Table of Contents

The Indian Tradition
Modern Science
The Dual Aspect of Kundalini
Paradigms of Reality
Modes of Consciousness and Orders of Reality
The Universal Aspect of Kundalini
The Individual Aspect of Kundalini
A Definition of Kundalini

During a podcast in 2025 I was asked to give a definition of Kundalini. Although I had been in the habit of using phrases like ‘spiritual force/energy’ or ‘a psycho-physiological mechanism in the body’, I was never satisfied with any of these definitions as being able to capture the essence of Kundalini in a logical, complete, and accurate way.

There are two main sources of information on Kundalini that are available for such an inquiry. One of these is the spiritual tradition of ancient India, and the other is modern science. Both of these sources have their strengths and weaknesses, but neither of them, on its own, is capable of providing a satisfactory definition of Kundalini.

Central to this issue is the radical difference between the paradigms of reality that these two systems of thought subscribe to. What this article will attempt to do, in addition to providing a definition of Kundalini, is to reconcile this difference in a way that preserves the integrity and spirit of both of them.

The Indian Tradition

Although the spiritual tradition of India is permeated with allegories, myths, symbols and images of Kundalini, that tradition came into being thousands of years before the start of the Common Era when knowledge of subjects like anatomy and physiology was rudimentary, compared with what it is today. In addition, many subjects essential to the understanding of life, like physics, biochemistry, genetics, microbiology, quantum theory and evolution were non-existent at that time 

Much of what was written was done in a veiled, allegorical or hyperbolic way, not easy for the modern, western-educated mind to interpret. Anyone who wishes to seriously understand the ancient tradition must be prepared to devote many years of study to it, and to acquire, at the very least, a good familiarity with Sanskrit vocabulary.

Not only that, in-depth knowledge of Kundalini was regarded as potentially dangerous to one who undertook extreme spiritual practices without competent guidance. As a consequence, much of the useful, practical knowledge of Kundalini was kept secret. It was not written down, but was passed on in an oral fashion from teacher to student. Although this Oral tradition of Kundalini still exists in India today, it is highly likely that a considerable proportion of the ancient knowledge it once contained has been lost over the centuries.

Another difficulty with fully comprehending these writings is that it is not just one single unified belief system. The tradition began with the Vedic philosophy prior to 2,000 B.C.E. and was followed by the texts known as the Upanishads. From this base emerged four major religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, six distinct schools of thought, including Classical Yoga, Sankhya, and Advaita Vedanta, and other traditions with knowledge of Kundalini such as the Tantric philosophy. 

As can be imagined, formulating a paradigm of reality which accomodates the many different belief systems of ancient India, but is also consistent with the modern scientific viewpoint, is no easy task. This task is made even more challenging due to the Sanskrit nomenclature used. As a perusal of books such as Georg Feuerstein’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of Yoga will quickly reveal, many Sanskrit terms have somewhat different meanings in different traditions. The situation is even more confounded when these terms are translated into English, and the English term has connotations that are not present in the Sanskrit one, and vice-versa.

For example the well-known British physicist and documentary film-maker Brian Cox stated in his program on the creation of the universe that the Rig Veda stated, “first came the Creation, then came the Gods.”  From this he concluded that the Rig Vedas supported the scientific view that the universe was created in the ‘Big Bang’.  

Not being a Sanskrit scholar, Cox had obviously read an English translation of the Rig Veda, and an examination of the Sanskrit verse he mentioned reveals that the English word God was a translation of the Sanskrit word deva. In Feuerstein’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of Yoga (p. 91), he states that the term deva has two possible  meanings. One is that of a transcendent, Universal deity, such as Vishnu or Durga, which would roughly correspond to the Western concept of ‘God’, and the other is of lesser deities, or ‘shining ones’, as the term means in Sanskrit, that would be more comparable to angels in the Christian tradition. If one is familiar with the Indian tradition, it is obvious that the usage in this case, being plural, is of the latter, angelic variety, not the Universal type.  So Cox’s claim that the Rig Veda supports the Big Bang theory is clearly incorrect.

