VI PSYCHOLOGY OF YOGA – XXV ANALYSIS OF KUNDALINI - XXV VEDIC DISCOVERY OF KUNDALINI The first reference to kundalini as a serpent of mystic significance is found in a small Rigvedic hymn. Had the human been at least of the average size, it would have yielded material quite sufficient for vindicating its proper position in the context of yoga as it came to yield in the later Upanishads and works on Tantra, Hatha-Yoga, etc. The hymn consists of three mantras However, the ideas it bears are of great importance from the viewpoint of yoga. The seer as well as the deity of the hymn is one and the same i.e. as Sarparajni, the queen of serpents, and is also characterised as Brahmavadini, like Vagambhrini. This title has been accorded only to those female seers who have presented themselves as the most intimate exponents of the Highest Reality, having played the dual role of the seer and the deity in the form of Atman, the Self. Thus, Sarparajni, the serpentine seer of the hymn is also a Brahmavadinis. The hymn reads as follows: “This variegated Bull has moved towards us and has sat facing the mother while on way to His Father in the Heaven. His illumination moves inward in the course of breathing in and breathing out while she looked towards the magnificent in the Heaven. Throughout all the thirty yamas (of forty-eight minutes each) day and night the word is being offered to the sun, moving on his way like a bird on its wings.” - Rigveda X.189.1-3 It is to be observed that from the within these details delivered by the queen of serpents, the sun also has been interspersed into them along with Atman as its deity. This can be understood in the light of the following Rigvedic statement: “Surya is the Atman, Self, of the mobile and immobile both.” -- Rigveda, I.115.1 This is so on account of everything on the earth, including she herself, being dependent on the sun in the same way as the self is mainstay of everything mobile or immobile. Even breathing in and breathing out of organic beings is dependent on Him as the air we draw in and throw out is a product of Him. This has been referred to in the second mantra by the words pranat and apanati. It is through unification of these two processes that the queen of serpents standing for the Mother can reach the heaven where the sun, as the Father has reached already from her proximity, as is mentioned in first mantra. She as the illumination of the Father is said to be moving from within looking upward to meet the Father in the Heaven in all his magnificence. Offering of Vak twenty-four hours to the Father in the Heaven through the process of breathing in and breathing out amounts to what is known as ajapa japa and which stand for the number of our breath counted as 21,600 during the time of a day and night with the natural sound produced in course of breathing in as “so” and breathing out as “ham” and combining to form the sacred mantra so’ham and getting turned into hassa when reversed. There is nothing surprising in this interpretation since this sacred mantra so’ham is available since as early a date as the Isha Upanishad which is almost a verbatim borrowed from the last chapter of the Yajurveda Samhita and has been seen by primeval seer Dadhyan Atharvana whose antiquity is vindicated by reference to him as many eleven times in the Rigveda and that, too, as a legendary figure. The only difference between the Samhita’s and the Upanishadic versions of the mantra is that while the former reads it as so’savaham, the latter reads it as abridged as so’ham. While commenting on the phrase pranadapanati of the second mantra of the hymn, Sayana mentions the mukhya prana as the basis of both these functions as also that of the remaining three kinds of functions of vitality, vyana, samana and udana. Indeed, it is on the basis of these functions of the vital that the sense organs also function. The sense-mind’s coordination of the functions of the senses also, therefore, is very much dependent on the function of the mukhya prana. The combined form of the breaths, prana and apana, travelling in its purified form along the susmana nerve is also called mukhya prana and has been designated as such as early as in the Chandogya Upanishad. Sayana refers to the force concerned as moving inside the nerve by the power of His form of the prana as an individualised form of the force of the sun in the following words: “The lusture of this sun moves inside the body in the form of the mukhya- prana.” Chandogya Upanishad elucidates this through the story of quarrel between the prana on the one hand and the senses on the other and leaving the body one after the other so as to decide the superiority of anyone from amongst them. The result of the trial was that while on suspension of the function of the senses one by one, the person on whom the trial was being conducted