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Pandit Gopi Krishna - Biographical notes

"The emphasis laid in some of the books on yoga, both of the east and the west, on the development of psychic powers merely for the sake of gaining success in worldly enterprises, invariably make me wonder at the incongruity in human nature, which, even in the case of a system designed to develop the spiritual side of man, focusses the attention more on the acquisition of visible, wonder-exciting properties of the body or mind, than on the invisible but tranquil possessions of the soul."

Introductory Notes

Gopi Krishna was a yogi, mystic, teacher, social reformer, poet, and writer. He was born in a small village near Srinagar, in the Jammu and Kashmir State in northern India. He spent his early years there, and later lived in Lahore, in the Punjab of British India. In his youth, Gopi Krishna was an office worker and spiritual seeker.

Two important events led him to the practice of yoga. First, his father renounced the world to lead a religious life leaving his twenty-eight year old mother with the responsibility of raising him and his two sisters. His mother as a result relied on her son to bring financial relief to her family, and become a man of some worth in the world. Second, he disappointed his mother by failing a college house examination which prevented him from attending the university. He attributed this failure to his lack of mental discipline, as he had spent his time pursuing enjoyable subjects and ignoring those that would be required for the examination. He felt great remorse at this failure, and resolved from that point forward to live a life of simplicity and austerity, while at the same time pursuing spiritual practices. He would restrain his desires, reduce his needs, and gain self-mastery. He also adopted a routine of meditation as part of his mental discipline and practiced concentration exercises for many years. In spite of his religious orientation, he did not have a spiritual teacher and was not initiated into any spiritual lineage.

He was instrumental in popularising the concept of Kundalini among Western readers. His autobiography Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man presents in considerable detail his personal account of the phenomenon of his awakening of Kundalini. His writings have influenced Western interest in kundalini yoga.

Parents and Early Life

Gopi Krishna was born in 1903 in the small village of Gairoo, about 20 miles from Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, which was the parental home of my mother. In the same big compound in which my mothers house was located, my father had constructed a small, two-storeyed humble structure, built of sun-dried bricks with a thatched roof, which served as our residence for a long time.Gopi Krishna was born in a village near Srinagar, to a family of hard working and God fearing peasants. Fate had destined his mother as a partner to a man considerably senior to her in age, who hailed from Amritsar, a place at that time no less than six days journey by rail and cart from the place of her birth. Insecurity and lawlessness in the country had forced one of his forefathers to bid adieu to his cool native soil in Kashmir and to seek his fortune in the torrid plains of distant Punjab.

There, changed in dress and speaking a different tongue, his grandfather and great grandfather lived and prospered like other exiles of their kind. Altered in all save their religious rites and customs and the unmistakable physiognomy of Kashmiri Brahmins, his father, with a deep mystical vein in him, returned to the land of his ancestors when almost past his prime, to marry and settle there. Even during his youth he was always on the look-out for Yogis and ascetics reputed to possess occult powers. He never tired of serving them and sitting in their company to learn the secrets of their marvellous gifts.

Gopi Krishna's first recollections of childhood circle round a medium sized house in a quiet sector of the city of Srinagar. As he was the only son, his mother never dressed him in fine clothes, nor allowed him long out of her sight for fear of mishaps.

The First Irresistible Call

A remarkable event of his childhood occurred at the age of eight. In his own words, Gopi Krishna describes the occurrence:

"One day as I walked along a road in Srinagar on my way to the house of our religious preceptor, all at once, like lightning, a sudden question, never thought of before, shot across my mind. I stood still in the middle of the road confronted with the insistent inquiry, 'What am I?' coupled with the pressing interrogation from every object without, 'What does all this mean?' My whole being as well as the world around appeared to have assumed the aspect of an everlasting inquiry, an insistent, unanswerable interrogation, which struck me dumb and helpless, groping for a reply. The surrounding objects began to whirl and dance around me. I felt giddy and confused, hardly able to restrain myself from fainting. Steadying myself, I proceeded on my way, my childish mind in a ferment over the incident of which, at that age, I could not in the least understand the significance. A few days later I had a remarkable dream in which I was given a glimpse of another existence, not as a child or as an adult but with a dream personality utterly unlike my usual one. I saw a heavenly spot, peopled by god-like, celestial beings, and myself bodiless, something quite different — ethereal — a stranger belonging to a different order and yet distinctly resembling and intimately close to me, my own self transfigured, in a gloriously bright and peaceful environment, the very opposite of the shabby, noisy surroundings in which I lived. Because of its unique and extraordinarily vivid nature, the dream was so indelibly imprinted upon my memory that I can recall it distinctly even today. The dream was probably the answer to the overwhelming, unavoidable question that had arisen from my depths a few days before. It was the first irresistible call from the invisible other world which, as I came to know later, awaits us, always intimately near, yet, for those with their backs to it, farther away than the farthest star in the firmament."

It was in Lahore that Gopi Krishna received his high school and two years of college education. He had not the advantage of a private coach or guide; it was with great difficulty that his mother could find enough money to purchase even his essential books and clothes. Denied the possibility of purchasing extra books, his study was confined to school classics, but he soon had the chance to read a slightly abridged translation in Urdu of the Arabian Nights at the age of about twelve. The book, for the first time created a burning thirst for fairy tales, stories of adventure and travel, and other romantic literature. He turned from Urdu to English, devouring every story book that came into his hands. From novels and other light material he gradually passed on to elementary books on science and philosophy, available in his small school library.

He read avidly, eager for satisfactory replies to the questions which cropped up as the result of his survey of the narrow world in which he lived, and the stray glimpses of the broader one of which he came to know from the graphic accounts contained in the books.

Gopi Krishna was brought up in a strictly religious atmosphere by his mother. In early childhood he followed implicitly the direction of her simple faith, sometimes to the extent of forgoing the sweet last hours of sleep towards dawn in order to go with her to the temple. With rapt attention he listened to the superhuman exploits of Krishna, which his maternal uncle read aloud every evening from his favourite translation of Bhagavad Parana, a famous book of Hindu mythology, containing the story of the incarnations of the god Vishnu in human form. He unquestioningly accepted every impossible and unbelievable incident as truth, filled with a desire to grow into a superman of identical power himself.

His Thirst for Knowledge

At this time of his life, his mind was moulded by degrees in the healthy atmosphere of literature, and by the influence of the great thinkers whose ideas he imbibed from their works. By the time he had completed his first year at college, the impact of treatises on astronomy and natural science had become powerful enough to start him on a path contrary to the one he had followed in childhood. It did not take him long to emerge a full fledged agnostic, full of doubts about the extravagant notions and irrational beliefs of his own religion, to which he had lent complete credence earlier.

Dislodged from the safe harbour which his mother's simple faith had provided for him, his still unanchored mind was tossed here and there. Without reading any standard book on religion or any spiritual literature, to counterbalance the effect of the admittedly materialistic tendency of the scientific works he had gone through, he began to question religion.

Search for Truth

Study of the scriptures and also the literature of other religions did not suffice to quiet the restless element in his nature. Stray passages from the teachings of prophets and the expressions of sages found an echo in the depths of his being, without carrying conviction to his uncompromising intellect. The very fact that the existing world religions, differ radically in their basic tenets, was enough to raise serious doubts in his mind about the authenticity of the claim that the revealed material was a direct communication from God.

Science itself, though extremely useful in many ways and serviceable as a battering ram to smash religion, was not, in his view, fit to rule the domain where faith holds sway. It had no satisfactory explanation to offer for his individual existence or for the infinitely complex creation around him. He thirsted for rationality in religion, for the worship of truth, whatever and wherever that might be. There was no spectacle more painful for him than the sight of a conscientious and intelligent man defending an absurdity simply because it formed an article of his faith. Conversely, the irrationality of those who attempted to squeeze the universe within the narrow compass of reason was no less deplorable. As such, the attempt to explain the cosmos purely in terms of human experience, as interpreted by reason, is an irrational endeavour to solve the riddle of the universe. He wondered whether it would ever be possible to have a religion that possessed an appeal for all mankind, that would be acceptable to one and all. The emphasis laid in some of the books on yoga, both of the east and the west, on the development of psychic powers merely for the sake of gaining success in worldly enterprises, invariably made him wonder at the incongruity in human nature, which, even in the case of a system designed to develop the spiritual side of man, focussed the attention more on the acquisition of visible, wonder-exciting properties of the body or mind, than on the invisible but tranquil possessions of the soul.

Gopi Krishna writes in his autobiography, "The target I had in mind was far higher and nobler than what in the most attractive form I could expect, from the acquirement of the much coveted supernormal gifts. I longed to attain the condition of consciousness, said to be the ultimate goal of yoga, which carries the embodied spirit to regions of unspeakable glory and bliss, beyond the sphere of opposites, free from the desire for life and fear of death. This extraordinary state of consciousness, internally aware of its own surprising nature, was the supreme prize for which the true aspirants of yoga had to strive. The possession of supernormal powers of the usual kind, whether of the body or mind, which kept a man still floundering in the stormy sea of existence, seemed to me to be of no greater consequence than the possession of other earthly treasures, all bound to vanish with life. The achievements of science had brought possibilities within the reach of man. Possibilities no less amazing than what is related to even the most wonderful performances of the supernatural type with but one supreme exception - the miracle of transcendental experience and revelation. It was towards this surpassing state of pure cognition, free from the limitations of time and space, that I desired with all my heart, to soar."

