṇḍalinī. Her straight form is thus considered to be “acosmic.” Only
by assuming her crooked or bent form does she generate the cosmic order.42 Thus, at
the ground zero of the self-emission of the absolute’s emergence into phenomenal
existence, she takes pleasure as she allows the microcosmic life-force to drain away
into her sleeping mouth. Her awakening from the microcosmic level, on the other
hand, is the beginning of the withdrawal into the absolute from which manifestation
originally emitted.
The coherence of the macrocosm and microcosm found its way into yogic
practice, where the yogin by raising kuṇḍalinī through breathing-techniques applied
vehicles by which to raise himself from mundane existence.43 This appropriation of
the macro-microcosmic perspective into yoga teachings is evident in the commentary
to the Mālinīstava proclaiming that the kuṇḍalinī, in her manifestation of the goddess
called the “Crooked One” (kuṭilā), “brings about emanation and withdrawal by the
movement of the two breaths (prāṇa and apāna).”44
The emanation of the life-force and vital breath

One of the characteristics of Tantrism lies in the attempt to constantly establish
correspondences between the human being, rites, and cosmos, and in the cosmic as
well as human aspects of energy. Those correspondences are not peculiar to
Tantrism, but, on the contrary, are traceable, for instance, in the Atharva Veda:
For all deities are seated in humans as cows in a cow-stall. Therefore one who knows
human beings thinks: “This is Brahman.”45
The idea behind this analogy is that the single originator of the universe is identical
with those powers illustrated by the deities that make human beings alive. This
cosmic and human energy was symbolized in Tantrism especially by the kuṇḍalinī
appearing at the same time as life-force (prāṇa), vital breath (vāyu), and speech
41
André Padoux, Vāc: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras (Albany: SUNY,
1990), 37.
42
Mark S.G. Dyczkowski, Manthānabhairavatantram Kumārikākhaṇḍaḥ: The Section Concerning
the Virgin Goddess of the Tantra of the Churning Bhairava, 6 vols. – Introduction, Myth, History and
Doctrine of the Goddess Kubjikā (Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 2009), 1:269 n.
1.
43
White, Alchemical Body, 219-20.
44
kuṭilā iti kuṇḍalinī / (...) parameśvarmī kuṭilā prāṇāpānagatyā ṣṛṣṭisaṃhāraṃ karoti / (Ṭīkā
173b; tr. Dyczkowski, Manthānabhairavatantram Kumārikākhaṇḍaḥ – Introduction, 1:269 n. 1).
45
Atharva Veda 11.8.32; tr. Padoux, Vāc, 24.
Cosmic emanation 17
(vāc), three terminologies which heavily imbued Vedic eschatology and mythology.
Prāṇa had aspects of a cosmic as well as a physiological principle in Vedic thought,
which retained a significant component as a psychosomatic principle in later tantric
concepts about the subtle body.46 For instance, Ṛg Vedic statements such as “along
the wind’s course they (i.e., the munis) glide when the gods have penetrated [them]”
and “upon the winds we have ascended” are easily interpreted as early analogies to
later yogic notions of prāṇāyāma breathing.47 Perhaps even more obvious are the
similarities to kuṇḍalinī practice in the following extract of the Ṛg Veda:
Through the mid-region (antarikṣa) flies the sage illuminating all forms (…). The wind’s
steed, Vāyu’s friend, is the god-intoxicated sage; within both oceans he dwells, the upper
and the lower. In the paths of apsarases (female spirits), gandharvas (male spirits), and
beast wanders the long-hair knower of thoughts (…). For him has Vāyu churned and
pounded the badly bent one (kunamnamā), when the long-hair drank with Rudra from the
poison cup.48
It is not clear what is meant by the “badly bent one” (kunamnamā) in the concluding
stanza, since this is the only place where this word appears. Feuerstein reasonably
suggests that it may be the “gross aspect” of the human body-mind, and perhaps even
an early reference to the dormant psycho-spiritual power of the human body, which
later came to be known as the kuṇḍalinī-śakti, or to the later goddess Kubjikā.49
Another striking comparison from the citation above can be made to a section of the
Tantrasadbhāva cited by Kṣemarāja in the Śivasūtravimarśinī 2.3, in which the
kuṇḍalinī is awakened through a churning of the union of Śiva and Śakti.50
However, that there was a subtle connection between breath and speech was
particularly emphasized in the Upaniṣads. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.2.19
equates breath to the power of speech, as does the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (perhaps 6th
century BC). The latter declares in 1.1.5-6 that the pair of breath and speech joined
together is the syllable oṃ.51 The Maitrī Upaniṣad 6.3-5 (perhaps 1st century BC),
which probably is the most recent among the Upaniṣads, contains a section that
considers oṃ in some detail. Herein we find that, through yoga practices consisting
of six aṅgas (limbs) including breath regulation, etc., there occurs a fuse between
breath and the syllable oṃ within the subtle medial channel (suṣumṇā) located at the
spinal column, a phenomenon which leads to liberation.52
46
Geoffrey Samuel and Jay Johnston, eds., Religion and the Subtle Body in Asia and the West:
Between Mind and Body (N.Y., USA: Routledge, 2013), 34.
47
Ṛg Veda 10.136,2-3; tr. Feuerstein, Yoga Tradition, 113.
48
Ṛg Veda 10.136,4-7; tr. Feuerstein, Yoga Tradition, 113-14.
49
Feuerstein, Yoga Tradition, 113.
50
Śivasūtravimarśinī 2.3, p. 93.
51
Tompkins, “Origins of Kuṇḍalinī,” 5.
52
Tompkins, “Origins of Kuṇḍalinī,” 6.
18 Part I
The emanation through sound

The ancient description perceiving the universe to be basically a sound manifestation
from subtle to gross was adapted in the tantric teachings of yoga which involved the
establishment in sound and the rise of kuṇḍalinī. For instance, having ascribed the
subtle sound (nāda) to kuṇḍalinī, the Manthānabhairavatantram Kumārikākhaṇḍaḥ
explains her location is in the middle of the navel.53 With the kuṇḍalinī entering the
navel, the yogin through intense practice acquires the possession of her qualities, the
supernatural powers (siddhis) and, in turn, the knowledge of all things in past,
present and future.54
Upaniṣadic as well as Vedic speculations about the universal sound of the syllable
oṃ have more features which will appear afterwards in elaborate form in tantric
texts. For instance, the image of the sleeping kuṇḍalinī coiled three and a half times
around an internal liṅga (phallus) frequently figuring in tantric sources recalls the
Upaniṣadic idea that the sound oṃ was made up of three and one-half elements,
which was achieved by breaking up oṃ into the three phonemes a, u, and m and
adding an elided m.55 In tantric teachings kuṇḍalinī is described ascending with the
vital breath in an inner impulse that infuses life in the body in a movement of twelve
stages during the emission of oṃ. The first three of the stages are concerned with the
sounding of the three phonemes a, u, and ṃ as kuṇḍalinī rises through the median
way. The three phonemes are respectively situated in the heart, throat, and at the
vault of the palate.56
The Śaiva tantric tradition, especially the Trika, describes the manifestation of the
universe to be an evolutionary movement of simultaneously a flashing forth of pure
light (prakāśa) and a luminous vibration (spanda). This vibrating effulgence is
regarded as that of sound or word on its ultimate stage (parāvāc) of consciousness
(cit). Manifestation occurs through a series of transformations and condensations of
sound or phonic primal energy, which gradually brings forth the manifested universe
into a process that is analogous in human beings. The evolutionary steps, in regard to
the emergence of sound through a gradual process from subtle to gross, is
terminologically explained in the 12th-century Śāradātilaka. In summary, it describes
that the evolutionary process occurs in a sequence beginning with the supreme Lord
or kalā,57 wherefrom is born the phonic energy; again thereof emerges the nāda-
sound. Then out of nāda, bindu, which divides into three portions called bindu, nāda,
and bīja. Eventually, out of the threefold division comes śabdabrahman into
existence and assumes the form of the kuṇḍalinī, from which arises the phonemes
53
Manthānabhairavatantram Kumārikākhaṇḍaḥ 40.92cd-94ab, 4:255.
54
Manthānabhairavatantram Kumārikākhaṇḍaḥ 40.102-104ab, 4:257.
55
Padoux, Vāc, 19.
56
Lilian Silburn, Kuṇḍalinī: The Energy of Depths (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988), 49. By means of
these three cavities – heart, throat, and palate where the yogin perceives the mind, intellect and ego
respectively – the individual soul, transported by the kuṇḍalinī’s ascent, leaves the body (Dyczkowski,
Manthānabhairavatantram Kumārikākhaṇḍaḥ – Notes on Text and Translation, 4:24 n. 24).
57
Abhinavagupta explains that there exists a seventeenth kalā, which is the kuṇḍalinī (Padoux,
Vāc, 91).
Cosmic emanation 19
(varṇas),58 then speech; the gods, then the elements and the empirical world. The
sound-energy continually moves on, bringing the whole emanation into existence,
from the primary principle, transcendent and yet endowed with an urge towards
manifestation (sakala).59
Indeed, the kuṇḍalinī process within the human body, which is considered
identical with the cosmos, parallels this cosmogonic evolution. Thus as she manifests
in the form of phonic energy rising from the mūlādhāra, the kuṇḍalinī, although ever
pure, is said to be tinged with latent impressions (saṃskāras) and differentiating into
śabda (“sound,” “word,” or “speech”) and artha (“object” or “meaning”).60 Hence
the universal evolution is described as both a cosmic process and the process of the
emergence of speech in human beings, since the movement of creation and
reabsorption of the phonic energy is linked to the movement of the kuṇḍalinī.
Identifying kuṇḍalinī with the subtle energy of the phonemes, the Śāradātilaka
explains that she, being immanent to the universe, is playing a cosmic role. Thus in a
passage, where the kuṇḍalinī is seen to move through the stages of the emanation of
the sound energy, the text elaborates that
The lady of the universe, the kuṇḍalinī, consisting of the śabdabrahman, the supreme,
produces śakti. From that (śakti) [she produces] sound (dhvani); from that (sound),
resonance/sound (nāda); from that (resonance/sound), nirodhikā; from that (nirodhikā), the
half moon (ardhendu); from that (half moon), the drop (bindu).61 From that (drop) parā
originates, then that paśyantī, the one signifying madhyamā [and] vaikharī, which [are the
four levels of speech that] give birth to words, – the kuṇḍalī in the form of light, consisting
of [the three powers,] will (icchā), knowledge (jñāna) and action (kriyā), who consist of
the [three] qualities, emanates in this sequence the series of syllables (i.e., the alphabet)
from a to sa, consisting of the forty-two [syllables of the bhūtalipi]. When fiftyfold she
gives birth to the series of fifty syllables [of the alphabet and] in sequence to the kalās, [the
gods such as] Rudra and the others, which are identical to the syllables of that (alphabet)
[and the rest of the cosmos].62
In this manner phonemes appear in various ways in relation to the various stages of
the manifestation of sound. According to the Śāradātilaka 1.53-57 the kuṇḍalinī,
58
The term vaṛna, which first of all refers to “color,” is usually employed in Tantras and by
Kashmirian Śaiva authors to indicate the Sanskrit phonemes.
59
Śāradātilaka 1.7-8.
60
Padoux, Vāc, 226.
61
Śakti, dhvani (“spontaneous sound”), nāda, nirodhikā (“subtle energy of sound”), ardhendu and
bindu are states of the kuṇḍalinī in the mūlādhāra.
62
sā prasūte kuṇḍalinī śabdabrahmamayī vibhuḥ / śaktiṃ tato dhvanis tasmān nādas tasmān
nirodhikā // tato ‘rdhendus tato bindus tasmād āsīt parā tataḥ / paśyantī madhyamāvāci vaikharī
śabdajanmabhūḥ / icchājñānakriyātmāsau tejorūpā guṇātmikā // krameṇānena sṛjati kuṇḍalī
varṇamālikām / akārādisakārāntām dvicatvāriṃśadātmikām // pañcāśadvāraguṇitā
pañcāśadvarṇamālikām // sūte tadvarṇato ‘bhinnāḥ kalā rudrādikān kramāt // (Śāradātilaka 1.108-
11).
20 Part I
despite being universal and all-pervading, assumes the form of the fifty phonemes
when lying coiled around the bindu in the mūlādhāra.
The term bhūtalipi (lit., “demon-writing” or “writing of the elements”), regarded
as a mantra containing the most essential aspect of all phonemes, plays a special role
in the worship of the śrīcakra-deities such as described in the Yoginīhṛdaya
(probably 12th century). A commentator to this text, Amṛtānanda (14th century),
explains that bhūtalipi appears when the kuṇḍalinī, rising from the mūlādhāra,
pierces the granthis and cakras tied along the suṣumṇā.63 Cakras neither revolve nor
vibrate in ordinary persons, but tent to form inextricable tangles of coils called
“knots” (granthis) in that they knot spirit and matter. Each knot regains its
universality when pierced during a process where the kuṇḍalinī ascends through the
middle channel or suṣumṇā.64 This process is an imaginative engagement on the
psychosomatic plane, connecting the vibrating subtle body to the static gross one or,
in other words, the level of the macrocosm to that of the microcosm. As such is this
process (as well as that explained the Śāradātilaka-passage (1.108-11) quotated
above (see, p. 19) a continuation in a human being of the cosmic emanating
movement that endows him with all the levels of the phonic energy, which, however,
is both human and cosmic. In simple words, the cosmogonic stages are repeated by
the kuṇḍalinī at the microcosmic level.
A different exposition of the phonic creative progression that issues from the
kuṇḍalinī is found in the Mālinīvijayottaratantra 3.8-11, an early text pertaining to
the Trika school. Having assumed the form of the three powers – icchā, and so forth
– and the nature of mother (mātṛbhāva) by dividing herself into the series of
phonemes, kuṇḍalinī, according to this Tantra, reaches down by means of further
divisions and to the multiplicity of created objects. Initially twofold in this
unfoldment, she splits into seed (bīja) and womb (yoni), which respectively
correspond to the vowels and the consonants, or to Śiva and Śakti.65 Hence, her
twofold division represents the commencement of creation as it comes into being
through the conjunction of the natures of the masculine and feminine. In regard to the
three powers, the Śaivas contend that as kuṇḍalinī descends she manifests
progressively at each turn as them. Conversely, when ascending she first manifests as
the energy of action, then knowledge and, finally, as the omnipotent will of the
transmental to merge into her basic coiled nature. The kuṇḍalinī thus ascends and
descends in a spiral motion in three great loops, whereas in her sleeping repose she is
said to enclosure the three energies in a potential state.66
The four levels of speech – parā, and so forth – through which cosmic sound and
accordingly human speech gradually manifest correspond respectively to four
goddesses, who are often identified as Vāmā, Jyeṣṭhā, Raudrī and Ambikā. As such,
these four goddesses represent four divinized energies (śaktis) of creation
63
Padoux, Vāc, 149 n. 174.
64
Silburn, Kuṇḍalinī, 26.
65
In Padoux, Vāc, 153-54.
66
Dyczkowski, Manthānabhairavatantram Kumārikākhaṇḍaḥ – Notes, 1:162 n. 158.
Cosmic emanation 21
functioning as partial manifestations of the kuṇḍalinī in the initial phase of the

process of phonic manifestation. During this process, the four goddesses operate at a
stage before the appearance of audible sound. In the first chapter of the
Tantrasadbhāva (1.217-30) this development of the kuṇḍalinī is described in order to
explain the goddesses’ presence in sound. According to the text, in shape of a
sleeping snake that encloses the heart-bindu (i.e., Śiva) the kuṇḍalinī is without any
thought; as such she is implicitly known as Vāmā. Awaken by a subtle sound in the
form of knowledge, she, in association with Jyeṣṭhā, raises herself and by union with
Śiva becomes straight. After this stage she becomes threefold, known as tripathā
(“having three parts”) and named Raudrī.67 Finally, in form of a fragment of the
moon, kuṇḍalinī is identified with Ambikā, who is the ardhacandra or ardhendu (see
citation above, p. 19).68
The emanation of consciousness

The appearance of human consciousness follows the cosmic evolutionary
progression of emanation, maintenance, reabsorption, and its corresponding theory of
the microcosm-mesocosm-macrocosm aggregate. Correspondingly, the Śaivas
distinguish between three ascending levels of consciousness – vyāpinī, samanā, and
unmanā – that are characterized as types of sonic energy. In the order of cosmic
emanation, unmanā appears first: this is the “transmental” or “superconscious” level,
in which there is complete union with Śiva. Next comes samanā, the “conscious,”
which is intermediate and transcendent. The energy of the universe at this level is
held within itself in a latent state. As for vyāpinī, the “pervading” awareness, it is the
energy immanent to the human being, whom it pervades and gives life to.
In the instant of manifestation consciousness in its pure essence is gradually
reduced within the limited confines of human awareness as the cosmic emission
unfolds. In this regard, the superconscious state of unmanā presumably refers to a
point in which the universe is still unmanifest, and therefore outside the range of
experience to the ordinary human potential. The movement which enlivens the
energy from samanā and vyāpinī onwards is the union of Śiva and Śakti, bringing
about the awakening of the kuṇḍalinī. This movement is a sonic vibration that exists
on all three levels of consciousness; therefore the yogin’s utterance (uccāra) of the
bījamantra (e.g., OṂ, HAUṂ, HRĪṂ, etc.), which is linked to the upward movement
of the breath energy, will eventually reach the unmanā and, in turn, subside into
Śiva.69
67
These first three goddesses – Vāmā, Jyeṣṭhā and Raudrī – are associated respectively with the
icchā-, jñāna- and kriyāśaktis (see above , pp. 13 and 19) as well as with the three cosmic functions of
emission, maintenance and reabsorption (see above, Part I, sec. 2, 14-15) (Heilijgers-Seelen, System of
Five Cakras, 168 n. 54).
68
Heilijgers-Seelen, System of Five Cakras, 169.
69
Padoux, Vāc, 94-96 and 96-97 n. 30.
22 Part I
4. Cosmological diagrammatic: The śrīcakra

