This book is emphatically not a guide to the awakening of Kundalini. On the other hand, there is an aura encircling all rightful experiments and experiences, which can be conveyed even through the medium of print. This aura not only clears the outlook of the earnest student of life, but also helps to raise his consciousness to the more rarefied levels where the Eternal dwells less veiled by the shadows of time.

Glimpses of Kundalini in action are vouchsafed the student who is content to watch and not to grasp. Let the descriptions be read lightly, not with the mind but with the intuition. Thus, however fantastic they may seem, yet the reader will perceive that they are fantastic not because they are untrue but because they are too true.

Is there a Kundalini chain linking the constituent elements of our own solar system, and another chain linking together the various solar systems? Surely so, and speculation is no less interesting as to the nature of the centres of a solar system and as to their vivification by Cosmic Kundalini. To understand this tremendous vista it is necessary to learn how to arouse and direct Kundalini to the various centres of the vehicles of a human being.

Can the brain stand the pressure? This and the sex danger are, perhaps, the principal questions with regard to the arousing of Kundalini. Extreme circumspection is vital, for the Serpent-Fire does not discriminate. It consumes. It tends to flow along the lines of least resistance, and sometimes such lines may lead downwards and not upwards, with indescribably disastrous effect.

Wherever there is life, there is Kundalini more or less awake and awakening. But the conscious direction and handling of its power is another matter altogether. One of the effects of Kundalini is the intensification of the sense of Unity. A breaker-down of barriers between the various layers and states of consciousness, Kundalini is also the breaker of barriers between the individual himself and the larger Self without.

In the beginnings of this process dizziness is noticeable, which is perhaps the physical expression of a new relativity, of a new adjustment, other worlds than the physical beginning to be open to a gaze which the individual has not yet learned to control. Sensitiveness is enormously increased, making the individual a kind of sensitive plate upon which, for example, people in the outer world imprint themselves, so that in a flash he knows their natures, especially the high lights of quality and the low lights of defect.

The heart of the earth is one pole of Kundalini, the Sun is the other. Now the awakening of Kundalini is tantamount to making oneself the Rod between the two. In one sense one ever is a Rod, but the Rod is not yet alive, awake. It is asleep or dreaming, and the Fire itself slumbers. To awaken Kundalini is to fan the Fire into a consuming flame, burning, purifying, energizing, making conscious contact with the Universal Fire.

Whether in fact clairvoyance, etc., arises or not, though in course of time it will, is of far less importance than the definite establishment of the higher consciousness—Buddhic and later Nirvanic—in the waking consciousness, which is the high purpose of the arousing of Kundalini. This means an extraordinary vivification of Intuition—pure knowledge undistorted by the personal equation. One even feels inclined to tell some of one's friends, if they ask, quite frankly what they need.

It seems as if Kundalini can be sent forth from any centre though preferably from the solar plexus centre or from the centre between the eyebrows. We thus begin to realize that the great centres of the body are the main distributors of force. It is not a matter of eyes or hands or feet, but of centres.

In some mysterious way Kundalini remains for ever individual to its recipient, however much it may always be inseparable from the Universal Fire whence it issues forth. In some mysterious way it partakes of the nature of the Permanent Atom, cannot disintegrate, and forms the eternal Fire of the evolving individuality.

Kundalini is music as well as colour. It is a throbbing majesty of sound and a rainbow of colour, Kundalini sings with the voice of all that lives. In the singing is heard the voice of the Unity of Life, and in the colours is felt the Warmth of Life.

The student finds himself on a stream of Kundalini, and moves on the stream towards time's beginnings so far as this particular evolution is concerned. He moves back and back and back, until he finds himself strangely immersed in the majestic profundities of the opening of a new era of life.