Father's renunciation

His father, an ardent admirer of the ancient ideal of retiring from the busy life of householders at a ripe age, to spend the rest of his life in forest hermitages in uninterrupted meditation, chose for himself a recluse's life, about twelve years after marriage, his gradually formed decision hastened by the tragic death of his first-born son at the age of five. Retiring voluntarily from a lucrative Government post, before he was even fifty, he gave up all the pleasures of life and shut himself with his books, leaving the entire responsibility of managing the household on the inexperienced shoulders of his young wife.

Gopi Krishna's mother suffered terribly, and made many sacrifices to bring up her children. She pinned her hopes on him to lift her economically ruined family out of poverty.

First Failure

At the age of about seventeen, Gopi Krishna who was a merit scholarship holder, failed to pass the house examination at College, which prevented him from appearing in the University that year, creating a revolution in his young mind. He was not so much worried by the failure and loss of one year as by the thought of the extreme pain it would cause his mother, whom he loved dearly.

He racked his brain for a plausible excuse to mitigate the effect of the painful news to her. She was so confident of his success that he simply could not disillusion her. He occupied a distinguished position in College, but instead of devoting time to study, he busied himself in reading irrelevant books borrowed from the library. Too late he realized that he knew nothing about some of the subjects, and had no chance of passing the test. Having never suffered the ignominy of a failure in his school life, and always highly spoken of by the teachers, he felt crestfallen by the thought that his mother would be deeply hurt at his negligence.

Realizing that by his lack of self-control he had betrayed the trust reposed in him, he determined to make up in other ways. In order to curb the vagrant element in his nature and to regulate his conduct it was necessary that he should make a conquest of his mind.

Having made the resolve, he looked around for a means to carry it into effect. Accordingly, he read a few books of the usual kind on the development of personality and mind control. Out of the huge mass of material contained in these writings, he devoted his attention to only two things: concentration of mind and cultivation of will. He took up the practice of both with youthful enthusiasm, directing all his energies and subordinating all his desires to the acquisition of this one object.

He made it a point to assert his will in all things, beginning with smaller ones and gradually extending its application to bigger and more difficult issues, forcing himself, as a penance, to do irksome and rigorous tasks, against which his ease-loving nature recoiled in dismay. He began to feel a sense of mastery over himself, a growing conviction that he would not again fall an easy prey to ordinary temptations.

Growing Aversion to the World

From mind control it was but a step to yoga and occultism. He passed almost imperceptibly from a study of books on the former to a scrutiny of spiritualistic literature, combined with a cursory reading of some of the scriptures. Smarting under the disgrace of his first failure in life, he felt a growing aversion to the world and its hopelessly tangled affairs which had exposed him to this humiliation. Gradually the fire of renunciation began to burn fiercely in him, seeking knowledge of an honorable way of escape from the tension and turmoil of life to the peace and quietude of a consecrated existence.

At this time of acute mental conflict, the sublime message of the Bhagavad Gita had a most profound and salutary effect on him. He was soon exercising his will and practising meditation with the sole object of gaining success in yoga even if that necessitated the sacrifice of all his earthly prospects. His worldly ambition died down. At that young age, when one is more influenced by ideals and dreams than by practical considerations. The effect of yoga on him was twofold: it made him more realistic, and at the same time it steeled his determination to find a happiness that would endure. Often in the solitude of a secluded place or alone in his room he debated within himself on the merits and demerits of the different courses open to him.

Earlier his ambition had been to prepare himself for a successful career in order to enjoy a life of plenty and comfort, surrounded by all the luxuries available to the affluent. Now he wanted to lead a life of peace, immune from worldly fervour and free of contentious strife. "Why set my heart on things", he told himself, "which I must ultimately relinquish, often most reluctandy at the point of the sword wielded by death, with great pain and torture of the mind? Why should I not live in contentment with just enough to fulfil reasonably the few needs imposed by nature, devoting the time I could save thereby to the acquirement of assets of a permanent nature."

The more he thought about the matter, the more strongly he was drawn towards a simple, unostentatious life. The only obstacle to the otherwise easy achievement of his purpose, which he felt was rather hard to overcome, lay in winning the consent of his mother, whose hopes were.shattered by the resolve of his father to relinquish the world, and now her hopes were centred on him. She wished to see him a man of position and substance, able to lift her economically ruined family out of the poverty and drudgery into which it had fallen by the renunciation of his father. Gopi Krishna knew that the knowledge of his plans would cause her pain, and this he wanted to avoid at any cost. At the same time the urge to devote himself to the search for reality was too strong to be suppressed. He was on the horns of a dilemma, torn between his filial duty and his own natural desire to retrieve the decayed fortune of the family on the one hand, and his distaste for the world on the other.

But the thought of giving up his home and family never occurred to him. He would have surrendered everything, not accepting even the path he had selected for himself, rather than be parted from his parents or deviate in any way from the duty he owed to them. Apart from this consideration, his whole being revolted at the idea of becoming a homeless ascetic, depending on the labour of others for his sustenance.

Gopi Krishna writes in his autobiography about this dilemma: "If God is the embodiment of all that is good, noble, and pure, how can He decree that those who have a burning desire, to find Him, surrendering themselves to His will, should leave their families, to whom they owe various obligations. The mere thought of such an existence was repugnant to me. I could never reconcile myself to a life which, in any way, cast a reflection on my manhood, on my ability to make use of my talents to maintain myself and those dependent on me. I was determined to live a family life, simple and clean, devoid of luxury, permitting me to fulfil my obligations and to live peacefully on the fruit of my labour. I wanted ample time and the serenity of mind to pursue calmly the path I had chosen for myself. At that young age it was not my intellect but something deeper and more far-seeing, which, chalked out the course of life I was to follow ever after. I was ignorant at the time of the awful maelstrom of superphysical forces into which I was to plunge blindly. Many years later I was to find an answer to the riddle which has confronted mankind for many thousands of years. I can assign no other reason for the apparent anachronism I displayed at an unripe age, when I was not shrewd enough to weigh correctly all the implications of the step I proposed to take, in adopting an abstemious mode of existence, to strive for selfrealization while leading a family life."

The Beginning of his Spiritual Journey

Gopi Krishna lived with his family in Lahore in those days, occupying the top part of a small three-storied house in a narrow lane, on the fringe of the city. He selected a corner in one of the two small rooms at their disposal, for his yoga practice and went to it every day, with the first glimmer of dawn, for meditation. Beginning with a small duration, he extended the period gradually until he was able to sit in the same posture, for hours without any sign of fatigue or restlessness. He tried to follow all the rules of conduct prescribed for the students of yoga. It was not an easy task for a college youth of his age, without the personal guidance of a teacher, to live up to the standard of sobriety, rectitude, and selfrestraint necessary for success in yoga. But he persisted, adhering, tenaciously to his decision, each failure spurring him on to a more powerful effort, resolved to tame the unruly mind instead of allowing it to dominate him.

The Beginning of his Office Duties

His mother understood, from his altered demeanour and subdued manner, that a far reaching change, had taken place in him. He never felt the need of explaining his point of view to prepare her for the resolution he had taken. Reluctant to cause her the least pain, he kept his counsel to myself, avoiding any mention of his choice when they discussed their future plans.

But circumstances so transpired that he was spared the unpleasant task of making his determination known to his mother. He stood second in a competitive test held for the selection of candidates for a superior Government service, but due to a change in the procedure he was finally not accepted. Similarly the disapproval of his brother-in-law had the effect of annulling a proposal for his joining the medical profession.

Meanwhile a sudden breakdown in his health due to heat, created such an anxiety in the heart of his mother that she insisted on his immediate departure to Kashmir. Receiving at this juncture an offer of appointment to a low salaried clerical post in the Public Works Department of the state, he accepted it readily with her consent and left for the beautiful valley, with no regrets, to take part for the first time in the mechanical drudgery of a small office.

Soon after his mother busied herself in finding a matrimonial alliance for him. Next summer, in the twenty-third year of his life, he was joined in wedlock in the traditional manner to his wife, seven years his junior, belonging to a Pandit family of Baramulla. He startled her on their very first meeting by leaving the nuptial chamber at three o'clock in the morning, for a bath in the nearby riverside temple, returning after an hour to sit in meditation until it was time to leave for work. She admirably adjusted herself to what must have seemed to her unsophisticated mind an eccentric streak in her husband, ready with a warm kangri when he returned from the temple, numb with winter cold. About a year after he was transferred to Jammu to serve his term in that Province, she followed him after a few months with his parents, to both of whom she endeared herself by her sense of duty and unremitting attention to their comfort. Years passed, not without lapses on his part and interruptions due to circumstances beyond his control; but he never lost sight of the goal he had set before himself.

At the time of his awakening in 1937, Gopi Krishna was serving as a clerk under the Director of Education. Prior to that he had been working in the same capacity in the office of the Chief Engineer, from which he had been transferred for questioning an unjust directive from the Minister in charge, who often took morbid pleasure in bullying subordinates. He had no liking for the work in higher office, although he held enviable positions.

He was required to maintain the classified lists and service records of senior grade employees, to formulate proposals for their promotion and transfer, to dispose off their petitions and appeals, and to attend to their requests. In this way he had to deal with a large section of the personnel in both departments, many of whom, frequented the offices regularly, hunting for easy gains, obliging colleagues to do likewise to save themselves from a possible loss.