The representation of creation is a common convention in Indian visual arts, and is
an important principle in Śāktic rituals. Perhaps the most famous visual element in
all of Hindu Tantrism is the śrīcakra or śrīyantra of the Śrīvidyā school, the most
widespread and enduring Śāktic tradition. This sacred diagram’s symbolism of the
cyclic movement of the universe both illustrates cosmic evolution and man’s spiritual
quest. In respect to the manifest universe, śrīcakra’s identity with śakti, the energy
within man identified as kuṇḍalinī that follows a process paralleling the cosmic
evolution, appears in a statement of the Yoginīhṛdaya:
When she, the supreme śakti, out of her own will [assumes] the form of the universe,
observing her own self-effusion (sphurattama), the [śrī]cakra emerges.70
To understand the cosmological event of expansion is thus, for the adept, to

participate in it and to develop a method for identifying with this transcendent form
of śakti. The śrīcakra (fig. 1; see next page) is composed of nine large or major
intersecting triangles surrounded by two sets of lotus petals. In the center of the
triangles is a drop (bindu). The śrīcakra is interpreted “from inside out,” i.e.,
following the so-called “emission sequence” or sṛṣṭi-krama that parallels the process
of creation. While the śrīcakra is in actuality the confluence of Śakti and Śiva, the
representation of the conjugal union that creates the universe, Śakti alone is the
presiding deity of the central bindu point established in the middle of the innermost
minor of the nine triangles, the bindu-cakra or trikoṇa. The individual’s true self-
identity (ātman) is to be located here at the center of the śrīcakra, symbolizing an
expansion not only of the basic principles and elements of the universe but also of
the human body and consciousness.
The crucial macro-microcosmic connection between the śrīcakra and the Śrīvidyā
adept is furthered in a process of ritual worship and contemplation, which includes
kuṇḍalinī practice and such related disciplines as breath control (prāṇāyāma) in order
to dissolve false distinctions that arise from human ignorance. Indeed, as
contemplative worship (upāsana) dissolves false distinctions and the adept’s latent
spiritual nature, kuṇḍalinī, ascends within the body, so the adept ritually ascends the
śrīcakra. The crucial macrocosmic/microcosmic connection between the śrīcakra
and the Śrīvidyā adept is furthered in a process of ritual worship and contemplation,
which includes kuṇḍalinī practice and such related disciplines as breath control
(prāṇāyāma) in order to dissolve false distinctions that arise from human ignorance.
Indeed, as contemplative worship (upāsana) dissolves false distinctions and the
adept’s latent spiritual nature, kuṇḍalinī, ascends within the body, so the adept
ritually ascends the śrīcakra. Beginning at the outside of the śrīcakra, the adept
traces the process of creation in reverse. He proceeds not from the “inside out” (i.e.
beginning, as in emission, from the bindu) but from the “outside in” (i.e., from points
70
yadā sā paramā śaktiḥ svecchayā viśvarūpiṇī // sphutattām ātmanaḥ paśyet tadā cakrasya
saṃbhavaḥ / (Yoginīhṛdaya 1.9b-10a).
Cosmological diagrammatic 23
Figure 1 – Śrīcakra according to the Yoginīhṛdaya ch. 171
on the periphery towards the bindu).72 In persisting that the liturgy follows this
procedure, the adept ritually reverse creation rather than simply reenacting it.73
Eclipsing the traditions that nurtured its development (i.e., the Trika and Kubjikā
sects), the Śrīvidyā became very successful and widespread throughout India. When
the Trika eventually disappeared in the south, it nevertheless survived there through
71
This diagram, based on the rendition in André Padoux and Roger-Orphe Jeanty, The Heart of
the Yoginī: Yoginīhṛdayam – A Sanskrit Tantric Treatise (Oxford University Press, 2013), 28-29, is a
copy courtesy of the śrīcakra found at “Graphic Design,” CONNIELEEMARIE.COM, accessed April
29, 2016, http://www.connieleemarie.com/library/July-29-2013.html.
72
D.F. Brooks, The Secret of the Three Cities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 110-
11.
73
This is a.k.a. the process of dissolution (layayoga) (see below, Part III, sec. 3, 49-51).
24 Part I
the incorporation of the principle mantra (SAUḤ) of goddess Parādevī (a mantra also
employed to awaken the kuṇḍalinī) into the core of the Śrīvidyā liturgy.74
5. The micro-macrocosmic tenets in Nāth and haṭhayoga texts

Gorsakṣanātha’s writings reveal extensive awareness to the connection between the
cosmic landscape and the human subtle autonomy. Especially his
Siddhasiddhāntapaddhati is devoted to expound on the body’s (piṇḍa) origin and
role in both cosmic and soteriological perspectives. Śakti, identified as the primordial
power that constitute the basis of all creation, functions through her five evolutes:
nijā (innate or constant), parā (superior), aparā (inferior), sūkṣmā (subtle), and
kuṇḍalī. The teachings of the Siddhasiddhāntapaddhati, tantric in nature, aim at
realizing identity in unity of the world and the yogin’s interior symbolized by the
fusion of Śiva (akula) and śakti (kula). The sleeping and awakening aspects of the
kuṇḍalinī are explained in detail in connection with the cosmic evolution: When
kuṇḍalinī is raised, the expanded śakti turns into a creative primus motor for cosmic
manifestation; whereas when she coils, the contracted śakti parallels the dissolution
of the world. According to the subtle body-locations of śakti at the mūlādhāra,
hṛdaya, and sahasrāra the kuṇḍalinī is respectively called adhaḥ (“below”), madhya
(“center”), and ūrdhva (“above”).75 The first aspect ensures the practitioner’s
connection to the external world. The second is either lower and gross or higher and
subtle which, respectively, furthers grounding or salvation. The third is for the
attainment of the final beatitude (paramapada).76
Something else is presented in the Gorakṣapaddhati that became influential for
later haṭhayoga literature borrowing numerous of its stanzas. Entirely devoted to the
six limbs of yoga starting with the postures, it teaches widely on the kuṇḍalinī
awakening but nothing of the micro-macrocosmic theories.77 As such, the text
perfectly illustrates the tendency of classical haṭhayoga instructions to skip the
theoretical aspects, presumably, both for the sake of brevity and to keep focus on the
quintessence of haṭhayoga, namely, yogic exertion and meditative exercise.
Furthermore, the Gorakṣapaddhati associates the three vessels of the subtle body,
iḍā, piṅgalā, and suṣumṇā, respectively with the deities of moon, sun, and fire.78
However, the impression of these identifications, as in later haṭhayoga teachings,
appears symbolical, rather than illustrations of explicit micro-macrocosmic doctrines.
74
75
For more on the practical aspects of the adhaḥ- and ūrdhvakuṇḍalinīs, see below, Part IV, sec. 1,
56.
76
Siddhasiddhāntapaddhati, p. 41.
77
Gorakṣapaddhati; tr. Feuerstein, Yoga Tradition, 401-19.
78
Gorakṣapaddhati 1.32; tr. Feuerstein, Yoga Tradition, 404. In other haṭhayoga texts these three
nāḍīs are identified by the rivers Gaṇgā, Yamunā, and Sarasvatī, respectively.
Micro-macrocosmic tenets in Nāth and haṭhayoga texts 25
In comparison to the Vedic and tantric scriptures the treatment of cosmology are
scarce in the haṭhayoga corpus, nevertheless not complete absent. A survey into two
of the at least twenty texts that Svātmārāma used to compile his
Haṭhayogapradīpikā, the Khecarīvidyā and Śivasaṃhitā, illustrates the scarcity of
cosmology in the haṭhayoga instructions. Starting with the former, it only once and
briefly mentions in the context of a prāṇāyāma exercise called ‘churning’ that the
practice will enable the yogin to see the entire universe as undifferentiated from
himself.79 Nowhere is the kuṇḍalinī mentioned in connection with cosmology, only
as a means to the ultimate bliss, overflowing the body with nectar (amṛta) and
become immortal.
The Śivasaṃhitā, on the contrary, contains much Śaiva tantric inspired
cosmology, and even at the beginning chapters, which indicate that the theoretical
basis was of central importance to establish before proceeding into the practices
themselves outlined further in the text. Here, similar to the latter text but by other
means, the yogin sees in himself (ātmani) the universal spirit (ātman) by renouncing
false desires and worldly chains.80 The Śivasaṃhitā is dedicated to describe the
micro-macrocosm to a high degree:
In this body, the mount Meru (i.e., the vertebral column or suṣumṇā) is surrounded by
seven islands (i.e., presumably the seven cakras); there are rivers, seas, mountains, fields;
and lords of the fields too. There are in it seers and sages; all the stars and planets as well.
There are sacred pilgrimages, shrines; and presiding deities of the shrines. The sun and
moon, agents of creation and destruction, also move in it. Ether, air, fire, water and earth
are also here.81
The following stanzas continuous elaborating on the structure of the macrocosm

called brahmāṇḍa (lit., “Brahmā’s egg”) on its parallel level of microcosmic
embodiment, although, by describing the nāḍīs in their function as fluid-vessels.
Let us now move to probably the most central stanza of the haṭhayogic sources
examined in this study in regard to explore the kuṇḍalinī teachings in a cosmological
context. Having introduced Kuṇḍalinī as ‘the supreme goddess’ (paradevatā),82 the
Śivasaṃhitā explains that “she represents the creative force of the world, and is
always engaged in creation.”83 The Śivasaṃhitā, furthermore, identifies her as the
“Goddess of Speech” (Vāgdevī).84 The text reserves the remaining part of its second
chapter for instructions on deliverance of karman, the effect of action, chaining the
79
Khecarīvidyā 1.64cd-65ab.
80
Śivasaṃhitā 1.62.
81
dehe ‘asminvartate meruḥ saptadvīpasamanvitaḥ / saritaḥ sāgarāḥ śailā kṣetrāṇi kṣetrapālakāḥ
// ṛṣayo munayaḥ sarve nakṣatrāni grahāstathā / puṇyatīrthāṇi pīṭhāni vartante pīṭhadevatāḥ //
sṛṣṭisaṃhārakartārau bhramantau śaśibhāskarau / nabho vāyuśca vahniśca jalaṃ pṛthvī tathaiva ca
// (Śivasaṃhitā 2.1-3)
82
Śivasaṃhitā 2.23b.
83
jagatsaṃsṛṣṭirūpā sā nirmāṇe satatodyatā / (Śivasaṃhitā 2.24ab).
84
Śivasaṃhitā 2.24cd.
26 Part I
jīva that dwells within the cosmic body (brahmāṇḍa). The Śivasaṃhitā contains
these detailed descriptions and specific associations of the kuṇḍalinī with the divine
energy of macrocosmic manifestation, presumably because it was a mixed product of
the Śaiva non-dualistic tradition with the Śrīvidyā cult, and complete absent of
anything to associate it with the Nāth tradition.
Scrutinizing the Haṭhayogapradīpikā for any concrete cosmological teachings, it
is difficult to argue for more than hints. The text equates the Lord of Serpents’ (Śeṣa
a.k.a. Ananta) function of supporting the earth with the kuṇḍalinī supporting all
yogic practices.85 Whereas in the Śāradātilaka nāda, bindu, and kalā emerges from
the kuṇḍalinī, the Haṭhayogapradīpikā declares that Śiva is in form of these three
components.86 The fact that the Haṭhayogapradīpikā’s very first chapter deals with
āsanas (postures) and not cosmological doctrines as the case of the Śivasaṃhitā,
illustrates that the physical aspects of classical haṭhayoga predominated the
theoretical doctrines. Moreover, the absence of kuṇḍalinī doctrines within a
cosmological framework suggests that the Haṭhayogapradīpikā was a composition of
Śaiva rather than Śākta worshipers.
Cosmology and cosmogony in the Haṭharatnāvalī is, however, widely exposed.
The first instance encountered is, nevertheless, not sooner than in the final chapter,
which provides an introduction before entering into details about the nāḍīs by
informing that the following stanzas concern “the microcosmic (piṇḍa) and the
macrocosmic nature (brahmāṇḍa) along with the technique of its worship.”87 Having
exposed the nāḍīs, the text then declares that doctrines on the micro-macrocosm
should be learned from the Vedic texts, Āgamas and Purāṇas, and so forth in order to
attain liberation (mokṣa).88 The remaining part of the chapter continues meticulously
delineating the 36 elementary properties (tattvas) that comprise the Kashmir Śaiva
doctrine on cosmology. Again, there is nowhere in the Haṭharatnāvalī that the term
kuṇḍalinī directly is affiliated with cosmogony. Although the text contains numerous
stanzas on cosmology, these are to be found in the final chapter that completely
abstain to mention the kuṇḍalinī, while the haṭhayogic practices including the
serpentine energy were introduced in beginning chapters.
The Gheraṇḍasaṃhitā, another important haṭhayogic text, is, on the contrary,
entirely deserted of concrete allusions to cosmology. Merely at a single place where
teaching to wake and raise the sleeping serpentine goddess by repetition of the seed
syllable HUṂ and the word haṃsa (lit., “swan”)89 does it bespeak the union of Śiva
and śakti in this world, upon which the yogin realizes himself to be Brahmā.90
85
Haṭhayogapradīpikā 3.1.
86
87
brahmāṇḍapiṇḍāṇḍayoḥ sāṅgopāsanayoḥ piṇḍāṇḍasvarūpaṃ diṅmātraṃ pradarśyate //
(Haṭharatnāvalī 4.31).
88
Haṭharatnāvalī 4.41.
89
The symbol of the swan or migratory bird, haṃsa, has been attributed various connotations. In
Vedic times the haṃsa appeared for both the supreme entity (brahman) and the individual soul
(ātman). Since the Kāṭhaka Upaniṣad haṃsa was identified with the yogic breath. Later Kṣemarāja
Micro-macrocosmic tenets in Nāth and haṭhayoga texts 27
We have thus in this part examined the pan-Hindu worldview, which asserts that life
in the human world, the microcosm, is a mirror or reflection of life in a greater divine
dimension, the macrocosm. This early Vedic principle was elaborated extensively in
the Tantras, which, nevertheless, perceived the emanation process as merely a partial
element of the complete cyclic evolution of the universe in that they were dealing
with the inexorably reverse movement through the stages of cosmic reabsorption of
the praṇava sound-energy, a phenomenon which was asserted to influence the
movement of kuṇḍalinī accordingly.
The haṭhayoga material studied here at large leaves us with an ambiguous
impression of cosmology. Despite from a single place in the Śivasaṃhitā, there is
scarcely anything concrete in haṭhayoga that connects cosmogony with the kuṇḍalinī
energy. In terms of the chronological measurements of the textual evidences
surveyed here, it cannot reasonably be argued that cosmological doctrines were
completely absent in the haṭhayoga manuals, but they became less significant during
the course of time of the formation and development of classical haṭhayoga.
declared that haṃsa in representation of breath energy was none but kuṇḍalinī herself (Padoux, Vāc,
141), and the Nāths in similar manner identified haṃsa with suṣumṇā (White, Alchemical Body, 218).
90
Gheraṇḍasaṃhitā 3.41.
PART II
The Subtle Physiology
From at least the end of the first millennium AD, yogic and tantric traditions in India
began to evolve the idea of an alternative anatomy, which mapped the subtle body
(sūkṣma śarīra) as a locus of spiritual energies and points of graduated awakening –
cakras or padmas (lotuses) – arranged along a vertical axis (suṣumṇā) through a
network of channels (nāḍīs). This section examines, in particular, the development of
the characteristic notions of these terms of the subtle physiology.
1. The nāḍīs
Thought issues concerning the subtlety of a human body had presumably been
present in India from at least the fourth and fifth century BC, and had developed in
early yogic and ascetic circles which were active by this time. Early rudimentary
forms of the subtle physiology can be found in Vedic and Vedāntic literature.
References to nāḍīs can thus be found in both the Chāndogya and Bṛhadāraṇyaka,
which both, however, restrict the nāḍīs to the gross body. The latter of these texts
explains (4.3.20) that the nāḍīs “are minute as a hair split a thousand times and are
filled with humors which are white, blue, yellow, green and red.”91 However, the
nāḍīs developed drastically and continually already immediately after these earliest
notions up until the most recent texts teaching haṭhayoga, in which it is commonly
contended that there are 72.000 nāḍīs, of which three, viz. the left (iḍā), right
(piṅgalā), middle (suṣumṇā), are considered to be most important.92 The Taittirīya
Upaniṣad, one of the earliest Upaniṣads which plausibly is from the 4th or 5th century
BC, includes a passage (1.6) suggestive of ideas regarding an internal anatomy
contained with a central channel through the subtle body and the possibility of
movement in different directions from that central channel. Similar ideas can be
found in other early texts of the Upaniṣadic corpus.93
Since the time of the Upaniṣads, the seat of the soul has been located in the heart,
from where ātman is suspended in the midst of a void that extends outwards for ten
finger breadths from the core of the subtle body. Another conceptual void that is first
described in the Upaniṣads and subsequently continues down into the Tantras is that
91
In Swāmi Kuvalayānanda and S.A. Shukla, eds., Gorakṣaśatakam (With Introduction, Text,
English Translation, Notes etc.) (Lonavla, India: Kaivalyadhama, 2006), 69-70.
92
Kuvalayānanda and Shukla, Gorakṣaśatakam, 72.
93
Samuel and Johnston, Religion and the Subtle Body, 33-34.
28
The nāḍīs 29
of the central channel of the subtle breath.94 A verse in the Chāndogya (8.6.6), which
is repeated in the Kāṭhaka Upaniṣad, teaches that: “A hundred and one are the
arteries of the heart, one of them leads up to the crown of the head. Going upward
through that, one becomes immortal.”95 It is this channel, but more especially the
upper endpoint of its trajectory, the Nāths and a number of tantric schools identify
with the “ether” or “void.” The later Maitrī (6.21) specifies that the name of this
main artery is suṣumṇā and that the goal of yoga is to cause the prāṇa to rise through
that channel to the crown.96 The Maitrī was presumably composed at a time when
yoga became systematized and even got included some tantric elements.97 In relation
to the sonic manifestation during the kuṇḍalinī’s ascent, some of the Maitrī’s
descriptions are strikingly similar to the tantric doctrines of the arising of the
phonemes and the stages of the word (vāc). Taking up an image or a myth from the
Bṛhadāraṇyaka (4.2), the Maitrī thus says that Indra dwells in the right eye, his
consort Virāj in the left, and that both joining within an artery located in the heart
arise therefrom.98
In hymns 9 and 10 of the Ṛg Veda’s eighth book the word virāj appears
synonymously for the cosmic cow, identical with vāc, whose calf is Indra. Moreover,
she appears as an active principle, ruling, luminous, nourishing, and feminine, as a
creative energy. Padoux suggests these aspects and roles prefigure the śakti of the
later periods, although only other words such as śacī and the Gnās than śakti is
explicitly known in the Ṛg Veda as the female creative energy.99 In a somewhat
different, although closely related, perspective the Brāhmaṇas identifies vāc with
Sarasvatī, who will eventually become the goddess of eloquence and learning. In the
Ṛg Veda she is known first of all as the river of that name.100 Sarasvatī’s appearances
of being once word, motherly, and creative power signifies much of the qualities that
are ascribed to the śakti energy in the Tantras. Likewise the Nāths and the haṭhayogic
texts identify her with suṣumṇā. Notably, the suṣumṇā was in fact represented in the
Guhyasūtra (presumably before the end of the 7th century) as a white, lotus stalk-
shaped, cosmological goddess emerging from Śiva’s body, upon whom the
practitioner should meditate.101 Later the Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa ascribed similar qualities
as Sarasvatī’s to kuṇḍalinī:
94
White, Alchemical Body, 241.
95
In Thomas McEvilley, The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian
Philosophies (New York: Allworth Press, 2002), 543.
96
McEvilley, Ancient Thought, 543.
97
Padoux, Vāc, 26.
98
Padoux, Vāc, 28.
99
Padoux, Vāc, 9-10.
100
Padoux, Vāc, 13.
101
Shaman Hatley, “Śakti in Early Tantric Śaivism: Historical Observations on Goddess,
Cosmology and Ritual in the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā,” in Goddess Traditions in Tantric Hinduism:
History, Practice and Doctrine, ed. Bjarne Wernicke Olesen (New York: Routledge, 2016), 16, 19
and n. 21.
30 Part II
Kulakuṇḍalī…produces melodious poetry and bandha and all other compositions in prose
or verse in sequence or otherwise in Saṃskṛta, Prākṛta and other languages. It is she who
maintains all the beings of the world by means of inspiration and expiration. 102
In this fairly late (16th century) layayoga-passage103 we witness an increased amount