Modern Science

One of modern science’s greatest strengths is its nomenclature. Scientific terms are clearly defined, and much effort is made in using these terms in a specific, consistent way, so misinterpretations, like the one that Cox made, are greatly reduced. 

Another tremendous advantage that science has is its comprehensive knowledge of the physical body. Modern disciplines such as biochemistry, genetics, microbiology and quantum theory have totally revolutionized our understanding of life processes. 

But this doesn’t mean that science’s understanding of life is complete. Though science can now see what’s happening in many of these processes, how they are guided and controlled is still, in many of them, a profound mystery. One such mystery is protein folding. A protein or enzyme is a long chain of amino acids assembled by a molecular machine in the cell nucleus called a ribosome. The information in a gene is copied into a strand of Messenger RNA (MRNA), which is taken up by the ribosome which ‘reads’ it. The ribosome then assembles the protein or enzyme one amino acid at a time, into a long chain, as specified in the base pair sequences in the MRNA strand. When this chain emerges from the ribosome, it then folds up in a particular way to give it a shape that determines its specific function. 

Folding can occur at each junction of amino acids, and it can happen in several different ways at each junction. These chains can be hundreds, or even thousands of amino acids in length, and the number of ways in which a protein could possibly fold is therefore in millions, billions, trillions, or even more. But amazingly, the protein will always fold up in the one specific way needed to perform its function, unless there is an error in the base pair sequence of the gene that the MRNA strand was copied from. Why this folding happens in the one out of countless possible ways is a complete mystery to science.

Another process that science cannot satisfactorily explain is gestation. How a single cell – a fertilized ovum – develops in nine months into a living, breathing, thinking human being, composed of about a trillion cells of several hundred different types, cannot be rationally explained by contemporary science.

There can be no doubt that the human body is being assembled according to a specific pattern, which must necessarily include assembly instructions for complex organs such as the eye or liver. But if such information exists in our genetic code, outside of that used for cell components such as proteins and enzymes, science has not been able to locate it so far. Even if this information does exist somewhere in our genetic code, where is the mechanism in the womb of the mother that decodes it and actually does the assembly, like a ribosome does for a protein?

When considered rationally, the belief that all these unimaginably complex, dynamic life processes occur in a purely mechanistic way is totally untenable. It would be far more rational to assume that there is some agency that is currently unknown to science, possessing great intelligence, which is guiding and controlling these processes.

According to the well-known author of books on Kundalini – Gopi Krishna (1903-1984) – the psycho-physical disciplines developed in India thousands of years ago, later known as Yoga, were capable of modifying the brain of the adepts so that they could directly perceive the amazing intelligence controlling life processes. He wrote that there were two basic tenets of the Indian spiritual tradition that science must adopt before Kundalini, and even life itself, could be fully understood. These tenets are 

1. Consciousness can exist independently of physical matter and is actually a higher order of reality than the physical creation we perceive with our senses. 

2. All life processes are guided and controlled by the aforementioned consciousness via an extremely subtle, as yet undiscovered medium which permeates all life. The existence of this medium has been known of for thousands of years in India, and was called prana.

Both tenets are directly at odds with the paradigm of reality that orthodox science currently subscribes to. As a consequence of its struggle with religion for the last five or six centuries, science continues to insist that  consciousness is simply a by-product of electro-chemical activity in the neurons of the brain. And since imaging technology has not yet reached the degree of sophistication where the medium of prana can be detected, science sees no reason to consider the possibility that it exists.

Without these two tenets, science will continue to try to explain life in purely mechanistic terms, in much the same way that the alchemists of yore attempted to understand chemical reactions without any knowledge of the periodic table of elements or the structure of the atom.

The Dual Aspect of Kundalini

One of the reasons why a simple, but comprehensive, definition of Kundalini is not easy to formulate is that Kundalini has two distinct aspects to it, and both of these aspects must be defined in order for the overall definition to be complete. One of these is what might be called the ‘Individual’ aspect, or how it functions in the human body from the physiological standpoint. The other is what might be called the ‘Universal’ or ‘Transcendent’ aspect, by which is meant the consciousness / intelligence which guides and directs the physiological processes in the body.