By the very nature of his duties it was utterly impossible for him to escape comment and criticism of his acts, which influenced the life and career of someone or other. But some of these acts had also the reverse effect of confronting him with his own conscience on behalf of a poor and supportless, but deserving candidate. Because of a desire to deal equal justice in all cases, he was frequently brought in conflict with hidden influences surreptitiously at work behind the apparently spotless facade of Government offices. He had a strange partiality for the underdog, and this trait in his character worked equally against his own interests, and on at least two occasions impelled him to refuse chances of promotion, out of turn, in preference to senior colleagues. Although he worked hard and to the best of his ability, he was more interested in the study and practice of yoga than in his official career. The latter he treated merely as a means to earn a livelihood, just sufficient to meet his simplest needs. Beyond that it had no value or significance for him.

The Awakening

Gopi Krishna describes his awakening in the following words:

One morning during the Christmas of 1937 I sat in a small room in a house on the outskirts of Jammu, the winter capital of the Jammu and Kashmir State in northern India. I was meditating with my face towards the east, where the first grey streaks of dawn fell into the room. Practice had accustomed me to sit in the same posture for hours without discomfort, and as I sat breathing slowly and rhythmically, my attention was drawn towards the crown of my head, contemplating an imaginary lotus in full bloom, radiating light.

I sat unmoving and erect, my thoughts uninterruptedly centered on the shining lotus, intent on keeping my attention from wandering and bringing it back again whenever it moved away. The intensity of concentration interrupted my breathing to such an extent that at times it was barely perceptible. My whole being, was so engrossed in the contemplation of the lotus that for several minutes I lost touch with my body and surroundings. During such intervals I felt as if I were poised in the mid-air, without feeling my body at all. The only object of which I was aware was a lotus of brilliant colour, emitting rays of light. This experience has happened to many people who practise meditation regularly for a length of time, but what happened to me that morning, changed the whole course of my life and outlook.

During a spell of intense concentration I suddenly felt a strange sensation below the base of the spine, at the place touching the seat, while I sat cross-legged on a folded blanket spread on the floor. The sensation was so extraordinary and pleasing that my attention was forcibly drawn towards it. The moment my attention was withdrawn from the point on which it was focused, the sensation ceased.

Thinking it to be a trick of the imagination, I dismissed the matter from my mind. Again I fixed my mind on the lotus, and as the image grew clear and distinct at the top of my head, again the sensation occurred. This time I tried to maintain the fixity of my attention and succeeded for a few seconds, but the sensation, extending upwards, grew intense and was so extraordinary, as compared to anything I had experienced before, that in spite of myself my mind went towards it, and at that very moment it again disappeared. I was now convinced that something unusual had happened for which my daily practice of concentration was probably responsible.

My heart beat wildly, and I found it difficult to bring my attention to the required degree of fixity. After a while I grew composed and was soon deep in meditation. When completely immersed I again experienced the sensation, but this time, instead of allowing my mind to leave the point where I had fixed it, I maintained a rigidity of attention throughout. The sensation extended upwards, growing in intensity, and I felt myself wavering, but with great effort I kept my attention centered round the lotus. Suddenly, with a roar like that of a waterfall, I felt a stream of liquid light entering my brain through the spinal cord.

Entirely unprepared for such a development, I was completely taken by surprise; but regaining self-control, I remained sitting, keeping my mind on the point of concentration. The illumination grew brighter, the roaring louder — I experienced a rocking sensation and felt myself slipping out of my body, entirely enveloped in a halo of light. It is impossible to describe the experience accurately. I felt the point of consciousness that was myself, growing wider, surrounded by waves of light. It grew wider and wider, spreading outward while the body, normally the immediate object of its perception, appeared to have receded into the distance, until I became entirely unconscious of it. I was now all consciousness, without any outline, without any idea of a corporeal appendage, without any feeling or sensation coming from the senses, immersed in a sea of light simultaneously conscious and aware of every point, spread out, as it were, in all directions without any barrier or material obstruction. I was no longer as I knew myself, to be a small point of awareness confined in a body, but instead was a vast circle of consciousness in which the body was but a point, bathed in light and in a state of exaltation and happiness, impossible to describe.

After some time, the circle began to narrow down. I felt myself contracting, becoming smaller, until I again became dimly conscious of the outline of my body and as I slipped back to my old condition, I became suddenly aware of the noises in the street, felt again my arms and legs and head, and once more became my narrow self in touch with my body and its surroundings. When I opened my eyes and looked about, I felt a little dazed and bewildered, as if coming back from a strange land. The sun had risen and was shining warm and soothing. I tried to lift my hands, which always rested in my lap, one upon the other, during meditation. My arms felt limp and lifeless. With an effort I raised them up and stretched them to enable the blood to flow freely.

What had happened to me? Was I the victim of a hallucination? Or had I by some strange vagary of fate succeeded in experiencing the Transcendental? Had I really succeeded where millions of others had failed? Was there, after all, really some truth in the oft repeated claim of the sages and ascetics of India, made for thousands of years and verified and repeated for generations that it was possible to apprehend reality in this life if one practised meditation in a certain way? I could hardly believe that I had a vision of divinity. There had been an expansion of my own self, my own consciousness, and the transformation had been brought about by the vital current that had started from below the spine and found access to my brain through the backbone.

I recalled that I had read long ago in books on Yoga, of a certain vital mechanism called Kundalini, connected with the lower end of the spine, which once roused, carries the limited human consciousness to transcendental heights, endowing the individuals with incredible psychic and mental powers. Had I been lucky enough to find the key to this wonderful mechanism, which was wrapped up in the legendary mist of ages, about which people talked and whispered without having once seen it in action? I tried once again to repeat the experience, but was so weak that I could not collect my thoughts enough to induce a state of concentration. I looked at the sun. Could it be that in my condition of extreme concentration I had mistaken it for the effulgent halo that had surrounded me in the superconscious state? I closed my eyes again, allowing the rays of the sun to play upon my face. No, the glow that I could perceive across my closed eyelids was quite different. The light I had experienced was internal, an integral part of enlarged consciousness, a part of myself.

The bitter aftermath

"I slowly walked downstairs. Saying nothing to my wife, I took my meal in silence and left for work. My appetite was not as keen as usual, my mouth appeared dry, and I could not put my thoughts into my work in the office. I was in a state of lassitude, disinclined to talk. After a while, feeling ill at ease, I left for a short walk in the street, with the idea of finding diversion for my thoughts.

My mind reverted again to the experience of the morning, trying to recreate in imagination the marvellous phenomenon I had witnessed, but without success. My body, felt weak, and I could not walk for long. I took no interest in the people whom I met, and walked with a sense of detachment to my surroundings. I returned to my desk sooner than I had intended, and passed the remaining hours unable to compose my thoughts sufficiently to work.

When I returned home in the afternoon I felt no better, I could not bring myself to sit down and read, my usual habit in the evening. I ate supper in silence, and retired to bed. Usually I was asleep within minutes of putting my head to the pillow, but this night I felt strangely restless and disturbed, and could not reconcile the exaltation of the morning with the depression that sat heavily on me now. I slept fitfully, dreaming strange dreams, and woke up after short intervals in sharp contrast to my usual deep, uninterrupted sleep. After about 3 am, sleep refused to come. I sat up in bed, fatigued, and my thoughts lacked clarity. The time for my meditation was approaching. I decided to begin earlier than usual so that I would not have the sun on me, and so, without disturbing my wife, went upstairs to my study. I spread the blanket and sitting crosslegged as usual, began to meditate.

I could not concentrate with the same intensity as on the previous day, though I tried my best. My thoughts wandered and I felt strangely nervous and uneasy. After repeated efforts, I held my attention at the usual point for some time, waiting for results. Nothing happened and I began to feel doubts about the validity of my previous experience. I tried again, this time with better success. Pulling myself together, I steadied my wandering thoughts, and fixing my attention on the crown, tried to visualize a lotus in full bloom, as was my custom. As soon as I arrived at the usual pitch of mental fixity, I again felt the current moving upward. I did not allow my attention to waver, and again with a rush and a roaring noise in my ears the stream of effulgent light entered my brain, filling me with power and vitality. I felt myself expanding in all directions, spreading beyond the boundaries of flesh, entirely absorbed in the contemplation of a brilliant conscious glow, one with it and yet not entirely merged in it. The condition lasted for a shorter duration than it had done yesterday and the feeling of exaltation was not so strong. When I came back to normal, I felt my heart thumping wildly and there was a bitter taste in my mouth. It seemed as if a scorching blast of hot air had passed through my body. The feeling of exhaustion and weariness was more pronounced than it had been yesterday.

I rested for some time to recover my strength and poise. It was still dark so I had no doubts that the experience was real and that the sun had nothing to do with the internal lustre that I saw. But, why did I feel uneasy and depressed? Instead of feeling exceedingly happy at my luck, why had despondency overtaken me? I felt as if I were in imminent danger of something beyond my understanding and power, something which I could neither grasp nor analyse.

A heavy cloud of depression and gloom seemed to hang over me. I did not feel I was the same man I had been a few days before. A condition of horror, on account of the inexplicable change, began to settle on me, from which I could not make myself free by any effort of my will.

I lost all feeling of love for my wife and children. I had loved them fondly from the depths of my being. The fountain of love in me seemed to have dried up completely. I looked at my children again and again, trying to evoke the deep feeling with which I had regarded them previously, but in vain.

On the third day of the Awakening I did not feel in a mood for meditation and passed the time in bed, not a little uneasy about the abnormal state of my mind and the exhausted condition of my body.