of elaborate qualities that are ascribed to the kuṇḍalinī, who is described in her
appearance of the goddess Devī Kuṇḍalinī. The commentary, moreover, credits her
for placing individual beings (jīvas, jīvātmans) in their respective bodies, and even
being creation itself (sṛṣṭi-rūpā) consisting of emission, maintenance, and
reabsorption (sṛṣṭi-sthiti-layātmakā).104 Finally, the Haṭharatnāvalī addresses the
kuṇḍalinī by the Sarasvatī epithet when describing a prāṇāyāma exercise for
removing diseases.105
2. The system of the cakras

By the time of Patañjali’s Yogasūtra (c. 2nd-4th centuries AD), there are indications of
a localization of yogic processes in various parts of the body that may foreshadow
the later cakras of Tantrism and haṭhayoga. In the following pages we will examine
the system of the cakras with particular focus on the relation by which it stands to
the kuṇḍalinī.
Origin and etymology of the term cakra

The term cakra literally means “circle” and has at least a double reference, since the
cakra were also the circles in which tantric practitioners met to perform worship
(cakrapūjā, gaṇacakra). These external cakras took place at the major Śākta
pilgrimage sites (pīṭhas), which were found throughout the Indian subcontinent.
Following the standard logic within India thought of internalization, the main cakras
within the body were associated with these external cakras.106
White’s study on the historical emergence of the subtle body and its structure in a
variety of Hindu and Buddhist texts dating from the 8th to the 12th centuries shows,
contrary to the impression created by Woodroffe’s widely read work, The Serpent
Power, that the system of the cakras presented by Woodroffe as if normative is
actually the result of a complex historical evolution expressing but one of many
possible configurations.107 Perhaps due to the power of the illustrations of this
configuration in Woodroffe’s work, many scholars have taken it to be an immutable
102
kūjantī kulakuṇḍalī … / vācāṃ komalakāvya-bandharacanā bhedātibheda-kramaiḥ /
śvāsocchvāsa-vibhañjanena jagatāṃ jīvo yayā dhāryate / sā mūlāṃbuja gahvare vilasati proddāma-
dīptāvaliḥ // (Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa v. 11).
103
On layayoga, see below, Part III, sec. 3, 49-51.
104
Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa, and comm. vv. 10-11, pp. 346-49.
105
Haṭharatnāvalī 2.122.
106
Samuel and Johnston, Religion and the Subtle Body, 39.
107
White, “Early Hindu Tantra,” 144-50.
The system of the cakras 31
eternal system as old as yoga itself grounded, perhaps, in the yogin’s actual
experience of the subtle body. In the earliest discussions of the cakras we find
reference to only four. Some early sources speak of five. Nor are they necessarily
called cakras. In fact, there is no standard system of the cakras: every school had
their own cakra system, which developed over time. The term cakra, according to
White, is first applied to them in the Kaulajñānanirṇaya, which enumerates seven
cakras as well as an expanded list of eleven.108
The system of the Trika school

The six centers common in the Kubjikā tradition and later Kaulism are not found in
the Trika, Siddhānta, nor Krama scriptures, which put forward a variety of systems.
For instance, Abhinavagupta mentions six centers: at the navel (nābhi), heart
(hṛdaya), throat (kaṇṭha), palate (tālu), top of the head (brahmarandhra), and finally
the cave of Bhairava beyond the crown of the head, the dvādaśānta (“end of twelve
fingers’ breadth”). The Netra Tantra also mentions six centers of the body, though
with some variations from Abhinavagupta’s six, namely, the organ of generation
(ānandendrīya), the navel, throat, palate, and the eye center (bhrūmadhya) a.k.a. the
bindu point.109 However, a further two levels are implied and are found in other texts,
at the forehead (lalāṭa) and, as in Abhinavagupta’s list, at the dvādaśānta.110
The cakra at the organ of generation is the root support (mūlādhāra), in which the
coiled serpent lies dormant. The cakra situated at the navel region, from which,
according to Abhinavagupta, spring forth the ten chief currents (nāḍīs),111 is
important for the distribution and exchange of prāṇa. The center of the heart is where
kuṇḍalinī usually chooses to stir, since in this region occur the mixing of the breaths
and their subsequent merging. At the center of the kaṇṭha, the raw energy of
kuṇḍalinī as she rises and enters this part of the body is purified by yogic practice,
while the bhrūmadhya center requires mastery over the state of samādhi in order to
be passed. The term bindu is used to designate the bhrūmadhya because, when this
center is pierced, the pent-up energy that has accumulated there is released, and a dot
of dazzling light appears. In regard to the lalāṭa in the middle of the forehead, this is
the realm where kuṇḍalinī discovers the entrance of the dvādaśānta and her journey
comes to an end.
In fact the dvādaśānta appears at the same time in three different, yet interrelated,
dimensions. First, externally, as an exact spot where the ordinary breath dies away.
Secondly, internally, as the brahmarandhra located twelve finger’s breadth from the
bhrūmadhya, following the curve of the head. Third, above the skull, twelve fingers’
breadth from the brahmarandhra, where there is no longer connection to the body,
108
White, “Early Hindu Tantra,” 146.
109
Gavin D. Flood, Body and Cosmology in Kashmir Śaivism (San Francisco: Mellen Research
University Press, 1993), 258.
110
Flood, Body and Cosmology, 258
111
These ten are iḍā, piṅgalā, suṣumṇā, gandhārī, hastijihvā, yaśasvinī, pūṣā, ālambusā, kuhū, and
śaṅkhinī.
32 Part II
dvādaśānta is known as the cosmic center with thousand spokes (sahasrāra), in

which the yogin completely fuses and identifies himself with the all-pervading
Śiva.112 It is in the dvādaśānta that occur the merging of the individual energy into
Śiva’s energy and the achievement of liberation; hence only true yogins reach it at
the final stage of the induced rising of kuṇḍalinī, which corresponds to the final
merging of the universe into the energy. It is thus, according to tantric Śaivism, the
end of the cosmic process or reabsorption.113 When applying the theory of three
cosmic dimensions to these metaphysical doctrines, there appears a correspondence
to the three localities of the dvādaśānta in that the first locality of the dvādaśānta
operates on the microcosmic level, the intermediate place of its second locality on
the mesocosmic level, and the third locality in the divine macrocosmic level of
innumerable energies, eternally present, in which the yogin attains liberation while
still alive (jīvanmukti).
According to the tantric non-dual exegetics composed by Kashmirian authors –
who present the notion of wheels (cakras) much from a cosmological perspective –
the arising and subsiding of each wave of cosmic manifestation is marked by a
regular sequence (krama) of metaphysical events. Following one after another in
recurrent cycles, each sequence is aptly symbolized by a rotating wheel (śakticakra),
the spokes of which are the aspects of the divine creative energy brought into
existence as the wheel revolves. The unfolding of the wheel confers upon the yogin
the enjoyment (bhoga) and bliss (ānanda) of cosmic consciousness. When the wheel
contracts, the yogin’s individuality fuses with pure consciousness and he experiences
its unconditioned freedom. In these two movements yogic powers (siddhis) are
conferred by the particular waves of energy of the universal vibration (spanda) of
consciousness which is the source of liberation (mokṣa).114
The system of the Kubjikā cult

The doctrines of the Kubjikā cult were depended on the Trika’s exegetical corpus. It
was in fact in the Kubjikā Tantras that the symbolism of goddess Kuṇḍalinī and the
stations of her rise and descent were first elaborated in its most commonly known
form. These centers are themselves yonis of energy in the center of which the
goddess of the center, Madhyadevī (= Kuṇḍalinī), resides.115 In the Kubjikā system
Navātma also called Naveśvara or Navaka is worshipped as Kubjikā’s spouse. The
divine couple, Navātma and Kubjikā, assumes six variant forms to preside over “six
orders” (ṣaḍanvaya-) located in the six centers (cakras) along the central axis of the
112
Silburn, Kuṇḍalinī, 30-31.
113
Padoux, Vāc, 145.
114
Mark S.G. Dyczkowski, The Doctrine of Vibration: An Analysis of the Doctrines and Practices
of Kashmir Shaivism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987), 117-27.
115
Mark S.G. Dyczkowski, “Kubjikā the Erotic Goddess: Sexual Potency, Transformation and
Reversal in the Heterodox Theophanies of the Kubjikā Tantras,” Indologica Taurinensia: Official
Organ of the International Association of Sanskrit Studies, vols. 21-22 (Edizioni A.I.T.: Torino, Italy,
1995-96), 139.
body and equated with the five elements (earth, water, fire, wind and ether) and mind
(manas). The system of the six energy centers ādhāra (lit., “support”) or mūlādhāra
in the anus, svādhiṣṭhāna in the genital region, maṇipūra in the navel, anāhata in the
heart, viśuddhi in the throat, and ājñā between the eyebrows, plus the “center”
beyond the cakras at the crown (sahasrāra), which became the standard list in late
haṭhayoga manuals, was presumably established in an 11th century Kubjikā text, the
Kubjikāmatatantra. In fact, as Professor Alexis Sanderson documents, this cakra
system became so universal and disseminated as a part of kuṇḍalinī practice beyond
the boundaries of the tantric cults that it has been forgotten in India (and also not
noticed outside her) it is quite absent in all the tantric traditions except this and the
cult of the goddess Tripurasundarī.116
The Kubjikā cult schematically associates their six centers with various
cosmological (i.e., sense objects or material elements) and religious (i.e., gods and
goddesses) aspects. For instance, the cult perceives each of the six centers to
correspond with one of the early Kaula lineages founded by Matsyendranātha.117
Hence, as the kuṇḍalinī rises through the centers the adept progressively acquires the
authority of each lineage which governs the corresponding element and constituent
of the body (dhātu).118 My intension here, however, is not to account for all of these
various aspects but rather to illustrate their appearances in the context of the contact
between kuṇḍalinī and the centers. For instance, the six centers from mūlādhāra to
ājñā are respectively associated with the five elements (bhūtas), earth, water, fire,
air, and space, plus a sixth “mental” element, as well as six colors, viz. white, red,
black, firebrand, crystal, and light. The Kubjikā texts, however, are scarce of
explanations to the connection between the elements, etc. associated with the centers
and the yogin’s physical condition.
In order to at least get a general sense of that relation it is necessary to consult the
Āgamic literature, which not only continued but also expanded the dual Sāṃkhya
philosophy of the tattvas (“units of manifest being”) and their relation to the
elements, senses, sense objects, etc. constituting man. The Śaivas thus operates with
36 tattvas compared to Sāṃkhya’s 25. According to the Śaivas, each element
pertains to a particular domain of the body; e.g., the domain of earth is the feet to
knees. Each domain has a number of attributes, corresponding to the number of
perceptible qualities present in each material element.119 The Śaivas perceive the
emission and reabsorption of the tattvas from and into their source-substance
(mahāmāyā) as a basic cosmological process creating man,120 wherefore the
Śivasaṃhitā in a metaphorical allusion states that: “The ‘Great Goddess of Illusion’
116
Alexis Sanderson, “Śaivism and the Tantric Traditions,” in The World’s Religions, ed. Stewart
Sutherland (London: Routledge, 1988), 687.
117
In fact, Matsyendranātha himself, as White has convincingly contended, was in a curious way
subjected to be connected by his name to the lower half of the yogic body, the place of the sleeping
kuṇḍalinī (White, Alchemical Body, 222-29).
118
119
120
34 Part II
(mahāmāyā), Kuṇḍalinī, is also absorbed (vilīyate) in [mount] Kailāsa, (Lord Śiva’s

paradise).”121 This cosmogonic process is directly paralleled in practical methods,
which consist of systematic worship of various parts of the body in order to purify
the various elements. The method of purification follows the order of reabsorption.
Aghoraśiva explains that
In order to purify the subtle body, the worshipper should cause the tattvas to be dissolved
(laya), each into its own source, in an inverse order [to that of their emission] ending with
mahāmāyā.122
His commentator, Nirmalamaṇi, glosses laya as “reabsorption” and explains that

each tattva goes within the source-substance that gave birth to it. Thus, the
worshipper visualizes earth reabsorbed into odor, water into taste, fire into form,
wind into touch, ether into sound, and the perceptible qualities (tanmātras) into the
inert aspect of the ego.123 Although this “subtle body” of the tattvas, etc. is not
directly related to the “subtle autonomy” of the cakras, etc. there are obvious
commonalities that serve to better understand the connection between the
macrocosmic and microcosmic levels.
The cakras in manifestation: Applications of the subtle sound and

