Abstract

The author of this book directs philosophical and scientific research in kundalini yoga in India and the United States. Yoga is generally considered by Krishna as the acceleration of natural processes to form the mind to higher states of consciousness. The thesis in this volume and previous writing of the author is that kundalini yoga is a natural device, the cultivation of a biological process, which leads to transcendent states of consciousness. What underlies this presupposition is Krishna’s belief that all religion has a base in the psychosomatic makeup of man and, consequently, a complementary biological fundament as well. Effort is taken to interpret the ancient writers on yoga according to contemporary norms of literary and scientific analysis. He shows that much of classical writing on yoga, and kundalini in particular, is cast into metaphorical language which resorts to anatomical and physiological knowledge drawn from the individual experiences of the seers and not from the study of human anatomy and physiology. From the scientific viewpoint he establishes that some of the basic assumptions of kundalini yoga have no existence in reality.