The keen desire to sit and meditate, which had always been present, disappeared suddenly and was replaced by a feeling of horror of the supernatural. At the same time I felt a sudden distaste for work and conversation, with the inevitable result that being left with nothing to keep myself engaged, time hung heavily on me, adding to the already distraught condition of my mind. The nights were even more terrible. I could not bear to have a light on in my room after I had retired to bed. The moment my head touched the pillow, a large tongue of flame sped across the spine, into the interior of my head. It appeared as if the stream of living light, continuously rushing through the spinal cord into the cranium, gathered greater speed and volume during the hours of darkness. Whenever I closed my eyes, I found myself looking into a weird circle of light, in which luminous currents swirled and eddied moving rapidly from side to side. The spectacle was fascinating but awful, invested with a supernatural awe which sometimes chilled the very marrow in my bones.

Sometimes it seemed as if a jet of molten copper, mounting up through the spine, dashed against my crown and fell in a scintillating shower of vast dimensions all around me. I gazed at it fascinated, with fear gripping my heart. Occasionally it resembled a fireworks display of great magnitude. As far as I could look inwardly with my mental eye, 1 saw only a brilliant shower or a glowing pool of light. I seemed to shrink in size when compared to the gigantic halo that surrounded me, stretching out on every side in undulating waves of copper colour distinctly perceptible in the surrounding darkness.

For a few days I thought I was suffering from hallucinations, hoping that my condition would become normal again after some time. But instead of disappearing, as the days went by, the abnormality became more and more pronounced, assuming gradually the state of an obsession. It grew in intensity as the luminous appearances became wilder and more fantastic, and the noises louder and more uncanny. The dreadful thought began to take hold of my mind that I was irretrievably heading towards a disaster, from which I was powerless to save myself.

There was no remission in the current rising from the seat of Kundalini. I could feel it leaping across the nerves in my back and even across those lining the front part of my body from the loins upward. But most alarming was the way in which my mind acted and behaved after the incident. I felt as if I were looking at the world from a higher elevation than that from which I saw it before. It is very difficult to express my mental condition accurately. It seemed as if my cognitive faculty had undergone a transformation and that I had mentally expanded. What was more startling and terrifying was the fact that the point of consciousness in me was not as invariable, nor its conditions as stable, as it had been before. It expanded and contracted, regulated in a mysterious way by the radiant current that was flowing up from the lowest plexus. This widening and narrowing were accompanied by a host of terrors for me.

For weeks I wrestled with the mental gloom caused by my abnormal condition, growing more despondent each day. I felt a distaste for food and found fear clutching my heart the moment I swallowed anything. Often I left the plate untouched. Very soon my whole intake of food amounted to a cup or two of milk and a few oranges.

I was fighting desperately against my own unruly mind. But how long could my resistance last? How long could I save myself from madness creeping upon me? My starving body was becoming weaker and weaker; my legs tottered under me while I walked. My memory became weaker and I faltered in my talk, while the anxious expression on my face deepened.

I made mention of my condition to my brother-inlaw, who came to Jammu during those days on a short business visit. My brother-in-law could not grasp the significance of what I related to him, but said that his guru had once remarked that if by mistake Kundalini were aroused through any other nadi (nerve) except sushumna, there was every danger of serious psychic and physical disturbances, ending in permanent disability, insanity, or death. This was particularly the case, the teacher had said, if the awakening occurred through pingala on the right side of the spine. When the unfortunate man is literally burned to death due to excessive internal heat, which cannot be controlled by any external means.

On the suggestion of someone, I glanced through a couple of books on Kundalini Yoga, translations in English of ancient Sanskrit texts. I could not read even a page attentively, the attempt involving fixity of attention which I was incapable of maintaining for long. The least effort instantly aggravated my condition by increasing the flow of the new born energy into the brain, which added to my terror and misery. I just glanced through the books, reading a line here and a paragraph there.

The description of the symptoms that followed the awakening corroborated my own experience and firmly strengthened my conviction that I had roused the vital force dormant in me. But whether the agony of mind and body that I was passing through was an inevitable result of the awakening I could not be sure. There was, however, one very briefly stated injunction - call it accident or divine guidance - I picked up from the huge mass of material in that very cursory glance. It was to the effect that during the course of the practice the student is not permitted to keep his stomach empty, but should take a light meal every three hours. This brief advice flashed across my brain at a most critical moment.

I was burning in every part of my body while my mind, swayed erratically, unable to keep itself steady even for a moment. Whenever my mind turned upon itself, I always found myself staring with growing panic into the unearthly radiance that filled my head, swirling like a fearsome whirlpool in the night. This happened night after night for months, weakening my will and sapping my resistance until I felt unable to endure the fearful ordeal any longer, certain that at any moment I might succumb to the relentlessly pursuing horror and, bidding farewell to my life and sanity, rush out of the room, a raving maniac. But I persisted, determined to hold on, resolved at the first sign of breaking up to surrender my life rather than lose myself in the ghastly wildness of insanity.

Divine Intervention and Relief

It was in such a frame of mind that the festival of Shivaratri or the night of Shiva, came to pass towards the end of February. As usual my wife had prepared some dainty dishes on the day and gently insisted that 1, too should partake of the food. Not to disappoint her and cast a cloud of gloom on her already anxious mind, I forcibly swallowed a few morsels, then gave up. Immediately I felt a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach, a fiery stream of energy shot into my head. I felt myself being lifted up, expanding and an unbearable terror was clutching at me from every side. I felt a reeling sensation while my hands and feet grew cold as ice, as if all the heat had escaped from them to feed the fiery vapour in the head which had risen through the spinal cord and struck me numb. I was overpowered by giddiness.

I staggered to my feet and dragged myself towards my bed in the adjacent room. With trembling hands I lifted up the cover and slipped in, trying to stretch myself into a position of ease. I was in a terrible condition, burning internally from head to toes, outwardly cold as ice, and shivering as if stricken with ague. What horrified me was the intensity of the fiery currents that now darted through my body, penetrating into every organ. My brain worked desperately, unable to give coherence to my frenzied thoughts. To call in a doctor for consultation in such an state would be absurd. On hearing of my symptoms he would send me to a lunatic asylum. It would be futile on my part to seek help any where for such an affliction. What could I do then to save myself from this torture?

The heat caused such unbearable pain that I writhed and twisted from side to side, while streams of perspiration poured down my face and limbs. But still the heat increased and coursing through my body, seemed to be scorching and blistering the organs and tissues like flying sparks. Suffering the most excruciating torture, I clenched my hands and bit my lips to stop myself from leaping out of bed and crying at the top of my voice. The throbbing of my heart grew more terrific, acquiring such a spasmodic violence that I thought it must either stop beating or be burnt out. Flesh and blood could not stand such strain without giving way any moment. It was easy to see that the body was valiantly trying to fight the virulent poison speeding across the nerves and pouring into the brain.

I racked my distracted brain for a way of escape, only to meet blank despair on every side. The effort exhausted me and I felt myself sinking, dully conscious of the scalding sea of pain in which I was drowning. I tried desperately to rouse myself, only to sink back again, deadened by the torment. After a while, with a sudden, inexplicable revival of strength, marking the onset of delirium, I came back to life with a shred of sanity left, Almightly alone knows how, just enough to prevent me from giving way completely to acts of madness. Pulling the cover over my face, I stretched myself to my full length on the bed, burning in every fibre. At this moment a fearful idea struck me. Could it be that I had aroused Kundalini through pingala or the solar nerve, which regulates the flow of heat in the body and is located on the right side of sushumna? If so, I was doomed. The idea flashed across my brain to make a last-minute attempt to rouse ida, or the lunar nerve on the left side, to activity, thus neutralizing the dreadful burning effect of the devouring fire within.

With my mind reeling and senses deadened with pain, but with all the will-power left at my command, I brought my attention to bear on the left side of the seat of Kundalini, and tried to force an imaginary cold current upward through the middle of the spinal cord. In that extraordinarily extended, agonized and exhausted state of consciousness, I distinctly felt the location of the nerve and strained hard mentally to divert its flow into the central channel. Then, as if waiting for the destined moment, a miracle happened.

There was a sound like a nerve thread snapping and instantaneously a silvery streak passed zigzag through the spinal cord, exactly like the sinuous movement of a white serpent in rapid flight, pouring an effulgent, cascading shower of brilliant vital energy into my brain, filling my head with a blissful lustre in place of the flame that had been tormenting me for the last three hours. Completely surprised at this sudden transformation of the fiery current, darting across the entire network of my nerves only a moment before, and overjoyed at the cessation of pain, I remained absolutely quiet and motionless for some time, tasting the bliss of relief. I soon fell asleep, bathed in light and for the first time after weeks of anguish felt the sweet embrace of restful sleep.

I awoke after about an hour. The stream of lustre was still pouring in my head, my brain was clear, heart and pulse had stopped racing, the burning sensations and the fear had almost vanished, but my throat was still dry, my mouth parched and I found myself in a state of extreme exhaustion as if every ounce of energy had been drained out of me. Exactly at that moment another idea occurred to me that I should eat something immediately. I motioned to my wife, who as usual was lying awake in her bed anxiously watching my every movement, to fetch me a cup of milk and a little bread. Taken aback by this unusual and untimely request, she hesitated a moment, and then complied without a word. I ate the bread, swallowing it with difficulty with the help of the milk and immediately fell asleep again.