Modern science is obviously far better equipped to provide us with a definition of the Individual aspect of Kundalini than the spiritual tradition of ancient India. The scheme of physiology used by the ancients, involving such concepts as chakras, vayus, nadis and pranas, although logically consistent within itself, was largely expressed in a functional and experiential, rather than physiological way. 

For instance, the nadis bear a striking resemblance to the nerves as they are very large in number and carry electrical energy as impulses and sensations throughout the body. The five sub-divisions of prana  – prana, apana, samana, udana and vyana — correspond roughly to respiration, elimination, digestion, vocalization / ideation, and circulation.

Although our knowledge of how life functions has vastly increased in recent times, thanks to modern science, this new understanding of how complex and dynamic life is has made any kind of purely mechanistic explanation entirely untenable. This applies not only to overall body systems such as gestation, the immune and endocrine systems, and those corresponding to the five pranas, but also to the microbiological ones, such as protein creation, which happen inside cells. 

The key to the solution of this riddle is the Individual prana – the link between the Universal Consciousness and life processes. Whereas consciousness is totally immaterial, the Individual prana does have a physical component, although a very subtle one. Since no means exists at present to directly image prana, the only avenue we have for its study is that of individuals who have achieved enough of a transformation of their perceptive faculties, via Yoga, to directly perceive this medium. It is to be hoped that in the not-too-distant future, technology will have advanced to the point where prana can be imaged and studied directly.

With regard to the Universal or Transcendent aspect of Kundalini, however, the situation is reversed. As science has chosen to restrict its sphere of inquiry to measurable, physical phenomena, it is in no way equipped to provide any guidance with the non-physical aspects of creation.

The bias of orthodox science towards consciousness is both irrational and unjustifiable. The many reasons for this are beyond the scope of this article, but thanks to quantum physics and the forward-thinking of some scientists in areas such as brain research, the trend towards an acceptance of a new view of consciousness, more in line with that of the Indian tradition, is slowly taking place.

The two later sections on the Universal and Individual aspects of Kundalini will provide the background for a rational, complete and understandable definition of Kundalini. For those who find some of the ideas and concepts in the paradigm of the Indian tradition strange and unfamiliar, it should be pointed out that theories such as those of Einstein and the quantum physicists have radically reshaped our understanding of reality without sacrificing logic or rationality. 

Also, the paradigm of reality of the Indian tradition, described below, is not contradictory to that of modern science, as it violates no known physical laws. It is, rather, an expansion of the scientific paradigm to include non-physical aspects of creation that science has chosen not to investigate so far. 

For example, one of the most profound mysteries in science is why physical creation is bound, from end to end, by strict, inviolable natural laws. Where these laws originate from and why they have the specific values that they do is a question that science has been unable to answer.

Human society creates laws, like the rules of the road, in order to impose order on what would otherwise be chaos. Since human laws are the result of our intelligence, and one aspect of consciousness is intelligence, treating consciousness as a higher order of reality than the physical would provide an answer to the question of where these laws originate. How these laws are used to bring physical creation into being will be explained below.

Based on his own experience of higher consciousness, Gopi Krishna insisted that these non-physical aspects of creation are bound by strict natural laws in the same way that the operation of the physical creation is. As such, science’s fear of chaos in realms beyond the physical world is unjustified.

Paradigms of Reality

The basic difference between the Indian and scientific paradigms of reality is that in the former, consciousness is considered to be a higher order of reality than the physical creation we perceive with our senses. On what basis can this claim be regarded as valid, since consciousness is totally non-physical in nature and cannot be directly detected or measured? In order to answer this question, it will first be necessary to consider what is meant by the term ‘reality’.

Reality, in the sense that it is currently used in contemporary science, is a physical construct which we call the universe, that exists independently of the consciousness of any life forms that exist within it. However, one of the basic tenets of quantum theory is that the observer can never be separated from the phenomenon being observed. In other words, they are two parts of a unified system. So the very basis of science’s definition of ‘reality’ has been called into question by science’s own discovery of how matter works at a very basic level.