phonemes
According to the Śaiva Tantras the microcosmic movement of kuṇḍalinī’s ascent
from the mūlādhāra through the nābhi and hṛdaya to the kaṇṭha, accordingly occurs
on four planes in which manifestation emerges from the subtlest level up to the most
dens level of sound vibration. These four planes through which the cosmic sound
gradually manifests into the gross world are termed (1) parā, (2) paśyantī, (3)
madhyamā, and (4) vaikharī, respectively corresponding to the four centers
mentioned above.124 Thus, (1) at the lowest center of the body the kuṇḍalinī is
sleeping, but (2) when she moves therefrom up to the nābhi, the sound level becomes
more perceptible without yet being particularized. This means that differentiation,
however faintly, then begins to dawn, and that the phonemes are present, not as
differentiated and utterable, but in the form of the energies which generate them and
are inseparable from the overall phonic energy. When (3) the kuṇḍalinī passes
beyond the navel region and rises to the center of the heart, the sound of the
intermediate level is produced. The sound vibration at this level becomes
particularized, for there the distinctive features of the phonemes, and even of speech,
appear, though still hardly emerging out of the undivided phonic energy. Continuing
121
kuṇḍalyapi mahāmāyā kailāse sā vilīyate // (Śivasaṃhitā 4.26cd).
122
In Davis, Oscillating Universe, 53.
123
124
Padoux, Vāc, 146.
upward (4), the kuṇḍalinī reaches the throat cakra, where she mingles with the breath
and produces the phonemes, the syllables, and the words of empirical speech.125
Commenting on the Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa v. 51, which is wholly dedicated to
describe the six centers, Kālīcaraṇa straightforward identifies the four levels – which
he calls the four “sound-producing” (śabdotpādikā) śaktis – with the kuṇḍalinī.
However, associating the levels from parā to vaikharī respectively with the bindu-
point located above the ājñā, ājñā, anāhata, and mūlādhāra, Kālīcaraṇa, on the
contrary, identifies the four levels from parā to vaikharī respectively with the
mūlādhāra, svādhiṣṭhāna, anāhata, and the mouth (i.e., sahasrāra) in his description
of the process of dissolution (laya-krama).126 When the emergence of sound is
looked at on the microcosmic level (i.e., that of yoga) with the awakening and ascent
of the kuṇḍalinī, nāda can be a somewhat perceptible sound.
Those sounds that must be perceived by the yogin, who performs certain exercises
designed to raise the kuṇḍalinī, are variously described in a number of texts teaching
haṭhayoga. In the yoga scriptures as well as in various Tantras the cakras are
represented with phonemes written on the petals of letters forming the lotuses
(cakras). The petals are distributed among the six centers from bottom up as follows:
four, six, ten, twelve, sixteen, and two. The fifty phonemes are dispersed among the
petals, so for instance the mūlādhāra usually has the letters sa, ṣa, śa, and va
connected to it, while the ājñācakra only has the letters ha and kṣa connected to it.127
There is a link between the phonemes and the centers that will account for a
particular bījamantra affecting a particular center, thus being instrumental in
bringing about the ascent of the kuṇḍalinī.
Testimonies of the necessity to chant the bījamantras in order to raise the
kuṇḍalinī are found, particularly, in the later Yoga-Upaniṣads such as the
Dhyānabindu or the Nādabindu, where nāda is considered important in the
meditation of oṃ.128 When the fifty different syllables or phonic seeds (bījas) of the
Sanskrit alphabet dispersed on the various cakras are struck by the energy of the vital
breath as the kuṇḍalinī rises, the subtle sound (nāda) of the universe appears as gross
phonic vibrations emerging from each of the phonic seeds.129 In the course of the
gradual reabsorption of the bījamantra sound-vibration, the resonance (nāda) merges
from bindu into the kuṇḍalinī energy, which is its source and, therefore, still
endowed with a certain form of sonic vibration. This is a spontaneous creative
movement of this energy. According to some interpretations, the coiled kuṇḍalinī
forms as many rings around the bindu as there are phonemes, while other texts
125
Padoux, Vāc, 141-43.
126
Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa, comm. v. 11, pp. 348-49.
127
See, for instance, the entire the Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa.
128
129
The mass or totality of these fifty sounds (śabdarāśī) is, according to Kṣemarāja, the sound of
haṃsoccāra. In this context, Kṣemarāja tells us, is uccāra in essence the expansion (sphāra)
experienced by the supreme energy (Padoux, Vāc, 142 n. 158).
36 Part II
describe them as placed on the petals of the cakras or on the triangle enclosing the
bindu.130
Now, the bindu on the top of the triangular (yoni) is associated with the bīja
syllable AIṂ, the syllable of emanation (sṛṣṭi-bīja), as well as with the mūlādhāra.131
The triangular AIṂ located in the mūlādhāra is a replica of a triangle in the
sahasrāra located above the head, the spot which in Trika terminology is identified
as the brahmarandhra or the inner dvādaśānta.132 The locations of the triangles are
both the “Cavity of Brahmā” (brahmarandhra), because they are equally openings at
the extremities of the suṣumṇā. Kuṇḍalinī issues out of both triangles: the one below
moves up through the centers, while the one above moves down through them. The
hexagon of the two triangles – where one is facing down and the other up –
illustrates the union of these two known as the “conjunction of the thunderbolt”
(vajrasandhi) that generates the awakening of the kuṇḍalinī. The six centers
(ṣaṭcakra) in the body are commonly projected into the corners of the hexagon,
where they are associated with the person who resides in them.
The Kubjikās perceive that the aroused kuṇḍalinī pierces rotating in an
counterclockwise sequence (krama) the six centers on the hexagon, where each
center that she passes accordingly is worshipped by the recitation of mantras. The
clockwise sequential direction is accordingly identified with the kuṇḍalinī’s
descent.133 In a macro-microcosmic perspective, this mantra ritual thus implies the
following notions: Emerging into the summit of the centers, the kuṇḍalinī descends
within the adept; this is a process which corresponds to cosmic emission. On the
contrary, when she emits from the centers, she ascends within the adept, which
corresponds to cosmic reabsorption.134 These two groups of antinomian
characteristics, corresponding thus respectively to the purifying descent and ascent of
the kuṇḍalinī’s movement through the suṣumṇā, are reflected in the structure of
mantra recitation.135
In recapping Part II, we may conclude that some of the subtle body descriptions are
ultimately grounded in a body of metaphysical assumptions that date back, in some
cases, to the time of the classical Upaniṣads. However, it was the Tantras that heavily
elaborated on the system of the subtle physiology, combining it particularly with
aspects of the cosmic manifestation through sound. All of the categories and
functions ascribed to the subtle physiology thus became subject to multiplication,
variation, and homologization as generic themes in the various cult-religious
130
The synthesis of the bindu- and kuṇḍalinī-oriented paradigms of yoga had its first truly
systematic manifestation in the Haṭhayogapradīpikā (James Mallinson, “Haṭha Yoga,” in Brill’s
Encyclopedia of Hinduism, vol. 3, ed. Knut A. Jacobsen et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 779-80.
131
132
133
Dyczkowski, Manthānabhairavatantram Kumārikākhaṇḍaḥ – Notes, 1:150-51 nn. 129-32.
134
135
The hexagonic diagram is further explained under the name kāmakalā (see below, Part III, sec.
1, 42-45, and fig. 2, p. 43).
discourses. In the tantric view the cakras arranged along the vertical axis in the
human body are implicated in the process of self-realization and the expansion of
consciousness, which are carried out by the explicated kuṇḍalinī practices and rituals
that we will examine in the following part.
PART III
The Kuṇḍalinī Rituals and Practices
1. The sexual rituals

A key element to the subtle body practices in the earliest descriptions in yogic
sources is their close connection with sexual rituals. For example, the later chapters
of the Kaulajñānanirṇaya, teaching worship of one’s maiden as the internal śakti,
present practices of the sequence of cakras along the spinal column and the
importance of the raising of the goddess (i.e., kuṇḍalinī) from the lowest cakra up
through the cakras, which are closely associated with sexual yoga.
What could reasonably be called “sexual practices” were, in a generic sense,
already present in the Vedic and Upaniṣadic material. Late Vedic texts treat sexual
intercourse as symbolically equivalent to the Vedic sacrifice, and ejaculation of
semen as the offering.136 New emerging cults appropriated the kāpālika-style
ascetism and their sexual practices into more aestheticized sexual rites. Sexual
intercourse, real or imagined, became used in tantric rites as a way to stimulate the
flow of substances along and within the body. This process is associated in various
ways with meditative techniques for the attainment of health and liberating insight.
With reference to the broader tantric tradition, White elaborates on the embodiment
of sexuality in practice:
Here, all humans were viewed as essentially androgynous with sexual intercourse an affair
between a female serpentine nexus of energy, generally called kuṇḍalinī, and a male
principle, identified with Śiva, both of which were located in the subtle body. 137
However, something else was seen in the Nāths’ emphasis on the practices giving
rejuvenation and immortality. Gorakṣanātha describes that kuṇḍalinī is divine energy
(śakti) and female materiality (prakṛti), but she is also a tigress (an animal with
which also the vulva is identified), who can drain a man of all his energy and seed.138
Like the vulva, the kuṇḍalinī both alarms danger and the promise of great power and
pleasure for the practitioner. In this sense, the yogic sources speak of the internal
female serpentine by the name “bhogavatī,” a term which once refers to her coiled
form (bhoga, from bhuj, “bend, curve”) and her enjoyment (bhoga, from bhuj,
136
Geoffrey Samuel, The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century
(N.Y., USA: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 282.
137
138
White, Alchemical Body, 218-19 n. 7.
38
Sexual rituals 39
“enjoy, possess”). In fact, kuṇḍalinī’s role as bhogavatī is twofold: she both takes
pleasure and gives pleasure.139
The new sexual rites of the 7th and 8th centuries are different, since here rather
than sexual intercourse being homologized with the sacrifice the process of sexual
excitation is homologized with the movement of internal substances or energies
within the body. On a more concrete level, this means that the rise of the kuṇḍalinī
brings about the transmutation of raw semen into nectar in the cranial vault.140 Hence
the channeling of prāṇa in the suṣumṇā should in this connection be understood very
clearly as the internalization of orgasmic ejaculation.
Sexual union: Rituals of the Trika school

The most familiar imaginary applied in the Trika school is that of the arousal of the
serpentine goddess, Kuṇḍalinī, who is conceived of as dwelling in the lowest of the
cakras (mūlādhāra or mūlābhūmi) within the human body. Here, the perception of
kuṇḍalinī is that she, as receptacle energy (ādhāraśakti), holds within her a poison
(viṣa), which destroys the vitality of human beings as they dissipate their energies in
sexual agitation. Theoretically, if the apex of the triangle (trikoṇa) symbolizing the
root cakra is turned downward, the spiritual force will be dissipated to the benefit of
sexual life, since breath and semen follow a downward course. On the other hand, if
the yogin overturns the triangle, its apex will thereafter be directed upward and the
opening called meḍhrakanda (lit., “bulb of the membrum virile”) at the base of the
sexual organ lets in the virile potency, which then enters the suṣumṇā. Having
succeeded his effort to reverse the downward flow of semen, the yogin at the time of
the kuṇḍalinī’s arousing transforms poison into an all-pervading (viś)141 power,
which, in turn, generates access to an elevated state of consciousness.142 Silburn
writes:
If, when kuṇḍalinī becomes erect and the energies are purified, pleasure is used as a
stepping stone, it converts into the bliss of pure consciousness. So, the sexual rite through
which access to cosmic consciousness is to be gained rests upon the specifics of sexual
union.143
In the natural contact between subject and object, the yogin keeps joy in the
background. Seeing his body being transfigurely merged into the universe, the yogin
thus finds the opportunity to merge into the greater joy of cosmic consciousness
through the unification of the two gender poles. Quoting the Yogasaṃcara,
139
140
141
Abhinavagupta in his magnum opus, the Tantrāloka, plays on the word viṣ[a]: when she sleeps,
the kuṇḍalinīśakti holds the poison that destroys human vitality; when she awakens, this poison
transforms itself into all-pervading (viś) power (Tantrāloka 3.170-72a, p. 108).
142
143
40 Part III
Abhinavagupta writes in the Tantrāloka that as in mutual intercourse, the yoni and
liṅga emit nectar (amṛta), in the same way, the mutual intercourse of fire (agni) and
moon (soma) releases nectar.144 The fact that kuṇḍalinī prefigures in the intense heat
of agni, the brilliance of sun and the nectar of immortality (amṛta), becomes obvious
in the Tantrāloka adding that
When the supreme subject, or fire, sets the object ablaze, the moon, the latter releases the
flow it contains and engenders the world common to all humans, as well as the varied world
specific to each individual. Then this energy, all ablaze, pours its supreme nectar on all
sides, right into the wheel (cakra) of the subject, through the wheel of the object and that of
knowledge; and this nectar trickling from wheel to wheel finally reaches the fivefold
wheel.145
That is, the supreme subject discovers within himself the cakra through the sexual
union, when heart, throat, and lips take part in the unfoldment of the whole being.
When both lovers remain aware of the process going on in the median way as pure
interiority, it is kuṇḍalinī that rises inside the median way through the wheels up to
the dvādaśānta.146 Presumably the practitioner applying these outward-directed
activities, which Abhinavagupta reluctantly revealed, claiming them to be “[too]
secret,”147 attain a state of harmony – i.e., equality of subject and object – through
kuṇḍalinī alone and not without her. Despite the highly evocative sexual language,
Abhinavagupta’s model is one of phonematic rather than fluid expansion and
contraction. It is in the later Tantras and haṭhayogic classics that the kuṇḍalinī
becomes the vehicle for fluid, rather than phonematic, transactions and transfers.
Sexual fluids: Rituals of Kaulism

In contrast to the Trika system in which the kuṇḍalinī is the dynamic manifestation
of Śiva in the universal macrocosm as well as the human microcosm, the Kaula
tradition perceive the kuṇḍalinī in the body of the yogin to be an incarnation of the
feminine, and thereby incarnates all the perils and joys that women can represent for
men. Here, the siddhis and jīvanmukti are the direct results of the internal
combination and transformation of sexual fluids (dravyas) into the divine nectar of
immortality, the amṛta.
Kaula rituals emphasize the manifesting aspects of sexual fluid rather than the
acoustic and graphic ones. According to the Kaulas, it is via a sexually transmitted
stream or flow of sexual fluids that the practitioner taps into the source of that
144
Paraphrasing Tantrāloka 4.131.
145
tatrasthāṃ muñcate dharāṃ somo hyagnipradīpitaḥ / sṛjatīttahaṃ
jagatsarvamātmanyātmanyanantakam // ṣoḍaśadvādaśārābhyāmaṣṭāreṣvatha sarvaśaḥ / evaṃ
krameṇa sarvatra cakreṣvamṛtamuttamam // somaḥ sravati yāvacca pañcānāṃ cakrapaddhatiḥ /
(Tantrāloka 4.134-136a; tr. Silburn, Kuṇḍalinī, 145).
146
147
Sexual rituals 41
stream, (the male) Śiva, represented by the phallic image of the liṅga. His self-
manifestation is effected through the goddess, whose own sexual fluid carries his
divine germ plasm through the lineages or transmissions of the tantric clan family
(kula), which even identifies human females called yoginīs with the goddess
herself.148
The yoginīs are presumably prototypes of the kuṇḍalinī, who was considered by
the early Kaula tradition to be a goddess flying upward when satisfied by the
oblations of wine and vital fluids offered into her mouth. The yoginī’s flight was
fueled by her extraction of the essence of the five nectars (human semen, blood,
urine, excrement, and marrow) or five elements (earth, water, air, fire, ether) of the
human body.149 This is precisely the role played by the kuṇḍalinī in the subtle body
of haṭhayogic exertion. As she rises or flies upward along the suṣumṇā, she implodes
earth into water at the level of the svādhiṣṭhāna, water into fire at the maṇipūra, fire
into air at the anāhata, and air into the ether, through which she flies at the
viśuddhi.150 The female yoginī was vital to aspiring male practitioners, who wished
to be inseminated with the liberating clan fluid. Absorption of the clan fluid was
effectuated through the drinking of such emissions as described or through the
practice of the vajrolī mudrā, in which the male partner extracted his own essence
back from the yoginī through urethral suction.151
The latter practice found its way into the classical haṭhayoga teachings and is
described in the Haṭhayogapradīpikā 3.5-8 as one of ten mudrās that assist the
kuṇḍalinī awakening. In the case of the haṭhayoga techniques, both when sex is
directly involved – as in the case of the vajrolī mudrā – and when it is not, they are
structured around the way in which the material nature of the body, both subtle and
gross, is linked to inner alchemy and the transubstantiation and flow of sexual fluid.
In modern usage, however, the haṭhayoga practices have generally been divested of
the tantric and sexual associations – a process that already can be seen in the
Haṭhayogapradīpikā – although these are still present in various Indian ascetic
traditions.152 It therefore seems that we have in the classic haṭhayoga-style involving
the “flying up” of kuṇḍalinī through the six centers to unite with Śiva in the cranial
vault, when viewed historically, an internalization of what was originally a system of
ritual transaction of actual sexual fluids.
The pañcamakāra ritual

Rather than sexual contact, the rituals should invoke an intimate union or even sexual
intercourse (maithuna). The term maithuna refers to the last, culminating step in a
ritual practice that involves the application of five ingredients known as the
148
David Gordon White, “Transformations in the Art of Love: Kāmakalā Practice in Hindu
Tantric and Kaula Traditions,” History of Religion 38(2) (1998): 175.
149
150
151
White, “Art of Love,” 195.
152
Samuel and Johnston, Religion and the Subtle Body, 44.
42 Part III
pañcamakāra (lit., “the five M-words”): 1. wine (madya), 2. fish (matsya), 3. meat
(māṃsa), 4. parched grain (mudrā), and 5. maithuna. In this portion of the tantric
sexual rituals that involves these five anti-sacraments, the kuṇḍalinī plays a pivotal
role in the dynamic transfer of subtle body fluids. Agehānanda Bhāratī (1923-1991)
describes the process thusly:
When the practitioner is poised to drink the liquor (madya), he says “I sacrifice;” and as he
does so, he mentally draws the coiled energy of the clan (kula-kuṇḍalinī) from her seat in
the base cakra. This time, however, he does not draw her up into the thousand-petaled
sahasrāra in the cranial vault, but instead he brings her to the tip of his tongue and seats her
there, at this moment he drinks the beverage from its bowl, and as he drinks she impresses
the thought on his mind that it is not he himself who is drinking but the kula-kuṇḍalinī now
seated on the tip of his tongue, to whom he is offering the liquid as a libation, in the same
manner he now empties all the other bowls [containing food offerings, including sexual
fluids] as he visualizes that he feeds their contents as oblations to the goddess – for the
kula-kuṇḍalinī is the microcosmic aspect of the universal Śakti. 153
Rather than in her role of setting into vibration the phonemes of the subtle lotus-
petals, the rising kuṇḍalinī is here the consummator of impure substances, the
substitutes for or actual instantiations of vital bodily fluids which the practitioner
sacrifices to her as oblation for the sake of a higher purpose, namely, access into the
universal Śakti.
The aim of the sexual ritual should be perceived as serving a twofold purpose: On
the one hand, the practitioner strives towards liberation (mokṣa, mukti) from
conditional existence, on the other hand, however, he also seeks to realize the
enjoyment (bhoga, bhukti) mirroring the pleasure that Śiva takes in his female
aspect, the goddess identified with the kuṇḍalinī. It is a pleasure of the same order as
that enjoyed by Śiva in his union with the goddess that the practitioner comes to
know in awakening and raising his kuṇḍalinī. The practitioner’s bhoga takes the
form of pleasure he enjoys by consuming the makāras, which precede sexual
intercourse with his partner. The wine that he drinks and the flesh and fish he eats
become offerings into the mouth of the kuṇḍalinī, who rises therewith. Riding the
kuṇḍalinī upwards on a wave of enjoyment, the practitioner thus eventually comes to
experience both pleasure and liberation at the same time.154
The kāmakalā diagram