I woke up after about two hours, refreshed by the sleep. My head was still filled with the glowing radiance. To my surprise, in this heightened and lustrous state of consciousness, I could distinctly perceive a tongue of the golden flame searching my stomach for food, and moving round along the nerves lining it. I took a few bites of bread and another cup of milk and as soon as I had done so, I found the halo in the head contracting and a larger tongue of flame licking my stomach, as if a part of the streaming energy pouring into my brain was being diverted to the gastric region, to expedite the process of digestion. I lay awake, dumb with wonder watching this living radiance moving from place to place through the whole digestive tract, caressing the intestines and the liver, while another stream poured into the kidneys and the heart. I pinched myself to make sure whether I was dreaming or asleep, absolutely dumbfounded by what I was witnessing in my own body. Unlike the horror I had experienced before, I felt no discomfort now. All that I could feel was a soothing warmth moving through my body as the current travelled from point to point. "

In Quest of the Unknown

The abnormal physiological reactions and the existence and extraordinary behaviour of the luminous vital current in the body are sure to bring, to the uninitiated and the unprepared subjects, a host of terrors in their wake. Of course, Gopi Krishna's extended and terrible suffering were due to the unexpected release of the Powerful vita energy through a wrong nerve, pingala, and that the hot blast coursing through his nerve, and brain cells would have undoubtedly led to death but for the miraculous intervention at the last minute.

It is an undeniable fact that the quest of the unknown was as unmistakable a feature of ancient civilizations, as it is now. There was as persistent search for the spiritual and the supernatural and a strong thirst in countless people for the acquirement of supernormal powers and for tearing aside the veil that hides the beyond.

Considering the colossal nature of the physical and mental metamorphosis that has to be effected as a prelude to spiritual unfoldment, there is nothing to wonder at the accompanying trials and tribulations. The mystic state represents the last and most arduous lap of the journey which began with man's ascent from dust. It terminates with his tasting, after suffering and travail, the incomparable bliss of unembodied existence, not after death, but within his span of life on earth.

During the days following he paid scrupulous attention to his diet, taking only a few slices of bread or a little boiled rice with a cup of milk every three hours from morning until about ten o'clock at night. The amount of food taken each time was small, a few morsels and no more. Gopi Krishna writes:

"I fell asleep enveloped in a radiating and soothing mantle of light. I awoke next morning greatly refreshed in mind, but still extremely weak in body. But my head was clear and the fear that had pursued me had decreased considerably. Time passed, adding to my strength and to the assurance that I was in no imminent mental or physical danger. But my condition was abnormal, and the more I studied it with growing clarity of mind, the more uncertain I became about the outcome. I was in an extraordinary state: a lustrous medium intensely alive and acutely sentient, shining day and night. I had no doubt that Kundalini was now fully awake in me, but there was absolutely no sign of the miraculous psychic and mental powers associated with it by the ancients. I could not detect any change in me for the better. Any sustained effort at concentration invariably resulted in intensifying the abnormal condition.

The halo in my head increased enormously in size after every spell of prolonged concentration, creating a further heightening of my consciousness with a corresponding increase in the occasional sense of fear, which otherwise was present in a very mild form. Perceiving no sign of spiritual florescence and always confronted by the erratic behaviour of an altered mind, I was assailed by grave misgivings about myself.

I searched my brain for an explanation, and revolved every possibility in my mind, to account for the surprising development. At times I was amazed at the uncanny knowledge it displayed of the complicated nervous mechanism. But I could detect no change in my mental capacity. I thought the same thoughts and both inside and out was the same mediocre type of man like millions of others. There was no doubt an extraordinary change in my nervous equipment, and a new type of force was now racing through my system connected unmistakably with the sexual parts, which also seemed to have developed a new kind of activity not perceptible before. The nerves lining the parts and the surrounding region were all in a state of intense ferment, as if forced by an invisible mechanism to produce the vital seed in abnormal abundance, to be sucked up by the network of nerves at the base of the spine, for transmission into the brain through the spinal cord.

What was more precious to me, the deep feelings of love for my family, which had appeared to be dead, stirred in my heart again."

Within a few weeks, Gopi Krishna found himself able to take long walks and to attend to ordinary affairs not requiring too much exertion. His former appetite returned and he could eat without any fear of creating a storm in his interior. He could even prolong the interval between meals without discomfort. By the time his office opened at Srinagar he had gained enough strength and endurance to have the assurance that he could take up his official duties without the risk of aggravating his mental condition or exhibiting a lack of efficiency or any sign of abnormality in his behaviour.

At this time, there took place in Gopi Krishna an inexplicable change. Devout and God-fearing until his abnormal condition, he had lost all feelings of love and veneration for the divine, all respect for the sacred and the holy, and all interest in the scriptural and sacramental. The very idea of the supernatural had become hateful and he did not allow his thoughts to dwell on it even for a moment. From a devotee he became an inveterate enemy of faith and felt scathing resentment against those whom he saw going to or coming from places of worship. He had changed entirely, devoid completely of every religious sentiment.

Shortly before coming to Jammu, I had begun to feel vaguely the dim stirrings of the apparendy dead impulse. This happened usually in the early hours of morning, as if the refreshed state of the brain afforded an opportunity to the vanished urge to make a shadowy appearance for a brief interval. My thoughts usually dwelt on the life stories of certain mystics whose utterances had once made a powerful appeal to me. I had wholly forgotten them during the preceding months and when recalled by accident, the remembrance failed to evoke any warmth. I usually turned my thoughts to other things to avoid thinking of them. Now their memory returned as of old for a moment, the sweetness tinctured with a certain bitterness. They had said nothing clearly of the dread ordeal which they too must have gone through, in one form or another, nothing about the dangers and pitfalls of the path which they too must have travelled and which must be common to reach a goal open to all.

A few weeks after my arrival in Jammu I noticed that my religious ideas, sentiments, and memories were reviving rapidly. I felt again the same deep urge for religious experience and the same all absorbing interest in the supernatural and the mystical. I could sit all by myself brooding on the yet unanswered problem of being and the riddle of my own existence or listen to devotional songs and mystical poetry with undiminished rapture.

Gopi Krishna writes:

I felt and saw nothing extraordinary, in the least approaching the supernatural, and for all practical purposes I was the same man that I had always been. The only difference was that I now saw the world reflected in a larger mental mirror. It is extremely difficult for me to express adequately this change in my cognitive apparatus. The best I can do is to say that it appeared as if an enlarged picture of the world was now being formed in the mind, as if the world image was now presented by a wider conscious surface than before. the dimensions of the shining mist in my head varied constantly, causing a widening and shrinking of consciousness. This rapid alteration in the perceptive mirror, had been the first acutely distressing and completely bewildering feature of my uncanny experience. As time wore on, the extension became more and more apparent, with less frequent contractions, but even in the narrowest state of perception, my consciousness was wider than before.

It appeared as if I were viewing the world through a mental haze, or to be more clear, as if a thin layer of extremely fine dust hung between me and the objects I perceived. It was not an optical defect, as my eyesight was as sharp as ever and the haze seemed to envelop not the sensual but the perceptive organ. The dust was on the conscious mirror which reflected images of the objects. It seemed as if the objects seen were being viewed through a whitish medium, which made them look as if an extremely fine and uniform coat of chalk dust were laid on them, without in the least blurring the outline or the normal colour peculiar to each.

I continued to pass my time until one sunny day, when on my way to the office, I happened to look at the front block of the Rajgarh Palace, in which the Government offices were located. I looked casually at first, then struck by something strange in their appearance, more attentively, unable to withdraw my gaze, and finally rooted to the spot I stared in amazement at the spectacle, unable to believe my eyes. I was looking at a scene familiar to me in one way before the experience, and in another during the last few months, but what I now saw was extraordinary. I was looking at a scene belonging not to the earth but to some fairyland. The ancient, weatherstained front of the building, unadorned and commonplace, and the arch of sky above it, bathed in the clear light of the sun, were both lit with a brilliant silvery lustre that lent a beauty and a glory to both and created a marvellous light and shade effect, impossible to describe. Wonderstruck, I turned my eyes in other directions, fascinated by the silvery shine which glorified everything.

On entering my room, instead of sitting at my desk I walked out on to the verandah at the back, where it was my habit to pass some time daily, for a breath of fresh air, while looking at the fine view open in front. There was a row of houses before me edged by a steep woody slope leading to the bank of the Tawi river, whose wide boulder-covered bed glistened in the sun. On the other side was a hillock with a small medieval fortress on top. I had looked at the same sight almost daily in winter for several years and the picture of it was vivid in my memory. During the past few months, when gazing at it, I found that it too, had assumed grander proportions and had the same chalky appearance which I had noticed in all other objects.

On that memorable day when my eyes swept across the river bed to the hillock, and from there to the sky, trying to take in the whole panorama in one glance. I was utterly amazed at the remarkable transformation. The magnified dimensions of the picture and the slightly chalky appearance of the objects were both present, but the dusty haze before my eyes had vanished. I was gazing fascinatedly at an extraordinarily rich blend of colour and shade, shining with a silvery lustre which lent an indescribable beauty to the scene.

Breathless with excitement, I looked every where to see whether the transformation was noticeable in everything or whether it was an illusion caused by the particularly clear and sunny weather on that day. I looked on, allowing my gaze to linger for some time on each spot, convinced after each intent glance that far from being the victim of an optical illusion, I was seeing a brightly coloured real scene before me, shining with a milky lustre never before perceived.