For any who might think that quantum theory is some kind of abstract mathematical construct that bears little relationship to the ‘real’ world, it is worth noting that most of the major inventions of our modern age, including nuclear technology, lasers, the integrated circuits that power all of our electronic devices and digital and medical imaging technology, to name some of the more important ones, could not have been invented without quantum theory.

Since the inception of quantum theory, one of the major debates has been whether consciousness was necessary for the act of observation. Although this debate has not been settled with finality, the preponderance of quantum theorists, including most of the prominent ones such as Neils Bohr and John Wheeler, believe that it is.

Other factors which directly determine a life form’s experience of and definition of reality are the faculties of sense and mind that it possesses. As life has evolved and grown in complexity from single cells to humans, more and more aspects of creation have been revealed to it. There can be no doubt that a chimpanzee experiences a much larger and more complex order of reality than an earthworm, due to its more advanced faculties of sense. But the same is also the case with humans and chimpanzees. Thanks to our highly evolved intellect, we now know about many aspects of creation that are hidden from other lifeforms on earth. These include the laws of Nature, the physical forces, the scale of the universe, the structure of the atom, the periodic table of elements, the quantum realm and mathematics.

With the vast body of knowledge we have acquired about the physical creation in the last several hundred years, science has concluded that we now know what reality is in its ultimate form. Although most orthodox scientists would probably deny this belief, the finality with which they regard their current paradigm of reality would argue otherwise.

This belief is based on two critical assumptions. The first is that reality consists of only what we perceive with our senses or detect with our current level of technology. This belief is difficult to justify for two reasons. Firstly, this has never been the case in the past, and there is no reason to assume it is the case now. During its history, science has made one unanticipated discovery after another that totally revolutionized our paradigm of reality. Relativity, quantum theory, dark matter and dark energy are examples of this type.

 Secondly, there are still many profound mysteries about reality, such as life, consciousness, psychic phenomena, and the origin of both the laws of  Nature and mathematics, which remain unsolved. This would suggest that our current scientific understanding of reality isclearly incomplete. 

Another assumption orthodox science makes is that the faculties of mind that we human beings currently possess are the final word in what is possible in evolution. This assumption is also untenable for several reasons.

The steady evolution of life from lower to higher complexity with more advanced faculties of sense and mind is a profound mystery to science.  This undeniable progression is inconsistent with the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, which states that evolution is a consequence of random genetic mutations put through the filter of natural selection to eliminate non-viable mutations. 

According to this theory, the only trend that we should be seeing in evolution is towards more and more viable forms of life. But there does not seem to be any evidence that this is the case. Quite the contrary. Some of the simpler forms of life, such as sharks or turtles have been in existence for hundreds of millions of years. If genetic changes are random and do not contribute to viability, why should complexity proceed from simplicity?

Also there is no reason, genetic, biological, logical or otherwise why this trend  to more complex life forms, with more advanced faculties of perception, should not continue into the future. The reason for this belief is quite simple. In the same way that a chimpanzee is incapable of understanding higher mathematics, we humans can only have a vague notion of the nature of new faculties of perception. The belief that humanity is the last word in evolutionary development, beyond which no further advancement is possible, seems to be more a consequence of pride in our own achievements rather than sound logic.

As this undeniable trend in evolution cannot be explained with the neo-Darwinian theory, the most likely alternative is that there is some agency at work of which science is ignorant.

There can be little doubt that the evolution of our intellect has been a consequence of changes in our brain, possibly structural, biochemical, energetic, or all three. But how these changes resulted in the creation of our advanced intellect is still poorly understood by science.

Given science’s materialistic definition of reality and given that it does not know why evolution has proceeded from simple to more complex life forms, it should come as no surprise that science generally regards the faculties of sense and mind we currently possess as the final word in what is possible in evolution. 