Another tantric sexual practice which is important to mention in the context of
kuṇḍalinī awakening is the transformative ritual of the kāmakalā (“divine principle
of desire” or “art of love”) diagram (fig. 2; see next page), which appears in a
number of tantric sects, especially in the late Trika and Śrīvidyā traditions. The ritual
or practical component of the kāmakalā is abstracted into a program of meditation,
153
Quoted in White, “Early Hindu Tantra,” 153.
154
Sexual rituals 43
Figure 2 – Kāmakalā according to the Yoginīhṛdaya 2.21155
which aims towards a non-discursive realization of the enlightened non-dual

consciousness. Through the meditative practice of mantras and maṇḍalas or yantras
– i.e., respectively the acoustic and the graphic or visual representations of the
manifestation of the goddess – the consciousness of the practitioner is uplifted. The
basic, ideological principles of this practice, as White argues, are probably borrowed
from earlier traditions.156
In the kāmakalā’s graphic representation of the divine emanation within the
human microcosm it is the image of a drop or point (bindu) that appears as that form
which encapsulates the being, energy and pure consciousness of the divine. As
described for instance in the Yoginīhṛdaya 2.21, a script pertaining to the Śrīvidyā
corpus, the yantric representation of kāmakalā appears as a hexagon formed by two
intersecting triangles, of which the upturned and downturned respectively symbolize
155
This diagram is borrowed from White, “Art of Love,” 179.
156
44 Part III
Śiva and his consort Śakti.157 At the apex of the upturned Śiva triangle we find the
Sanskrit vocal a, which is both the sun and face of the maiden supporting the
meditation. This is also termed the “medial bindu” point, which contrasts the two
bindu points that form the visarga in the base angles of the triangle. They represent
fire and moon, and are also identified with the maiden’s two breasts. Located
between these two and pointing downward is the apex of the downward Śakti
triangle, which is the yoni of the maiden and the locus of the consonant ha.158
The Sanskrit vocal ī located in the heart of the hexagon represents the kuṇḍalinī,
which together with the bindu becomes the ĪṂ, the special seed syllable mantra of
the Śrīvidyā goddess, Tripurasundarī. It is in the ĪṂ-syllable’s particular shape that
energy, in the coiled form of the kuṇḍalinī serpent, dwells between the bindu and the
visarga, which respectively symbolizes the male and female principles. The fact that
these respectively represent the first and last letters of the Sanskrit alphabet (a and
ha) means that the rising of the coiled kuṇḍalinī serpent sets in motion the complete
unified resonance of the entire sonic spectrum. Similar to the rising of the coiled
serpentine kuṇḍalinī, the grapheme ĪṂ represents a yogic process that extends from
the base to the apex of the subtle body. The bipolarities depicted in the kāmakalā
diagram are mediated by the kuṇḍalinī, who in her yogic rise from the base to the
apex of the system is telescoping the lower phonemes and graphemes of the Sanskrit
alphabet into their higher evolutes until all are absorbed in the bindu, at which all
manifest sound and image dissolve in the cranial vault.159
Mark Dyczkowski has identified Tripurasundarī’s seed syllable to be AIṂ, which
is likewise (and probably borrowed from) the seed syllable of the goddess
Kubjikā.160 This makes perfectly sense in the light of the fact that Kubjikā is the
epithet for Kuṇḍalinī (or vice versa). In fact, as Dyczkowski notices, “all major
Kaula goddesses are identified with Kuṇḍalinī,” although Kubjikā, he adds, stands
out in that “she is not Kuṇḍalinī merely by ascription: much of her mythology,
iconography and ritual is molded primarily around her personage, metaphysical
identity and activity as Kuṇḍalinī.”161 In regard to Kubjikā and her arousal illustrated
in sexual pairing of the gender opposites, Dyczkowski documents that Kubjikā is in
particular (or perhaps only) iconographic depicted in her maṇḍalas with their yonis,
liṅgas and installed seed mantras symbolizing the blissful, cosmic consciousness
obtained through hierogamic union. In this connection Dyczkowski explains that
when goddess Kubjikā as Kuṇḍalinī rises within the yogin, “she rises within herself
and the hierogamy that results at the climax of her flow is completely
157
Yoginīhṛdaya 2.21.
158
Śiva is symbolized in the mystic alphabet by the first letter – a – which stands for the absolute,
while his śakti is represented by ha, the last letter of the Sanskrit alphabet, symbolizing the ongoing
emanation of the universe. Each letter of the alphabet thus stands for a mesocosmic aspect of the
universe’s phase of maintenance in the cycle of cosmic emission and withdrawal.
159
160
Mark S.G. Dyczkowski, A Journey in the World of the Tantras (Varanasi, India: Indica Books,
2004), 267.
161
Dyczkowski, World of the Tantras, 264 n. 126.
Pneumatic practices 45
internalized.”162 In other words, she is activated by the conjunction (yoga) of yoni

and liṅga, which stimulates her flow out of the matrix of energy constituted
symbolically by the phonemes of the alphabet. The seed (retas) pours out flaming
upwards. In the aroused conditioned it is the consuming energy (śakti) of desire
(icchā) burnt by passion (kāmadagdhā). At the culminating point, which is marked
by the release of seed that flows down to the drop (bindu) of origin, the jīva is
penetrated by the kuṇḍalinī energy.163
2. The pneumatic practices

In yoga, the principal motor behind the transformation of mundane semen into divine
nectar of immortality is a pneumatic one. With particular reference to the expositions
put forward in the Trika exegeses the next couple of subsections will examine the
role of breath in order to raise kuṇḍalinī.
The practice of prāṇa

The exact meaning of the term “prāṇa,” as Silburn observes, varies with the levels of
the cosmos and could be rendered as “consciousness,” “life,” “energy,” “breath,”
“inhalation” and “exhalation.”164 In fact, in Trika texts the idea of kuṇḍalinī is often
replaced by that of prāṇa or instead referred to as prāṇakuṇḍalinī, the life-giving
breath. For example, the Vijñānabhairava speaks of the arising śakti within the body
in the form of prāṇa without mentioning the kuṇḍalinī.165 Furthermore, the subtle
form of prāṇa is denoted by the syllabic sound (varṇa). Kṣemarāja in this context
describes that when the energy of kuṇḍalinī shines and pulsates in the form of
varṇakuṇḍalinī, the kuṇḍalinī with all the phonemes, she conjoins the subtle sound
(nāda) and the self-reflecting awareness (vimarśa) in an infusion of her manifest
form as prāṇakuṇḍalinī.166 By this Kṣemarāja points to the manner in which the
subtleties of sound vibration from the macrocosmic plane infuses the human being
through the up- and downward movements of the breath energy called haṃsa, which,
in turn, on its way strikes the phonetic syllables connected to his metaphysical body.
The concept of prāṇakuṇḍalinī along with related ideas of the arising of energy
and sound function primarily through visualization or meditation (dhyāna), which,
Flood argues, “allows for the realization of the coextension of the individual and
cosmic bodies.”167 In order to raise the kuṇḍalinī through the formation of prāṇa the
yogin should
162
Dyczkowski, “Erotic Goddess,” 140.
163
Dyczkowski, “Erotic Goddess,” 139-40 n. 27.
164
165
Vijñānabhairava v. 24.
166
167
Flood, Body and Cosmology, 256.
46 Part III
Meditate on the śakti rising from mūlādhāra, which is luminous like rays of the sun and
which gets subtler and subtler until it dissolves in dvādaśānta. Then the state of Bhairava
will awaken. [Meditate on] the rising śakti in the form of lightning, as it moves upward
from one cakra to the other until it reaches dvādaśānta. At the end is the great
awakening.168
The raising of prāṇa within the body is thus facilitated through visualization. As
suggested by the ambiguous image of lightning, both mental image and the
experience of energy arising in the body are united. The final dissolution of this force
at the crown of the head is the revealing of the body of consciousness here called
Bhairava, the horrible appearance of Śiva.
Although prāṇa is the force of manifestation, and therefore of bondage, it is
equally when drawn up the central channel to the dvādaśānta a means of
transformation. In practice this means that the breath moves from grossness (sthūla)
into an inner friction of subtlety (sūkṣma) as the yogin rises higher within his body
and, eventually, reaches beyond into the “supreme vibration” (paramaspanda) of the
universe.169 In the continuum of breath from the body of consciousness to the
individual body, the yogin’s “inner journey” in this way parallels the cosmic creative
unfoldment.
The practice of uccāra

The three concepts of breath (prāṇa), sound (mantra, varṇa, nāda) and śakti
(kuṇḍalinī) in Śaiva practices are intimately drawn together within the body, which
they traverse and pervade. For instance, in the context of transformation through
“arising” (uccāra),170 the three terms are interchangeable.171
In tantric literature the term uccāra (or uccāraṇa) is designated variously, but is
often used to denote breath as a means to liberation. The word uccāra sometimes has
a derived meaning of utterance of pronunciation of a letter as an emission of sound
resulting from the upward movement of the breath. In connection with haṃsa,
however, uccāra is not the actual pronunciation of a sound, but the conjunction of
the phonic energy with prāṇa, thus being nothing other than the human and cosmic
energy, the kuṇḍalinī.172 Hence, when the uccāra occurs in the yogin’s body it is of
an operation at once corporeal and phonic, since the stages of the uccāra carry the
yogin from the level of empirical speech and of thought-construct to the supreme
stage of the transcendent Śiva. The Trika tradition, then, correlates each of these
stages with a particular spot in the subtle body. The uccāra, when located in the
168
ā mūlātkiraṇābhāsāṃ sūkṣmāt sūkṣmatarātmikām / cintayettāṃ dviṣaṭkānte śāmyantīṃ
bhairavodayaḥ // udgacchantīṃ taḍidrūpāṃ praticakraṃ kramātkramam / ūrdhvaṃ muṣṭitrayaṃ
yāvat tāvadante mahodayaḥ // (Vijñānabhairava vv. 28-29).
169
170
The word uccāra derives from the prefix ud + the root car, “to move up.”
171
172
Padoux, Vāc, 399.
Pneumatic practices 47
body, is thus deemed to extend from the heart center to the brahmarandhra, and then
beyond up to the dvādaśānta.173
In the context of the serpentine kuṇḍalinī, the term uccāra denotes the ascent of
energy as sound of vibration which affects the body. A sample of the various
connotations ascribed to the term uccāra are found in a brief passage of the
Tantrāloka, which explains the so-called “Energy Piercing” (śāktavadya) where the
guru, having taking his own kuṇḍalinī upward, is said to enter the body of the
disciple who, accordingly, has his kuṇḍalinī awakened and raised:
O Beautiful One! Through uccāra of the lower muscles of the trunk [the master] exerts an
upward thrust upon the essence of the energy up to the possessor of the energy (i.e., Śiva);
then, spontaneously, without any effort of utterance, he lifts the coiled serpentine energy
dwelling in the triangular seat. Let him, by her help, pervade the entire universe. Such is the
description of the piercing by means of the energy, in which the penetration [resembles]
that of the bumble bee.174
In this passage uccāra assumes numerous connotations, among which is its

distinctive feature of the attendant sound of the natural humming of a bumble bee.
With the purpose of making the kuṇḍalinī ascend through uccāra as an upward
contraction by means of the muscles of the rectum, the energy awakens
simultaneously in both guru and disciple. When the kuṇḍalinī, hitherto sleeping in
the lowest of the subtle centers, ascends in complete transgression, the disciple’s
energy permeates the universe, thus making it impossible to detect even the slightest
difference between the cosmic energy and the divine kuṇḍalinī.
The practice of the prāṇa-vāyus

In more explicated contexts uccāra is associated with the sensations of the flow of
the five breaths within the body (prāṇa-vāyus), namely prāṇa, apāna, samāna,
udāna, and vyāna,175 which the yogin resolves through mediation (dhyāna) upon the
breath that is the consequence of the cosmic process itself, hence transcending
limitations and raising the kuṇḍalinī. In Kashmir Śaivism this meditative exercise
that constitute the visualization of the subtle centers located along the central axis of
the body and kuṇḍalinī’s upward journey through them is an integrate portion of the
practices constituting the āṇava-upāya (“individual means”).176
173
Padoux, Vāc, 407.
174
Tantrāloka 29.246-47; tr. Silburn, Kuṇḍalinī, 96.
175
It should be noticed that the functions of the five prāṇa-vāyus as described here in the context
of tantric yoga practice are distinct from the functions described in the context of Indian medical
literature, which, nevertheless, is linked to the tantric functions in certain ways. For example, udāna is
associated with speech, and the power of speech derives from Parā-vak, the goddess of the supreme
word, who is identical with the kuṇḍalinī-śakti that eventually comes to designate the innate
intelligence of embodied consciousness (Wallis, Tantra Illuminated, 478 n. 165).
176
This is the fourth and most inferior of four different skilful means or ways (upāyas) to
liberation, of which the first and respectively most superior three are: an-upāya (“non-means”) which
48 Part III
Under the heading of the āṇava-upāya Abhinavagupta in the fifth chapter of his
Tantrasāra prescribes five successive steps in the uccāra practice, corresponding to
the sequence of the five prāṇa-vāyas mentioned above. In one of two variations of
the fifth step, when the fusion of the samāna-vāyu – the breath relating to the vital
energy – is perfected, the prāṇa-śakti, teaches Abhinavagupta, will suddenly rise up
through the suṣumṇā in the form of the udāna (“up-breath”). This form of the
upward-moving vital energy, the udāna-vāyu, is in later tantric and the haṭhayoga
traditions identified with the kuṇḍalinī-śakti. The āṇava-upāya diverts the flow of the
vital breath from its more usual course and induces it to enter the central channel,
along which it rises as the pure conscious energy technically called kuṇḍalinī, and
thus leading the yogin to an elevated state of consciousness in which he enjoys the
pure awareness of unity. In this moment, Abhinavagupta says, there occurs a
spontaneous ascension towards the highest center, where Śiva eternally resides. This
is the final stage of prāṇa-uccāra, which cannot be accomplished by any forceful
exertion whatsoever, but only experienced as complete unity between the knower
(pramātṛ), act of knowing (pramāṇa), and the known (prameya).177
Having illustrated in the Tantrāloka 5.43-53 the prāṇa-vāyus’ recovery of the
cosmic nature, Abhinavagupta further explains that at the moment vyāna-vāyu surges
forth the yogin experiences the bliss of consciousness (cidānanda).178 When breath
blends with the free śakti pervading the universe, the yogin, whose actions are of a
cosmic nature, then experiences the bliss known as universal (jagadānanda), which
in its relation to the energy at the source of all the breaths, prāṇaśakti, is surpassing
the cidānanda.179 As he thus transgresses the limitation of common conscious
experience through the various stages of the prāṇa-vāyu practice, the yogin
transcends his awareness into total unity with the consciousness of the absolute. We
thus see that Abhinavagupta’s prāṇa-vāyu practice is not separable from a conceptual
matrix: the framework and the experience are inextricably intertwined.
The five breaths also play a pivotal role as the internal sensation at a certain stage
in the maṇḍala installation, a detailed internalized tantric ritual of the emanation and
subsequent reabsorption of cosmic sound-energy, which involves the awakening of
the kuṇḍalinī. The complicated ritual involves the placement of the
triśūlābjamaṇḍala (“maṇḍala of the trident and lotuses”).180 This maṇḍala specific to
in fact the tāntrikas do not count as a “real” upāya, śāmbhava-upāya (“divine means”), and śākta-
upāya (“empowered means”).
177
In this context, the final stage would be the entry into the highest state of pure consciousness
(pramiti) (see table 1 in Dyczkowski, Doctrine of Vibration, 176).
178
This phenomenon is peculiar to where the serpentine energy is identified as citkuṇḍalinī
(“kuṇḍalinī of consciousness”). The feminine serpentine energy recognized in this particular form is
perceivable, although only from a vantage point of complete disinterest to the bliss that is identical
with her appearance (Silburn, Kuṇḍalinī, 63).
179
180
The triśūlābjamaṇḍala is built up along the axis of internal sensation to contain the complete
hierarchy of the Śaiva cosmos (bhuvana) constituted of the 36 tattvas. The tridenet (triśūla)
symbolizes the three goddess Parā, Parāparā, and Aparā, who should be visualized as enthroned on
Practice of laya 49
the Trika school acts as an internal map, by use of which the practitioner may
visualize the various stages of yogic emancipation that he is undergoing. Sanderson
describes the process thusly:
The fused breath (samāna) is totally dissolved and the “fire” of the rising breath (agni,
udāna) blazes up from below the navel. Devouring all duality it ascends through a central,
vertical channel (suṣumṇā), penetrating the cranial “aperture of Brahmā” (brahmarandhra)
to culminate as Śiva-consciousness (= vyāna) at a point twelve finger spaces (c. 20 to 25
cm.) directly above it (dvādaśānta, ūrdhvakuṇḍalinī). In the present phase of the ritual the
level of inner sensation underlying the movement of inhalation and exhalation is extended
in imagination along the suṣumṇā and the triśūlābjamaṇḍala is projected in ascending
stages along it. Thus the worshipper evokes through ritual the actual, yogic rise of the
liberating central power (kuṇḍalinī).181
The worshipper thus aspires to experience the kuṇḍalinī’s rise during the ritual itself
by mentally installing the triśūlābjamaṇḍala.
3. The practice of laya