Wherever I went and whatever I did, I was conscious of myself in the new form, cognizant of the radiance within and the lustrous objectivity without. 1 was changing. The old self was yielding place to a new personality endowed with a brighter, more refined and artistic perceptive equipment, developed from the original one by a strange process of cellular and organic transformation."

Years passed. His health and vitality were completely restored. He could read continuously for long periods without fatigue and even indulge in his favourite pastime, chess, demanding close attention for hours. The diet became normal and the only article to remind him of his experience was a cup of milk in the morning and another in the afternoon with a slice of bread.

Gopi Krishna writes:

With my inner vision I could distinctly perceive the flow of lucent currents of vital energy through the network of nerves in my body. A living silvery flame with a delicate golden tinge was clearly perceptible in the interior of my brain across the forehead. My thought images were vividly bright, and every object recalled to memory possessed radiance in the same manner as in the concrete form.

There were unmistakable indications of abnormal activity in the region of the Kundalini, the moment I slept. It was obvious that by some mysterious process the precious secretion of the seminal glands was drawn up into the spinal tube and through the interlinking nerves transferred into a subtle essence, then distributed to the brain and the vital organs, darting across the nerve filaments and the spinal cord to reach them. The suction was applied with such vigour as to be clearly apparent, and sometimes in the early stages with such violence as to cause actual pain to the delicate parts. I passed hours of agony thinking of this abnormal development in myself. It was easy to see that the aim of this entirely new and unexpected activity was to divert the seminal essence to the head and other vital organs."

Experimenting with Meditation

Years passed. Outwardly Gopi Krishna lived a strictly normal life, permitting no one, save his devoted wife, to have the least glimpse into the mysterious happenings in his interior. Every year he moved with his office to Jammu in winter and to Srinagar in summer. Gradually in the course of a few years, his body attained a degree of hardiness and strength. He became almost his old self again, humbled and chastened by the experience, with a good deal less of ego and a great deal more of faith in the Unseen Arbitrator of human destiny. The only thing he was aware of was a progressively expanding field of consciousness and a slowly increasing brightness of the external and internal objects of perception, which in course of time brought the idea irresistibly home that though outwardly one with the restlessly active mass of humanity, he was a different being inside, living in a lustrous world of brilliant colours of which others had no knowledge whatsoever.

He received an invitation from his relatives in Multan to spend a few days with them during the winter. As it afforded him an opportunity to meet his cousins whom he had not seen for many years, he determined to go there during the Christmas holidays, extending the period by a few more days if necessary. That year, feeling particularly fit and strong, he left his wife at Srinagar and came alone to Jammu to stay with her brother He hired a building in the outskirts of the town where, having a room all to himself and finding all his simple needs well provided for, he felt entirely at home, happy at the change and harbouring not the slightness suspicion that all his cheer would vanish in the horror of another awful trial.

He was happy to find himself in full possession of his normal health with a surplus amount of energy demanding an outlet. From early November he started taking light physical exercises, beginning at the first gray streaks of dawn and ending with the sun just near the horizon. After only a few weeks of the programme the urge to take exercise partially disappeared, yielding place to a strong, almost irresistible desire for meditation. The glow of vibrant health resulting from systematic exertion made him feel reckless, and looking for an avenue to make the best use of his superb physical condition, he felt half inclined to yield to the impulse and try his luck again.

Describing what followed, Gopi Krishna writes:

I began to practise from the first week of December, enjoying the marvellous extension of personality, the enrapturing conscious glow that I had experienced on the first day of the awakening, differing only in the colour of the radiance. I felt a sense of elation and power impossible to describe. It persisted through the day and in my dreams, to the hour of practice, and was replenished again the next morning to last for another day.

Astounded at the results of my effort, I increased the interval by beginning earlier, completely overpowered by the wonder and glory of the vision which, luring away my senses from the harsh world of mingled joy and pain, carried me to supersensory plane. It was indeed a marvellous experience, and I felt my hair literally stand on end when the stupendous vision wore its most majestic aspect. It seemed on every such occasion as if I, or the invisible cognitive self in me, was leaving my safe anchorage in the flesh, and was carried by the strong outgoing tide of a lustrous consciousness, towards an existence of such immensity and power that made everything I could conceive of on earth, tame and trite in comparison. An existence where, untroubled by any idea of bondage or limitation, I found myself lost in an amazing immaterial universe of stupendous extent, and sublime and marvelous nature! There could be absolutely no doubt that I was the exceedingly fortunate possessor of an awakened Kundalini.

But alas, my good luck was exceedingly short-lived. After only a couple of weeks I found that the ferment caused in my mind by the breath-taking experience was so great that I could hardly sleep for excitement and was awake hours before the time of meditation, impatient to induce the blissful condition again as soon as possible. The impressions of the last three days terminating this extraordinary period of excursions into the normally forbidden domain of the supersensible, are indelibly imprinted upon my memory. Before losing myself entirely in the contemplation of an unbounded, glowing, conscious void, I distinctly felt an incomparably blissful sensation in all my nerves, moving from the tips of fingers and toes and other parts of the trunk and limbs towards the spine, where concentrated and intensified, it mounted upwards with a still more exquisitely pleasant feeling to the upper region of the brain. I call it nectar, a name given to it by the ancient savants."

Columns of Fire

"On the last day of this unique experience I had no sleep. My mind was in a state of excitement and exhilaration at this most unexpected and unbelievable stroke of luck. I awoke at my usual time and after feasting my mental eye on the grandeur that was now a reality for me, went to the market to make some purchases. I returned at nearly one o'clock in the afternoon in an unusual state of exhaustion which surprised me. I had not taken my breakfast that day and accordingly attributed my weakness to an empty stomach. Only a few minutes after lying down that night, the stark realization came to me that I had woefully blundered again. My head reeled, my ears buzzed with a harsh, discordant noise, and in place of the usual resplendent glow in my head a wide column of fire was mounting up, shooting out forked tongues of flame in every direction. Trembling with fear, I watched the awful display. Too late I understood what had happened. I had overdone the practice of meditation and strained my already overstimulated nervous system to a dangerous limit. It is needless for me to recapitulate all the incidents and details of the torture that I suffered again on this occasion for more than three months. After passing a restless night I did not feel fit to undertake the long journey to Multan in the morning and was compelled to abandon the idea. Discarding meditation, I again took all care to regulate my diet as I had done the last time. In a few days I noticed a slight relief in the tension in my head, but the insomnia grew worse and I became weaker every day."

Suffering

One day, finding that Gopi Krishna was unable to rise from bed without assistance and losing all hope of survival, he yielded to his brother-in-law to send a telegram to his wife. She arrived in all haste, half dead with anxiety, accompanied by her father and younger son. Gopi Krishna's wife waited on him day and night, attending to his every need, trying to soothe by her presence the internal agony he was suffering, which she could not visualize in all its horror, but the external indications of which she could see every moment.

Growing more desperate with his progressively worsening condition, they ultimately approached a Kashmiri Sadhu staying at Lahore in those days and persuaded him to come to Jammu to see him. He stayed with them for some days studying his condition attentively. Gopi Krishna had now grown extremely weak, almost exhausted, with spindle legs and emaciated arms, a skeleton with gleaming eyes, which made his wife wince every time she looked at him. For more than a month he had starved himself, subsisting on barely half a cup of boiled rice and a cup of milk two or three times a day. The poisoned condition of his nerves caused by acute digestive disturbances had translated itself into an ungovernable fear of eating because of a constant threat of the dreadful consequences.

He would have preferred not to eat anything at all, but knowing well that a completely empty stomach meant a dreadful death, he used all his will power to perform the extremely unpleasant task. Unable to penetrate the cause of his distemper, the learned sadhu, imputing his dislike for food to a whim, asked him to eat in his presence, directing that the full quantity he was accustomed to take be served to him. On his insistence, he swallowed with great difficulty a few morsels more than his usual intake, washing them down with water to overcome the resistance offered by his throat. The moment he did so, a sudden unbearable stab of pain shot across his abdomen and the area round the sacral plexus, attaining such an intensity that he fell prostrate, writhing and twisting. The incident exposed the helplessness of his condition as being entirely beyond human aid and added immensely to the worry of his wife.

The Horror of Death

After some days Gopi Krishna noticed with a shock that he was slightly delirious at times. He had still enough sense to realize that if the condition worsened he was doomed. He had exhausted all his resources, but had failed miserably to find a way out of this condition. Finally, losing every hope of recovery and apprehending the worst, in a mood of utter depression, he prepared himself for death, resolved to end his life before the delirium of madness rendered the task impossible.

Before going to bed that night he embraced his wife with enfeebled, palsied arms for a long time, noting with anguish her pinched face, and with burning tears in his eyes he resigned her to God. Calling both his sons to him by name, he embraced them fondly, clasping each to his breast, entrusting them also to His care for ever and ever. He remembered with sorrow that he could not have a last look at his dear daughter, who was at Srinagar looking after the house. Resigning her also to God and looking for the last time at her image in his mind, Gopi Krishna recovered his breath and stretching his aching body on the bed, closed his eyes, unable to stifle the great sobs that shook his breast.

A Hair-breadth escape

Towards the early hours of dawn, he passed into a sleep-like condition, the first in weeks, and for a brief interval dreamed, a vivid dream in which he saw myself seated at a meal with a half-filled plate, containing boiled rice and a meat preparation common in Kashmir, which he ate with enjoyment. He awoke immediately, the lustre noticed in the dream persisting during wakefulness for some time.