remained surviving almost intact except for deficiency in regard to the sense organ suspended at the moment, on prana’s stopping its function, all the senses became apprehensive of their death along with the death of the person concerned and hence they could not but admit the superiority of the prana over all of them. This is also obvious from the same Upanishad’s story concerning the basis of meditation on the most celebrated syllable Om, as discussed already. While the meditation conducted on the basis of the senses, vak and manas failed on account of hindrances presented by the demons, the same when conducted through the mukhya prana became an astounding success. This mukhya prana is, thus, the main current of vitality in the individual diversifying itself in the form of the ten pranas on the one hand and the ten organs of sense and action on the other in ordinary course of life with its centre in the muladhara cakra but when reintegrated, it assumes the form of the kundalini, remaining asleep in that centre and allowing only its partial energy to make operative the pranas and organs to carry on their normal functions. When, however, its total force gets integrated through special yogic effort, known as awakening of the kundalini, the latter moves upward along the nerve known as susumna to get merged eventually in its original source, that is, the Supreme Being. Secondly, it is also important to observe that in the hatha yogic and tantric tradition the power of kundalini is supposed to lie asleep in the muladhara cakra has been conceived as a serpent. By virtue of representing the primeval force of vitality, it can very well be taken as the queen of all serpents, as she has been done in the Rigvedic hymn quoted above. In the third place, the power of kundalini has intimately been associated with the breaths working in the body of the individual, particularly in the form of the inward moving breath called prana and the outward moving one known as apana. These conversely moving current of breath when get harmonised mutually so as to move uniformally from the muladhara cakra, their meeting point, upward through the innermost nerve of the human body known as susumna, kundalini gets awakened from her sleep and begins to rise upward on her journey towards the highest of the cakras known as sahasrara, thousand-petalled, to meet her supernal consort, figuratively described as Shiva sitting at the top of the Creation, i.e., the heaven, div, dyu, etc. In fact, kundalini is the force of the vital derived apparently from the sun and embodied in the individual but really it is the force of the Divine Itself and hence becomes eager to meet the Divine seated in the sahasrara at the top of the human body. This concept of the force, as represented figuratively by the kundalini has its root in the Vedas themselves, gets confirmed by a mantra of the Shvetashvatara Upanishad recounting how a group of seers inquisitive to understand the nature of the Ultimate Reality, Brahman, sought to satisfy their curiosity at the congregation of them but failed to reach the conclusion in spite of several propositions having emerged in course of the discussion Finally, they resolved to decide it through meditation and after going into the same quite for long, what they realised is as follows: “They took to the yoga of meditation and saw the Self-power of the Divine hidden inside Her own attributes and supervening all those causal principles of creation such as Time, Atman, etc., and their aggregates (as suggested by the seers during the discussion).” -- Shvetashvatara Upanishad I.3 Here ‘the Self-power of the Divine hidden inside Her own attributes’, is, indeed, the kundalini itself stated in abstract philosophical terms in place of the actual yogic enclosed in the figurative. It is also important to note that the kundalini has a close bearing on “word” as the source of the highest form of it known as the para serving as the basic stuff of its lower grades known respectively as pashyanti, madhyama and vaikhari. A veiled reference to it is also to be met with in Katha Upanishad. The mantra concerned reads a follows: “There is a dwarf, indwelling the mid of the body, who raises the prana upward and pushes the apana downward and is meditated on by all the gods.” -- Katha Upanishad V.3 The dwarf referred to here as the controller of the prana and the apana as also that of the representatives of the organs of sense and action is no one else but that central force of vitality known as the kundalini. To be continued… Source of synopses: Yoga From Confusion to Clarity, Psychology of Yoga, Vol. 2 (published in 2010) written by Professor Satya Prakash Singh and Yogi Mukesh (© Authors)
Posted on: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 14:02:31 +0000
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