A great concern of the yogin’s practice that is valuable in regard to the cosmic
evolutionary theory is the doctrine of cosmic reabsorption or dissolution (pralaya),
which concerns the conscious rising of the kuṇḍalinī. In this connection the
Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa teaches that
The wise and excellent yogin…should lead kula-kuṇḍalī along with the jīva to her lord the
Paraśiva in the abode of liberation within the pure lotus…. When he thus leads [kula-
kuṇḍalī], he should make all things absorb (laya) into her.182
In this yogic ascent of the kuṇḍalinī, the four phonemes of the mūlādhāra stand for
the gross elements (which are first to be dissolved) and so forth up the highest tattvas
in the ājñācakra. Then all the phonemes will appear in the sahasrāra from a to kṣa,
and no longer in the reversed order. The sahasrāra thus contains the pure energy
prior to the reabsorption, which is identical to the energy lying at the center of the
three white lotuses that rest on the tips of the trident, which is imaginatively superimposed along the
suṣumṇā of the worshipper’s body so that the trifurcation rises through the space of twelve finger
breadths above his head (dvādaśānta) (Sanderson, “Śaivism,” 673-74).
181
Alexis Sanderson, “Maṇḍala and Āgamic Identity in the Trika of Kashmir,” in Mantras et
Diagrammes Rituels dans l’Hindouisme, ed. André Padoux (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique, 1986), 178.
182
nitvā tāṃ kulakuṇḍalīṃ layavaśājjīvena sārdhaṃ sudhīr / mokṣe dhāmani śuddapadmasadane
śaive pare svāmini / dhyāyediṣṭaphalapradāṃ bhagavatīṃ caitanyarūpāṃ parāṃ / yogīndro
gurupādapadmayugalālambī samādhau yataḥ // (Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa v. 52).
50 Part III
mūlādhāra.183 This process is identical to the unfoldment of the cosmos, but in the
reverse order.
A phonic process occurs parallel to the process of dissolution on the three
ascending levels of consciousness, vyāpinī, samanā, and unmanā, which Kālīcaraṇa
respectively calls vyāpikā-śakti, samānī, and unmanī.184 However, by switching
samānī with unmanī in this sequence and instead making it vyāpikā-śakti, unmanī,
samānī, Kālīcaraṇa thus describes the phonic process of dissolution to progress as
follows: Nāda dissolves into nādānta (“end of nāda”),185 the nādānta into vyāpikā-
śakti, the vyāpikā-śakti into unmanī, the unmanī into samānī. Finally, with reference
to a certain Vaiṣṇava teacher named Keśavācārya, Kālīcaraṇa explains that the level
of samānī dissolves into the “mouth of Viṣṇu” (viṣṇu-vaktra), the Vaiṣṇava
counterpart to the “lotus-mouth of Śiva” or sahasrāra.186 That means, during this
process in which the kuṇḍalinī pierces the six centers, the yogin’s mind gradually
dissolves into Śiva’s abode (śivasthāna) in the sahasrāra. The sonic absorption from
the nāda up to sahasrāra described as a sequence of dissolution (laya-krama)187 is,
in fact, a process in which consciousness is dissolved into the nature of the material
world.
The process of dissolution is effectuated, the Haṭhayogapradīpikā 4.10 declares,
by steady practice of various āsanas, kumbhakas and mudrās,188 through the success
of which the yogin gradually reaches two, but interdependent, aims: control of his
breath and of his mind.189 The Haṭhayogapradīpikā in simple words explains the
yogic process of dissolution thusly:
The breath (pavana) dissolves where the mind dissolves (līyate);190 the mind dissolves
where the breath dissolves. (…) The mind is lord of the organs of sense; the breath
(māruta) is lord of the mind. Laya is lord of the breath, and that laya has nāda for its
basis.191
The piercing of each center is here an upward movement equated with reabsorption,
a cosmic dissolution (pralaya). The kuṇḍalinī’s awakening marks the beginning of
183
Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa, comm. v. 52.
184
Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa, comm. v. 52, p. 472.
185
I.e. that beyond nāda.
186
187
This process is in the haṭhayoga texts identified as layayoga.
188
Whereas early texts teaching haṭhayoga mentioned neither the cakras nor kuṇḍalinī, the
Haṭhayogapradīpikā’s success ensured that the raising of kuṇḍalinī became the rationale for many of
the practices of haṭhayoga. With kuṇḍalinī came a variety of other practices and aims (Mallinson,
“Haṭha Yoga,” 774).
189
190
The verb līyate comes from the root lī, “to dissolve,” from which derives the word laya
(Monier-Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary, 903,2).
191
mano yatra vilīyeta pavanastatra līyate / pavano līyate yatra manastatra vilīyate // (...)
indriyāṇāṃ mano nātho manonāthastu mārutaḥ / maṛutasya layo nāthaḥ sa layo nādamāśritaḥ //
(Haṭhayogapradīpikā 4.23,29). The translation is slightly modified by myself.
Kuṇḍalinī awakening as a remedy for disease 51
the yogin’s own withdrawal into his yogic sleep or trance, into the total integration
that is samādhi. On this issue, White elaborates that
In the universal scheme of things, the great yogin, be he named Śiva or Viṣṇu, ultimately
“awakens” – pours himself out into mundane being of which the sleeping kuṇḍalinī is the
end- or turning-point – in order that human yogins might find a way to genuinely “fall
asleep,” i.e., enter into the yogic sleep of samādhi.192
We have thus in this bipolar model on the one hand a yogic withdrawal and return,
and on the other a kalpic cycle of divine withdrawal (dissolution, pralaya) and return
(emission, sṛṣṭi). Hence, the kuṇḍalinī’s sequential travels up and down the spinal
column are respectively referred to as laya-krama and sṛṣṭi-krama.193 On the
microcosmic level this yogic reintegration affords liberation and bliss, while on the
macrocosmic level it is nothing other than the pralaya, the universal reabsorption of
all mundane existence into the primordial essence.
4. The kuṇḍalinī awakening as a remedy for disease

In the texts of haṭhayoga the kuṇḍalinī awakening becomes increasingly associated
with alleviation or the complete elimination of disease. The Khecarīvidyā in detail
list into various categories the following diseases that are removed by raising the
kuṇḍalinī: eye-disease, trembling of the body, fever, dizziness, tooth disease, lack of
strength, loss of suppleness of the body, high fever, headache, imbalance of the
phlegmatic humour, vomiting, breathing trouble, blindness, and sleep that cannot be
overcome.194 The exact remedy is effectuated by a procedure starting with a
prāṇāyāma technique, which include that the yogin raises the primordial goddess,
Kuṇḍalinī, from the disturbance of whom a great sound (mahānāda) arises that,
hence, liberates him. Subsequently, the yogin visualizes his body be sprinkled by a
nectar (amṛta).195 With the body thus satiated by nectar, the yogin benefits in several
ways from the siddhis that are, accordingly, attained.196
The Haṭhayogapradīpikā teaches that a “gastric fire,” which concentrates within
the space of the suṣumṇā, is generated simultaneously with the kuṇḍalinī
awakening.197 This remarkable heat apparently effects the gradual transformation of
raw semen into cooked,198 and even into a stream (dhārā) [of perfected nectar
(amṛta)] which gradually fills out the moon in the cranial vault. 199 With the body
thus inundated in nectar from head to toe, the yogin becomes endowed with a
192
193
194
Khecarīvidyā 2.88-91.
195
Khecarīvidyā 2.92-94a.
196
Khecarīvidyā 3.4-8.
197
198
199
52 Part III
superior body, great strength, and valor.200 Furthermore, in the Haṭhayogapradīpikā

(which ascribe the kuṇḍalinī to be a support of all its yoga practices)201 and in other
haṭhayoga texts certain individual postures that explicitly raise the serpentine energy,
besides leading to steadiness, health, suppleness and making the breath enter the
suṣumṇā, also removes diseases, etc.202 Another remedial exercise is the haṭhayogic
kumbhaka called bhrastikā that is claimed to both raise the kuṇḍalinī and be
purifying, pleasant, and beneficial by removing the obstructions caused by the three
humors (doṣas), flatulence (vāta, vāyu, or māruta), bile (pitta), and phlegm
(kapha).203
5. The kuṇḍalinī withdrawal: Transmutation and effect

In the visualizations taught in the Kubjikā Tantras, the kuṇḍalinī, on reaching the
store of amṛta located in the head, returns to the mūlādhāra from where she came,
flooding the body with the amṛta as she withdraws. This is also the result of the
haṭhayogic khecarīmudrā taught in the Khecarīvidyā, which describes the process of
the kuṇḍalinī’s descent: When the kuṇḍalinī has been lead up through the various
centers to unite with Śiva in the cranial vault, death will eventually approach the
yogin who rests with his awareness for awhile in that location, above which –
contrary to the region beneath – he knows there is no opportunity of bodily death.
However, seeing that his death has passed, the yogin leads back to mūlādhāra the
kuṇḍalinī, whose energy has now reproduced his jīva and sense organs.204
According to Kālīcaraṇa, when the kuṇḍalinī has reached the brahmarandhra in
the cranial vault, and there drunk the red nectar issuing from her union with Śiva, she
and a stream of celestial nectar (divyāmṛtadhārā) commence the trajectory down the
suṣumṇā (a.k.a. citrinī-nāḍī). During her withdrawal, she infuses a vital fluid (rasa)
into the various elements and cakras, which she absorbed on her upward traverse. As
they are infused by the fluid, the elements and cakras manifest into the gross material
world, where they accordingly become visible. Having passed the various centers
and, eventually, entered the mūlādhāra, the kuṇḍalinī resumes the shape of a coiled
sleeping snake.205
The two types of the mundane and transcendence poles of the kuṇḍalinī’s mode of
being – sleeping and waking, etc. – are identified as her poison and her nectar,
respectively. The kuṇḍalinī is the poison when she remains asleep in the lower
abdomen; she is nectar precisely when she rises up through the suṣumṇā of the subtle
body to reunite with Śiva in the yogin’s cranial vault. In the haṭhayogic sources, this
200
201
202
This can be attained, for instance, through the matsyendrāsana (Haṭhayogapradīpikā 1.27) and
padmāsana (Haṭhayogapradīpikā 1.44-48).
203
204
Paraphrasing Khecarīvidyā 3.40-48.
205
Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa, comm. v. 53.
The kuṇḍalinī withdrawal 53
union is in fact accompanied by an outpouring of nectar (amṛta), which renders the

yogin immortal. Through the raising of the kuṇḍalinī, the haṭhayogin is thus capable
to transmute poison into nectar. More properly speaking, that which is poison for
mortal beings is for the haṭhayogin, who through the haṭha techniques has united the
polarities within himself, identical to nectar. Thus, metaphorically for their mastery
of the metaphysic energy of the kuṇḍalinī, numerous Nāths, White reports, were
“known for their ability to control (and charm) serpents” and, moreover, “for their
ability to treat poisons as elixirs.”206 This is but one of numerous yogic metaphors for
the mastery of the force that sleeps in the lower part of the body, a force that, when
awakened, transforms the yogin’s being completely.
Let us recap this part. We have covered the various ritual and yogic methods that are
given meaning and form part of the attempt to raise kuṇḍalinī. The subtle body
practices provide a new and different purpose and significance for transformative
sexual rituals within the tantric context of attaining cosmic consciousness, where we
also encounter a multiplicity of references to the notions of sexual fluids. In this
connection, it is supposedly the serpent’s coiling and straightening that explains its
projection upon the subtle body: a poisonous serpent, when coiled, is dangerous; but
straightened, it is no longer threatening. This would be of a piece with the
characterization of the kuṇḍalinī as poison when she lies coiled in the lower body
and nectar when she is extended upward into the cranial vault.
The rising and return of śakti piercing the centers along the central axis within the
body is particularly accomplished in the contexts of breath-regulating exercises,
meditations, and accompanying pneumatics and phonemics. In this manner the
practitioner is aligning himself with tradition as well as with the construction of his
subtle body. The cosmogonic theory of the kalpic cycle of emission and dissolution
was foundational for the layayoga practice of kuṇḍalinī’s rise and withdrawal that,
again, was standardized and incorporated into the haṭhayoga techniques. During the
transition from tantric ritualism into haṭhayoga the kuṇḍalinī’s rise is no longer
merely associated with liberation and the attainment of siddhis, but becomes a
remedy for numerous diseases.
206
PART IV
Discursive Analysis and Discussion
This section will analyze and discuss the discourses connected to the concept of
kuṇḍalinī in terms of various philosophical aspects, although it could be argued that
several issues within the discourse of one aspect are applicable or fall in under the
discourse of another aspect. In his comprehensive portrayal of the Śaiva tantric
tradition, Tantra Illuminated, Wallis presents the following terms among a handful of
others:
 Ontology: What is the fundamental nature of reality? What is “being”?

What can we say about existence?
 Epistemology: How do we know anything? What are the valid means of
knowledge? How can we test what we think we know?
 Phenomenology: What is the nature of conscious experience?207
These terms particularly central to Western philosophy are not addressed in a

systematic manner in tantric and haṭhayogic literature, but nevertheless applicable to
clarify the Hindu tenets of the kuṇḍalinī. Since the ontological aspects of the
kuṇḍalinī practice and theory specifically relate to the topics of cosmogony and
metaphysic, which explicitly have been covered in the major part of this thesis, the
ontological discourse will not be further addressed in the following discussion.
1. The epistemological discourse

In context of the epistemological perspective, we will examine the extent to which
the yogin’s subjective experience of the kuṇḍalinī practice tells him about true
reality. We will in reviewing the epistemological aspect approach the kuṇḍalinī
concept of primarily Śaiva Tantrism within the framework of three conditions, which
Abhinavagupta requires are achieved before the practitioner’s acquisition of true
knowledge can be said to be wholly established. Indeed, in the beginning of
Tantrasāra’s fourth chapter, Abhinavagupta tells us that the process of
contemplation (bhāvanā-krama), which leads to experiential knowledge of reality, is
based on these three conditions:
1. Sound and careful reflection on your experience (sat-tarka).208

207
208
Sattarka, literally meaning ‘right reasoning,’ also denotes an orthodox system of Hindu
philosophy.
54
The epistemological discourse 55
2. The guidance of a great teacher (sad-guru) who is skilled in the meditative

enquiry and has attained its fruit.
3. The wisdom of the scriptures (sad-āgama).209
According to Abhinavagupta, when these three prerequisites come together in

agreement, the adept knows he/she has arrived at truth.210
The first condition is encountered in relation to the three ascending levels of
consciousness – vyāpinī, and so forth – where cosmic consciousness, accordingly as
the universe emerges, is gradually reduced into the limited confines of mundane
awareness. Indeed, the adept has succeeded his kuṇḍalinī practice not
instantaneously the moment his mind is fused into cosmic consciousness as the
serpentine energy reaches the dvādaśānta center above the cranial vault, from where
a stream of nectar percolates down through the various psychic centers, but
completely merely when the kuṇḍalinī, eventually, enters the mūlādhāra and thus
vivifies and makes visible for him the manifest world.
The Trika school approaches the epistemological discourse with the allegation
that the yogin is incapable to experience the kuṇḍalinī, who remains unknown in her
supreme state at the heart of Śiva, an approach that is somewhat different in
haṭhayoga. Only at the time of death, when his awareness is extending beyond the
mind (manonmanī) in the final fusion with universal consciousness (saṃvid), the
yogin may, at best, get a few glimpses of the śaktikuṇḍalinī.211 Assuming the form of
pure quiescent energy that is not yet turned outward, the kuṇḍalinī at this state lies
dormant resting in the form of pure universal consciousness (saṃvid). Here, some
explanatory clarification is necessary in that śaktikuṇḍalinī is expressed by the
tāntrikas in the form of the visarga,212 the phoneme ḥ, which is transcribed into
Sanskrit in the form of two superposed dots (:) representing the twofold tendency
peculiar to this energy. The upper dot thus represents the parākuṇḍalinī of universal
consciousness, while the lower dot the prāṇakuṇḍalinī which pertains to the gross
aspect of consciousness, concealing its true essence at the stage of illusion (māyā).213
Indeed, pure universal consciousness is the universal space (vyoman) that embraces
all the spiritual extensions, thus making room for the unfoldment of every
configuration of experience. It is at once Bhairava and the supreme form of śakti
termed parākuṇḍalinī, equally consciousness and its contents.214 Parākuṇḍalinī,
therefore, denotes both the first movement which brings universe into existence as
well as the corresponding movement to that of the process of cosmic emanation.215
209
210
211
Silburn, Kuṇḍalinī, 63. The term śaktikuṇḍalinī is a.k.a. “kuṇḍalinī as reflective awareness”
(vimarśakuṇḍālinī) (Silburn, Kuṇḍalinī, 21).
212
The term visarga in tantric cosmology also refers to the cosmic emission.
213
214
Dyczkowski, Doctrine of Vibration, 199.
215
Padoux, Vāc, 126.
56 Part IV
A further division is formulated, since the prāṇakuṇḍalinī is asserted to manifest