A sudden idea darted across his now almost delirious mind, and calling his wife to his side, he asked her to serve him nourishment every two hours that day, beginning early, each serving to include in addition to milk a few ounces of well-cooked, easy-to-digest meat. Following his instructions to the letter, his wife cooked and served the food to him at the specified intervals, punctual to the minute. He ate mechanically, his arms and hands shaking while carrying the food to his mouth. After finishing the last meal at nine, he felt a slight relief. The tension grew less, yielding to a feeling of extreme exhaustion, followed by a soothing wave of drowsiness until, he felt blissful sleep steal upon him. He slept soundly until morning, enveloped in a glowing sheet of light as usual.

The next day he reduced the interval for his food to one hour, raising it to one-and-a-half hours after a week and adding in the course of this period fruits and a little curd to his diet. Gradually the signs of delirium vanished and the insomnia gave way to an excessive desire for sleep. Refreshed by sleep, his mind grew clearer, escaping by degrees the horror; in spite of the fact that the vital radiation had now assumed a colossal appearance, he began to feel a growing sense of confidence in himself and to hope that if nothing untoward happened he might pass the crisis with safety after all.

As if guided by a newly developed sense of taste Gopi Krishna selected the constituents of every meal, rejecting this article and taking more of that, choosing a combination of acids and alkalis, sugars and salts, fruits and vegetables, in a manner that helped his stomach to digest the enormously increased mass under the stimulation of the new more powerful radiant current without any undesirable reaction. He was now passing through an experience as amazing and weird as any he had passed so far, utterly bewildered by the new direction taken by his singularly functioning organism. No man in his senses would believe such an abnormal performance of his digestive organs possible all of a sudden, turning one from a moderate eater into a voracious one; his stomach, working under the stimulation of a fiery vapour, consumed incredible quantities without causing the slightest adverse effect, as if licked up by fire.

Gopi Krishna writes: "The lustrous appearance of external objects as well as of thought forms and the brilliance of dream images was intensified during the worst period of the last disorder and grew in brightness to such an extent that when gazing at a beautiful sunlit landscape I always felt as if I were looking at a heavenly scene transported to the earth from a distant elysium, illuminated by dancing beams of molten silver. This astounding feature of my consciousness, purely subjective of course, never exhibited any alteration, save that it gained in transparency, brilliance, and penetrative power with the passage of time and continues to clothe me and all I perceive in inexpressible lustre today."

In November 1949 Pandit Gopi Krishna again went to Jammu with the office. He stayed at Jammu with an old friend who was good enough to place a room at his disposal. Gopi Krishna was glad to accept his hospitality, offered with great cordiality and love, as it afforded him several facilities, especially the opportunity to be all to himself, absorbed in the contemplation of the luminous glow within which had begun to assume to some extent the enrapturing character of the vision perceived on the first day of the awakening. Profiting by the awful experience he had undergone previously, he made absolutely no attempt to meditate as before. What he did now was quite different. Without any effort and sometimes even without his knowing it, he sank deeper and deeper within himself, engulfed more and more by the lustrous conscious waves, which appeared to grow in size and extent the more he allowed himself to sink without resistance into the sea of consciousness in which he often found himself immersed. Gopi Krishna writes about this experience:

After about twelve years a curious transformation had occurred in the glowing circle of awareness around my head which made me constantly conscious of a subtle world of life stretching on all sides in which I breathed, walked, and acted without either in any way affecting its all-pervasive homogenous character or being affected by it in my day-to-day transactions in the world. Speaking more clearly, it seemed as if I were breathing, moving, and acting surrounded by an extremely subtle, viewless, conscious void, as we are surrounded by radio waves, with the difference that I do not perceive or feel the existence of the waves and am compelled to acknowledge their presence by the logic of certain facts; in this case I was made aware of the invisible medium by internal conditions, as if my own confined consciousness, transcending its limitations, were now in direct touch with its own substance on all sides, like a sentient dewdrop floating intact in an ocean of pure being without mingling with the surrounding mass of water. During the past months I had on a few occasions noticed this tendency of my mind to turn without encountering any barrier to its expansion within itself, extending more like a drop of oil spreading on the surface of water until, collecting myself with an effort, I came back to my normal state, itself more extensive by far than the original field of consciousness I had possessed before the awakening.

Attempts at writing verse

Towards the third week of December I noticed that when returning from these prolonged spells of absorption which had now become a regular feature of my solitary hours, my mind usually dwelt on the lyrics of my favourite mystics. Without the least idea of trying my skill at poetic composition, when not in an absorbed mood, I made attempts at it, keeping the mystical rhymes which I liked most as models before me. Beyond the fact that I had committed to memory a few dozen Sanskrit verses culled from the scriptures and a few dozen couplets picked up from the works of mystics, I knew nothing of poetry. After a few days of mere playful dabbling I became restless, and for the first time in my life I felt an urge to write verse. Not at all impressed seriously by what I thought was a passing impulse, I put to paper a few stanzas, devoting several hours every day to the task. I wrote in Kashmiri, but after about a fortnight of daily endeavour I found I did not improve. The sterility of my efforts to write in verse, instead of dampening my spirits, urged me to greater efforts, however, and I devoted more and more time to what now became a regular, fascinating hobby for me.

One day Pandit Gopi Krishna offered to accompany his friend home when she rose to depart, intending by the long stroll to rid himself of a slight depression he felt at the time. They walked leisurely, discussing their work, when suddenly while crossing the Tawi Bridge he felt a mood of deep absorption settling upon him until he almost lost touch with his surroundings. Gopi Krishna writes about this experience:

I no longer heard the voice of my companion; she seemed to have receded into the distance though walking by my side. Near me, in a blaze of brilliant light, I suddenly felt what seemed to be a mighty conscious presence sprung from nowhere encompassing me and overshadowing all the objects around, from which two lines of a beautiful verse in Kashmiri poured out to float before my vision, like luminous writing in the air, disappearing as suddenly as they had come.

When I came to myself, I found the girl looking at me in blank amazement, bewildered by my abrupt silence and the expression of utter detachment on my face. Without revealing to her all that had happened, I repeated the verse, saying that it had all of a sudden taken form in my mind in spite of myself, and that accounted for the break in our conversation. She listened in surprise, struck by the beauty of the rhyme, weighing every word, and then said that it was indeed nothing short of miraculous for one who had never been favoured by the muse before to compose so exquisite a verse on the very first attempt with such lightning rapidity. I heard her in silence, carried away by the profundity of the experience I had just gone through.

The more intently I examined the problem the more surprised I became at the deep meaning of the production, the exquisite formation, and the highly appealing language of the lines. On no account could I claim the artistic composition as mine, the voluntary creation of my own deliberate thought. I reached my place while still deeply absorbed in the same train of thought and, still engrossed, sat down for dinner. I took the first few morsels mechanically, in silence, oblivious to my surroundings and unappreciative of the food in front of me, unable to bring myself out of the state of intense absorption into which I had fallen, retaining only a slender link with my environment like a sleepwalker instinctively restrained from colliding with the objects in his path without consciously being aware of them. In the middle of the meal, while still in the same condition of semi-entrancement, I stopped abruptly, contemplating with awe and amazement, which made the hair on my skin stand on end, a marvellous phenomenon in progress in the depths of my being. Without any effort on my part and while seated comfortably on a chair, I had gradually passed off, without becoming aware of it, into a condition of exaltation and self-expansion similar to that which I had experienced on the very first occasion, in December 1937, with the modification that in place of a roaring noise in my ears there was now a cadence like the humming of a swarm of bees, enchanting and melodious, and the encircling glow was replaced by a penetrating silvery radiance, already a feature of my being within and without.

The marvellous aspect of the condition, lay in the sudden realization that although linked to the body and surroundings I had expanded in an indescribable manner into a titanic personality, conscious from within of an immediate and direct contact with an intensely conscious universe, a wonderful inexpressible immanence all around me. My body, the chair I was sitting on, the table in front of me, the room enclosed by walls, the lawn outside and the space beyond including the earth and sky appeared to be most amazingly mere phantoms in this real, interpenetrating and all-pervasive ocean of existence which, to explain the most incredible part of it as best I can, seemed to be simultaneously unbounded, stretching out immeasurably in all directions, and yet no bigger than an infinitely small point. From this marvellous point the entire existence, of which my body and its surroundings were a part, poured out like radiation, as if a reflection as vast as my conception of the cosmos were thrown out upon infinity by a projector no bigger than a pinpoint, the entire intensely active and gigantic world picture dependent on the beams issuing from it. The shoreless ocean of consciousness in which I was now immersed appeared infinitely large and infinitely small at the same time, large when considered in relation to the world picture floating in it and small when considered in itself, measureless, without form or size, nothing and yet everything.

It was an amazing and staggering experience for which I can cite no parallel and no simile, an experience beyond all and everything belonging to this world, conceivable by the mind or perceptible to the senses. I was intensely aware internally of a marvellous being so concentratedly and massively conscious as to outlustre and outstature infinitely the cosmic image present before me, not only in point of extent and brightness but in point of reality and substance as well.

Warned by the ill effects that followed my excessive absorption in the superconscious at Jammu, I tried and gradually succeeded in exercising restraint and moderation on the supersensory activity of my mind by keeping myself engaged in healthy temporal pursuits and the work of the organization.

