Gopi Krishna (yogi)

Gopi Krishna (1903-1984) of Kashmir was yogi, mystic, teacher, social reformer, and writer. His autobiography Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man became an interanational sensation.

He chose the path of yoga due to his circumstances. 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 now pinned all her hopes for success on her only son.

But he failed to pass the examination to enter college, and he now took a lowly job and established his family. He also started on a discipline of meditation to discover who he was. After having been engaged in this for many years, he had his first Kundalini experience at the age of 34, which he describes thus in his autobiography:

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 my self-control, keeping my mind on the point of concentration. The illumination grew brighter and brighter, the roaring louder, I experienced a rocking sensation and then 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 corporeal appendage, without any feeling or sensation coming from the senses, immersed in a sea of light simultaneously conscious and aware at every point, spread out, as it were, in all directions without any barrier or material obstruction. I was no longer myself, or to be more accurate, no longer as I knew myself to be, a small point of awareness confined to 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 exultation and happiness impossible to describe.

Slowly he gained an international reputation with students from far and wide. He wrote many books and traveled all over the world giving lectures. He came to feel the kundalini experience underlie all (or most) religions that started with a personal revelation. He could see kundalini iconography in cultures worldwide, from ancient Egypt to Quetzacoatl to the cadueus of Mercury, and believed there was a common basis, and that he had be granted entry to this vision. Traditionalists generally are skeptical of this overarching vision.

Bibliography

Gopi Krishna, Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man, Shambhala Books, 1970. autobiography
---- The Dawn of a New Science, New Delhi: Kundalini Research and Publication Trust, 1975.
---- Yoga: A Vision of its Future, New Delhi: KRPT, 1978.
---- Secrets of Kundalini in Panchastivai New Delhi: KRPT, 1976
---- The Awakening of Kundalini, New York: E P Dutton, 1975.
---- The Real Nature of Mystical Experience, New York: New Concepts Publishing, 1978.
---- The Shape of Events to Come, New York: KRPT, 1979. A warning of impending nuclear holocaust, in essay and verse.
---- The Riddle of Consciousness, New York: Kundalini Research Foundation, 1976. ISBN 0917776003, entirely in verse.
---- The Biological Basis of Religion and Genius, New York: Harper and Row, intro. by Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker, which is half the book, 1971, 1972.
---- The Secret of Yoga, New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
---- Higher Consciousness: The Evolutionary Thrust of Kundalini, New York: Julian Press, 1974.

Those books cover alot of the same ground.

William Irwin Thompson, Passages abut Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary Culture, New York: Harper and Row, 1974. one chapter describes his interaction with Gopi Krishna.