in two successive phases: First as lower energy (adhaḥkuṇḍalinī), then as raised or
ascended energy (ūrdhvakuṇḍalinī). The first one is a descent of energy from the
uvula at the tālu to the mūlādhāra, whereas the second is an ascent of energy through
the suṣumṇā. In the context of “the five states of awareness”216 the first phase
finishes at the threshold of the fourth state (turya), the second reaches completion
beyond, i.e. in turyātīta. Thus, the adhaḥ- and ūrdhvakuṇḍalinīs are situated at two
different states: the adhaḥkuṇḍalinī in the transitional state between known and
knowledge, while ūrdhvakuṇḍalinī between knowledge and knower.217 In this light,
one may resonate that the yogin by combining these two streams of the kuṇḍalinī
movement thus gives rise to an intense self-awareness, where subject and object,
microcosm and macrocosm, are merged into an intermediate state of undifferentiated
indivisible consciousness.
In order to explain Abhinavagupta’s second condition – the importance of a
charismatic guru – we shall once again turn to the Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa, one of
numerous examples of the sort of transmission of spiritual knowledge which occurs
within the traditional lineage (paramparā) teachings between disciple and master.
While explaining the liturgies of inner worship, the text states:
The yogin who has gained steadiness of mind makes offering to his chosen tutelary deity
(iṣṭa-devatā) and to the deities in the six centers…with that stream of celestial nectar
(amṛta) which is in the vessel (i.e., kuṇḍalinī) of brahmāṇḍa (“the universe”), the
knowledge whereof he has gained through the tradition of the gurus.218
In intense meditation with unperturbed heart and concentrated mind the disciple
would point his attention inwardly to the lotus of a thousand petals, the sahasrāra,
wherein his awareness should immerge with that of the guru.219 The guru is beyond
doubt one of the primal sources, if not the source par excellence, for the disciple to
succeed raising the kuṇḍalinī energy. The guru’s oral instructions are considered to
be pivotal for the yogic process which, besides reciting the haṃsa-mantra, consists
of contracting the heart and raising the kuṇḍalinī by various breathing techniques.220
The transmission from master to disciple thus took place from heart to heart, from
body to body. Furthermore, at times new recruits wished to enter the religious
community and to follow its traditions the guru would play a central, liturgical role.
In the ceremonial ritual of initiation (dīkṣā) of the comprehensive tantric rite where
the divinely revealed mantras were employed (mantra-nyāsa) into the subtle body of
216
These five are: the waking (jāgrat), dream (svapna), deep sleep (suṣupti), fourth or
transcendental (turya), and beyond the fourth (turyātīta) states. For more detailed definitions of the
five states of awareness, see Wallis, Tantra Illuminated, 175-80.
217
218
taddivyāmṛtadhārayā sthiramatiḥ saṃtarpayeddaivataṃ / yogī yogapraṃparāviditayā
brahmāṇḍabhāṇḍasthitaṃ // (Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa v. 53cd).
219
This is described in the introductory-verse by Acalānanda to the Pādukāpañcaka.
220
Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa, and comm. v. 50.
The epistemological discourse 57
those with proper entitlement or qualification (adhikāra), it was believed that the
guru’s illuminated consciousness was able to penetrate or pierce (vedha) the
disciple’s obscured consciousness in order to enlighten it.221 At a sacred space
centered on the initiatory maṇḍala or sacred diagram the guru then performed an
elaborate meditative visualization, in which he fused the suṣumṇā of his subtle body
with that of the initiand. Subsequently, by means of special mudrās (“hand
gestures”),222 the guru would fuse his own consciousness that was raised through his
suṣumṇā passing through the subtle centers with that of the initiand.223 Various
methods to this initiation were performed on a purely inner level by piercing the
centers in attempt to bring forth the median breath energy (madhyaprāṇakuṇḍalinī).
Listing several types of piercings, Abhinavagupta in the Tantrāloka 29.263-64
explains that during the piercing through wisdom (vijñāna-vedha) the master
transfers knowledge to the disciple by means of the subtle thread of his conduits
(nāḍīs).224 Hence, a sad-guru was not merely considered a teacher of information but
a transmitter of the power of experiential understanding.
Finally, we will consider the importance of scriptural transmission in regard to
kuṇḍalinī practice. Contrary to philosophical discourses, textual dissemination to
acquire spiritual insight plays a secondary role in the kuṇḍalinī teachings.
Nevertheless, scriptures exist as a representative document of the collective wisdom
perpetuated through the continual tradition of spiritual transmission from guru to
disciple in a particular lineage (sampradāya). Indeed, scriptures are merely a
comprised bulk of idiosyncratic experiences, the reality of which each individual
practitioner himself must explore through the doctrines and techniques made
available in these documents. For, as Silburn states regarding the proficiency in
221
Wallis, Tantra Illuminated, 331-33. The mudrā described at the Haṭhayogapradīpikā 3.25-28
under the name mahāvedha (“Great Piercing”), in which the kuṇḍalinī is forced into the suṣumṇā, is a
corporealization of the tantric vedhadīkṣā, the initiation through piercing of the subtle centers.
222
What accounts for both Tantrism and haṭhayoga is that a mudrā (lit., “sign” or “seal”) is not
just a hand gesture but any posture of the hands, body or awareness. Abhinavagupta, who nearly
equates the word mudrā with karaṇa, a yogic trance in which the virtual divinization of the trans-
intellectual levels is actualized by ascent through the cranial aperture to the dvādaśānta, suggests
those with a sincere wish to awaken should adopt and practise the mudrās the kuṇḍalinī-śakti has
revealed in advanced meditators. Alluding to its literary meaning, Abhinavagupta advocates that a
mudrā arises spontaneously in profound meditation or mystical experience (samāveśa) as a “sign” of
attainment or a “seal” of the awakened consciousness, while classical haṭhayoga describes mudrā as a
purpose to awaken the kuṇḍalinī (see e.g. the Haṭhayogapradīpikā 3.5). The most important mudrā in
Abhinavagupta’s optic, the khecarīmudrā – the real nature of which had been forgotten by the time of
the haṭhayoga manuals that describe a corporealization of the tantric technique under that name – is
essentially, according to Abhinavagupta, a name for a procedure of intensifying the “central energy,”
a name for the kuṇḍalinī-śakti at the base of the spine, and of raising it to the crown of the head, thus
thereby achieving a higher state of consciousness (Wallis, Tantra Illuminated, 400-2).
223
224
58 Part IV
kuṇḍalinī practice, “book knowledge remains fruitless if not paralleled with

extensive experience.”225
The instructions or explanations documented in the scriptures are not considered
by the practitioners themselves to be merely “death words” passed down from a
remote ancestral tradition, but rather living esoteric teachings which can directly
influence and amplify their spiritual process. However, as Kālīcaraṇa states, “It can
be learnt from the guru alone, and not from ten million śāstras.”226 Nevertheless, in
its closing stanza the Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa assures the practitioner that if he
…reads this work which is the supreme source of the knowledge of liberation
(mokṣajñāna), and which is faultless, pure, and most secret (para-gupta), then of a very
surety his mind dances at the feet of his chosen tutelary deity.227
By completely engrossing in the descriptions of the cakras, the arousal of kuṇḍalinī,

and so forth explained in the confidential texts, the practitioner, trough continual
yogic practice, will eventually embody the psychic phenomena experienced during
the liberating state of unity with Śiva. In terms of Abhinavagupta’s three conditions,
the yogin would thus say from the epistemological perspective that he knows from
his sensational and subtle observational experiences of the kuṇḍalinī awakening and,
moreover, from the grace bestowed onto him by the guru during his initiation into
the tradition, all of which he can recall and recognize in the testimonies documented
in the scriptures teaching the secret kuṇḍalinī practice.
The haṭhayogic approach to kuṇḍalinī awakening was to a large extent associated
with removal of diseases and the attainment of siddhis rather than cosmic
consciousness. The Śivasaṃhitā 5.5 even mentions various types of knowledge
(jñāna) that are obstacles for understanding the ultimate reality, among which
knowledge of the subtle anatomy and of yogic practices associated with kuṇḍalinī are
included. Nevertheless, there exist few references in the haṭhayoga manuals in the
context of kuṇḍalinī that indicate the accomplishment or byproduct of some sort of
epistemological nature. Thus, the Śivasaṃhitā 5.157 declares that the indivisible,
pure gnosis is made known when kuṇḍalinī and the mind is absorbed respectively
into the supreme self and the object of meditation. The Haṭhayogapradīpikā states
that the power of kuṇḍalinī (śaktiprabhāva) may not only evoke a blissful bodily
sensation, but can lead to unequalled knowledge (bodhamatula) as well.228 Similarly,
besides death, the mahāmudrā technique, by which the serpentine energy straightens,
is claimed to conquer the five kleśas (afflictions): ignorance or illusion (avidyā),
egoism, attachment, repulsion, and clinging to life.229 The Gheraṇḍasaṃhitā declares
225
226
Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa, comm. v. 50, p. 456. Kālīcaraṇa here cites an unknown text.
227
yo ‘dhīte niśi saṃdhyayorathe divā yogī svabhāvasthito / mokṣajñānanidānametadamalaṃ
śuddhaṃ ca guptaṃ paraṃ / śrīmacchrīgurupādapadmayugalālambi yatāntarmanā- /
stasyavaśyamabhīṣṭadaivatapade ceto narīnṛtyate // (Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa v. 55).
228
Haṭhayogapradīpikā 1.48d.
229
The phenomenological discourse 59
that the yogin will know himself to be Brahmā by the union of Śiva and śakti from
the kuṇḍalinī awakening.230
2. The phenomenological discourse

In terms of the kuṇḍalinī awakening, the yogin are dealing with experiential
phenomena, which occur in connection with religious rituals or yogic practices
rhetorically delineated in a metaphorical language, rather than with a dialectic- or
logic-oriented philosophy. Considering the phenomenological aspect – the truth-
value of experience – of the kuṇḍalinī energy, we must, therefore, examine the causal
effects from the ascending and descending kuṇḍalinī both to the point of the yogins’
physicality as well as to the point of his inner state of being. For instance is some
kind of internal experience a universal prerequisite for the initiation rite. Hence,
Abhinavagupta stresses the importance of internal experience matching or
transcending external practice.231
A great phenomenological example to consider is the appearance of the kuṇḍalinī
as vibrant energy generating psychosomatic oscillations, which directly affect the
yogin’s physical body. Where the Trika school presents a metaphysical structure that
is related to five centers – the mūlādhāra, kanda, hṛdaya, tālu and brahmarandhra –
these are identified respectively with five states or signs (cihnas): bliss (ānanda),
jump or bound (udbhava or pluti), trembling (kampa), mystical sleep (nidrā), and
whirling (ghūrṇi).232 These five bodily phenomena are states of spiritual
development, the vibrations of which the yogin experiences due to the power of
kuṇḍalinī filling his entire body. These mystical experiences occur in rapid
succession as the corresponding centers are affected and the kuṇḍalinī energy begins
to spread within the yogin’s entire being. However, the vibrations which the
kuṇḍalinī generates, Abhinavagupta assures, are nothing more than the reaction of
the yogin in contact with the plenitude (pūrṇatāsparśa) of the divine and, therefore,
cease as soon as his energy is reabsorbed into mundane consciousness. 233 Silburn
suggests the culminating stage, in which the yogin experiences the vibratory whirling
(ghūrṇi), refers to an inner churning that mixes the two poles of the macrocosm and
microcosm at the source of emission and reabsorption.234 As the intensity of the
whirling increases to infinity and becomes one with the ever active primordial
vibration, which is none other than the fully-unfolded kuṇḍalinī in brahmarandhra,
the yogin is lifted to universal consciousness and, accordingly, recognizes his
identity with the entire world. With his energy turned into the all-pervading
kuṇḍalinī, the yogin, whose centers have been pierced one after the other and by
230
Gheraṇḍasaṃhitā 3.42.
231
Wallis, “Descent of Power,” 264.
232
233
Silburn, Kuṇḍalinī, 72 n. 1.
234
60 Part IV
which, in turn, his subjectivity gradually is poured into the universal consciousness,
experiences himself one with Śiva at the culminating stage.
Supposedly, evidences of the five signs could also occur in relation to the
sophisticated phenomenon of śaktipāta (“descent of power or grace”)235 denoting the
preliminary or conversional spiritual awakening, which was believed could directly
lead new recruits to wish for complete initiation. Being simply the codification of an
internal kuṇḍalinī experience, śaktipāta thus denotes a transmission of insight from
guru to initiand, which involves a spontaneously descent of energy or grace
percolating through the centers of the latter.236 Nevertheless the marginality of
explication, kuṇḍalinī appears in the context of initiation in a brief passage of the
Tantrāloka (29.248-51) on the “cobra” style of the vedhadīkṣā, the so-called
“Serpent Piercing” (bhuja[ṅ]ga-vedha), which is an initiation subsequent to the
primary one only given to those with a wish to pursue bhoga.237 However, the
identification of the kuṇḍalinī, which is not named explicitly in the passage, is
somewhat tenuous.
Delineating a series of thirteen stages through which the kuṇḍalinī traverse,
Somānanda (fl. c. 900-950) in his Śāktavijñāna (v. 24) explains that the kuṇḍalinī at
the tenth stage generates various symptoms, which follow from the energetic
transformation affecting the yogin. As she rises, the yogin may experience:
“horripilation, flood of tears, tendency to yawn, stammering, bursting of the knots,
divine joy of touch, and vibrations in the bindu.”238 However, when the kuṇḍalinī
eventually permeates all the nāḍīs, bursting open the knots in the centers, she pours a
divine sensation of bliss (ānanda) into the entire body.239
An experience of ānanda, or bliss, is the most common byproduct of the yogin’s
practice and a feedback mechanism for consciousness. At the peak of his practice the
yogin attains the type of “state of realization” which implies the coexistence and,
maybe even, interdependency of bliss and consciousness. Nevertheless the degree to
which an experience may be blissful, ānanda for the yogin, as Wallis confirms, “is
simply the chief byproduct of realization, it is not the goal of the path,”240 as is also
the case of the supernatural powers (siddhis) acquired from haṭhayogic exertion.
Indeed, there seems thus no straightforward argument for separating the
epistemological discourse from the phenomenological discourse in terms of
kuṇḍalinī practice, since insights into and the true knowledge of reality and mystic
phenomenological experiences (samāveśas) in this yogic method are invariably
intertwined. Of course only physiological and sensational effects, to which may be a
claim of transformation occurring from the kuṇḍalinī awakening, can rightfully be
235
In this regard it should be mentioned that the terms āveśa, śaktipāta, and vedha in some tantric
texts are used more or less interchangeably, which is probably the reason why modern interpreters tent
to conflate the two terms śaktipāta and dīkṣā.
236
Wallis, “Descent of Power,” 266.
237
238
In Silburn, Kuṇḍalinī, 110. “Vibration in the bindu” refers to vīrya (“energy”).
239
240
Modern interpretations of kuṇḍalinī 61
measured – not the achievement of gnosis. Any observance perceiving the inner,
metaphysical structures of the body – although these are numerable in both tantric
and haṭhayogic literature – remains the proposition of a subjective experience;
something that could explain the diversification in descriptions of the subtle body’s
interior.
3. Modern interpretations of the kuṇḍalinī