Pandit Gopi Krishna died on 31st July, 1984. In the light of Pandit Gopi Krishna's experiences he himself had started to search the life of geniuses and enlightented persons in history for clues of kundalini awakening. He proposed an organisation to be erected to conduct scientific research on the matter. The research should, according to him, consist of research on biological processes in the body, psychological and sociological research of living persons. According to him the lives of historical persons should also be investigated.

Books by Gopi Krishna

• Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man
• The Awakening of Kundalini
• The secret of yoga

Selected Poems of Gopi Krishna [See All]

Excerpt from The Wonder That Is Consciousness

What I aver may seem to you, perhaps,
Blasphemous, unbelievable or odd,
For we are guilty of a common lapse,
When we forget that Consciousness is God;
When we ignore that what we see without
And our self inside, with no room for doubt,
Are diverse facets or, say, different shades
Of One Eternal Substance which pervades
The whole creation, everywhere the same
Beneath the varied dress of form and name.

All that we know: our learning, science, art
And all our universe of earths and suns
Are of a wondrous magic play a part,
Which change in consciousness makes clear at once,
When dumb with awe and wonder the ego sees
The world turned topsy turvy and the soul,
In one incredible moment of release,
From but a point become the Cosmic Whole.

From immemorial times we have deceived
Ourselves into the false belief that all
Impressions of the objective world received,
Which on the observing mind through senses fall,
Come from external objects and that we
Are transient shadows, born to live and die,
To come into being and then cease to be,
To act a while and then unmoving lie,
And that the Cosmic Ocean will not stop
Its movement for the loss of our one drop.

This most misleading and fallacious view
Has made mankind oblivious to a Truth
Which only can persuade her most to live
In peace and happiness and render smooth
Her path towards the Target she must win,
Which is: to find Divinity within.

Our consciousness is neither born nor dies
Nor after nascence does it e’er grow old,
Nor like a waif cast on the earth it tries,
A while, to enrich itself with power or gold,
But, on the contrary, this whole display,
This whole stir and this multitude of things
Emerge from it alone, like, let us say,
The lavish dream-scenario which all springs
From mind alone without external aid,
Appearing real for a while to fade.

It is not we who come into the world,
But, strange to say, the world is born in us
Before the day we in the womb lie curled,
And e’en before the birth of primary cells
We come into the orbit of a dream,
Dreamed by the Eternal Mind, or play a role
Assigned by a Cosmic Sun to a tiny beam
To act in Life’s Drama as a soul.

Only a wrong assessment makes us doubt:
The world is inside us and not without,
And lost in this delusion mortal life
Becomes one long drawn night of ceaseless strife,
Of fear, contention, rivalry and hate,
Of passion and desire which ne’er abate,
But as decay sets in our earthly mould
With age, they gain on mind a firmer hold.

So our main effort oft becomes to gain
The highest profit from our brawn and brain,
To rise above our rivals in the field
In harvesting a more abundant yield,
To make the period of our stay on earth
A sunny day of comfort, ease and mirth:
At death to leave a fortune and a name
When, like a gambler who has lost the game,
We end in suffering e’er assailed by doubt
And e’er in woeful ignorance about
The Truth: that ‘tis not Consciousness which dies
But the illusive veil before our eyes.

Not all the learned savants, now engaged
On consciousness-research, to ascertain
The plot and action of the drama staged
And how it is enacted by the brain,
Can e’er contrive in e’en a hundred years
To lift the veil this World-Enchanter wears.
This great exploit, to match with nature’s plan,
Must be himself performed by every man.

To be alive, self-conscious and to know
That we exist to observe this baffling show
Is such a precious, such a most unique
Possession that no thinker, save one weak
In intellect and observation, can
Assign a secondary role to man
And not the primary, for this boundless Whole
Is but a veiled reflection of his soul,
Which Consciousness itself does build and plan
To see, perplexed, the Play as mortal man.

Where is the cosmos, what source lies behind
The hasty verdicts of the agnostic mind?
Wherefrom arise ideas, conceptions, views
And all the mass of learning, stories, news
With which the world is flooded in our day?
Whence comes what we believe or what we say?

And where is birth, where death and all our fears
That our temporal span is of some years?
Where are the sun, the moon, the wind and tide,
Those shining starry crowds which long abide?
Where are the wits and thinkers new or old,
Whence came the thought they did or now unfold?
And where is sorrow, sickness, suffering, pain
Or joy and cheer, love, beauty, loss or gain?
This is a point one ne’er can too much stress:
They all originate from consciousness!

Our mirage of the world, our personal views
And our experience come from that which lives,
Which knows, imagines, calculates and thinks,
And one observed fact with another links
To build the extremely complex world of thought
Which all exists, but where? We know it not.

Perhaps you hardly will believe me, when
I say what might shock nine men out of ten,
That this immense display, this Cosmic show
We carry all with us where’er we go!
The external world and our internal thought
depend for their appearance on our mind.
What of them would survive if mind were not,
Can any one imagine, guess or find?
We are mistaken too when we concede
That subtler forms of matter form the base,
They too are products of the mind, indeed,
As, save it, who can their existence trace?

The argument that one, when fast asleep,
Does not observe the changes that are wrought
Round him, is shallow and does not go deep
Enough, for it again is wakeful thought
Which marks the changes and maintains the link
Between what one mind and the other think.
And even this point and counter-argument
Are but a mental product and event,
Because, save mind itself who can refute
That it of all existence is the root?

The talk about brain cells and genetic code
And all the carefully made-up bookish load
Is again an endless round of forms and names
Which suits the learned, who love wordy games,
For all whatever we know for sure or guess
Must e’er come from the spring of Consciousness.

E’en after a thousand years what e’er we know,
What e’er we prove or still unproven show,
Shall not out of a different seed-bed grow,
But from the same mysterious spring-head flow.
What e’er the future holds, what e’er is past
Nowhere save in the mould of mind is cast.

There is a twist in thinking here which needs
Correction, as it to grave error leads,
Matter on one, mind on the other side—
Who, of them, can between the two decide?
Save mind? And can you name a greater fool
Than one who, made to judge or bade to rule,
Would yield his chair or abdicate his throne
To those he judges—dead matter, earth and stone!

The source behind awareness, thought and will,
Desire, emotion, passion, logical skill,
Behind the world of knowledge, learning, wit,
Gathered with toil through ages, bit by bit,
Which, as supposed, does not exist in books,
But in the searching mind that in them looks,
To catch from man-made symbols what was said
By yet another mind, though long since dead,
Of worlds of past experience, form and name,
As flame is lit up by another flame.

Save mind there is no granary to store
What happens now or what transpired before,
The symbols used none else save it can read,
And like condensed material in a seed
That bears a tree, the invented symbols hold
Vast stores of knowledge but it can unfold.

Where then are our achievements highly praised,
The metropolises built, and mansions raised,
The amazing harvest of the industrial age
That has turned earth into a flood-lit stage?
And where the bloody wars and massacres
Which make us fear that we are growing worse?

Will not this knowledge also of our times,
Our great inventions, learning, wars and crimes,
Become known to our progeny at last
Through relics and the writings of the past?
To ponder often as we ponder now
Upon the achievements of our long since dead
Precursors, their ambition, hate and love
Which now exist nowhere save in our head.

Incredible though it seems, it is a fact
That Prana and pure consciousness react
On one another to produce the myth
Of this stupendous world we battle with.

Still more incredible is the further fact
That with restraint of passions, righteous act,
Devotion, fellow-feeling, mental calm
And thought sublime, which all act like a balm,
Prana in faint degrees works out a change
And, much enhanced in power, brings in its range
Of observation new domains of life,
As different from this world of stress and strife
As sky is from the earth, sunshine from gloom,
Or as from winter is the spring in bloom.

Then consciousness a wondrous aspect wears,
So lofty and sublime that all our fears
And doubts about ourselves dissolve at once,
As if illumined by a hundred suns
Of knowledge to be assured the Vision seen
Is That which will be, is and e’er has been;
The Source Eternal of all that is known—
The world—of that too by which it is shown—
The mind—and process by which this is done:
The whole scheme of creation in but One.

In this amazing, radiant Presence all
The staggering worlds, which awe us and enthrall,
Become a ghostly shadow seen at night;
A far-off melting cloud in sunshine bright,
While mind, with ego vastly whittled down,
In mute astonishment sees itself drown
Into one all-enfolding Life sublime,
Only pure consciousness, devoid of time
And space, One all-embracing world of love
And joy not found on earth or heaven above.

Let not the thought that millions, all like you,
Reflect the light of mind, as drops of dew
In countless mini-forms reflect the sun,
And of this multitude you are but one:
Let also not the thought that countless dead,
Since man arose on earth, when once the thread
Of life was broken, ne’er again returned
To visit former scenes, where they had burned
With love and hate, again to ignite the fire
Which ne’er rekindles once it does expire,
Depress or pain you, for you ne’er e’en once
Were born or died, nor had a sire nor sons.
Unborn, eternal, your Self is the cream
Of all creation, now lost in a dream.

Let not the thought that you are not endowed
With beauty, strength or wit, that make one proud,
Nor are pre-eminent nor have wealth nor name,
Nor gift nor knowledge nor can light the flame
Of love, disturb your mind for there is naught
On earth which you lack now or e’er had not.
You are the Spring-head, though you know not it,
Of all the riches, talent, charm and wit.

[Excerpt taken from The Riddle of Consciousness]