The basic premise of Gopi Krishna’s theories is that this most pronounced trend in evolution has not stopped but is continuing in a slow but steady way towards the development of an entirely new faculty of perception in the human brain. This new faculty, called enlightenment or higher consciousness, rather than giving us more information about the physical plane, as the intellect has done, shows us by direct perception that consciousness is, in fact, a higher order of reality than the physical creation.

Modes of Consciousness and Orders of Reality

In order to understand what is meant by concepts such as ‘by direct perception’ and ‘higher order of reality’, it is useful to know about the four modes of consciousness as described in the Indian tradition. They are:

1. Dreamless sleep

2. Dreaming sleep

3. Waking state

4. Enlightened state

In dreamless sleep, there is no conscious perception or, if there is, we have no memory of it when we awaken. 

In dreaming sleep, our ‘self’ exists in a mental construct that we call a dream. While we are in the dream state what we experience seems to be completely and totally ‘real’. To illustrate how ‘real’ this state seems I will cite an experience I had once during a dream. 

Some months prior to this dream I had another one in which I was able to fly. After waking, I thought to myself that if I ever found myself in a situation where I could float or fly, I would know that I was dreaming. When I had the second dream some months later, I found myself in a corridor of my old high school floating along. It occurred to my dreaming self that since I was floating, I must therefore be dreaming. But I looked at my surroundings and simply concluded that they were unquestionably ‘real’, and I therefore could not be dreaming!

But as totally ‘real’ as the dream state seems to be while we are in it, when we wake up, we realize instantly that what we just experienced was only a construct of our mind. By having direct perception of the third or waking state, we know, not believe, that the second, or dream state was no more than a mental construct.

Similarly, when we transition from the waking state to the enlightened or higher conscious state, we instantly know, by having direct perception of that higher state, that our true ‘self’ is of the nature of pure consciousness, and that all that we experienced in the waking state was a construct or projection of that consciousness. Moreover, from the accounts of those who’ve had this ‘mystical experience’, this sense of going from something that is less real to something that is more real is many times greater in magnitude than the transition from the dream to the waking state.

To summarize, the waking state is perception of a higher order of reality than the dream state, even though the dream state seems to be totally real while we experience it. Similarly, the enlightened state is perception of a higher order of reality than the waking state. This is why anyone who has had a genuine mystical experience will from that time on have no fear whatsoever of death. Instead, there is an unshakable conviction of the immortality of our consciousness. To suggest that our consciousness ends when we die would be like suggesting to a person in the waking state that if they were killed somehow in a dream that they would actually be dead. This is one way that a genuine mystical experience can be distinguished from a hallucinogenic or delusional experience.

What this fourth or enlightened state of consciousness is, to be precise, is a totally new faculty of perception that gives us the ability to directly apprehend reality in its ultimate form as pure consciousness. Although this consciousness has as many names as there are religions and spiritual traditions, I prefer to call it ‘Transcendent Consciousness” as it is infinite, and therefore transcends time, space and causality. 

But we can only have a glimpse of this Consciousness as, in order for us to apprehend it completely, we ourselves would have to be infinite. Since we can only experience Transcendent Consciousness from the frame of reference (to use an Einsteinian term) of the finite human brain and mind, we can never know it in its ultimate form.

It is hoped that the ideas and concepts presented in the preceding sections will provide a framework for the next section on the Transcendent aspect of Kundalini. When understood correctly, the expansion of orthodox science’s paradigm of reality can then be viewed, not as a threat to science, but as an essential and exciting opportunity to increase our knowledge of Creation.

The Universal Aspect of Kundalini

The Ultimate reality or Transcendent Consciousness is, by definition, infinite. Because science regards consciousness as only a by-product of electrochemical activity in the neurons of the brain, it has no conceptual tools to help us understand Transcendent Consciousness. The Indian tradition, on the other hand has spent thousands of years developing a spiritual science based upon practice and experience.  The result has been a number of frameworks for this type of understanding. The following account is an outline of some of the basic ideas and concepts of various  Indian schools of thought, particularly the Sankhya, Vedanta and Tantric traditions.