What can we tell about the modern appropriation of the term kuṇḍalinī? By the late
19th century printed images of the yogic bodies reflected a slow but visible
transformation through encounters with the world of science and medicine, which
lead to reflect on the yogic body through anatomical eyes. At this time there occurred
a growing visual engagement with the vocabularies, concepts, symbols and measures
of science as a new source of legitimizing authority. One of the earliest known
indigenous medical paintings is an 18th-century image of yogic anatomy
superimposed on a medical body.241 Nevertheless the painting is primarily a medical
image, not a tantric or a yogic one, there is what Dominik Wujastyk terms a
discernible “Indianization” of the medical body in the superimposition of six cakras
faintly drawn onto the spinal column and the kuṇḍalinī serpent coiled at the base of
the spine below the outline of the body.242 Despite its predominantly medical
content, the painter was seemingly motivated to integrate his own artistic and cultural
background with the more typical indigenous tantric image of the body, featuring
cakras and nāḍīs.243
Attempts to produce modern and alternative interpretations of the subtle
physiology were not unusual in the early 20th century. The attempt to return to a
literalist interpretation of yogic and tantric physiology and to equate it with
medical/anatomical images of the body is demonstrated in Haṃsasvarūpa Mahārāja’s
Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇacitram published in c. 1903. Through text and illustrations, which
assimilates the features of the subtle physiology – the cakras, energy channels, and
so forth – with the anatomical body, Haṃsasvarūpa argues for the physical reality of
the tantric body.244 While subtle body depictions of the cakras were based on
traditional iconography, a somewhat different visual interpretation was introduced in
the West by the Theosophist Charles W. Leadbeater (1854-1934), whose The
Cakras, first published in 1927, was a leading conduit for public acquaintance of the
tantric cakra doctrine outside India. Leadbeater made one of the early attempts to
schematize the yogic body by applying prevailing ideas of cakra images in order to
give readers a potent and poetic visual metaphor for spiritual awakening as a
241
Find a print of this particular painting, in Debra Diamond, Yoga: The Art of Transformation
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute, 2013), 276.
242
Dominik Wujastyk, “Interpreting the Image of the Human Body in Premodern India,”
International Journal of Hindu Studies 13(2) (2009): 210.
243
Wujastyk, “Premodern India,” 211.
244
Wujastyk, “Premodern India,” 201.
62 Part IV
kuṇḍalinī force: a serpent moving as a brilliant thread along the central suṣumṇā
pierces six lotus cakras located not necessarily in a straight line, but linked with
elements (humors) and within anatomically recognizable organs in the body.245
Taking up Leadbeater’s idea of turning the yogic process into a physiological one,
the Indian biomedical doctor Vasant Rele, one of the earliest “scientizers”246 of the
kuṇḍalinī phenomenon and author of The Mysterious Kundalini: The Physical Basis
of The “Kundalini (Hatha) Yoga” in Terms of Western Anatomy and Physiology first
published 1927, advocated that the system of the subtle body and kuṇḍalinī’s
movement within it have neurological equivalents. With its anatomical illustration of
the kuṇḍalinī serpent in the center of an inverted triangle radiating energy with the
following inscription beneath: “The kuṇḍalinī is sleeping above the kanda dispensing
liberation to yogins and bondage to fools. He who knows her knows yoga,”247 The
Mysterious Kundalini became among the first to establish and popularize a scientific
basis for yogic physiology and haṭhayoga practice.248
The translation and widespread dissemination of the texts on yoga outside India
were also historically paralleled by the emergence of Western depth psychology.249
At a time when psychology was characterized by the reign of behaviorism, of
positivist experimental epistemology, and of the growing dominance of
psychoanalysis, kuṇḍalinī practice presented C.G. Jung (1875-1961) with a model of
something almost completely absent in Western psychology.250 Heavily inspired by
Woodroffe’s The Serpent Power, which consists of translations of the
Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa and the Pādukāpañcaka together with extensive commentaries,
Jung found in yoga a rich storehouse of symbolic depictions of inner experiences and
of the individuation process in particular, claiming that important parallels with yoga
and analytical psychology had come to light especially with the kuṇḍalinī practices
and symbolism of tantric yoga.251 Well aware that yoga has particular religious
connotations in the indigenous Indian culture, Jung did not proclaim to have any
personal experience with kuṇḍalinī awakening, but rather attempted to appropriate
the yogic teachings into a cross-cultural comparative psychology of inner experience
by differentiating his approach from Eastern understandings. 252 Jung thus claimed
that the symbolism of kuṇḍalinī teachings suggested that the symptomatology
patients at times presented actually resulted from a kuṇḍalinī awakening.253
Since Jung, phenomenal occurrences following a kuṇḍalinī awakening have more
systematically been recorded by contemporary practitioners and, furthermore,
245
Diamond, Yoga, 277.
246
For more information how this term is applied, see Diamond, Yoga, 279.
247
Cited in Diamond, Yoga, 279.
248
Diamond, Yoga, 279.
249
C.G. Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1932 by C.G.
Jung, ed. Sonu Shamdasani (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), xviii.
250
Jung, Kundalini Yoga, xxiv.
251
Jung, Kundalini Yoga, xxix.
252
Jung, Kundalini Yoga, xxviii-xxix.
253
Jung, Kundalini Yoga, xxvi.
carefully examined by the scientific establishment. Claiming to have awakened the

serpentine energy, Gopi Krishna (1903-1984), a contemporary yogin and author
dedicated to a modern interpretation of kuṇḍalinī practice, records on his quite
unexpected and uncontrolled experience of a phenomenal burst of energy the
following:
Suddenly, with a roar like that of a waterfall, I felt a stream of liquid light entering my brain
through the spinal cord. (…) The illumination grew brighter and brighter, the roaring
louder, I experienced a rocking sensation and then felt myself slipping out of my body,
entirely enveloped in a halo of light.254
Indeed, Gopi Krishna’s report here of the gradual increase of light corresponds
perfectly to descriptions of the kuṇḍalinī in various tantric texts. For instance, the
Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa states that the brilliancy of kuṇḍalinī is like “a strong flash of
young strong lightning,”255 and adds that kuṇḍalinī, having pierced all the subtle
centers, “shines therein in the fullness of her lustre.”256 Likewise, there exist
numerous reports on “out-of-body experiences” in relation to kuṇḍalinī awakenings,
which, however, conventional psychiatrists typically have interpreted as delusional,
since to accept them as in some sense ontologically real would undermine the very
foundation of Western understanding of the relationship between brain, body and
consciousness.257
Gopi Krishna democratized, so to speak, the kuṇḍalinī phenomenon by promoting
its scientific investigations, thereby making it widely known in the modern world.
On the one hand Gopi Krishna was adamant that the kuṇḍalinī is a spiritual reality,
while on the other hand he passionately advocated that it is the biological mechanism
responsible for sainthood, genius, and insanity alike. As he put it:
What my own experience has clearly revealed is the amazing fact that though guided by a
super-intelligence, invisible but at the same time unmistakably seen conducting the whole
operation, the phenomenon of kuṇḍalinī is entirely biological in nature. 258
Of course, from a tantric point of view, which holds that immanence and
transcendence are coessential, any strict distinction between matter and spirit makes
little sense.
Even though Gopi Krishna’s work contributed greatly towards a phenomenology
of the kuṇḍalinī experience, there still remained a need for further research and, at
254
Gopi Krishna, Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man (Berkeley: Shambhala, 1971), 12-
13.
255
Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa v. 10.
256
Ṣaṭcakranirūpaṇa v. 51.
257
Lee Sannella, The Kundalini Experience: Psychosis or Transcendence? (California, US:
Integral Publishing, 1987), 102.
258
Gopi Krishna, Kundalini: The Biological Basis of Religion and Genius (N.Y.: Harper & Row
Publishers, 1972), 88.
64 Part IV
least, conceptual clarification. This challenge was met by modern scientists, among
whom the American psychiatrist and ophthalmologist Lee Sannella was at the
forefront. Sannella designates the curious physical phenomena associated with the
kuṇḍalinī awakening collectively as “physio-kuṇḍalinī” and, accordingly, the
complex phenomenon of her ascent and descent through the spinal column as a
“physio-kuṇḍalinī process,” a “cycle,” or a “mechanism.”259 This sophisticated
model, from which Sannella presents these aspects of the kuṇḍalinī thus understood
in neurophysiologic terminologies, was developed by the Israeli American Isaac
Bentov (1923-1997), a scientist as well as a mystic, who perceiving the kuṇḍalinī
process from a mechanic point of view claimed that the body contains a standing
electromagnetic wave system. These waves, Bentov thought, trigger the brain to
produce the type of visionary, auditory, and other sensory experiences that are
typical of kuṇḍalinī awakenings.260
Having explored at some length the existing literature and evidences of the so-
called “kuṇḍalinī awakening experience” and, particularly, its association with
“psychosis,” Sannella points out that it, along with all the “psychotic”-like
symptoms, “seem[s] pathological only because the symptoms are not understood in
relation to outcome: a psychically transformed human being.”261 In his appendix to
Joyce MacIver’s 1983 The Glimpse, in which MacIver graphically describes her out-
of-body experience, Sannella wrote that “her journeys into the hidden levels of
reality had a positive, healing and revelatory effect on her life.” 262 Sannella also
implies that the stirring up of “the sediments of the unconscious” is an intrinsic
aspect of the kuṇḍalinī awakening, confronting a person with “just those psychic
materials he or she wishes to inspect least of all.”263 It seems in Sannella’s optic that
the kuṇḍalinī awakening is a phenomenon of multiplicative determinations, being
simultaneously the process of purification, of healing deep unconscious psychic
material, and of a transmutation of mind into a higher and qualitatively enriched
level of consciousness.
We may conclude that the modern appropriation of kuṇḍalinī was especially
characterized by various scientific explanations attempting to advocate factually for
the kuṇḍalinī and the subtle body’s anatomical correlations. The term kuṇḍalinī was
adopted by Western scientists primarily to explain a phenomenological experience,
but without the clarification of on which sources the association of psychosomatic
phenomena with an ascent of kuṇḍalinī was based. Since scientists generally refer
neither to the original Hindu theories that the kuṇḍalinī is basically an energy within
the body which equals the dynamic, creative force of the evolving universe or the
Hindu rituals and practices to which Indian yogins have sworn for numerous
centuries in order to raise the serpentine goddess, the modern attempt to associate
259
Sannella, Kundalini Experience, 34.
260
Feuerstein, Yoga Tradition, 357.
261
Sannella, Kundalini Experience, 7.
262
Quoted in Sannella, Kundalini Experience, 102.
263
Sannella, Kundalini Experience, 98-99.
kuṇḍalinī with various psychosomatic phenomena seems an unjustifiable

extrapolation from her original context in Hindu tradition. Indeed, the phenomenal
experience that occurred in the type of kuṇḍalinī awakening the Tantras and
haṭhayoga manuals envisioned as the climax of a spiritual quest scientifically is
difficult to investigate and prove the validity of.
Conclusion
The outset of the present thesis was to test the hypothesis that the rituals, practices
and cosmogonic perspective embedded in tantric kuṇḍalinī-teachings were partly
altered or replaced in classical haṭhayoga manuals, which instead emphasized the
physiology- or posture-oriented aspects of yoga. This first led to an examination into
the Hindu cosmogonic principles of emanation and reabsorption as well as into the
concepts of macrocosmic homology. Indeed, Tantra sources from approximately the
middle of the first millennium enunciated the Vedic concept of the macrocosm-
microcosm parallels, which similarly was embedded in the tantric kuṇḍalinī-method.
We saw that notions such as the emanation of the universe trough life-force and
vibrating sound-energy were particular cosmogonic constituents since Vedic times.
Nevertheless, the tantric religious ideas were distinguished by their self-conscious
difference from Vedic ideology and by a number of other typological features.
Indeed, the basis of the cosmogonic theories was adopted and further expanded in the
Tantras in the expressive symbolism of highly sophisticated yogic and ritual
practices that aimed to awaken the serpentine energy, the kuṇḍalinī. Just as the Vedic
body was profoundly implicated in ritual meaning, the tantric body, an example of a
non-anatomical body, was an instantiation of the universe in miniature and a conduit
for mystical energies which awaken the serpentine energy. Thus, although the
rudiments of kuṇḍalinī and subtle body imagery can be found as far back as the
Upaniṣads, it was not until the advent of the Śaiva corpus that kuṇḍalinī fully
emerged as a central ontological, soteriological and ritual phenomenon.
Now, what has our investigation shown in regard to the hypothesis of the
differences between tantric and haṭhayogic presentations and applications of
kuṇḍalinī? We do not find the haṭhayogic dynamic to the Kubjikā’s system of the
cakras, although we encounter the notion of a process of yogic refinement. The
tantric concept of the kuṇḍalinī explicitly involved the notion of tuning human action
to an envisioned cosmic order onto the plane of human experience. This theory
seems lesser emphasized as the kuṇḍalinī was appropriated into haṭhayogic
expositions, in which the serpentine energy eventually represented an element of
synthesis from various medieval religious traditions. Although comprising an overall
spiritual orientation, the haṭhayoga manuals favored the physical methodology and
achievements. Despite fragmented elements of the Hindu cosmogonic theory are
found scattered in various haṭhayoga texts, they were by no means prerequisite
doctrines for succeeding in the haṭhayoga practice.
Although the Tantras employed a physiological methodology by using the sexual
rituals as a means to reach cosmic consciousness, it was nevertheless the dynamic,
liberating effect of the power embedded in the symbolism of these coital practices
that remained the focal point of the practitioner. The haṭhayoga texts codified the
practices deeply indebted to the Kaula Tantras, but divorced from their sectarianism,
66
Conclusion 67
doctrinal systems, and elaborate rituals. Hence, the idea of transmuting semen into
nectar, etc. was, presumably, easy to adapt or adjust into a kuṇḍalinī practice by the
haṭhayoga practitioners, since they dismissed the corporality of sexual teachings. In
the haṭhayoga scriptures kuṇḍalinī’s awakening became explicitly associated with
removal of diseases, increased vitalization, and strengthened physical and mental
health. Thus, although the hypothesis’ assertions in general are valid, it seems within
contexts the term kuṇḍalinī was involved that we are not presented in haṭhayogic
manuals with comprehensive notions which fundamentally diverged from that of the
Śaiva Tantras, but rather a confluence of metaphysical speculations, various yogic
techniques, and concepts of bodily transmutation and an altered state of mind, etc.
The argument for the liberating nature of the kuṇḍalinī awakening was possible to
move from the discourse of one system to that of another – e.g., from the tantric to
haṭhayogic system – and thereby emerged, it could be asserted, a further expanded,
coherent and multilayered expression of yogic kuṇḍalinī teachings. What is common
in all kuṇḍalinī teachings is the fact that the metaphysics serve as a theoretical
framework supporting a body of spiritual disciplines; it is never merely abstract
speculation. More than a reasoned opinion, it indicates the practitioner’s attitude to
his own experience, an attitude which forms his activities to raise the serpentine
energy.
Searching for words that at once comprehensively encapsulates both the
theoretical and practical aspects and both the spiritual and physical aspects of
especially the tantric tenets of the kuṇḍalinī energy, I would subscribe to the term
“cosmotheandrism,” which suggests that the human being in all its aspects, the
universe, and the god[dess]head, are all involved in one and the same evolutionary
process taking place on manifold levels of creation. Cosmotheandrism is the
culmination of the Roman Catholic priest and scholar Raimon Panikkar’s (1918-
2010) speculation, with which he endeavors to offer a synthesizing principle of all
different traditions and spiritualities.264 Panikkar describes his idea as follows:
I should like to present this cosmotheandric principle with the minimum of philosophical
assumptions. And the minimum here is that reality shows this triple dimension of an
empirical (or physical) element, a noetic (or psychic) factor, and a metaphysical (or
spiritual) ingredient. By the first I mean the matter-energy complex, the cosmos; by the
second, the sui generis reflection on the first and on itself; and by the third, the inherent
inexhaustibility of all things: the cosmic, the human, and the divine.265
In the same manner as Panikkar in his holistic vision consisting of three different
perspectives – the physical, the psychical, and the spiritual dimensions, which in turn
can be seen empirically, noetically, and metaphysically – pursues a synthetic
understanding of the traditional philosophies and religions, we can reasonably, I
264
For a full discussion of Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism, see Jyri Komulainen, An Emerging
Cosmotheandric Religion?: Raimon Panikkar’s Pluralistic Theology of Religions (Leiden, Boston:
Brill, 2005).
265
Quoted in Komulainen, Cosmotheandric Religion?, 198.
68 Conclusion
would argue, perceive the tenets connected with the kuṇḍalinī dynamics similarly in
that light.
With this study, I have attempted to thread depictions of kuṇḍalinī in order to
come to an understanding of how different traditions may have collectively viewed
its role and purpose within the broader field of tantric and haṭhayogic ontology and
soteriology. Hopefully, with more translations and research of other tantric and
haṭhayogic texts, in which kuṇḍalinī is exhibited, we may be able to more broadly
link together the core tenets of kuṇḍalinī in the pursuit to further discover her
original purpose and adaptation.
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What is the thesis about?

What is the thesis about?

What are the main parts of the thesis?

What are the main parts of the thesis?

KUṆḌALINĪ

The Hindu Tenets of the Serpentine Energy

A thesis submitted for a degree in

Resumé ....................................................................................................................... iii

Introduction to the Thesis .......................................................................1

Denne specialeafhandling er resultatet af et studie og en analyse af forskelligartede

2. Purpose and overall structure

terms of the individual religious traditions to be distinguished and the overall

As a consequence we must here limit the notion of understanding to a form of sympathetic

Nevertheless, it would not be appropriate to approach the tantric and haṭhayogic

The study material

4. Origin and etymology of the term kuṇḍalinī

Tantrasadbhāva.23 Furthermore, recent research carried out by Christopher

Nevertheless the verse significantly recalls the later haṭhayogic symbolical

comprehensive development of ascribed attributions. These attributed characteristics

Hindu Cosmogonic Theories

1. The aggregate of cosmos

2. The cosmic evolutionary cycle

governing all creation.”39 This description frames appropriately the tantric

3. The cosmic emanation

The emanation of the life-force and vital breath

The emanation through sound

functioning as partial manifestations of the kuṇḍalinī in the initial phase of the

The emanation of consciousness

4. Cosmological diagrammatic: The śrīcakra

To understand the cosmological event of expansion is thus, for the adept, to

Figure 1 – Śrīcakra according to the Yoginīhṛdaya ch. 171

5. The micro-macrocosmic tenets in Nāth and haṭhayoga texts

The following stanzas continuous elaborating on the structure of the macrocosm

The Subtle Physiology

In this fairly late (16th century) layayoga-passage103 we witness an increased amount

2. The system of the cakras

Origin and etymology of the term cakra

The system of the Trika school

dvādaśānta is known as the cosmic center with thousand spokes (sahasrāra), in

The system of the Kubjikā cult

(mahāmāyā), Kuṇḍalinī, is also absorbed (vilīyate) in [mount] Kailāsa, (Lord Śiva’s

His commentator, Nirmalamaṇi, glosses laya as “reabsorption” and explains that

The cakras in manifestation: Applications of the subtle sound and

The Kuṇḍalinī Rituals and Practices

1. The sexual rituals

Sexual union: Rituals of the Trika school

Sexual fluids: Rituals of Kaulism

The pañcamakāra ritual

The kāmakalā diagram

Figure 2 – Kāmakalā according to the Yoginīhṛdaya 2.21155

which aims towards a non-discursive realization of the enlightened non-dual

internalized.”162 In other words, she is activated by the conjunction (yoga) of yoni

2. The pneumatic practices

The practice of prāṇa

The practice of uccāra

In this passage uccāra assumes numerous connotations, among which is its

The practice of the prāṇa-vāyus

3. The practice of laya

4. The kuṇḍalinī awakening as a remedy for disease