The Waking

  This is a short blog post following on from the blog I wrote on 11th February about the kundalini experience I had in 1978 (see https://herethewaking.blogspot.com/2023/02/a-kundalini-experience-while-meditating.html) A few years later, in about 1986 or 1987, I was driving across England and listening to a cassette of music by Beethoven on the car’s audio system while I was driving. If you are under the age of 30 you may need to ask an older person what a cassette was. This cassette included the Leonore overtures from his opera, Fidelio.  I was enjoying the music as I had several times before, but on this occasion, as the music reached part 2 of the Leonore III overture, I found myself again having a kundalini experience, only the second since the initial experience I had in 1978! It was not as intense or as long-lasting as the first two occasions, but it fitted descriptions of kundalini experiences very clearly: A feeling of intense energy gathered at the base of my spine, t...

  These are the notes I wrote for a video I made about this experience. My apologies if you have already seen that but I know some people would rather read than watch a video. Many people have heard about kundalini yoga or kundalini experiences generally and so might be interested to know what a kundalini experience feels like, to the extent that that can be expressed in words. It might help open some possibilities for you and also save you some time – as you’ll see below! At the time this happened, in the summer of 1978, I had no history of meditation. I don’t think I even knew then what the word meant! I had a materialist perspective on the mind, consciousness etc. and I was doing research for a PhD in cognitive psychology. The setting was my office, which was a caravan in the garden of my university department, the Applied Psychology Unit in Cambridge, on a quiet summer evening. I was typing up some notes when, for no reason that I was aware of, I had the urge to close my eyes a...