Central to this understanding is what might be termed the ‘Process of Creation’ – that is, how the physical creation is brought into being from the Transcendent Consciousness. One way to understand this process is by using the scheme of the four states of consciousness described above.

Consciousness, whether it is manifesting in either its infinite or embodied forms, has three distinct attributes by which we can know it. These are awareness, knowing and intelligence. In the case of finite, living beings, awareness consists of both our ‘self’ and the environment in which we exist. In the case of the Transcendent Consciousness, awareness is of everything that happens at any point in time at any location in the entire universe, or in other universes we have no perception or knowledge of. 

The situation is similar in the case of knowledge. For example, we have knowledge of mathematics. But that body of knowledge has been growing steadily since it was discovered and we do not know how much more of it still remains to be apprehended. On the other hand, the entirety of mathematics originates in Transcendent Consciousness. It uses mathematics in the process of creation to construct the physical universe in a similar way to that which we use mathematics (through the vehicle of computer code) to generate computer games and animated motion pictures.

In the case of intelligence, we have various mental tools such as logic, reasoning, inference, deduction, intuition, imagination, and the ability to use mathematics. As these tools would be infinite in Transcendent Consciousness, it would make the construction of a physical creation like our unimaginably vast universe like child’s play. 

A fourth attribute of consciousness is the ability to create subordinate realities within itself. In the case of humans (and possibly other higher order species), we call this a ‘dream’. In the dream, we experience a reality that can be radically different from the waking state. In a dream, we both create the dream world and populate it with our own individual self, or consciousness. 

In the case of Transcendent Consciousness, this subordinate reality is what we call the universe or physical creation. But the Transcendent Consciousness not only creates the entire universe but populates it with finite points of its Self which are the living beings.  This is why mystics will describe the state of awareness they experience as being both ‘the knower and the known’, or ‘the seer and the seen.’

Thanks to Gopi Krishna, the relationship between the individual points of consciousness and the Transcendent Consciousness can be described using several analogies. First, in the same way that a drop of water taken from the Pacific Ocean has exactly the same chemical constitution as the ocean itself, it is the same, in essence as the Ocean. But being finite, it is not the complete Ocean, but only a drop. 

A second analogy that he used was of a ray of sunlight shining into a dark room through a window. Although that ray of light gives the objects in the room such attributes as form, texture, color, and perspective, the ray is of the nature of the Sun, millions of kilometers away, not the room or the objects in it. Similarly, the point of individual consciousness, that is our ‘self’ is of the nature of the Transcendent Consciousness, not our body or the physical creation we exist within.

If we look for other explanations for the relationship between the Transcendent Consciousness and the phenomenal creation in the various schools of thought in the Indian tradition, the situation becomes much more complicated. Some systems of belief are theistic, others are not. Some are dualistic, others are non-dual or unitive. Each has its own framework for understanding this relationship and its own methods for achieving the enlightened state. The following account takes ideas from several of these traditions, in particular the Advaita Vedanta and Sankhya schools, and the Tantric philosophy. This account owes a great deal not only to Gopi Krishna, but also to Sir John Woodroffe (1865–1936), who wrote under the pen name Arthur Avalon.

Woodroffe was a judge and legal scholar who was born in British India and lived most of his life there. He became deeply immersed in the Indian spiritual traditions, particularly the Tantric philosophy. He was a Sanskrit scholar of the highest caliber and translated more than 20 Tantric texts into English.

His most important work was The Serpent Power: The Secrets of Tantric and Shaktic Yoga, first published in 1919. His writings had a major influence on the Western understanding of Indian philosophy in general, and the Tantric tradition in particular. 

He used his incisive, systematic and scientific Western way of thinking to interpret the profound, transcendental knowledge of the Indian tradition. The Serpent Power was the culmination of this life-long work and is (in the opinion of this author) without equal in writings in English on Kundalini in the Indian tradition. But before the reader rushes out to buy a copy of the book please note that each page has as many as 15 to 20 Sanskrit terms on it, and it took this author about 25 years of study of Gopi Krishna’s writings, the Vedic tradition and Sanskrit before the book could be read in a comprehensive way.