EXPLANATION

N this brief account of a number of experiments and experiences with Kundalini, called the Serpent-Fire for its seemingly tortuous movements and its triple power of creating, preserving and destroying-regenerating —a veritable trinity of activity within a mighty stream of life —I have deliberately refrained from any comparison between statements contained in responsible Kundalini literature, scattered, few and veiled as these must necessarily be, and the conclusion to which the experiments and experiences seemed at the time to lead. I want these experiments and experiences to give their own atmosphere, uncorroborated and standing by themselves.

All statements regarding Kundalini should always be treated with the greatest reserve, partly because the personal equation of the experimenting individual looms very large — Kundalini acting very differently in different cases — and partly because nothing ought to appear in print which might give even the slightest assistance in the development of a power which destroys ruthlessly when it is sought to be awakened before its due time.

On the other hand, there is an aura encircling all rightful experiments and experiences which can be conveyed even through the medium of print; and I venture to think that this aura not only clears the outlook of the earnest student of life, but also helps to raise his consciousness to the more rarefied levels where the Eternal dwells less veiled by the fleeting, but nonetheless relatively impenetrable, shadows of time.

KUNDALINI AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE is emphatically not a guide to awakening the forces of Kundalini. That is for the individual and for those Elder Brethren whom he will sooner or later meet when he has outgrown the nursing of the ordinary everyday circumstances of the outer world. The outer world can help an individual up to a certain point. It may see him through his school career. But at last he begins to have learned the lessons the outer world can teach him, and thus becomes ready for life's more advanced courses in the inner worlds. Kundalini is a lesson in such inner worlds, part of the curriculum which prepares him for his Master's degree.

KUNDALINI AN OCCULT EXPERIENCE, an experience in the as yet little known field of the Serpent-Fire, is published far more for the sake of the mystery of the adventure than for the sake of any precise knowledge which may have been gained. Indeed, the book is not published for the sake of a knowledge of Kundalini, but for the sake of introducing its readers to the fact that Kundalini is a mystery, but an intriguing and fascinating mystery. All knowledge, for true understanding, must at first be a mystery as well as an experience. It should be approached softly and with bated breath, reverently, with joyous eagerness, and with the sense of being in the midst of a great beyond. All true knowledge is a mystery for ever and ever, for however much we may know, or think we know, there is always the wondrous more drawing us onwards and upwards, giving more beautiful worth to that which is already ours, and making our pathway to Divinity an ever-increasing delight.

I am hoping that the discerning reader will rest content with envelopment in provocative mystery, will be satisfied with what I hope will prove a comfortable stretching of his consciousness so that he hardly knows where he is, so that in his very waking consciousness he receives intimations of certain larger states, of peaks in those Himalayan heights, which await his conquering. It is sometimes good when one is in darkness to be reminded of the light which some day shall pierce it. Let the reader lose his time-imprisoned self in the mystery of Kundalini as he should be constantly losing this time-self in many another mystery. Thus losing himself he shall gradually learn himself to adventure forth into all mysteries, and at last to hear the Silver Voices chanting to him of his Ascension.

To dwell in knowledge is beautiful and helpful, but no less beautiful and helpful is it to dwell in mystery, for in mystery Gods learn to know themselves as God.

Let us first be flotsam of the depths, floating peacefully and safely on their calm and sheltering surfaces, ere we seek to penetrate their profundities against their righteously rebellious shatterings, designed not to protest but to test worthiness to seek. Let us know them face to face in peace, before we plunge into the storms and cataclysms which make us one with them.

I hope that a perusal of this little book will at least cause, in each understanding reader, an adjustment of his individual consciousness to a larger consciousness of which it is a part. Such adjustment should be in the nature of an expansion, a sense of happy stretching, of exhilaration, of a joyous ascent into the mountains of his being, of an exploration of himself such as he has probably not so far undertaken.

Finally, I apologize for all redundancies and obscure wordings. The redundancies were inevitable, since the experience sometimes repeated itself, and I have thought it better to leave the experience in its original form of translation into outer world language. The obscure wordings result from the endeavour to express that which to the student was inexpressible. These obscure wordings I have also left untouched.

G. S. A.