One of the most obvious, and confusing aspects of the Indian tradition is the prodigious array of deities that are worshipped. But a deeper understanding of the tradition will reveal that it was generally accepted by those who had the actual experience of higher consciousness that the human mind, in a state of normal consciousness, was simply not capable of apprehending reality in its ultimate form. The only attributes by which we can think of it are that it is of the nature of consciousness, that it is infinite, and it is absolute unity.

By its very nature, the human intellect can only function in a non-unitive or dualistic way. It is most comfortable thinking of things in terms of polarities. In some cases, such as positive and negative electrical charges, or female and male forms, the physical reality matches our conception. But our minds will almost always try to put aspects of creation that are on a continuum, such as hot and cold, active and passive, or good and evil, into a polar dynamic.

According to the Sankhya philosophy, ultimate reality is called ‘purusha’, and in the Vedanta school it was named ‘Brahman’. In order to make terms like these meaningful to the human intellect, the ancient adepts gave this ultimate reality a dual aspect. These are consciousness and Creative Power. Woodroffe put this into more modern terms by calling them the static and dynamic aspects of the ultimate reality. The static aspect is Infinite Consciousness, unchanging, beyond time, space, and causality, usually represented by a male deity like Shiva. The dynamic aspect of reality is infinite Creative Power, which exists in, and changes in time and space. Since females perform the creative function of gestation, this aspect of reality is represented by female deities like Shakti.

Another, more modern way in which Woodroffe referred to these two aspects of reality is ‘Power Holder’ (static) and Power (dynamic). In the same way that heat cannot be separated from a flame, one cannot exist without the other. Power, without a Power Holder cannot be creative. And Power Holder without Power is impotent. In the Sankhya philosophy, purusha is the static Power Holder  and Creative Power was given the name prakriti or the phenomenal creation, sometimes translated as ‘Nature’ in English. 

As Woodroffe states it in The Serpent Power, 

“The ultimate or irreducible reality is ‘Spirit’ in the sense of Pure Consciousness (Chit, Samvit) from out of which, as and by its Power (Shakti) Mind and Matter proceed. Spirit is one. There are no degrees or differences in Spirit. The Spirit, which is in man, is the one Spirit which is in everything. . . Spirit is infinite (Aparicchinna) and formless (Arupa). Mind and Matter are finite (Paricchinna) and with form (Rupa). Atma (Spirit) is unchanged and inactive. Its Power (Shakti) is active and changes in the form of Mind and Matter.” ^[1]

The process by which the phenomenal creation is projected from the Transcendent Consciousness is central to an explanation of Kundalini. In the Sankhya tradition, this process of creation has 24 different levels or steps, called tattvas, proceeding first through the mind, then the senses, then gross physical matter. In the Tantric system there are 36 levels!

As both of these schemes are far too complex to be easily understandable, they are here condensed down to 4 essential levels which I call ‘aspects of Shakti’. For those who might find this scheme too involved or complex, it must be kept in mind that the very concept of Kundalini makes no sense unless it is put into a framework such as this.

The first of these aspects, which must come into operation before any of the others, is Maya-Shakti. Since Transcendent Consciousness is infinite, it cannot exist in an embodied form in time and space. Maya-Shakti is a two-stage process. In the first, Shakti takes a spark of this infinite Transcendent Consciousness and contracts it to a point in time and space, so that it is no longer infinite. At the same time it creates a sense of separation from the whole, which allows this spark to have finite, embodied experience as our limited human consciousness. 

The next stage of the creation process is an amalgamation of many of the 24 levels  that I have chosen to call Prakriti Shakti. As stated above, prakriti is a term from the Sankhya tradition meaning Nature, or the phenomenal creation. This process has 3 stages – the mind, the senses, and sensible matter.

This phase of the creation process is somewhat analogous to the way that a movie projector throws an image onto a white screen. The light bulb in the projector is like our indwelling spark of consciousness, the moving celluloid film in front of the light like our mind, the white screen like our senses, and the images on the screen physical matter.